Linux DAW ???

Eleanor Fudd

Eleanor Fudd

Member
Are there any worth a hoot?


I think that Microsoft is close to not caring about anybody except phone users, which wil lbe a business decision and not a moral one which will hurt my feeling, but I think it may happen.

Linux, anyone? I don't know anything about the stuff, except that users wear red hats.


:cool:
 
I've tinkered with a few distros.
I'd strongly encourage against it unless you have some familiarity already.
It has the potential to be beautiful and flawless. It also has the potential to be a complete pain in the ass.

Have a google for Ubuntu Studio 14.04.
It comes bundled with a lot of cool tools. Ardour is one of them.
I have no experience with it, but it's talked about often when Linux DAWs come up.
I think there's a live CD option with Ubuntu studio so at least you can check it out without much hassle and see if your hardware is compatible.
 
First, make sure your audio interface will work. Second, there are a couple (Tractor 5 and Ardour) are the only ones I know. MS or Apple is your best bet still at this point. Once the hardware/software vendors support the Linux OS, then I think there will have a great third choice (actually first choice), but now not a viable choice.
 
I've been dabbling in ecasound for a year or so. (CLI mixer rather than a GUI one like Ardour). I can't entirely say I recommend the idea. Getting a functional environment that has all the features I need has been kind of a nightmare.
 
VomitHatSteve said:
Getting a functional environment that has all the features I need has been kind of a nightmare.
Click to expand...

This is exactly my problem. I LOVE the freedom and flexibility that Reason gives (and the extreme ease of use). But then you're limited to using Propellerheads plugs...I use Reaper for mastering two track mixes and for SSD. Just wish they'd open up an external VST bridge...

AFA the original post. I played with Ardor a bit several years ago (before finding Reason) and I thought it was well planned, well thought out and useable. But that clear back before I even considered myself a n00b. I'm sure it's gotten better, but I was running a dual boot XP/Linux machine and had to do all sorts of tricks and tribs to get the music back and forth between Ardor and Home Studio (post cakewalk, pre SONAR)...
 
I had a Linux rig for years using Ubuntu Studio. I loved it, but then I know Linux and can get around on it pretty well. It's a lot of work getting it all setup and playing nice with the hardware, but all kinds of fun once you do! Ubuntu is great.
 
Beck said:
It's a lot of work getting it all setup and playing nice with the hardware, but all kinds of fun once you do!
Click to expand...

I guess an advantage of a Linux system would be that once you've got it functional it'll stay functional for a while. New features tend to arrive slowly (and propagate to your preferred system even more slowly). Once you've got it working, cut the ethernet and let it run forever.
 
About 5 years ago, I set up an ubuntu partition, got Wine installed and had Reaper running fairly nicely.Next day, it wouldn't boot for me.
Perhaps something completely simple. I didn't bother to find out. I just don't have the time to get familiar with it, no matter how disenchanted I get with Microsoft.
I will say, just out of curiosity, I've installed later versions of Ubuntu, with little or no intention of installing recording software. It seems to have gotten more newb friendly.Worked well enough for just web browsing.
 
I notice that no one has mentioned LMMS. I've been thinking about recommending it to a friend who runs Kubuntu. Has anyone here had any experience with it? The spec looks good, but how does it compare to any of the commercial DAWs?
 
I have tried Linux a few times (last time was past year) with a childish hope of get rid of Windows after two and a half decades using it. All of my attempts has failed miserably. Don't get me wrong. I am a fan of Linux but it just doesn't fit to me. As Mac doesn't either. The problem is that unfortunately you won't find any platform that has so MANY applications ready to do virtually any thing as Windows does. It's a curse. My opinion? Just stick to it and enjoy your music instead to waste your time trying to make your software/hardware to work.

Windows is far from to be perfect, but at least at the end of the day you will have the job done. Any job. Just get a regular machine (say an i5) with Windows 7 and a SSD. Then enjoy a faster-than-10-seconds boot and a stable working. The ONLY thing nowadays that piss me off with Windows 7 (and later) is that audio becomes absolutelly crappy whenever you get a heavy traffic on your network (specially with wi-fi). Windows XP was just perfect on that ground.

Good luck!
 
I've been using Linux since 1998 and switched over completely in 2006, if I recall correctly. I am mostly doing video production nowadays but often use the audio tools.

The first thing to understand is that it is a very different culture. It expects you to know how to find and read instructions before you ask questions. Fortunately these days applicable instructions are pretty well documented and fairly easy to find. There could be multiple instructions for doing the same thing... a way that works and 'The Good and Decent Way.' what causes most problems for people is using a 'way that works' ...and minor issues pile up over time.

This computer , also my main workstation, is running Arch Linux. I have a dedicated archival computer running Slackware. I would suggest installing to a USB stick so you can try them out. I used LiveCD's when I made the switch. These days I'm moving more in the direction of Slackware due to the systemd civil war. Not so much that I don't like systemd but more because the guy heading it also brought us PulseAudio which probably accounted for 99% of the headaches the previous posters had.

Software wise, keep in mind I havn't used commercial software for production since Sonar 2.2... Ardour is a pretty solid program. It uses a patchbay system called JACK which makes things really flexible. In fact not having everything in a self contained program is a bit overwhelming. It was years before Ardour supported midi because it was expected that you would use midi though a separate application like Rosegarden via JACK.

Hardware wise, unless you were like me and using something weird like an Aardvark Q10 you will likely be fine. Check the hardware compatibility lists for the driver architectures - Firewire is FFADO and pretty much everything else is ALSA. Actually Aardvarks giant middle finger to their users when they failed is what inspired me to switch completely over to Linux. I didn't want to have software depend on a hardware manufacturer.
 
zekthedeadcow said:
The first thing to understand is that it is a very different culture. It expects you to know how to find and read instructions before you ask questions.
Click to expand...
Amazingly correct. Getting at 50 and being at the front of a computer for the last 35 years, I am not really interested on spend my time reading manuals. I just want that the thing works and does whatever I want. Imediately. No waiting. Mea culpa!

:D
 
I think this is why I got on reasonably well with Ubuntu.
I'm pretty familiar with OS X terminal and behind the scenes - I got to know OS X in the early days of hackintosh so nothing was ever simple.
A lot of kext altering, hex code, firmware flashing etc..

A lot of the linux stuff was pretty intuitive to me for that reason..It's like knowing French and being in Italy or something, but I still wouldn't recommend it to average Joe.
 
Steenamaro, it's scary!

Starting with computers in the early 80s with Basic, DOS, Unix and all this crap has caused me a trauma big enough to not want to get back to a similar reality! LoL!

:laughings:

But I think that modern Linux references cannot be compared to that old times. Things are too much better now. The last time I tried it (past year) I got positively surprised with the amount of improvements on it. I could install Ubuntu (12 and 14) and had my machine hardware COMPLETELY recognized automatically and everything worked in the very first attempt.

In my opinion, Linux (read Ubuntu as I don't know other distributions) is ready for the end user and very very VERY close to reach its maturity as a operation system. The ONLY problem for me (at least for ME) is that still there are too little options on compatible applications. And some of them never will such as Visual Studio, MS-SQL, Photoshop, Flash, etc. So, in MY case while I still have a professional career I cannot stick to it. Maybe only to have it installed on my computer as a second boot just for fun (what doesn't make too much sense for me) but just that. The case is that I started my professional life in the MS era and now it is too late for me to quit everything and start over.

Nonetheless I strongly encourage the twenty something dudes to invest on Linux world. It is definitively the future. In 20 or 30 years Windows will be a far far away remembering of something in the awakening of the personal computers history.

:)
 
YanKleber said:
Steenamaro, it's scary!

Starting with computers in the early 80s with Basic, DOS, Unix and all this crap has caused me a trauma big enough to not want to get back to a similar reality! LoL!

:laughings:

But I think that modern Linux references cannot be compared to that old times. Things are too much better now. The last time I tried it (past year) I got positively surprised with the amount of improvements on it. I could install Ubuntu (12 and 14) and had my machine hardware COMPLETELY recognized automatically and everything worked in the very first attempt.

In my opinion, Linux (read Ubuntu as I don't know other distributions) is ready for the end user and very very VERY close to reach its maturity as a operation system. The ONLY problem for me (at least for ME) is that still there are too little options on compatible applications. And some of them never will such as Visual Studio, MS-SQL, Photoshop, Flash, etc. So, in MY case while I still have a professional career I cannot stick to it. Maybe only to have it installed on my computer as a second boot just for fun (what doesn't make too much sense for me) but just that. The case is that I started my professional life in the MS era and now it is too late for me to quit everything and start over.

Nonetheless I strongly encourage the twenty something dudes to invest on Linux world. It is definitively the future. In 20 or 30 years Windows will be a far far away remembering of something in the awakening of the personal computers history.

:)
Click to expand...

I do agree. The Ubuntu studio distros are very impressive and pretty intuitive on the face of it.
There's still that fear, though, where if something doesn't work OOB you probably need to know what you're up to. lol.
Just like a windows box - The research should be done first!

I've high hopes for ubuntu and the likes. It does seem to be developing pretty fast and the open source software available is incredible.
Take a look at GIMP (cross platform) and compare it to photoshop, for example.
Same with OpenOffice.

Simple day-to-day stuff might throw a casual new-user. I'll just watch some netflix here...oh...no I won't! :p
 
I actually should try it again, with the intent on starting from scratch, and not trying to make it work like a windows machine.That was probably a big part of my problems with it....trying to get it so it would work with my projects already in progress.
 
My only statement to all of this is hardware support. If your hardware won't work with it (Presonus yes, Tascam no) then it isn't just a matter of the OS. I think the software is getting there (who really cares about the OS for a focused based machine), but the hardware has to work. Otherwise you have to write an assembler language program to interact (OK, maybe C++ only, it has been awhile). That is hardcore programming.

If the hardware works, I would then say it is worth a shot. (Standard USB 1.0/2.0 full compliant is what is required). Thunderbolt and Firewire, couldn't say.
 
YanKleber said:
Nonetheless I strongly encourage the twenty something dudes to invest on Linux world. It is definitively the future. In 20 or 30 years Windows will be a far far away remembering of something in the awakening of the personal computers history.

:)
Click to expand...

I think learning a few different OSes, and knowing your way around the CLI/Bash is a great idea, but I don't think proprietary distros are going anywhere any time soon.
 
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