this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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I'm quite interested in using Linux, but it won't run many, if any of the 100s of plugins I own, let alone my audio interface, or my production software.
At least, that's my assumption. I did a search and can see there's a decent DAW for Linux (the amusingly-named Cockos Reaper), it's affordable at $80. But I'd also need to buy a new audio interface, there's a few that have Linux drivers. An expensive experiment. My interest is because it'd be amazing to have a stable system to play music live, with no weird Microsoft shit happening in the background guaranteed.
Reaper is awesome. It's pro tools for non-millionaires.
Reaper is awesome indeed. But the DAW isn't the issue, it's the VST, very few work on Linux
it's wild to me how many people I see saying this. I assumed I was one of like... 3
Maybe Ardour can fit? You can pay $1 or more for the binary or compile it yourself.
http://ardour.org/
Reaper is the best there is for Linux. There are other alternatives of you want FOSS, but they are not as good.
Not a pro DAW user. I use it to just substitute Adobe Audition to some extend. Tenacity is used most of the time.
In that case there are many viable FOSS alternatives.
Ardour is very appealing to me because it supports VST3! There is a 'wrapper' available to make VST3 compatible with Linux, but that's just adding the complexity and potentially bugginess that I'd be trying to escape from.
FYI I am using reaper on Linux and I have all my windows plug-ins working through yabridge (32 and 64 bit vst/vst3), focusrite interfaces don't even need special drivers, that and my alesis midi keyboard just worked when I plugged them in. I just started using Linux semi-permanently at home last week for the first time (though I am a developer)
Does the interface that you have now work under Linux? Linux has pretty good support for a lot of things now, so you may be able to use what you have. Reaper also has a generous free trial, so potentially this is a free experiment. (I'm no expert and just tinker with this stuff, but I have Reaper and I find it similarly easy/difficult as every other DAW I've used) Several distributions have "live images" where you can run it from a flash drive without copying anything to the hard drive. I don't know if you could set up Reaper and your interface from a live image.
If you do decide to do an installation, consider buying a different hard drive and installing Linux on that. You can install both Windows and Linux on the same drive, and it's not difficult, but it is slightly easier to use a separate drive and they are not expensive.
I have used Linux and Windows a lot, but I have only used Reaper in Windows, so unfortunately I can't say whether it's a similar experience.
Unfortunately, not only is my interface not supported, but it straight up doesn't work with linux (according to all the forum posts I've seen of people trying, failing, then asking UAD why no Linux compatibility). It's a UAD Apollo USB, ASIO-only.
I've got a frankly ludicrious number of M2 / SATA drives in my music PC so installing on a separate drive is no problem. Thanks for the tip! I bought a new interface for mobile production / live work, so maybe I'll fare better with that than the UAD beast. Certainly wouldn't want to stop using that because it's an absolutely fantastic interface, not to mention the 2x SHARC chips which allow me to run CPU-intensive UAD hardware recreations without smashing my CPU.
If you want to try Linux, try Ubuntu or mint. Those are the easiest to make an entry into.
Thanks, noted.
The 'proprietary software' you're referring to is Cubase, which is one of the industry standard DAWs. I think I'm OK relying on the DAW / company that created the VST protocol and is used by pros all over the world.
With some industry software, the proprietary stuff really is better. There are plenty of great FOSS tools out there, but not always the exact thing you need. For example, PDF software: I don't know of any editor as powerful as Acrobat. And I absolutely hate Acrobat, but it's the best tool out there for modifying a PDF.
Bud you don't control any of the software on your device I'd bet. FOSS or not. Even if you're building from source, are you inspecting every line of code on every update? Are you reviewing every PR that gets merged? No, of course not.
Collective control does not equal you controlling it. FOSS has significant advantage on this front because if you want to you can at least go peek under the covers and see what's happening, but unless you are running a very, very minimal system and very carefully selecting your software and very carefully inspecting every update, you have already given up your control. We all do. And I absolutely know what I'm talking about I manage thousands of systems, both windows and Linux. I work with open source and closed source software. Sometimes the closed source software is leaps and bounds ahead of FOSS. And as a business you choose what allows your business to make money within acceptable risk levels.
I'll give you an example. There is literally no actual FOSS competitor to Exchange (on-prem) for enterprise scale email that functions even half as well. Does exchange suck for many reasons including that it's closed source? Sure. But there's a reason that no one has been able to put forth a reasonable competitor for businesses to adopt and use. There are certainly other options with fewer features or which require you to give up even more control of your data but none that match. So most massive scale businesses continue to choose exchange.