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.
This is probably going to be the right choice. Captive markets are a thing and its not always practical for individuals to get out of them. Changing a good worklfow isn’t likely to be worth it unless there’s a different workflow you want more.
I wanted what I get with Linux more than I wanted any particular element of what my creative workflow was on Windows, but I’ve never really been super comfortable with the DAW-VST paradigm for music production in general. I’m way happier having to put a bit more work into doing custom stuff my own way than being locked out of entire approaches because that’s not how the software is intended to be used and I’m not in the target demographic for pricing. (I’m looking at you specifically, notch and touchdesigner.)
You could always set yourself up to switch to Linux in the future. Every time you buy new hardware, make sure it’s Linux-compatible. It may take years, but changes in industry typically are slow so that you can still make money in the interim.
I understand and using Windows for certain things is perfectly valid. Perhaps things will change in a few years and we’ll be able to run all the plugins with a system similar to WINE, or something like that.
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.
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.
Linux can also boot with EUFI (hope that is the right letters) as I converted mine to that. So it is recognised alongside my dual-boot Windows 10.
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.
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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 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.
I did some music production on windows, had a lot of vsts and everything worked pretty well. I then lost interrest for a while and switched to linux in the meantime. After starting again, I realize, how much easier it was on windows. While the bitwig plugins are great, there are so many things, like some effects plugins missing, that I really want to have. Of course carla and wine works quite ok, but it still isn’t the same as native running plugins. My suggestion is to stick to windows if you do music production somewhat professionally, but if you have the time and motivation to work with a limited set of instruments, go for it. It can only change for the better in the future.
yabridge works really great for working with Windows plugins. I have quite a few of them working out just fine—at least with Bitwig, which is a native application.
That said, I’ve also seen some plugins that did not work. In particular the problems can be related to license management; they probably get confused of what kind of system it is running on…
In my view yabridge is easy to use, but on the other hand I have a decent amount of Linux experience, so perhaps the experience can vary.
Sounds like you have some investment into hardware and software not really designed with linux in mind. Running windows in a VM could work. There might be issues with graphics though if your VSTs/DAW have a lot of eye candy, as you’ll usually use a virtual GPU with a VM. You could always try a windows VM inside windows whether it works OK, before committing to linux + VM. An alternative could be to have a dual boot setup. You could use linux for day to day things, and reboot into windows to do music production.
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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!
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.
