Hey,
atm i am considering switching over to linux on my main pc. I have some experience with different distros ( i have fedora on my laptop) but i am not sure if it is really worth it. I mainly use my PC for Music Production, some Gaming and graphics stuff (Affinity Suit).
For my music production i use a lot of stuff from Native Instruments. I have a Maschine mk3 as my hardware DAW (in combination with Maschine Software) and NI Komplete with lots of vsts. I also have some Arturia vsts and vsts from smaller companies (all paid). My Software DAW is Bitwig (wich has native Linux support). After some research i found out that there are ways to get at least some software from NI running with yarbrigde, but this does not account for my Maschine mk3 and seems very tedious and unstable. Also it is suggested that i have to use older versions of my software as the current version of Native Access does not run at all. I am willing to put in some effort but all of this seems a little bit too much. I also found out that you can run windows in a vm and give it direct access to hardware so i could Use my Maschine mk3 and all of the software of course. My main concern with this is, that i will end up using windows anyway so why bother switching to linux if it is basically just a host for Linux in this case.
Do any of you have experience with the soft and hardware i use under linux? Or maybe some suggestions how i could solve my problems? Is running windows in a vm a viable solution or should i just stick with windows? Any input is welcome and much appreciated!
If music production is your main objective, I would suggest Windows. I do some home recordings as well and have quite a baggage of pluggings and tools that are either unavailable, not compatible or not up to date on Linux (I’m on an Arch based distro). I have Windows and Linux on two separate SSDs for this exact reason. I managed to set up my Linux system in a way where I can work on some projects and got most programs to work one way or another but I always encounter hardware issues that have to do with drivers, especially with some of my older equipment. If you have the the option you can install another drive on youtrlaptop and run both Windows and Linux.
Now, there are folks out there that do music on Linux but there is a lot of work to do to keep things running, especially if you use lots different softwares and pluggins.
After some Research and reading through the answeres here i think you are right. I do appreciate all the suggestions, but ditching my vsts and especially my Hardware really isnt an Option for me. I have spent too much money on them and i love working with them, and for a lot of them, there really just is now alternative that cones close to the quality. I dont want to talk down on all the amazing work the foss community has created, but i hope people understand that i dont wabt abandon my (expensive) collection. And in the end, my goal is to make nusic and not tinker around with an operating system. Maybe i will try a dual Boot solution. It really is frustrating though, i would really like to switch to Linux and i dont mind to put some effort in. But it seems that as long as the companies behind all the software dont Support linux, i will have to Stick with Windows.
There’s a music producer on YT called unfa who does all of his work on Linux. You may want to contact with him for specifics.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/channel/UCAYKj_peyESIMDp5LtHlH2A
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
You certainly want to test out what you expect to use before moving. The advantage would also be finding apps that run natively on Linux. There certainly are some such DAW apps.
I’m using Manjaro KDE and my games are running fine under Proton on Steam Games. But I play Snowrunner, Red Dead Redemption 2, etc.
A tip on Windows VMs as I do keep one. I discovered that running one with it’s Windows files rather on a separate partition formatted at NTFS, really works quite well for me (versus the VM sitting on one massive VM file on the Linux partition. Can see Chris’ video about this at https://youtu.be/6KqqNsnkDlQ.
Nice thing for just testing Linux, is install it on an external drive, and boot with that. Then your existing machine is completely left as it is, and you can test Linux as it would really run on your computer.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/6KqqNsnkDlQ
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Thanks a lot for the Hint about the vm solution, i will defenitely Look further into it. The only problem with actually running Linux on my Hardware i can think of would be secure Boot. But this can be turned off (i needed it for Windows 11 and some docker stuff i played around with). Years ago i had a dual Boot solution with win 7 and Ubuntu. But in the end i was more on Windows (gaming on Linux was way worse bock then) and eventually kicked Ubuntu off my harddrive.
It isnt even that i have actual Problems with win11, in fact i have to say it runs well and very stable, at least on my System. Its more like an “ideological” Thing. I just want to have As little big corpo stuff as possible.
I would highly recommend Linux Mint.
Almost all audio plugins you likely use do have native Linux equivalents (but not through the same developer). Check out Ubuntu Studio. Also I think highly of Reaper as a DAW. Reaper is not FOSS, but it is Linux native.
Hey thanks for the Suggestion. Ill definetly will look further into Ubuntu studio. As i understand it includes all the important audio settings and drivers.
For my DAW i use Bitwig which runs natively on Linux, so that would be no Problem. The issue is more with my Hardware, Maschine mk3, and the Software it needs to Operate properly. Also yes i know there is a lot of free vsts, i used them when i started making music years ago. But since then i spent a lot of money on proprietary vsts that in a lot of cases (not all obviously) are just better. Especially when it comes to live sampled Romplers like Kontakt. Ditching my collection of Software i bought is therefore really not an Option. I dont want to talk down foss vsts and DAWs, there is a lot of really great stuff. But i hope you can understand that i dont want to Throw hundreds of Euro worth of Software to the trash.
Went from FL Studio and a lot of windows only vsts to using Reaper in Fedora and some good FOSS plugins plus “Vital” and " decent sampler". Definitely changed up my workflow but feels better at the same time. I’ll still open FL in “bottles”(compatibility program) to use some of the native cats in there but I don’t even mess with yahbridge to make my paid windows vsts work. Just changed up the flow mostly.
Edit: vsts kept autocorrectung to cats, kept one in.
I have fedora on my laptop and pretty happy with it. I know Vital and it is a great synth. But my vst library Contains a lot of stuff with live sampled Instruments like strings, horns , guitars, Bass and so on and while there are foss alternatives that are decent, they are nowhere near the Quality of a lot of paid stuff (there are exceptions of course). I really dont feel comfortable with ditching the quality i am used to and basically Throw away all the money i have spent on them.
Fair.
Some of your old proprietary plugins and hardware might work in Linux through a compatibility layer like WINE. Or it might work out of box, no software required. Or it might not work no matter what. It’ll be a bit of a crapshoot for each one.
I will say that JACK and Pipewire may make some of your hardware unnecessary, especially if your using it to get around Windows limited audio routing capabilities.
And of course MIDI stuff will generally work without issues. It’s MIDI.
I’ve never played with that Maschine mk3 so I couldn’t tell you how or it it will function.
Edit: autocorrect got me.
To add onto this, yabridge is a great tool to try out for using Windows VST’s on Linux
Those Linux eqivalents also (often) have Windows versions. You can test if they work for you and make the big switch if they do
Last time I tried to use low latency audio on a Windows VM the latency was still horrendous. You could get closer to the desired result via some non-trivial virtualization where you passthrough a whole USB controller to Windows and you plug your hardware in it. Unfortunately that still isn’t as low latency as native Windows. It might be possible to get there via further optimization like CPU core pinning but I didn’t get there. I keep a laptop with Windows for the purpose.
TL;DR: Windows VM for low latency audio isn’t an option.
Ardour runs on Linux machines (because it was written for it iirc) and Reaper is working on RasPi iirc. You’ll have to dig deeper into those yourself, especially as they pertain to your VSTs and other software, but it’s not impossible.
I use REAPER, which also has native Linux support and run most of my vsts over yabridge. Works really well for me overall but i try to use as much native foss vsts as possible. See https://safereddit.com/r/linuxaudio/comments/wntpyd/linux_plugins_thread_2022/ for some examples
I’m on Ubuntu Studio and using Ardour (though I also got Reaper and have been meaning to try it out). There is a LinuxAudio community here on Lemmy you can visit to get some advice!
I use Bitwig on an Arch Based distro. It works really well. Thanks to the flatpak package of bitwig, your choice of distro should not matter that much (in regard to running bitwig). So far I’ve only used bitwig and vst/clap plugins with a native vst version (vcv rack for example) those also work great. So far, I have not tried to get windows plugins to work. But that’s a Todo item for the future. I plan to use yabridge for this, but as you have read yourself, current NI plugins are a hassle and hardware specific plugins especially. I face similar issues with overbridge for my elektron machines…
At least when it comes to native Linux audio software like bitwig and reaper, my experience is highly positive. But the landscape is a lot smaller then on windows and some things do require more reading and tinkering so I’m not recommending it to everyone but certainly encourage it if one can live with some downsides.
Have you tried Overwitch for elektron? I use it for the digitakt and it works really well. I have never used actual overbridge though so I don’t know how it compares.
Do share if you have experiences using yabridge with the flatpak distribution of Bitwig! My existing setup did not work with that, but the deb version worked ok on Debian, so I keep using that.
I think you need to dick around with flatseal and I didn’t get it to work. Same though, deb package through AUR works well for me with yabridge and almost every plugin I try.
Thanks to your question I tried it out and found that there are some fundamental issues with getting yabridge to work with flatpak. Most of them described on these issues: https://github.com/robbert-vdh/yabridge/issues/135 https://github.com/bitwig/bitwig-studio-flatpak/issues/24 so yeah. I might also have to switch to a different bitwig distribution or wait for a new solution to use windows vsts in bitwig.
Thanks for the links! Once flatpak/yabridge works great I’ll be able to use it with SteamDeck :).
I wonder though if this might need some additional functionality in flatpak itself…
Check out traction
I think you’re going to have a bad time. You could always just dual boot Linux and Windows; use Windows when you need to use good software.
I might sound like an old fart but here’s my 2 cents.
I was exactly in the same situation in 2005. I was heavily invested in commercial products but I wanted to switch to an all open source workflow. My advice would be to start small. First dual boot with windows. Get your DAW working at a basic level. Then get your hardware setup the way you are fully comfortable. Then try to get your visual instruments to work.
Keep in mind that it will be a somewhat different workflow. Linux is highly modular. You can definitely achieve the same results but sometimes with more tools. Jack is an amazing sound system which is now seamlessly integrated into the system with Pipewire. It makes routing your audio stupidly simple and opens up a whole different universe of possibilities.
All this is coming from someone that’s using an all open source approach for almost 20 years now.
And if it does’t work, it doesn’t. No need to swim against the current.
