Changing to Linux for music making

[dellboy]

There is no need to change to Linux, just make a bootable SSD hardrive like I have with some sort of Linux on it.

Out of curiosity is this a USB connected drive? I've booted Linux plenty of times from a stick and it seems to work fine (though no massive projects yet) but have it in my head that if I went this way I should use a faster drive... Cheers.

Yes, I bought a 250GB SSD and put it into one of those cheap enclosures you get off ebay. I plug it in and tell the PC to boot off it and it works just like regular Linux. I can read and write to the disk as per normal. If I want to go back into windows I just unplug it and re-boot.

[FrettedSynth]

Some people are very vocal about things they don't understand or for that matter never took the effort to learn. No hating on Microsoft maybe just a little still remains for Apple (Audiomedia II card) but have used MacOS and it is a fine OS.
When I installed Linux eight months ago it was just an exercise to yet again see where it was at? As was already mentioned Linux has improved since my last bout a few years back.
There are even some bonuses for me anyhow! I can run the same computer/audio device at a lower latency. I have an installed system backed up that will run on most computers. Instalation is a matter of boot to a live USB and click install. But again to each his own and please don't piss in my cheerios.

[THE INTRANCER]

Every time I see someone make such an ill informed comment about Pro Audio on Linux, I have to remind myself that these people haven’t bothered to learn how much better Linux has gotten in the last five years, and are simply vomiting whatever garbage they’ve heard from others. The truth is, they fear Linux, and are unwilling to try for themselves. Or, their definition of “try” is loading a live install for a few minutes, not understand it, and declare it futile and useless with swings and roundabouts, providing a subpar experience.

I had Linux Mint 18.0 through to 18.3 installed for over 3 years on a hard drive, of my main desktop PC before replacing it with Windows 10 whilst I had Windows 7, and this was in 2019. I pretty much had all the available pieces of music software installed from Ardour, to Bitwig Studio, lots of freeware and audio utilities. It worked for a while, but things were never simple. Having to deal with JACK, Pulse and ALSA, configuring the routings of getting audio to work and software crashing.

Losing sound and then having to reinstall the whole operating system again and start a fresh, which I had to do after just a week of using Linux (and a number of times after). Having Saffire Mix Control utility software (for my Focusrite interface) not work as like it would on Windows, hence the need to use some strange software to act as an alternative that lacked features, really was a pain.

Now other than having to use a 1984 command line interface to sudu get updates to try and update software which would sometimes fail and having an app like store utility that showed you what programs you can download actually breakdown for no logical reason, having to constantly type in your password to do things all the time, really was the last straw.

Having to fix the operating system all the time really didn't do it for me. Now, if that wasn't enough, there was losing features in configuring my Sapphire RX 570 graphics cards software and not being able to use 1440p resolutions on my 1080P monitor as I did on Windows 7 and 10.

On Windows, I don't have to worry about things not working with the operating system, I've never needed to reinstall Windows 7 or 10 in all the years I've used it.

There are no compromises when it comes to the amount of audio software available and the ease in which everything just works on Windows without needing a degree or weeks or months to get things working as it should. I've been through many distros and forks of Linux versions years back which are just slightly different in look or have slightly more features, but they all suffer from the same problems.

Linux has had its uses for me, but for music production it really hasn't impressed me when I used it last.

[audiojunkie]

I think part of your problem is your distro. For example, Mint still doesn’t do pipewire correctly. With pipewire working correctly, you don’t have to even deal with JACK or PulseAudio or ALSA. Pipewire simply runs and replaces the need to configure and mess with all of that. The fact that the Debian family of distros hasn’t fully converted to pipewire means that to use it, you have to do a lot of the configuring yourself.

Furthermore, Mint Linux is still using an ancient kernel—IIRC, they still use kernel version 5.4. A lot of the best audio related updates didn’t start hitting until 5.12. Mint doesn’t have the ability to use kernel boot parameters to make the generic kernel run as a real time kernel. You have to go through the pain of installing a specially compiled kernel and configuring it for audio. The majority of the cool things that I rave about, you haven’t experienced, because they still aren’t in the distro you used.

Personally, I’m running Fedora and I’m incredibly pleased at how painless everything is. I’ve used most of the main distro families—including Arch, and I really feel that the “sweetspot” is Fedora. Fedora is “leading edge” rather than bleeding edge. In other words, Fedora tends to adopt the newest technology first, and yet is not a rolling release like the Arch family, and also not based on stable (meaning “old”) software like the Debian releases. New software is released in each new 6 month version, rather than being based on LTS releases.

The Arch family, because of its rolling release nature, often has the newest software, but you still have to configure it. Furthermore, when there are breaking changes, you have to deal with those breaks yourself. And finally, the maintenance of dealing with daily updates, breakages, manual configuration, pacnew and pacsave files is too much work. Fedora gives you a system using the latest technology, and remains new enough, and requires very little maintenance. Pipewire is all integrated and working great. It’s really nice!

Let me tell you about how easy it is for me. First, since Linux now has host (DAW) software that utilizes plugins, there is no need whatsoever to use JACK apps unless you really want to. I’ve decided that I’m perfectly happy using LV2 and VST3 plugins—just as I would when using plugins in Windows. And since Fedora already has Pipewire fully integrated, this is my process to start using my DAW and plugins in Linux:

1. I install Fedora
2. I install my DAW
3. I install a plugin.
4. I open my DAW and select my sound source: JACK
5. I load my plugin onto my track and begin my work.

SIMPLE!!

In fact, the process is exactly the same when using Windows, except with Windows, you’d select ASIO as your sound source.

That’s it. If you want to go deeper, you certainly can—you can combine JACK based programs together and save and recall them with a session manager. You can install WINE and yabridge and use Windows plugins along with your native linux plugins. You can (as I mentioned previously), use a kernel boot parameter in GRUB to make the kernel that came with your distro run as a real time kernel. You can then add your username to the realtime group as well to run at ultra low latencies. Unlike the days in the past, you can buy a Class Compliant audio interface that is completely plug and play and simply works.

So, in short, for a new user using Fedora, you simply install and go.

You need to give Linux another chance with the right distro. Mint is not the right distro for you.

Edit: P.S. I run my system with a 4k high resolution touchscreen monitor scaled for HiDPI on 2-in-1 laptop. It works flawlessly.

[dellboy]

Personally, I’m running Fedora and I’m incredibly pleased at how painless everything is. I’ve used most of the main distro families—including Arch, and I really feel that the “sweetspot” is Fedora.

So I took your advice and trashed my working Mint Linux and installed Fedora 36. My first impressions are that it has the worst desktop I have ever experienced. Who thought it was good idea to make you mouse click in the left hand corner every time you want to see something?

I then downloaded Reaper and clicked on it to load. Nothing. Click - click - click. It always worked fine on Mint. So I then downloaded Bitwig flatpak. Clicked on it to install, and it says "ready", only it is knowhere to be found. I thought you said this distro was ready to go?

[audiojunkie]

Personally, I’m running Fedora and I’m incredibly pleased at how painless everything is. I’ve used most of the main distro families—including Arch, and I really feel that the “sweetspot” is Fedora.

So I took your advice and trashed my working Mint Linux and installed Fedora 36. My first impressions are that it has the worst desktop I have ever experienced. Who thought it was good idea to make you mouse click in the left hand corner every time you want to see something?

I then downloaded Reaper and clicked on it to load. Nothing. Click - click - click. It always worked fine on Mint. So I then downloaded Bitwig flatpak. Clicked on it to install, and it says "ready", only it is knowhere to be found. I thought you said this distro was ready to go?

I like gnome because I use a touch screen. There are plenty of other choices that can be downloaded as an .ISO.

Mint is a beginner’s Linux. You do have to learn how Fedora is different from Mint. I personally don’t use Bitwig, and I don’t use Flatpak’ed DAWs (although I believe it is the right way to go for the future. I don’t know why Reaper doesn’t work for you. My experience is that it simply works. I haven’t reinstalled in a while—maybe something is broken in one of the newer releases.

You make a good point though with Bitwig. Bitwig only supports Flatpaks and .DEBs. If Bitwig is your DAW choice, Fedora may not be the best option for you.

Edit: Check out the Spins page:

https://spins.fedoraproject.org/

Also, when running scripts like the Reaper installer, you have to right-click and make the script an executable before being able to click on the script and have it work.

Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater after only spending a little time with it. Remember, Mint Linux was designed for Linux Beginners. Fedora is an OS that will do less hand holding. That doesn’t negate the fact that it is a leading edge Linux OS that has all of the new technology built in and working. Fedora may not be for those who are unwilling to spend time learning how it works, but my experience has been fantastic (and I’ve put a lot of time into learning how each distro I’ve used works. Give yourself some time.

[InLight-Tone]

Build a Hackintosh instead, much better operating system and less chance of things to go South.

[dellboy]

I like gnome because I use a touch screen. There are plenty of other choices that can be downloaded as an .ISO.

Mint is a beginner’s Linux. You do have to learn how Fedora is different from Mint. I personally don’t use Bitwig, and I don’t use Flatpak’ed DAWs (although I believe it is the right way to go for the future. I don’t know why Reaper doesn’t work for you. My experience is that it simply works. I haven’t reinstalled in a while—maybe something is broken in one of the newer releases.

You make a good point though with Bitwig. Bitwig only supports Flatpaks and .DEBs. If Bitwig is your DAW choice, Fedora may not be the best option for you.

Edit: Check out the Spins page:

https://spins.fedoraproject.org/

Also, when running scripts like the Reaper installer, you have to right-click and make the script an executable before being able to click on the script and have it work.

Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater after only spending a little time with it. Remember, Mint Linux was designed for Linux Beginners. Fedora is an OS that will do less hand holding. That doesn’t negate the fact that it is a leading edge Linux OS that has all of the new technology built in and working. Fedora may not be for those who are unwilling to spend time learning how it works, but my experience has been fantastic (and I’ve put a lot of time into learning how each distro I’ve used works. Give yourself some time.

I trashed Fedora and installed Ubuntu 22.10 which has pipewire installed by default. Much better desktop altogether. Reaper and Bitwig installed very easily with low latency and no tweaking required. Now I have to go all through the setup of Yabridge etc again and I forgot how to do it. I can confirm though that Ubuntu 22.10 does have working pipewire and it boots fine off a USB SSD disk.

[dellboy]

Build a Hackintosh instead, much better operating system and less chance of things to go South.

I have tried that and found it too difficult. I sold my Mac Mini last year and miss it. But at the end of the day I still have windows, and its easy to forget what a a fantastic OS it is for music making.

[audiojunkie]

I like gnome because I use a touch screen. There are plenty of other choices that can be downloaded as an .ISO.

Mint is a beginner’s Linux. You do have to learn how Fedora is different from Mint. I personally don’t use Bitwig, and I don’t use Flatpak’ed DAWs (although I believe it is the right way to go for the future. I don’t know why Reaper doesn’t work for you. My experience is that it simply works. I haven’t reinstalled in a while—maybe something is broken in one of the newer releases.

You make a good point though with Bitwig. Bitwig only supports Flatpaks and .DEBs. If Bitwig is your DAW choice, Fedora may not be the best option for you.

Edit: Check out the Spins page:

https://spins.fedoraproject.org/

Also, when running scripts like the Reaper installer, you have to right-click and make the script an executable before being able to click on the script and have it work.

Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater after only spending a little time with it. Remember, Mint Linux was designed for Linux Beginners. Fedora is an OS that will do less hand holding. That doesn’t negate the fact that it is a leading edge Linux OS that has all of the new technology built in and working. Fedora may not be for those who are unwilling to spend time learning how it works, but my experience has been fantastic (and I’ve put a lot of time into learning how each distro I’ve used works. Give yourself some time.

I trashed Fedora and installed Ubuntu 22.10 which has pipewire installed by default. Much better desktop altogether. Reaper and Bitwig installed very easily with low latency and no tweaking required. Now I have to go all through the setup of Yabridge etc again and I forgot how to do it. I can confirm though that Ubuntu 22.10 does have working pipewire and it boots fine off a USB SSD disk.

Cool! There are 600+ linux distros available. I’ve never said that everyone HAS to use Fedora. I’ve only posted MY experiences with it—dead easy. In fact, I just reinstalled Reaper to test if there were any problems with the install—it worked flawlessly. Linux isn’t like a Mac. There IS a learning curve. I’ve only recently learned how to avoid package conflicts when using multiple 3rd party repositories. That is something that has to be configured. I am in the process of learning just like everyone else. That is the way of linux. I’m not judging you; I’m just saying to give whatever distro you are hopping to some time to learn how it is meant to work. I started with Ubuntu and used it for a decade before deciding to see what else is available. It’s a fine OS. I just didn’t like the direction Canonical was taking it. The whole point of Linux is Freedom.

Edit: How are you using 22.10? It doesn’t get released until October. Are you using the daily builds? Daily builds are betas. Just curious.

Edit2: Or are you using 22.04?

To quote: “ Technically speaking Ubuntu already includes PipeWire. Ubuntu 22.04 LTS ships with both PipeWire and PulseAudio installed on the default image. However, the former stack is only used for video (mainly for Wayland compatability) and the latter remains in charge of audio duties.

It’s possible to make PipeWire default audio server in 22.04 LTS with a little bit of effort, but it’s arguably better to wait for the switch to happen formally. Not only will the implementation be more finessed and less prone to breakage, you get someone to shout at when it goes wrong!”

[dellboy]

Edit: How are you using 22.10? It doesn’t get released until October. Are you using the daily builds? Daily builds are betas. Just curious.

Edit2: Or are you using 22.04?

Yes, its a daily build of 22.10. Seems to be working OK. I installed the Ubuntu Studio add-on and now have tons of other stuff.

[audiojunkie]

Nice! I’ve never been interested in the daily builds myself, that’s cool if it’s working without bugs. So, indeed, you should have pipewire fully integrated. What kernel version is being used in the dailies? Ubuntu 22.10 may be another good distro to recommend once 22.10 is officially released.

[glokraw]

Now I have to go all through the setup of Yabridge etc again and I forgot how to do it. I can confirm though that Ubuntu 22.10 does have working pipewire and it boots fine off a USB SSD disk.

a yabridge refresher:

to use yabridge, unpack the yabridge archive in

/home/you/.local/share

This will create a Yabridge folder. Copy it's contents to

/usr/bin

Create and populate the paths as in the example commands below, and in your .wine folder,
observe the use of quotes in paths and app titles containing spaces.
These are pretty much the standard windows vst paths:

yabridgectl add /home/you/.wine/drive_c/users/VstPlugins
yabridgectl add /home/you/.wine/drive_c/"Program Files/VstPlugins"
yabridgectl add /home/you/.wine/drive_c/"Program Files/Common Files/VST3"
yabridgectl add /home/you/.wine/drive_c/"Program Files/Steinberg/VstPlugins"

When finished, run the command:

yabridgectl sync

Run the above command each time you make changes to your vst collection,
or update the yabridge version.
Cheers

[audiojunkie]

“Also, Ubuntu 22.10 will most likely be powered by the upcoming Linux 5.19 kernel series since Linux kernel 5.20 will be out in early October and there's not enough room for testing because the Kernel Freeze development stage is set for October 6th, 2022.”

It looks like Ubuntu is running a little more than a year behind Fedora (Fedora had pipewire by default in April, 2021). The Debian family of distros will likely get pipewire by default in the upcoming months. Soon, Mint will have pipewire by default too. Also, it looks like Ubuntu will likely be released with kernel 5.19 for Ubuntu 22.10.

Personally, I moved from the Debian family of distros, because the Debian family runs about 2 years behind Arch, and the Arch family had a touchscreen bugfix that I didn’t want to wait 2 years for to get fixed.

I moved to Fedora from EndeavourOS because Fedora adopts the newest tech early, and yet doesn’t require the hyper-vigilance and maintenance work of an Arch distro family member. To me, it’s just right. I believe all of the major linux families of distros will eventually adopt the newest technologies, and then everyone will be able to experience the benefits that I’m currently seeing.

[THE INTRANCER]

I think part of your problem is your distro. For example, Mint still doesn’t do pipewire correctly. With pipewire working correctly, you don’t have to even deal with JACK or PulseAudio or ALSA. Pipewire simply runs and replaces the need to configure and mess with all of that. The fact that the Debian family of distros hasn’t fully converted to pipewire means that to use it, you have to do a lot of the configuring yourself.

Furthermore, Mint Linux is still using an ancient kernel—IIRC, they still use kernel version 5.4. A lot of the best audio related updates didn’t start hitting until 5.12. Mint doesn’t have the ability to use kernel boot parameters to make the generic kernel run as a real time kernel. You have to go through the pain of installing a specially compiled kernel and configuring it for audio. The majority of the cool things that I rave about, you haven’t experienced, because they still aren’t in the distro you used.

Personally, I’m running Fedora and I’m incredibly pleased at how painless everything is. I’ve used most of the main distro families—including Arch, and I really feel that the “sweetspot” is Fedora. Fedora is “leading edge” rather than bleeding edge. In other words, Fedora tends to adopt the newest technology first, and yet is not a rolling release like the Arch family, and also not based on stable (meaning “old”) software like the Debian releases. New software is released in each new 6 month version, rather than being based on LTS releases.

The Arch family, because of its rolling release nature, often has the newest software, but you still have to configure it. Furthermore, when there are breaking changes, you have to deal with those breaks yourself. And finally, the maintenance of dealing with daily updates, breakages, manual configuration, pacnew and pacsave files is too much work. Fedora gives you a system using the latest technology, and remains new enough, and requires very little maintenance. Pipewire is all integrated and working great. It’s really nice!

Let me tell you about how easy it is for me. First, since Linux now has host (DAW) software that utilizes plugins, there is no need whatsoever to use JACK apps unless you really want to. I’ve decided that I’m perfectly happy using LV2 and VST3 plugins—just as I would when using plugins in Windows. And since Fedora already has Pipewire fully integrated, this is my process to start using my DAW and plugins in Linux:

1. I install Fedora
2. I install my DAW
3. I install a plugin.
4. I open my DAW and select my sound source: JACK
5. I load my plugin onto my track and begin my work.

SIMPLE!!

In fact, the process is exactly the same when using Windows, except with Windows, you’d select ASIO as your sound source.

That’s it. If you want to go deeper, you certainly can—you can combine JACK based programs together and save and recall them with a session manager. You can install WINE and yabridge and use Windows plugins along with your native linux plugins. You can (as I mentioned previously), use a kernel boot parameter in GRUB to make the kernel that came with your distro run as a real time kernel. You can then add your username to the realtime group as well to run at ultra low latencies. Unlike the days in the past, you can buy a Class Compliant audio interface that is completely plug and play and simply works.

So, in short, for a new user using Fedora, you simply install and go.

You need to give Linux another chance with the right distro. Mint is not the right distro for you.

Edit: P.S. I run my system with a 4k high resolution touchscreen monitor scaled for HiDPI on 2-in-1 laptop. It works flawlessly.

I found this on youtube, but there really isn't any benefits for me actually switching to go through this process when I have everything on Windows working without any problems or potential problems that Linux brings with it. Linux was whilst it was on my main PC desktop was a way to access all the available ram my system had that Windows 7 Home Premium didn't allow.

I needed access to all the ram I had, so I could try and run Cinema 4D R11.5 and render still images or 3D animations for a big project I was doing. Installing Windows 10 solved that problem, as it has a larger limit.

From 2008, I had various versions of Linux installed on my laptop which was used as an alternative to buying another copy of Windows 7 to use on it, although it was possible to run it unregistered. The laptop was used to help in fixing broadband issues with my ISP and the dodgy cable on the phone line.

My main DAW is Studio One Professional v4.6 and plugins such as Dune 3 and Parawaves Rapid are not going to work. This is hundreds of pounds of software that one can't replace on a Linux system. When I had Linux, I tried to get even version 2.6 of Studio One running vie WINE, but without success. I doubt that Richard of Synapse would be inclined to even adopt CLAP, not because it wouldn't be possible, but because of the authorisation system.

Music isn't the only thing I do and depend on doing with a functional operating system. I tried installing many programs vie WINE that I use on Windows such as Photoshop CS6 which I use all the time. Sure, there are free alternatives, but this is a £620 program I bought. CS2 sort of worked, but crashed with an error.

I migrated everything I had on Windows 7 to Windows 10 plugin wise for Studio One that needed registering again. I doubt Linux would make that easy.