Linux Users, What's You Distro Experience?

[dellboy]

AVLinux is made by a guy with a band, over many years, for his personal use, according to his needs. He makes it available, and has made an effort over the years, to include things that might appeal to a broader group of users. Currently, it's debian based, using a good deal of configuration from the MX Linux distro. Anyone familiar with debian systems, linux eye-candy, and synaptic package manager, can transform both the desktop and underlying system. Same is true for the many ubuntu spinoffs. Same is true for Suse, Fedora, and their various spinoffs. Linux systems consist of a kernel, system tools and libs, a collection of configurations files, and a choice of desktop gui's,
followed by various graphic themes for apps. The desktop gui's have a wide range of preferences and capabilities, causing some consternation at times, but anyone with a mouse, a keyboard, and a weekend, and the internet, can get the record button doing something useful. Whatever you don't like, can be removed or replaced, and what you do like, can be enhanced

Maybe AVLinux is useful to a total new beginner, who is happy with the apps on offer. Its nice to have simple Yabridge support for those who want to use their Windows plugins.The main problem I had was that I could not find the download folder anywhere after downloading Bitwig. I found it eventually this morning after another protracted search.

And then Bitwig refused to install with either Deb or Flatpak? Why are Debi and Flatpak not preinstalled? So I had to install Gdebi using the command line,something a newbie would not have a clue to do. I then tried to install Studio One and that refused to co-operate, probably because of lack of Wayland. So I gave up and went home to Mint.

[EnGee]

@ EnGee: Do you mean a newbie to linux? A newbie to audio prodection? A newbie to computer-based audio production? Or? AVLinux has wine-staging, a plugin wrapper (with a gui), a Reaper daw, and a variety of plugins and instruments pre-configured, so only a few configurations will be needed to start. This makes new, or repair installations quite useful, from a time savings standpoint. I wouldn't recommend trying to get by on a single installation, regardless of the chosen distro(s). I have three different AVLinux setups for different purposes, and things change quickly enough, that I'm a newbie several times a year, or more if other peoples opinions are counted

I was answering dellboy question about why he should switch from Mint. I answered with sarcasm of course because I don't understand how Mint is for newbies according to j_e_g! Is it because of its ease of use? Is Mac OS for a newbie also? Just because something is easy to use, doesn't make it less capable, right?

[WackyZoundz]

AVLinux turned out to be one of those distros which gave me the most kernel panics. Far from being stable and reliable. Never got Wine or Yabridge to work on it either. It's a mess of a distro.

Mint has been the best so far but that doesn't say much. I managed to get a few programs to run with Wine but the performance was so bad there is no point of even trying. But at least the distro itself works to some degree as long as you don't change anything about it.

[FrettedSynth]

AVLinux turned out to be one of those distros which gave me the most kernel panics. Far from being stable and reliable. Never got Wine or Yabridge to work on it either. It's a mess of a distro.

You claim to have Linux experience? yet you could not get WINE nor Yabridge to work in AV Linux? Very interesting.

If not for what Glenn built with AV Linux I would still be using Windows. Thanks Glenn

[dellboy]

I found it very easy to set up Yabridge in AVLinux, just took a couple of minutes using the Yabridge GUI tool. It would be nice if it was available for download in all distros. I set up Yabridge in Mint the old fashioned way by installing Wine and then following the Yabridge install instructions.

[glokraw]

AVLinux turned out to be one of those distros which gave me the most kernel panics. Far from being stable and reliable. Never got Wine or Yabridge to work on it either. It's a mess of a distro.

Mint has been the best so far but that doesn't say much. I managed to get a few programs to run with Wine but the performance was so bad there is no point of even trying. But at least the distro itself works to some degree as long as you don't change anything about it.

I suspect your hardware has issues with linux in general, or some component fails at times. I've had one kernel panic in around 20 years, and across a dozen well-known distros, and several one-man-shop releases. In many different AVLinux versions, never had a panic, but I have simple hardware:
intel i7 mobo 8gig ram
mAudio pci soundcard
nVidia pcie video card
booting off external usb drive

[WackyZoundz]

Three very different laptops regarding age and hardware. With Mint I only experienced kernel panic twice. Though I didn't try as much to run audio software on it (Both native and Wine). At this point I don't care anymore what caused the issues. None of my audio interfaces are supported anyway so even if I managed to fix the issue I would be forced to use the onboard sound.

[FranklyFlawless]

None of my audio interfaces are supported anyway so even if I managed to fix the issue I would be forced to use the onboard sound.

Audio interfaces supporting Linux (AKA USB class compliance) is also a long-standing issue. I have been on the fence for a year or so as to whether or not I want to create and maintain a list to address it.

[WackyZoundz]

Up to this day I haven't seen a single professional audio interface working with any Linux distro. There are no drivers for anything. Even devices like mice or touchpads barely work. And if they do they often have terrible polling rates, making them useless. All the distros feel like unfinished tech demos. At this speed, Linux might become usable in 30-40 years - but only if companies put a lot of money and work into "their" distros to get them out of "geek heaven".

[audiojunkie]

Up to this day I haven't seen a single professional audio interface working with any Linux distro. There are no drivers for anything. Even devices like mice or touchpads barely work. And if they do they often have terrible polling rates, making them useless. All the distros feel like unfinished tech demos. At this speed, Linux might become usable in 30-40 years - but only if companies put a lot of money and work into "their" distros to get them out of "geek heaven".

…..he said, in his opinion.

[Boone777]

Up to this day I haven't seen a single professional audio interface working with any Linux distro. There are no drivers for anything. Even devices like mice or touchpads barely work. And if they do they often have terrible polling rates, making them useless. All the distros feel like unfinished tech demos. At this speed, Linux might become usable in 30-40 years - but only if companies put a lot of money and work into "their" distros to get them out of "geek heaven".

RME works, Behringer and Focusrite your just trolling at this point. It's not as plug and play on Linux but you can make it work. If it does not work for you just quit it already.
I was tired of messing with workarounds and sound was unstable for me so went back to a custom Win11 with all the crap removed: telemetry, forced account creation, Cortana, games, etc. problem solved.

[WackyZoundz]

RME works, Behringer and Focusrite your just trolling at this point.

If there are drivers (because some geek wrote them) then they don't share them (which seems to be the standard for the Linux community, pretty much the exact opposite of the Windows community). And Behringer is prosumer, not professional.

It's not as plug and play on Linux but you can make it work.

...if you write your own drivers. But then you're not making music anymore, you spend decades on learning how to program. And then a new kernel comes out and your driver doesn't work anymore so you have to rewrite it. Rinse and repeat.

If it does not work for you just quit it already.

Always this "For you" bogus. If there are no drivers it doesn't work for anyone. I always found it fascinating that no Linux fanboy who claimed that everything works for him ever had time to show it, not even half an hour.

"Oh yeah, I have a laptop with ArchLinux and it runs my Babyface Pro at a buffer size of 16 samples!"

"Well, bring it over. I want to see and measure that."

"Sorry, no time available."

Coincidentally they never have time. But the Windows and Mac users do. So where does all the time of Linux fanboys go? Recompiling the kernel to not have the machine crash frequently? I expect it's all just hot air and nothing more. If it would work I would have seen it at least once in any studio because studios always try to cut costs.

I was tired of messing with workarounds and sound was unstable for me so went back to a custom Win11 with all the crap removed: telemetry, forced account creation, Cortana, games, etc. problem solved.

And that's what I did. No more tinkering, no more "Oh, this Wine version doesn't work with this Yabridge which doesn't work with this distro and this kernel and this and this and this". It never ends. I wasted so many years on Linux. At least now I know it'll never work, it will always remain just a demo like ReactOS.

[uOpt]

My RME PCI cards work just fine under Linux.

[glokraw]

Up to this day I haven't seen a single professional audio interface working with any Linux distro. There are no drivers for anything. Even devices like mice or touchpads barely work. And if they do they often have terrible polling rates, making them useless. All the distros feel like unfinished tech demos. At this speed, Linux might become usable in 30-40 years - but only if companies put a lot of money and work into "their" distros to get them out of "geek heaven".

If you want linux audio success, you should buy or trade for an interface known to work in mainstream distros. FocusRite has supported a linux dev who proved committed to supporting their many interfaces, details here:

https://linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic.php?t=26217

https://linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic.php?t=23272

https://linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic.php?t=24281

https://linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic.php?t=24763

Linux support for audio hardware comes primarily from kernel modules. My mAudio pci card uses the module snd_ICE1712, it has worked without fail in every distro I have tried.
My E-mu Xmidi 2x2 midi interface also is fine. It shows up in qjackctl patchbay gui, as does the mAudio pci card. The E-mus run $50 or less second-hand. A bit more for the pci soundcards. When something is needed beyond stock kernel modules, dkms is often used:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dynami ... le_Support

The alsa team still has this reference page of supported hardware, although I've never needed it.
(knock on formica

https://www.alsa-project.org/wiki/Matrix:Main

[stanlea]

And don't forget a huge issue with Windows : you always end spending waayyy too much time on KVR.