Why Linux is Becoming Impossible for Audio Developers to Ignore

[audiojunkie]

This comment wasn't a developer, but a Linux user with a common opinion:

Bitwig made me switch my amateur/fun music project from Windows to Linux. It completed the transition. Music was the last thing keeping me on evilcorp.

[stoopicus]

The person that pointed out that audio on Windows was a dumpster fire was not wrong.

[Tiles]

Kaiser Wilhelm II ?

Ah wait, that was the guy with horses and cars.

[Tone2 Synthesizers]

For the plugin I released a few hours ago, I put up PC, Mac, and Linux builds side by side. Out of roughly a thousand downloads so far, exactly 2 were Linux. There's not much more I can do than offer it, the actual numbers just don't reflect the demand that gets framed in threads like this.

Yeah, this is how it looks in the real world. You are not alone. I can back that up with very similar numbers from my own software.

Thanks for sharing your experience.

I can share these numbers and data:

Sales:
54% of the PAYING CUSTOMERS that fund our tiny company are from PC.
45% of the PAYING CUSTOMERS that fund our tiny company are on Mac.
We only got a hand full of people that use Linux. I'd estimate <1%. We do not offer native versions, but our software works with WINE.

OS versions:
45% of the PC users still use Win10. The rest is Win11. Win7 is still used by a few but neglectible these days. We do not longer actively run software testing for Win7 or WinXP. These users can stick with an older version if necessary.
Mac users are more up-to-date with their OS. Most of them use the current or previous OS version. Quite a few are still on Intel Macs. We dropped support for Intel32 bit and PowerPC.

[TechHaus]

For the plugin I released a few hours ago, I put up PC, Mac, and Linux builds side by side. Out of roughly a thousand downloads so far, exactly 2 were Linux. There's not much more I can do than offer it, the actual numbers just don't reflect the demand that gets framed in threads like this.

Yeah, this is how it looks in the real world. You are not alone. I can back that up with very similar numbers from my own software.

Thanks for sharing your experience.

I can share these numbers and data:

Sales:
54% of the PAYING CUSTOMERS that fund our tiny company are from PC.
45% of the PAYING CUSTOMERS that fund our tiny company are on Mac.
We only got a hand full of people that use Linux. I'd estimate <1%. We do not offer native versions, but our software works with WINE.

OS versions:
45% of the PC users still use Win10. The rest is Win11. Win7 is still used by a few but neglectible these days. We do not longer actively run software testing for Win7 or WinXP. These users can stick with an older version if necessary.
Mac users are more up-to-date with their OS. Most of them use the current or previous OS version. Quite a few are still on Intel Macs. We dropped support for Intel32 bit and PowerPC.

You are Definitely missing out on native sales.

Modart would just offer wine versions of Pianoteq instead of selling $929 native Linux bundles.

Nobody is going to buy a license for another OS to use it with wine. Your wine users clearly had a windows license in the past. They weren't Linux customers.

[TechHaus]

The only time I EVER considered buying a non-native plugin to wrap, personally, was before 2022 when reverbs were a bit sparse.

Folks would say to get the Valhalla reverbs and wrap them. I considered it, but I got all of the great convolution verbs from the thread on here, and just held tight with native stuff - now I have well over 20 great native reverbs - 9 of them paid for. 3 I should go donate to.

[GaryG]

Folks would say to get the Valhalla reverbs and wrap them. ... now I have well over 20 great native reverbs

I bridged the Valhalla plugs as have used them for years, familiarity etc. but could probably replace VintageVerb with any number of free native ones, the Dragonfly ones for example, quite surprised the quality of a lot of these plugs. Sticking with Delay and UberMod for now as both have a unique sound I'd miss for certain things but getting easier by the day to find native replacements for most things.

[Tone2 Synthesizers]

You are Definitely missing out on native sales.

It really can't be that dramatic. We only received a hand full of requests for Linux native versions during many years. Apart from this I personally prefer to miss a tiny bit of money instead of wasting months of my short life to keep things Linux native.
Instead, I will invest the development time into creating free updates with new features for the existing products.

[zerocrossing]

For the plugin I released a few hours ago, I put up PC, Mac, and Linux builds side by side. Out of roughly a thousand downloads so far, exactly 2 were Linux. There's not much more I can do than offer it, the actual numbers just don't reflect the demand that gets framed in threads like this.

Yeah, this is how it looks in the real world. You are not alone. I can back that up with very similar numbers from my own software.

Thanks for sharing your experience.

I can share these numbers and data:

Sales:
54% of the PAYING CUSTOMERS that fund our tiny company are from PC.
45% of the PAYING CUSTOMERS that fund our tiny company are on Mac.
We only got a hand full of people that use Linux. I'd estimate <1%. We do not offer native versions, but our software works with WINE.

OS versions:
45% of the PC users still use Win10. The rest is Win11. Win7 is still used by a few but neglectible these days. We do not longer actively run software testing for Win7 or WinXP. These users can stick with an older version if necessary.
Mac users are more up-to-date with their OS. Most of them use the current or previous OS version. Quite a few are still on Intel Macs. We dropped support for Intel32 bit and PowerPC.

This thread is just an attempt to make Linux look a lot more popular than it is, so they can garner more support. It's always the same 6 dudes asking for it.

Also, audio on Windows 11 is fine. I've been using Windows since a bit after Apple dropped support for Motorola chips.

[TechHaus]

Acoustica coming to Linux lesssgoooo

viewtopic.php?p=9263445#p9263445

That's like 3 devs this week and it's only Tuesday.

[TechHaus]

Not being available on all 3 os's in 2026 feels "outdated".

[starflakeprj]

I think I'll wait until around 500+ of my applications and plugins are Linux native. But for my home server it's definitively Linux.

[audiojunkie]

Acoustica coming to Linux lesssgoooo

viewtopic.php?p=9263445#p9263445

That's like 3 devs this week and it's only Tuesday.

This is awesome news!!!! They've definitely got a sale coming from me!!!

[audiojunkie]

I received another interesting response from a Linux developer:

in terms of audio *processing pipeline quality* we are now in a hilarious situation where Linux audio as provided by PipeWire is demonstrably better than what Windows 11 is equipped to provide:

https://www.techpowerup.com/347319/it-i ... windows-11

And in terms of users, 3.99% of all Steam users (as of 2026-05) is not a huge _fraction_ but it is a huge absolute number, and it keeps slowly growing:

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

(click on the "OS version" line to drill down to OS type and then distro)

it may very well still be true that developing for Linux users is not worth the cost and effort for those particular developers in your discussion thread, but those data points may be enough to prove the point that this *is* a case-by-case decision and not a broad generalization that will hold for most or many other devs.

[audiojunkie]

Another Linux developer:

Windows has a tendency to hand you buffer sizes that aren't a power of 2, the plugin host can't abstract that away for you unless it rebuffers, which would add latency.

This might seem inconsequential, but for stuff like the dft and some other dsp algorithms it has performance implications.