New recording PC will be Linux, what do I need to know?

[DavidPardy]

Hey all. After years of putting up with Microsoft constantly dumbing down Windows and removing useful features, I can finally switch to Linux on my secondary PC which is used purely as Plex and Calibre servers, and for recording music (and playing whilst I practice drums).

I would appreciate any feedback that I will need to know from the start as it's been years since I've used any Linux distro. I'll be looking into which suits my needs best but I suspect it'll be something along the lines of Ubuntu or Debian. Would appreciate recommendations.

Also, anything I need to know with regards to plugins, etc., will be most appreciated. I'm assuming VST/VST3 plugins should continue to work as expected? How about Sforzando?

I actually haven't done any recording or editing in a while for a few reasons, so I'm very rusty. So all helpful information is most welcome.

[talby]

In order to reuse your plugins, which you purchased for Windows, and if no Linux version is available for them, and you do not find an alternative plugin under Linux to replace the no more usable for Windows purchased ones, you can try to use them via Yabridge and Wine path. Sometimes this works flawlessly, sometimes not. Looking for alternatives, consider the LSP plugins (https://lsp-plug.in/).

It exists a dedicated forum where Linux Musicians meet about all this: https://linuxmusicians.com/ . There it is often recommended to start with https://www.bandshed.net/avlinux/, because everything of importance for music making comes preconfigured. Besides, https://ubuntustudio.org/ is also often mentioned for quickly getting up and running.
Your going to encounter a lot of debate about established Linux internal audio routing by JACK2 and new Linux internal PIPEWIRE audio routing. If you are new to this, right away learn the new thing and ignore the lamenting worship in favor of the old. Technology is progressing and it's obvious that the current versions of the major Linux distros default to PIPEWIRE nowadays. Learn right away to overcome the upcoming hurdles instead of bothering about the old ones.

However, my feeling is, that, if needed, most Linux users simply tweak the distro which they anyway like to use for their day to day work. I didn't tweak anything and use an older Debian with older KDE. I just made sure that my USB audio-interface is class compliant and that the hardware functions I need it for are available out of the box without running any specific control software for this (because such control software is usually not Linux compatible, although the class compliant hardware is). I do not even bother about JACK2 or PIPEWIRE, because another old thing called ALSA, not es powerful and by far not configurable as jack or pipewire, was in my Debian by default in place already - and Waveform works nicely with it, either with ALSA, or with JACK, or with the JACK interface provided by PIPEWIRE for compatibility to the old way of setting up sophisticacted signal pathways under Linux.

[DavidPardy]

Thanks very much! I decided on Ubuntu Studio after some research, it looks like it will be perfect for my needs in comparison to others - someone mentioned in a review that they set up their DAW and then JACK immediately worked out of the box, so that sounds like less work for me overall. I will look into PIPEWIRE.

I recall using ALSA many years ago myself, not sure what for though.

Fortunately I have mostly just been using free plugins. I'll take your advice on board. Hopefully the LSP plugins will help bridge the gap for me and I won't have too much trouble.

Your advice is very useful, and much appreciated

[fedexnman]

Pop OS is another cool distro ( Ubuntu based ) you could probably add the Ubuntu Studio packages to it and have a really nice desktop environment .

[DavidPardy]

I was able to start with it today but ran into a couple of game-breaking problems (the worst being that my NTFS media drive magically developed a problem that would have required moving into my Windows machine) and ended up just putting Win10 back on. Sad to say my Linux trial only lasted a couple of hours

[fedexnman]

Don't feel bad I tried it and went back to the dark side too .lol

[DavidPardy]

Haha I really wanted to give it a proper go. On the bright side, once Windows finished installing I had my Calibre and Plex servers set up, as well as all the Waveform stuff within under an hour. Plus, RDP also works without a problem

[unholyeyebrows]

This is an interesting thread and having seen the conclusion (i.e., return to Windows) I had a similar experience a few months ago. Earlier this year I purpose-built a PC, installed stock Ubuntu LTS, tuned it for 96/24 audio with Pipewire, installed Waveform, plus a few other DAWs, and my collection of Linux native plugins. Then got Yabridge / WINE working, and all in all it was pretty much perfect, and if I had stopped there I'd have been fine.

However, despite my extremely generic (and in theory the most compatible) set-up, reliability on Linux just wasn't the same as Windows, and plugins / DAWs would crash just too often for my liking. Equally the inevitable temptation of acquiring new plugins and the desire to stay as Linux Native as possible led to a certain amount of FOMO. So oddly the main advantage of Linux, which for me were reliability & freedom, kind of became the weakness. Which led me to think about Windows again...

...and so I re-installed W11 Home, but approached the installation with the benefit of my Linux experience. In other words, a plain stripped-down OS installation (no major modifications, but disable all the distractions such as tiles / weather / notifications and uninstall Spotify etc) and then installed only my audio apps and plugins. The result is, in my mind, a simpler system than my Ubuntu set-up since everything is Windows native, no need for any compatibility layers, plus the peace of mind that Waveform and other complex software has likely had a lot more testing on Windows than Linux. Certainly it feels that way as everything is rock solid and very fast.

So my experience is that Linux (specifically Ubuntu - I would definitely only recommend that distro for maximum compatibility) is absolutely viable for audio (certainly for a hobbyist like me) . However you really need to be prepared to learn a lot about Linux, and most importantly you'll need to want to commit and don't look back.

[SuitcaseOfLizards]

Ok,I'll throw in my two Euros worth (lool) here, with my experiences with Waveform 13 and Linux Mint 22.

First, let it be known that I am in no way married to any single synth or effect. I'm on Linux Mint 22 on both of my computer now, with WF13 and Audacity on the main production machine. But getting here was no walk in the park unless your park is full of secret traps and monsters!

FIRST: WF13 popped crackled and snapped like Rice Krispies when first installed. Nothing helped, even setting the buffer to 1024 bytes (ecch). So I switched to Ardour 8.8, which ran flawlessly but is missing a pile of WF quality-of-life features that I adore. Once that worked, I tried setting the audio system parameters identically in WF13 and Ardour, and DAMN if WF didn't work Just Fine! Lesson: WF doesn't necessarily 'know' the best working settings.

After THAT was over (I left out 2 weeks of screaming and cursing), things took off. Collective and Biotek2 both run flawlessly on Linux. Vital runs to perfection as well. My beloved Zebra Legacy and ZebraHZ perform like champs.

Audio Damage Panstation, Filterstation, Eos, and Other Desert Cites have wonderful Linux versions, and DAW Essentials rocks as well.

I sort of miss my DAWesome synths and Love, but not enough to reinstall Windows 11 For Sheep.

Ardour came with a bazillion LV2 plugins, all of which WF13 found. Pretty damn amazing.

The F'Em demo runs well, so I'll get that next time I have a pile of cash around. That will fill up my stable of synths and effects.

Master Mix would NOT load. Ever. Period. Not a huge loss, it was a crutch for me anyway.

So, all in all, while I now have 1/3 of the hair I started out with before Win11 pushed me off the Microsoft Kool-Aid, in the end it's worthwhile. My DJ software, writing software, DAW, video editor, 2D animation software, office apps, and Web browser are all rock stable and FAST. Memory usage on y Linux box is about 30% less on average than my Win10 system. No need for that 32GB upgrade.

Many of my Steam games have Linux versions, and I've rediscovered emulation of old arcade titles (wheeeee Galaga again!!!).

So, for ME, it's a perfect arrangement. I no longer give a damn about what Microsoft adds to Winblows (AI, spyware, ads -go ahead!!) which is sizably less stress, no forced updates is good, can't count the times I left a project up, went to bed, and Winsuck rebooted for 'required' updates, $$$@).

Full disclosure: I am a retired embedded software engineer and, while my Linux knowledge was with real Unix back in the 80s it counts. Your mileage may vary.

Bet of luck to anyone else that attempts he jump, it can be a challenge if you're not a tech type.. for now.

[DavidPardy]

If I could still run XP or 7, I would. The only versions of Windows that were ever worth bothering with were 3.1(1), 95B, 98SE, XP, and 7. Unfortunately, every other version was a demonstration that they have no idea what they're actually doing and that they actually hate their userbase. Windows 11 is like Windows 8 Take Two. I have a brand new gaming laptop which is running it, and do you know what's missing for the first time since Windows 95? A multi-row taskbar. Who makes these decisions? Not to mention that on this brand new, i9 14th gen laptop with a clean installation of Windows, I get random mouse jitters and Explorer (mainly the taskbar) seems to be unstable.

And I do come from a technical background - been working on computers since I was a child, and worked for my dad who owned an IT business from 1993 until the late 2010s (and you talk about Microsoft exactly the same way he does haha).

Unfortunately, I just don't have the energy to want to have to constantly fiddle to make things work. My recording PC is running Win 10 which at least is stable and does what I want it to do, and so does my main PC. As previously stated, I had it up and running with my Plex and Calibre servers within a very short period of time of installing Win 10, no problems, it just did what I wanted. I didn't have to manually install the Linux version of "ipconfig" to be able to check what the IP address was (because it wouldn't show me that information in Plasma).

So, like I said - I really wanted to give Linux a fair go. But when basic things don't work, or require extra steps to make happen, it just isn't worth my time. It's pretty much been the exact same result every time over the years that I've attempted to make Linux work for my needs, even when I was still actively working in the industry and had a genuine interest in the technical side of things.

In conclusion: I am just going to have to suffer with disappointing efforts by makers of all OSes, and simply go with that which will cause me the least inconvenience.

[fde101]

I didn't have to manually install the Linux version of "ipconfig" to be able to check what the IP address was (because it wouldn't show me that information in Plasma).

Newer Linux distributions have deprecated the ifconfig command in favor of the newer ip command which replaces it.

To get your IP address on such a distribution you would use the command ip a, which is why ifconfig is no longer installed by default on those distributions - the ip command is normally provided instead.

[DavidPardy]

Ahh, too late unfortunately. I was unable to find such basic information whilst I had it installed. But I will try to remember that for if I ever try again with Linux

[vitocorleone123]

Win11 is super solid, works great, never had to be reinstalled from scratch even when moving the drive data (via Macrium X) to a totally new computer, works fairly well with modern CPUs, etc.

It’s as good as Win7 x64 in terms of my favorite versions (been using Windows since 3.1).

That said, I know Windows rather well by now and the little tweaks that make it work for me.

I wish Linux had taken off, but it seems doomed to obscurity. Great for a few things server related etc. but not so much for things like music.

Good luck!