Are you happy being on LINUX for music production?

[questionaire]

Yeah. It is not about the OS. You simply have a job to do.

Completely true how much i like Linux and Bitwig, unfortunately both do not match with my current Labtop.

I have a job to do and choose for stability which is Ableton and windows 10. Windows 11 is a nightmare aswell. I will try macos maybe later when my labtop has run old.

[ThomasHelzle]

Moved to CachyOS about two months ago. Love it.
I was trying out Linux since 1996 and something always broke.
Now I get it fixed and move on.

Pipewire finally made Linux for Audio actually good.

CachyOS is Arch based but optimised for speed and has a very enjoyable look (KDE Plasma here), structure and is lovingly made. https://cachyos.org
Also optimised for games if that should be your thing.

What I can highly recommend: Find a good local LLM and let it help you with Linux issues. It's very interesting for that. I don't use LLMs otherwise, but this is the perfect realm.
I use LM Studio & Qwen 3.6 35B A3B which runs on my old Laptop with a Geforce 3070 through some clever settings I found online.
It's the least "confidently-being-wrong asshole" LLM I found so far.
The "thinking" teaches me a lot and even if it's wrong, I profit.

Also the CachyOS Discord is very good.

I run native Bitwig 4.4.10, Reaper, Renoise, VCV-Rack without issues.
In theory also Fender Studio Pro, but those idiots think that plugins should show hundreds of generic knobs instead of an UI, so it's unusable for me.
Ardour is also interesting.

Many of my plugins are native Linux, but Yabridge works well too for windows stuff - I use the latest alpha version with Wine-staging 11 even.

My Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 1gen works very well with the help of a tool called "ALSA Scarlett control panel" and some tinkering.

I actually enjoy some hands on tinkering, since it helps understanding the system better - which is what I want.

And I find more and more software I didn't know about and that is running natively, so that part is also interesting.

So yeah, I can highly recommend if you are willing to learn a new system.
I have Linux on a second SSD and can dual-boot into my old Win 11 installation if need should be.

Cheers,

Tom

[Tiles]

You shared a really romantic picture of Linux here. Just curious, have you ever wondered why you need an LLM or Google to use Linux at all? Windows doesn’t require that, you know. If this proves that most Linux distributions have usability or conceptual issues, this is it.

Anyways. You mention LM Studio. It’s distributed as an AppImage, which can be problematic. On most Linux distros, it won’t launch with a double-click due to sandbox restrictions. You’ll need to make it executable and run it from the terminal using:

./LM-Studio-yourversionnumber-x64.AppImage --no-sandbox

Alternatively, you can create a simple shell script to handle it.

As a warning, take advice from LLMs with a grain of salt. ChatGPT initially misled me and even suggested changing my kernel because my Linux installation was “supposedly corrupted.” I ended up spending another half-day on research before i stumbled across the sandbox solution. Time that I would have much rather spent being productive.

Qwen 3.6 is indeed a really nice LLM. I prefer to use it in conjunction with Gemma 4 31b. Which is more accurate but also requires more Vram and is slower. Let's see how the next step in evolution turns out. Exciting times

[TechHaus]

You shared a really romantic picture of Linux here. Just curious, have you ever wondered why you need an LLM or Google to use Linux at all? Windows doesn’t require that, you know. If this proves that most Linux distributions have usability or conceptual issues, this is it.

Anyways. You mention LM Studio. It’s distributed as an AppImage, which can be problematic. On most Linux distros, it won’t launch with a double-click due to sandbox restrictions. You’ll need to make it executable and run it from the terminal using:

./LM-Studio-yourversionnumber-x64.AppImage --no-sandbox

Alternatively, you can create a simple shell script to handle it.

As a warning, take advice from LLMs with a grain of salt. ChatGPT initially misled me and even suggested changing my kernel because my Linux installation was “supposedly corrupted.” I ended up spending another half-day on research before i stumbled across the sandbox solution. Time that I would have much rather spent being productive.

Qwen 3.6 is indeed a really nice LLM. I prefer to use it in conjunction with Gemma 4 31b. Which is more accurate but also requires more Vram and is slower. Let's see how the next step in evolution turns out. Exciting times

I agree with your LLM warnings.

When I last tried Windows 10 seriously (my previous version was Windows 2000 - and then Mac OS 9.2- OSX 10.9 or so), I couldn't figure out how to format a usb stick. Definitely needed Google to even find out about "diskpart".

Mac -> Linux was a much smoother transition than Mac -> Windows, for sure.

A lot of cryptic wtf moments in WIndows. Modern desktop Linux just works, like Mac, imo. YMMV.

[Tiles]

Goes much simpler by simply right clicking and choosing format ...

[TechHaus]

Goes much simpler by simply right clicking and choosing format ...

Wasn't a recognized format.

[Tiles]

So the problem wasn't formatting a USB stick. The problem was Windows not recognizing a filesystem or partition layout that was apparently created elsewhere. Those are two different things.

To take it a step further: if diskpart was actually required, then the USB stick was probably in a broken or unusual state. That's not the normal process of formatting a USB stick in Windows. On a regular USB stick, it's literally right click → Format.

[TechHaus]

Needed to Google to use diskpart. You seem to understand now.

The whole process is way smoother on Linux. Not cryptic like Win.

[ThomasHelzle]

Just curious, have you ever wondered why you need an LLM or Google to use Linux at all? Windows doesn’t require that, you know.

I don't need it since I used Windows since Windows 3.11 for Workgroups and almost every version since.
I know all about it and even find most settings in the horror that they made out of it.
But even MS is actually working on an LLM to help people find what they are looking for in that mess they made settings, so no, I do not agree at all, I just think that most people do not bother to actually change those settings - which I assume is intentional.
You can run Linux that way too, it's just not what I want.

Call it romantic if you will, for me CachyOS is a welcome adventure and opportunity to learn something new. Windows and even more MacOS keep you more and more appart from what actually happens behind the scenes and I enjoy learning about filesystems and bootloaders and all that stuff.

The benefit for me is, that my ageing Laptop feels like a new one and that I do not get plastered with "AI" I don't want or control and don't work on a system that isn't mine anymore.

The question was: "Are you happy being on LINUX for music production" and my answer is "yes".



Cheers,

Tom

[Tiles]

Needed to Google to use diskpart. You seem to understand now.

The whole process is way smoother on Linux. Not cryptic like Win.

No, you're still mixing up the normal GUI workflow with recovery or edge cases.

On Windows, a regular USB stick is right click → Format. If diskpart was needed, the stick was likely in an unusual or broken state, not a standard scenario.

On Linux it's the same story. In the GUI (e.g. Disks), you normally just select the drive and format it. Only if the partition layout is broken do you go deeper: delete partitions, recreate a partition table, then format.

The Linux equivalent of “diskpart level” is tools like fdisk or parted plus mkfs. That's not the normal user workflow either, it's the low level recovery path.

So in both systems the simple case is easy, and the CLI tools only come into play when something is already non standard.

If the same stick was easily formatted via the Linux GUI, then it wasn't in a state that required diskpart in the first place.

[TechHaus]

No, it was in a state that needed diskpart and it was easily formatted via Linux gui.

Would have been up the creek without Google. Windows is a mess.

[Tiles]

Just curious, have you ever wondered why you need an LLM or Google to use Linux at all? Windows doesn’t require that, you know.

I don't need it since I used Windows since Windows 3.11 for Workgroups and almost every version since.
I know all about it and even find most settings in the horror that they made out of it.
But even MS is actually working on an LLM to help people find what they are looking for in that mess they made settings, so no, I do not agree at all, I just think that most people do not bother to actually change those settings - which I assume is intentional.
You can run Linux that way too, it's just not what I want.

Call it romantic if you will, for me CachyOS is a welcome adventure and opportunity to learn something new. Windows and even more MacOS keep you more and more appart from what actually happens behind the scenes and I enjoy learning about filesystems and bootloaders and all that stuff.

The benefit for me is, that my ageing Laptop feels like a new one and that I do not get plastered with "AI" I don't want or control and don't work on a system that isn't mine anymore.

The question was: "Are you happy being on LINUX for music production" and my answer is "yes".



Cheers,

Tom

Here we are, back at a discussion I’d rather avoid

That’s completely fair. I wouldn’t argue against personal preference or the value of tinkering. I just think it’s worth acknowledging that for certain workflows, the learning curve and compatibility overhead can seriously hurt long-term productivity.

Take ComfyUI: I spent a week researching native Ubuntu 24.04 setup, only to hit ROCm and venv walls. Downgrading to 22.04/ROCm 6.x meant losing kernel benefits, so I switched to Docker. Now every update pulls ~12 GB plus the container has some constraints, compared to a native implementation.

The irony? AI video is genuinely faster on Linux when it works. But between the research, workarounds, bloated updates, and routine Ubuntu breakages, that performance gain vanishes. Add in stuck GIMP 2 due to unreliable GIMP 3/NTFS support, and I rarely boot into Linux for this anymore. It was learning, yes, but rarely productive. Just Linux forcing me to solve problems Windows handles out of the box.

I also have to push back on the idea that “freedom” equals control. In practice, it often becomes an illusion. Stepping outside the mainstream ecosystem means cutting yourself off from prioritized driver, software, and hardware compatibility. Professional tools, AI frameworks, and even gaming optimizations land on Windows/macOS first. From a UI/UX standpoint, I see this daily: Windows is simply more goal-oriented and self-explanatory, while typical Linux distros feel fragmented and demand guesswork. That usability gap is exactly why the “freedom” comes with so much friction.

For me, that friction consistently outweighs the freedom. AI/video workflows and music production are just examples. My preferred DAW and most VSTs aren’t available on Linux. So I’m not a happy Linux musician. I can't even do my work. I write my music on Windows.

This is just my experience, and I won’t generalize from it. But I do think it’s a valid part of the Linux vs. Windows debate. I also believe it’s worth pointing out upfront to new users. Transparency matters. Those who know what they’re signing up for will make an informed choice, and if it’s the right fit, they’ll stay.

[Tiles]

No, it was in a state that needed diskpart and it was easily formatted via Linux gui.

Would have been up the creek without Google. Windows is a mess.

Those two statements don't really fit together.

If it actually required diskpart because the partition layout was broken or unreadable, then a Linux GUI tool wouldn't just “easily format it” either. It would have to fix the same underlying issue first (wipe partitions, recreate partition table, etc.), just via a different interface.

So either it was a normal case where both GUI tools work, or it was a broken state where both systems need low level steps. It can't be both at the same time.

[TechHaus]

Nope. It was as i said it was, and your statement about not needing Google for windows was debunked in one post, unfortunately for you.

[Tiles]

And I already explained why that doesn't add up technically.

So either you're misremembering what happened, or you're constructing a case to fit your conclusion. Given how aggressive you've become over such a trivial point, I'm inclined to believe it's the latter.

Either way, I'm not interested in playing that game.