A Good Linux Distro For Music Production?

[audiojunkie]

There is nothing wrong with my hardware or drivers. Everything is up to date including my graphics card. Updates are being forced on Windows Home versions.

Well, if you're too stupid to keep your system up to date, what do you expect? My laptop is bang up to date and I don't think I've ever had a BSOD under windows 10 or 11. Not once. Like Jinotsuh said, if it was a Windows or an update problem, it would be affecting everyone, not just you.

I know it's the updates because it eventually repairs itself after several reboots (rolling back the updates). It's been documented here about the problems caused in the past month.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/m ... e-screens/

If you think that's a problem with Windows, you'll quickly discover that you're going to have an order of magnitude more similar trouble with Linux. If Windows doesn't properly support your processor, the chances of Linux doing so are much less. Unless someone who knows how to make it work has the same processor as you, you might not be able to fix it at all.

That's the problem with Linux - unless you have a pretty standard install, you may have a lot trouble getting things to work. e.g. It took a team of three Linux IT experts a week to get the Quadro graphics on my Dell M90 to work at the proper res, where it was smooth sailing all the way in Windows because I had nVidia's own drivers for that.

One other thing I should have mentioned... I don't allow Windows to auto-update. I'm always a few months behind, so as to allow others to be the beta testers (and experience the weird behavior and god forbid, BSODs). Waiting, of course, allows MS to patch any reported bugs by the time I install an update.

OTOH, I have been a beta tester since Windows 8 beta and the biggest problem I have ever had was a beta build that re-assigned a drive letter to my SD card. Hardly the end of the world and fixed in a week or so. There are more than one million Windows beta testers, so the chances of real issues failing to be spotted are miniscule compared to Linux.

Bones...Bones.... You haven't worked seriously on Linux in over a decade. We've gone the rounds before about this. Things are NOTHING like they were when you had to use Linux for work. Things are really moving quickly. Even your fancy two-screen laptop now has full support and drivers for linux built directly into the kernel (this happened between the time we last spoke and now). Now Presonus is jumping aboard the Linux train. You are getting closer to having everything you use supported natively by Linux. Linux isn't like it used to be. For fun, why don't you wait until the latest kernel being released is added to your favorite linux distro, and live boot it on your laptop to see how well it goes. You don't have to erase or change anything. You can report back if it works for you or not. Things really are better than they used to be.

[audiojunkie]

If you're struggling with Windows then Linux will be next level headaches unless you feel at home within that environment, and know the architecture.

And I think Studio One 6.5 requires Ubuntu and Wayland, so you need to be aware of that when asking for distros. The Presonus knowledgebase article is worth reading to see what's involved:
https://support.presonus.com/hc/en-us/a ... ng-Started

This is pretty accurate. There is a new paradigm when moving to Linux. Things are different (though not necessarily hard). There is some new learning involved. For example, the drivers are all built into the kernel. If your hardware is popular, there's a good chance it may work right out of the box. You can run a "live" boot off of a flash drive and test it out to see if everything works, without even having to commit anything to your hard drive. If you don't like it, remove the flash drive and reboot, and everything is back to the way it was before putting the flash driven into the machine.

And yes, Wayland and Vulkan will be needed. But most of the popular modern distros have long supported that, so there will likely be no problem there either.

[audiojunkie]

If you're struggling with Windows then Linux will be next level headaches unless you feel at home within that environment, and know the architecture.

Especially when you want to fiddle with audio...

Not anymore. Even as recently as a year ago, this was still true. However, Pipewire is now being installed on most common distros by default, and as of a recent version of Pipewire, only a simple command is needed to change the sample rate, and another simple command to change the buffer size. Nothing else. In fact, there are now simple GUI based tools that let you point and click to make these changes. No need for the command prompt. And, with the upcoming Pipewire 1.0, everything is going to move to IRQ based scheduling for Pipewire-ALSA. This is going to bring Pipewire latencies and xrun numbers to the same level as JACK based systems, but will be WAY easier to manage. Every year that passes gets better and better. Linux isn't even the same as a year ago. It is a constant steady march forward for ease of use and performance.

[skijumptoes]

Not anymore. Even as recently as a year ago, this was still true. However, Pipewire is now being installed on most common distros by default, and as of a recent version of Pipewire, only a simple command is needed to change the sample rate, and another simple command to change the buffer size.

How is it for multi-client audio nowadays? One of my biggest annoyances with Linux was using Ardour and not being able to pull up a youtube video and watch it if I needed some guidance/help with anything as it couldn't render the audio.

Has that been rectified nowadays, or is it something you have to spend time to get configured perhaps?

[audiojunkie]

As for me, I've distro hopped back and forth for the past several years. I pushed myself all the way to using Arch. I realized that I don't like the manual intervention that is frequently required of the Arch family, but I don't like the slow but stable progress of the Debian family. After using EndeavorOS for about six months (and liking it quite a bit), I moved to Fedora about a year ago. I have finally found the perfect solution for me. Fedora is supported by Red Hat, but not controlled by Red Hat--unlike Ubuntu, which has had a heavy handed control over everything they do. Arch has great documentation. EndeavourOS has a very friendly and knowledgeable community. Ubuntu gets the lions share of the "supported" software. Mint is built (and as I understand, Binary compatible) with Ubuntu's repositories. When considering all of the available repositories, pretty much all of the major distros have the same amount of software as Arch + the AUR. So that's not a thing to worry about.

In the end, for several reasons, I moved to Fedora Workstation. Gnome has the most advanced touch screen support of all of the desktop environments. Fedora is independently developed (with infrastructure support by Red Hat). Fedora is not a rolling distro, but is a leading edge distro. In other words, you don't have to deal with manual intervention, but you still get the latest technological advances before most other distros. Six months passes fast for me. It is the best middle ground between rolling distros, and the stable LTS versioned distros. Fedora implements Pipewire correctly. After a LONG time of searching, I have finally found a long term Linux home.

Now, to add to that, I have since learned about immutable OSes, and the greatly increased stability they offer. With the upcoming release of Fedora 39, I'm moving from Fedora Workstation to the new, next generation Linux distro, Fedora Silverblue. Silverblue provides an immutable OS that does away with the feared Linux concept of Dependency Hell (known as DLL hell in the Windows world). On top of that, each main GUI-based app will run within its own sandbox through Flatpaks. And through the power of containers, leveraged by Toolbx and Distrobox, I will run all of my audio programs through an Ubuntu container. This means that while I have a base Fedora system, I also have full access to Ubuntu's apps. This is all next generation Linux technology that is just now getting started. Gone are the problems of the old days with instabilities and incompatibilities. I will be able to essentially run any app in the Linux universe while keeping a solid immutable base that is completely safe.

While Apple has now got Immutability (shortly after Linux did), Windows does not. I'll repeat. Windows is not an Immutable OS. The closest thing Windows has is SFC which can scan and repair based off of a comparison list.

Linux is improving by leaps and bounds and it is improving fast! Most of the computing industry is behind it now, and contributes to the development.

So, while I do use Fedora Workstation, my personal choice will soon be Fedora Silverblue. I don't necessarily recommend this to beginners, because it takes the standard Linux paradigm, and adds the immutability, container technology, and sandboxing on top of that. I recommend new users use something much more turn-key.

I'd suggest the following, in the following order of ease of use and according to Linux experience:

AV Linux
Ubuntu Studio
Linux Mint
Ubuntu or other Ubuntu derivatives
Debian
OpenSUSE
Manjaro
EndeavourOS
Arch

[audiojunkie]

Not anymore. Even as recently as a year ago, this was still true. However, Pipewire is now being installed on most common distros by default, and as of a recent version of Pipewire, only a simple command is needed to change the sample rate, and another simple command to change the buffer size.

How is it for multi-client audio nowadays? One of my biggest annoyances with Linux was using Ardour and not being able to pull up a youtube video and watch it if I needed some guidance/help with anything as it couldn't render the audio.

Has that been rectified nowadays, or is it something you have to spend time to get configured perhaps?

Pipewire is solving all of this. Prior to Pipewire, there were two main servers that sat on top of ALSA: PulseAudio and JACK. These two servers did not work well together and required various tricks to get them to work compatibly on a system. Pipewire has replaced PulseAudio and JACK, and has been working great for me. By the end of this year, Pipewire should be reaching its 1.0 status, and will be considered largely feature complete. Multi-client problems are a thing of the past.

[THE INTRANCER]

There are a lot of factors thay have to be considered to decide what distro is best for your use case. For me, Fedora works fantastic with Bitwig Flatpak. I use Fedora because it checks all my boxes... works with secure boot, Pipewire and Wayland work perfectly and are set up by default, I like their philosophy and community, they push innovation and work closely with upstream projects, supported by Red Hat. If you want to use Pipewire, which I really like, then I would suggest using a distro that has newer packages like non-LTS Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, etc. Need to know exactly what you want to use and what hardware you have to really give more info.

Edit: I just saw the note that Studio One is adding Linux support, that's amazing! Most software developers seem to be targeting Ubuntu LTS so that is probably your most headache free option if you want just plug and play. For me I'd prefer to not use Ubuntu for other reasons. But if I were you I'd start there. Studio One is using Ubuntu 23.04 (which is not LTS) with Jack for audio for the beta FYI. But I'd bet they will add Pipewire support at some point.

I've used a few distros in the past including AV Linux, Fedora isn't one although as ever, one does when they take on Linux, watch a fair few distro testers on YouTube who go through the process of testing and explaining the features they have. It's about 4 years since I used any Linux distros for me and whilst I've heard of Pipeline (I'll recall that being a convergence of audio and midi that obviscates the use of setting up JACK, correct me if I'm wrong) Wayland is new to me in what that actually refers to.

My PC is still running on an I7 920 CPU with an EX58 UD5 Mobo. Other than that many parts have been added to improve performance with an 8 Gig AMD Radeon Sapphire Pulse RX 570 graphics card (with Vulcan Support), USB3 PCI Express Card, plus external peripherals (USB3 hard Drive Dock) and 1 Gig SSD besides other hard disks. Still using my Firewire Focusright Pro 14 audio interface which I've had working with Linux fine in the past even without the interface software to configure things.

I'd be interested in actually seeing Studio One 6.5 running on Linux and someone going through the capabilities of Studio One's Pro's and Cons so one can evaluate the practicalities. The Presonus page posted about Linux and StudioOne 6.5 is pretty vague.

[THE INTRANCER]

No idea who these people are but they are talking about S1 on Linux.

[rlared]

There are a lot of factors thay have to be considered to decide what distro is best for your use case. For me, Fedora works fantastic with Bitwig Flatpak. I use Fedora because it checks all my boxes... works with secure boot, Pipewire and Wayland work perfectly and are set up by default, I like their philosophy and community, they push innovation and work closely with upstream projects, supported by Red Hat. If you want to use Pipewire, which I really like, then I would suggest using a distro that has newer packages like non-LTS Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, etc. Need to know exactly what you want to use and what hardware you have to really give more info.

Edit: I just saw the note that Studio One is adding Linux support, that's amazing! Most software developers seem to be targeting Ubuntu LTS so that is probably your most headache free option if you want just plug and play. For me I'd prefer to not use Ubuntu for other reasons. But if I were you I'd start there. Studio One is using Ubuntu 23.04 (which is not LTS) with Jack for audio for the beta FYI. But I'd bet they will add Pipewire support at some point.

I've used a few distros in the past including AV Linux, Fedora isn't one although as ever, one does when they take on Linux, watch a fair few distro testers on YouTube who go through the process of testing and explaining the features they have. It's about 4 years since I used any Linux distros for me and whilst I've heard of Pipeline (I'll recall that being a convergence of audio and midi that obviscates the use of setting up JACK, correct me if I'm wrong) Wayland is new to me in what that actually refers to.

My PC is still running on an I7 920 CPU with an EX58 UD5 Mobo. Other than that many parts have been added to improve performance with an 8 Gig AMD Radeon Sapphire Pulse RX 570 graphics card (with Vulcan Support), USB3 PCI Express Card, plus external peripherals (USB3 hard Drive Dock) and 1 Gig SSD besides other hard disks. Still using my Firewire Focusright Pro 14 audio interface which I've had working with Linux fine in the past even without the interface software to configure things.

I'd be interested in actually seeing Studio One 6.5 running on Linux and someone going through the capabilities of Studio One's Pro's and Cons so one can evaluate the practicalities. The Presonus page posted about Linux and StudioOne 6.5 is pretty vague.

Your hardware should work perfectly on really any modern Linux distro. I thought the Presonus knowledgebase article was pretty informative https://support.presonus.com/hc/en-us/a ... ng-Started . It seems they are introducing some new technologies so it will probably take a while for things to get stable. Wayland is a newer display protocol that replaces the old X11. Not all distros and desktop environments support it yet, for example Linux Mint does not. Feel free to PM me with any questions about DAWs and Linux.

[skijumptoes]

No idea who these people are but they are talking about S1 on Linux.

They make an interesting point that i've not considered. If Presonus decide to bring out audio interfaces and other such hardware that is supported under linux that will be quite a considerable jolt in the arm for (potential) Linux users.

[audiojunkie]

No idea who these people are but they are talking about S1 on Linux.

They make an interesting point that i've not considered. If Presonus decide to bring out audio interfaces and other such hardware that is supported under linux that will be quite a considerable jolt in the arm for (potential) Linux users.

Agreed! "Officially Supported" hardware.

[BONES]

Things are NOTHING like they were when you had to use Linux for work. Things are really moving quickly. Even your fancy two-screen laptop now has full support and drivers for linux built directly into the kernel (this happened between the time we last spoke and now).

Perfect example, given that I am on my 3rd Zenbook Duo. So the first two would have been a complete waste of time with Linux. It's something that should have worked fine from the get-go, given that it's just dual monitors, but it was obviously too much for Linux.

Now Presonus is jumping aboard the Linux train. You are getting closer to having everything you use supported natively by Linux.

No I'm not. 3DS Max will never be ported to any other OS and there is nothing even approaching an equivalent to After Effects on Linux. And if you have any desire to use Studio One on Linux, you'd better hope they do a better job than they did on the port to macOS.

For fun, why don't you wait until the latest kernel being released is added to your favorite linux distro, and live boot it on your laptop to see how well it goes.

Because it won't matter, for the reasons above.

[Kypresso]

No I'm not. 3DS Max will never be ported to any other OS and there is nothing even approaching an equivalent to After Effects on Linux. And if you have any desire to use Studio One on Linux, you'd better hope they do a better job than they did on the port to macOS.

What about Blender or/and DaVinci Resolve?
This is just what i've seen suggested as After Effects replacements, both free and run on linux.

[BONES]

Last time they ported Fusion - the compositor inside Resolve - it was running in WINE and was just about unusable. That was a while ago, and they eventually came to their senses and pulled it, but who knows what it's like now? Anyway neither of those things will get me work.

[THE INTRANCER]

Not watched it yet, but it's there.




Ok, I watched it. It looks pretty good, would have liked to have seen the native instruments to see if they were there and not just the effects.