Is Linux A Real Option For Music?

[TechHaus]

Apple sucks for normalizing app stores taking so much money from a transaction. Kind of evil all of the money they sucked up.

[audiojunkie]

Microsoft Corp. seems not able of stopping itself from putting all that tons of telemetry-related junk in Windows (and Apple is even worse)

Public opinion does not agree with that sentiment:
Screenshot_20260605_211820_Mastodon.jpg

Wow! And here I thought Lamashtu was a cinch for the win! Looks like a legit poll to me!

[audiojunkie]

Getting a clean and high-end, truly professional Windows OS installation is possible still today, but it's getting really harder and harder and time-consuming (ReviOS).

I have a dream...

Since it's evident we are living in the time of barbarians, culturally speaking (with no offense for the real Barbarians) and Microsoft Corp. seems not able of stopping itself from putting all that tons of telemetry-related junk in Windows (and Apple is even worse), I really hope in an Open Source initiative (a really huge and solid project involving 1000s of devs) putting together Linux + Wine + etc. (ReactOS?) so we can finally have a free, professional (and easy to install and set up) OS based on Linux, but (extremely important) capable of carrying the whole heritage of Windows Softwares/DAWs/Plugins/etc. (from XP to contemporary 10/11 and further).

And say a final goodbye to Microsoft and Apple and their anti-computerscience behaviour.

As someone who has followed ReactOS since its beginnings....... You'll be waiting a long time for this wish. It's really not that bad to port to Linux, according to many of the developers I've spoken with. The key is not to try to support all distros, but to support one old one: Debian. Libraries are backwards compatible. So if you compile your binaries in an old version of Debian, it should be compatible with most all distros. For example, compile to Debian 12 (current version is Debian 13). Create one .Deb and a Zip of the binaries. Debian, Ubuntu and all derivatives can use the .DEB, which covers the most popular distro families. Everyone else can copy the binaries to from the Zip file to the proper folders. It should work for most everyone--quick, clean and mostly problem free.

[xhunaudio]

Yes, it was just to describe the problem in 2 words.

ReactOS is proceeding very (too much?) slowly in order to be sure to use only 100% legal, original, reverse engineered code.

Windows XP/7 were top, workstation-class OSes out-of-the-box. With 10/11 things changed. I can't figure out why I have to spend all that time making 10/11 great again with ReviOS (great initiative). Simplicity should be something out-of-the-box of a product, as it was (once upon a time) with systems like W XP, W 7, IRIX, Solaris, etc.

I would like to see ( and support ! ) an official Microsoft Windows including just the Kernel, a bunch of System Utilities and a few simple common-use Apps (like Paint). Period. An OS core of just a few 100s of megabytes.

Several ex-Microsoft researchers/engineers stated Windows today misses a pro-mode without all that online activator/telemetry/cortana/agents/AI tons of junk.

So my dream : if Microsoft don't want to make Windows great anymore, it would be great to have a real alternative...

In that sense, long live Linux + Wine - or ReactOS, etc. - any kind of effective open source project on that direction !

It would be great to have a free (all meanings of "free"), offline, private OS for workstation-class purposes out-of-the-box, with a deep and complete compatibility and support for all the priceless Windows softwares of the past decades... (32-bit and 64-bit). A real computer-science oriented OS (like with XP/7), outside the current "feed the AI with plebeians" purpose/mechanics.

I don't want to say anything about Apple, I do not consider it a computer company. You can't disable anything from macOS, but I think fanboys are completely fine with that - and with the very colourful Apple Store etc. And same for Google, obviously.

[TechHaus]

Sad moment for me after talking so much junk on here about how solid my Linux system is...had to hard reset after it wouldn't wake from sleep just now!

On KDE's "Power and Battery" screen I am activating "Manually Block Sleep and Screen Locking" for a while.

I don't feel like figuring out what caused this.

[camsr]

Sad moment for me after talking so much junk on here about how solid my Linux system is...had to hard reset after it wouldn't wake from sleep just now!

On KDE's "Power and Battery" screen I am activating "Manually Block Sleep and Screen Locking" for a while.

I don't feel like figuring out what caused this.

Check your BIOS for any relevant power settings.

[Tiles]

Getting a clean and high-end, truly professional Windows OS installation is possible still today, but it's getting really harder and harder and time-consuming (ReviOS).

I have a dream...

Since it's evident we are living in the time of barbarians, culturally speaking (with no offense for the real Barbarians) and Microsoft Corp. seems not able of stopping itself from putting all that tons of telemetry-related junk in Windows (and Apple is even worse), I really hope in an Open Source initiative (a really huge and solid project involving 1000s of devs) putting together Linux + Wine + etc. (ReactOS?) so we can finally have a free, professional (and easy to install and set up) OS based on Linux, but (extremely important) capable of carrying the whole heritage of Windows Softwares/DAWs/Plugins/etc. (from XP to contemporary 10/11 and further).

And say a final goodbye to Microsoft and Apple and their anti-computerscience behaviour.

As someone who has followed ReactOS since its beginnings....... You'll be waiting a long time for this wish. It's really not that bad to port to Linux, according to many of the developers I've spoken with. The key is not to try to support all distros, but to support one old one: Debian. Libraries are backwards compatible. So if you compile your binaries in an old version of Debian, it should be compatible with most all distros. For example, compile to Debian 12 (current version is Debian 13). Create one .Deb and a Zip of the binaries. Debian, Ubuntu and all derivatives can use the .DEB, which covers the most popular distro families. Everyone else can copy the binaries to from the Zip file to the proper folders. It should work for most everyone--quick, clean and mostly problem free.

This paints an inaccurate picture of how Linux works and what it is.

The claim “Porting to Linux is not that hard” is simply not true. I would suggest learning how to develop and working on real projects before making such statements. As soon as you depend on Windows-specific APIs, DirectX, plugin ecosystems (VSTs), or proprietary audio/graphics stacks, you are usually looking at a partial or even complete rewrite, not a port.

The claim that you can just target an older Debian version and get broadly compatible binaries across all Linux distributions is also misleading. Linux does not provide a stable cross-distribution ABI in that sense. Differences in glibc, system libraries, audio stacks (ALSA/JACK/PipeWire), graphics layers (X11/Wayland), and driver environments regularly break that assumption. That is exactly why Flatpak, Snap, and AppImage exist. And even those are no panacea. Canonical, for instance, is openly fighting against Flatpak.

Likewise, “ship a .deb plus a zip and you’re done” is not how it works. That only works on Debian-based systems. And even then, you are not “done” as you are on Windows, where an .exe runs just fine for the next fifteen years. The next point upgrade of your primary target distribution might already require you to repeat the whole procedure. And that is for just one distribution. There are over 600 distributions with conflicting package managers and ecosystems. Even a specific version can break compatibility assumptions, and even a point release can break software compatibility.

This is not a matter of opinion, and these points have already been discussed several times.

[xhunaudio]

It would be a very hard task indeed - and I'm not strictly talking about modifications of Linux itself at any cost.

It's also worth mentioning - things way more complex and difficoult have already been accomplished, also as open-source projects. With a solid team of passionate and talented software architects (also 100s or 1000s), such new OS could be made, definetly.

Today, the reason of a potential migration to Linux (and this is why this same kvraudio topic/discussion/thread exists) is because Linux's appeal (also as a Kernel) resides in its being free and open-source - this is why people put attention to it.

So, generally speaking - dreaming of a whole new open-source OS does not strictly require an existing Linux (or ReactOS, etc.) Kernel, or a modification of a current Linux distro.

This new "Fair OS" (let's call it this way) could be built starting from the ground up, also with - let's say - **intense** reverse-engineering practices. This means an open-source project is way more transparent and "fluid" compared to a private Company project : trying to stop a distributed, open-source project is the same as trying to stop the ocean with hands. If there're solid, ethical reasons and ethical contexts, a decentralized open-source project has the power of an earthquake. I can't be more specific at this level.

I think today there are huge solid premises to consider this "Fair OS" project to soar. Real Computer Scientists ethically *deserve* a solid OS, they *deserve* full Softwares preservation across decades (as a preservation of a form of Art) through Hardware Emulation also at Driver level, they *deserve* to stay away from the jail/cage of the current AI-training dystopia or dysto-upidity mechanics.

Too long to explain it in detail, but I hope my simple words may inspire projects from people of good will, instead of just cause the usual insults from the usual stupids.