Don´t want to suppor thes Window sh... anymore. Change to Linux?

[classic]

Hello all.

I am a musician an love to think free and safe.
I am sure, Windows is the bigges spy software on earth.

I don´t know if Linux is any better, so I want to have some experience from Linux users that use it to make music.

Is this system any good and safe?

[ATS]

aliens made Linux

[Passing Bye]

Disconnect it from internet for audio work, for internet&co, use Linux, Linux Mint is really great OS for example.

[telecode]

use the right tool for the job. i believe the two main OS's for music are OSX and Windows. But if you with strong convictions, I see many are using Bitwig and some using WINE to run stuff. Make sure you get a audio interface that has Linux drivers. That's sort of what will determine where you are at. There is a long thread on here with the Linux hard cores. DO search in search box.

[chk071]

Have fun. You're welcome to run back to Windows when you find out about how all the audio stuff works under Linux.

Why not try Mac OS X though? At least you have a halfway proper OS then.

Although it is "the bigges spy software in the world" too. Whatever that means.

[imrae]

As somebody who uses all three major desktop platforms on a typical day...

Linux distributions do mostly respect your privacy, yes. They are more transparent and do not force change on you the way Windows and MacOS do. However, the flip side of choosing what is best for yourself is that you have to take more responsibility for system administration.

Also, there is very little support from music software developers. A lot of things can be made to work, but it can be a frustrating experience.

I suggest looking at the LinuxMusicians forum which specialises in this.

[rasmusklump]

And I don't want to read such sh... threads anymore

[chk071]

And I don't want to read such sh... threads anymore

I don't often agree with you on anything, but, yeah...

BTW, should I become vegan? Opinions?

[chk071]

As somebody who uses all three major desktop platforms on a typical day...

Linux distributions do mostly respect your privacy, yes. They are more transparent and do not force change on you the way Windows and MacOS do. However, the flip side of choosing what is best for yourself is that you have to take more responsibility for system administration.

Also, there is very little support from music software developers. A lot of things can be made to work, but it can be a frustrating experience.

I suggest looking at the LinuxMusicians forum which specialises in this.

Without any experience with Linux, I'd really really suggest to not fiddle with Linux for audio.

If you only want to browse the net, and read your mails, I think you'd be happy with it. For anything else, I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. And I absolutely detest the attitude of the "community".

[cleverr1]

I am sure, Windows is the bigges spy software on earth.

For this comment to be in any way meaningful you'd need to break it down into the criteria that you think constitute "the bigges spy software on earth" and compare with the other O/S specific features in these areas, if you really wish to discuss.

Alternatively just disconnect your DAW from the internet and chill

[telecode]

OS wars are really 00s and passe. I am a sysadmin. I use all the OSs. the thing is, you spend so much money on the VSTs, DSPs and DAWs.. it's silly to cripple yourself by running them in WINE.

[Guenon]

Without any experience with Linux, I'd really really suggest to not fiddle with Linux for audio.

If you only want to browse the net, and read your mails, I think you'd be happy with it. For anything else, I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. And I absolutely detest the attitude of the "community".

Okay, so I guess this calls for a trip report of sorts. Floooood alert

The above is a good example of the kind of biased replies these sorts of topics will generate in a place like this, if one doesn't post in a specific thread already dealing with the subject ... I.e. it's a lot more likely you receive something like this, from someone who already has a chip on their shoulder when seeing some keywords like "linux", hah, instead of replies from people with a genuine interest in the subject and weighing the pros and cons -- through the experience of actually being experts in their field and approaching it without said chip.

Trying to balance this out somewhat: having been an audio/music professional for well over a decade, I had never used Linux for audio... until this summer. I had thought about giving it a serious try in that context, but as most of my software licenses are for non-linux tools, I had ruled it out as a viable working platform for me. As an OS it's technically so terrific and malleable, for those who have the appropriate skills, this idea had still stuck in my head for a while.

Sort of following from the corona thing and all, having some "project time" on my hands, I decided to go all-in and build myself a 1) personal completely portable linux installation that works well for my coding projects and network administration AND 2) see if the same environment can be set up to work also for audio tasks. No harm in trying, eh.

Long story short, I've been surprised at how robust and well-rounded the audio side is these days. I now have a beautiful portable environment I can install on any system, take with me on a USB stick, and so on, and the best thing is... it's in a known state, not a moving target in any way, for everything I can do with it. I know exactly what I can really depend on it for, even years from now, and it will be ready to use just like that.

Alas, I still decided not to make it the basis of my primary audio workstation. This was simple realism and protectig one's profession: I didn't want to run a compatibility layer for Kontakt based soundtrack projects. That's it, basically. I know first hand there are people who do that, but I didn't want to inject any sort of additional complexity into the very thing that consists of tried and tested projects / project templates, going into pretty huge track counts, running days on end without an issue, natively, on something else.

However, that's really the only reason I kept this just a secondary system. Everything else showed I could easily make the switch. It's a joy to use. Last week I finished a dialog editing gig for a recent production, using this setup, and before that an electronics-heavy sound design gig, and so on. If you aren't doing huge Kontakt projects (or are a bit more adventurous on that side than I am), and you are comfortable around this stuff in a professional or at least "fluent enthusiast" capacity, I'd say go for it, definitely try this out, with a positive "yay I'm learning new stuff on the craft I love" attitude

But yeah, for some specifics: having quite a bit of Debian experience from the yesteryears, I opted for doing a custom build based on antiX and MX, especially because of their excellent snapshot/portability tools. After you have set things the way you wish to work, you can make it portable 1:1. Not the way you do "ISO authoring" in chroot environments on many other distros, but actual 1:1 portability of your running system. To me that's huge; someone really made something like this and it works this well and dependable, that's quite something on any OS, damn (check it out, it's reaaaally cool)

Most of the time went into building the non-audio functionality, with a different shell, x environment, network/forensic tools, quality of life things like integrated ripgrep/ripgrep-all and all sorts of little and less little things like that. But when I got to the audio side, switched the kernel to a low latency one (see the AV Linux repos), installed my licensed native Linux software and other native must haves (Reaper and its custom working environment, imported straight away from my main workstations without any issues, Renoise + Redux, u-he plugins, Surge, TAL plugins, VCV Rack etc...), then LinVST wrapped some essentials for post production and made sure they played nice (things like the TDR Limiter 6 GE, the Fabfilter lineup and so on), started using the Cadence toolset for when ever there's a need for configuring JACK connections -- instead of something like qjackctl -- and primed it with all the necessary drivers...

The end result: this thing is great , is extremely slick to use, and runs both on my modern RME HDSPe AIO systems and also sports low latency on all of my laptops I tried it on (2010 and 2019 models), and a Q6600 system from 2007. Heh. The latencies really are second to none, and I can just fire this thing up on any of my machines and everything instantly works. It takes only about 200 megabytes of RAM when booting it up to a fully working state, then just launch a host, and off you go. Especially for electronic productions, I really like working in this system.

I hope that inspires someone to try something like this , it sure is fun, and the best part is: for all the time you invest in creating your environment (realistically, if you know your way around this stuff, still reserve some good weeks of long spare evenings for this if you're going all-in custom on this, hehe), you really do reap it back afterwards, as the environment will be yours to keep, stable and functional, and it will do its thing efficiently from one month to the next, year after year.

[lfm]

Maybe Microsoft need a force like Phil Spencer/Spender and what he did for Xbox to be in the market again - but someone for Windows itself.

Some visionary that also seem to listen to user base.
Somebody that is aware of the various ways people use the PC and where constant updates is a really bad idea.

I've had similar ideas like OP in this thread, or go back to portastudio stuff. Was about to see if the Behringer Wing could actually be used as a standalone portastudio - as I understand it can do like 64 tracks on SD card.

If so many people think about how to avoid another Windows PC is a sign to take seriously.

[telecode]

FWIW.. If you have been bitten by the FOSS Richard Stallman bug, you may want to get into video animation. Those guys use tons of FOSS. They are highly technical and talented. Most of the talented music guys just know where the on and off button on a computer is. Forget about getting them to use thinks like make or package managers.

[chk071]

@Guenon: I didn't read all of your post, but, rest assured that I have enough Linux experience to form a opinion about it.

Yes, also with Linux audio.