Considering Linux for my next music production computer - wise or not?

[audiojunkie]

Distro recommendation: Omarchy (Arch + Hyprland)

Interesting! Hyprland is a dynamic tiling Wayland compositor, so it's modern! How do you like it compared to Sway?

[KVRaudioline]

As an alternative I highly recommend trying to find a custom Win11...

I will test AV Linux coming up soon and in case I am forced back to Windows... can you share a few inks of Audio Custom PCs worth purchasing for Music?

Thanks
M

PS just in case... I see Linux can do a lot now... if I make work my main Windows plug-in, well I will switch.
I already have 2 laptops on Linux Mint 22.2 working fine for all the rest - not music production (hobby)

[KVRaudioline]

I recently moved my desktop from Ubuntu studio to Debian 13 Trixie. With pipewire and some judicious fiddling, there is no need for a real-time kernal and I'm comfortably at a 128 blocksize / 3 ms latency. Running Bitwig, Renoise and VCV rack with no issues.

Using Wine and Yabridge I've gotten some, but not all, of my windows VSTs working. One thing to watch out for is to install Wine 9.21 staging - later versions break Yabridge and the VST GUI's don't work correctly.

General tip: Google Gemini helped me a lot with system tweaks.

Thanks for this - I needed to hear it. Will try AV (MX) Linux 25 soon and install WINE4VST kindly packaged by AVlinux developer... Looking forward, I kind of see some light now...

[glokraw]

I'm not sure about that. I've always preferred GUI tools if they are available. I can certainly see the benefit of having both available though. I know that you can make/break connections through the CLI with Wireplumber. Maybe that would be sufficient?

I use many computers and I can't go through a GUI every time I have a new desktop. I must have something that is configured either with a config file or on the commandline so that I can put it into a script.

I'll check out Wireplumber. Although I have to say that qjackctl better works if Pipewire is that compatible with jackd

I always uninstall all of pipewire, except for a few core libraries that are 'dependncies' to large parts of the system. This allows me to use qjackctl without relying on phantom compatibility with the secondary pipewire utilities. Pipewire team have yet to do a solid integration with jackd and pulseaudio, and I can't imagine them wanting to spend man-hours dealing with integration of what they hope to replace. The pajackconnect script, placed in /usr/bin
with appropriate lines in qjackctl config, does a fine job of providing stable and flexible audio i/o, and coupled with qjackctl connections panel, is easy to use.

qjackctl-pajackconnect.jpg

[glokraw]

As a sidenote, the pajackconnect script comes from the guitarix developer, aka 'tramp' who lately has done a fine job of supporting neural amp captures so linux users can load NAM and IR files in a very nice gui

[3lu5iv3]

Distro recommendation: Omarchy (Arch + Hyprland)

Interesting! Hyprland is a dynamic tiling Wayland compositor, so it's modern! How do you like it compared to Sway?

Omarchy was great until i saw this.
https://tekin.co.uk/2025/09/the-ruby-co ... hh-problem
I decided not to use Omarchy.
Don't wanna support the dev who is a racist.
Now i use vanilla Arch and Hyprland.
Setting almost everything from scratch requires a lot of time but u can set it up exactly how u like it to be so it's worth it IMO. I haven't used Sway for a long time so i can't compare.

[audiojunkie]

Pipewire team have yet to do a solid integration with jackd and pulseaudio…”

Pipewire completely replaces Jackd and PulseAudio. If you you are waiting for an integration with the old servers, you’ll be waiting a long time. There is no need for it.

[audiojunkie]

Distro recommendation: Omarchy (Arch + Hyprland)

Interesting! Hyprland is a dynamic tiling Wayland compositor, so it's modern! How do you like it compared to Sway?

Omarchy was great until i saw this.
https://tekin.co.uk/2025/09/the-ruby-co ... hh-problem
I decided not to use Omarchy.
Don't wanna support the dev who is a racist.
Now i use vanilla Arch and Hyprland.
Setting almost everything from scratch requires a lot of time but u can set it up exactly how u like it to be so it's worth it IMO. I haven't used Sway for a long time so i can't compare.

Interesting and quite concerning. Thank you for the info.

[kvotchin]

Have settled on LMDE.