A Guide to switching to Linux as your music production OS (If you really want to!)

[Paree]

Another DAW for your to be tested / working list: MuTools' MuLab -- I've heard it works under Wine. Also worth checking MuTools' Mux VST. An-n-n-d... One I'm pretty sure doesn't work: Sforzando (which is annoying).

Does Kontakt itself work? Did I miss someone mentioning it?

I can confirm that MuLab works well. Sforzando is a hit or miss for me, It worked in my Linux Mint setup, now it works as standalone but doesnt make a sound as plugin. Probably a linvst problem as it works fine with yabridge as the maker of it reported. (I should try it out soon, i am having a very tight schedule atm).

Kontakt works fine, installing it requires a small workaround as glokraw mentioned.

[lunardigs]

Another thing worth mentioning, related to Linux audio is video editing and animation. For those who wish to make music videos, etc., you'll need a Linux NLE or the like.
These are big areas with many great tools, but I'll point out a couple with good momentum right now.

OpenShot - Non-linear video editor (NLE) with Blender integration for 3D animation: https://www.openshot.org/
Blender - 3D/2D CGI modeling, animation and effects, non-linear video editing and much more: https://www.blender.org/

Shotcut - Non-linear video editor (NLE): http://www.shotcut.org/
Kdenlive - Non-linear video editor (NLE): https://kdenlive.org/en/

I'm currently checking out OpenShot and Shotcut, so I can't say much ATM. Although, Kdenlive and Blender I've used for many years now.
Blender is incredible. You can make feature length films; use it as a scientific tool to visualize audio; rig models to move with an audio input ... too many things to mention. It's also an excellent modeler for 3D printing--just thought I'd mention that, because it's my go-to.
Kdenlive, OTH, is a straight forward video editor and has been a mainstay for me. Although, stuff like Shotcut and OpenShot are making moves. I think they may soon eclipse Kdenlive. We'll see.
Also, everything above is open source.

[Paree]

Another thing worth mentioning, related to Linux audio is video editing and animation. For those who wish to make music videos, etc., you'll need a Linux NLE or the like.
These are big areas with many great tools, but I'll point out a couple with good momentum right now.

OpenShot - Non-linear video editor (NLE) with Blender integration for 3D animation: https://www.openshot.org/
Blender - 3D/2D CGI modeling, animation and effects, non-linear video editing and much more: https://www.blender.org/

Shotcut - Non-linear video editor (NLE): http://www.shotcut.org/
Kdenlive - Non-linear video editor (NLE): https://kdenlive.org/en/

I'm currently checking out OpenShot and Shotcut, so I can't say much ATM. Although, Kdenlive and Blender I've used for many years now.
Blender is incredible. You can make feature length films; use it as a scientific tool to visualize audio; rig models to move with an audio input ... too many things to mention. It's also an excellent modeler for 3D printing--just thought I'd mention that, because it's my go-to.
Kdenlive, OTH, is a straight forward video editor and has been a mainstay for me. Although, stuff like Shotcut and OpenShot are making moves. I think they may soon eclipse Kdenlive. We'll see.
Also, everything above is open source.

If you are okay using closed source software, there is Davinci Resolve Free (Pro Grade that many professionals use) and Lightworks free.
Although in its early days, olive video editor is pretty solid.

If you just want to make a music visualizer, you can use sonic candle or musicvid.org (which has a desktop version, open source, javascript based)

Kriya and GIMP are my other two recommendations for making album art etc.

[Paree]

Yes, more good info from Paree! I need to check out Caustic pretty soon.

I'd like to mention that caustic 3.2 does not work with wine-staging, it works well with wine-stable, however caustic 3.1 works with all versions. (You have one synth less in 3.1). Caustic is pretty popular in mobile music making scene, desktop version is free, it can be seen as a mini reason like daw.

[lunardigs]

If you are okay using closed source software, there is Davinci Resolve Free (Pro Grade that many professionals use) and Lightworks free.
Although in its early days, olive video editor is pretty solid.

If you just want to make a music visualizer, you can use sonic candle or musicvid.org (which has a desktop version, open source, javascript based)

Kriya and GIMP are my other two recommendations for making album art etc.

I've seen Davinci Resolve and it looks pretty awesome, but I've never tried it. Have you?
Sonic Candle and Musicvid are new names to me. I'll take a look.

Yeah, GIMP and Krita--I think you're saying Krita?--are great. For vector graphics my favorite is Inkscape.

[Paree]

If you are okay using closed source software, there is Davinci Resolve Free (Pro Grade that many professionals use) and Lightworks free.
Although in its early days, olive video editor is pretty solid.

If you just want to make a music visualizer, you can use sonic candle or musicvid.org (which has a desktop version, open source, javascript based)

Kriya and GIMP are my other two recommendations for making album art etc.

I've seen Davinci Resolve and it looks pretty awesome, but I've never tried it. Have you?
Sonic Candle and Musicvid are new names to me. I'll take a look.

Yeah, GIMP and Krita--I think you're saying Krita?--are great. For vector graphics my favorite is Inkscape.

I tried Davinci Resolve like 4 years ago, i don't do much videos, for music visualizers, musicvid.org is good for me (I have a local instance running with node.js).

Yes, its Krita, that was a typo.

[DRMR]

Nice overview, but I'm confused as why Zrythm and Radium are under Commercial Offerings. Is it because you have to pay for direct binary downloads? Then Ardour should also go in that list.

For sake of completeness it would be nice to have a better list of which software is free/libre/open, it's quit mixed formatting at the moment and not clear at all.

[Tj Shredder]

An-n-n-d... One I'm pretty sure doesn't work: Sforzando (which is annoying).

I guess you could replace it with the new kid on the block regarding sfz called Decent Sampler...

[glokraw]

There's no mention of sfz support on the webpage of DecentSampler, not seeing them in the load or browse dialogs, it looks for it's own files with extensions: dspreset and dslibrary.

https://www.decentsamples.com/product/d ... er-plugin/

The yabridge plugin wrapper may help enabling plugins that do support sfz, like discoDSP Bliss, and in general, has helped lots of linux users with the more finicky windows plugins, and it's easy to use, just add whatever vst paths like,

yabridgectl add /home/me/.wine/drive_c/"Program Files/VstPlugins"
yabridgectl add /home/me/.wine/drive_c/"Program Files/Common Files/VST3"
yabridgectl add /home/me/.wine/drive_c/"Program Files/Steinberg/VSTPlugins"
yabridgectl add /home/me/.wine/drive_c/"Program Files/Cakewalk/VstPlugins"

etc

When that's done, issue one more command,

yabridgectl sync

This will chug through all those folders, and create wrapped plugin versions with a .so extension, for linux daws like reaper, bitwig, mixbus, ardour, qtractor, carla etc

To install yabridge, I extracted the yabridge archive to /usr/bin, and /home/me/.local/yabridge

Scroll down at the link to download the yabridge-3.3.0.tar.gz,
or a version for slightly older18.04 vintage linux setups.

https://github.com/robbert-vdh/yabridge/releases

Cheers

[Passing Bye]

Anyone have experience with AudioGridder on Linux?

[coolblinger]

There's no mention of sfz support on the webpage of DecentSampler, not seeing them in the load or browse dialogs, it looks for it's own files with extensions: dspreset and dslibrary.

For .sfz we now also have a good native option: https://github.com/sfztools/sfizz

They still don't support everything Sforzando supports, but they're getting there. Oh and funnily enough they also supports DecentSampler's format.

[Passing Bye]

4. linvst - linvst creates a wrapper around a windows vst and you can use them in your native linux DAWs. An alternative to linvst is yabridge.

5. linvst3 - same as linvst but for vst3 plugins

How would one go about installing these (yabridge), I'm Linux noob (running Linux Mint), there's no .deb file, downloaded tar.gz file from github and have no idea what to do with that next? Any help?

[coolblinger]

How would one go about installing these (yabridge), I'm Linux noob (running Linux Mint), there's no .deb file, downloaded tar.gz file from github and have no idea what to do with that next? Any help?

There's a Usage section in the readme that guides you through the whole setup process. Let me know if you need more help.

[Passing Bye]

How would one go about installing these (yabridge), I'm Linux noob (running Linux Mint), there's no .deb file, downloaded tar.gz file from github and have no idea what to do with that next? Any help?

There's a Usage section in the readme that guides you through the whole setup process. Let me know if you need more help.

Thanks, sincerely I have no idea what all that is about, wish somebody could just make a tutorial about setting up all this things, on Ubuntu based systems, for total noobs who want to actually give this a go...

[glokraw]

I have a couple of Ubuntu Studio installs, which get you running audio out of the box, and with a good number of useful audio tools and plugins, and I posted the steps for using yabridge a few posts up. You can burn a bootable dvd of of that Studio, or of AVLinux (debian/openbox) to check things out.

There are two linux topics in the area, with a few how-2's in the posts and


www.linuxmusicians.com

fields plenty of questions, and have some guides available, and youtube has many linux audio videos.
Cheers