According to the StatCounter, Linux on the desktop has continued to rise and remains above 4%, with this being the healthiest it's ever looked on the desktop.
At this point I use Linux for everything except my music production hobby (Mac for that) and even then I use Renoise and BitWig on Linux. I’ve been on Linux since 1996 but I haven’t been 100% Linux until the past two years.
Fuck yeah Bitwig. I mainly chose it so I’d have the flexibility to move to Linux in the future. That and the unmatched sounds design and modulation abilities.
I bought Abelton Live 12 before I tried Bitwig and now I have a bit of buyer’s remorse. Bitwig and Renoise are so good. Bitwig is also far more inspiring IMHO. I couldn’t get into Reaper though.
I’m a newbie bedroom music producer but I’ve actually had more luck with my audio setup on Linux than I did on Windows 10.
I’m using an older Scarlet 2i2 to record guitar and back on Windows I was always having driver issues or Windows randomly resetting the sample rate making my DAW freak out at me.
On Linux it just works right away without me needing to download or tweak anything. Only part of my setup that needed tweaking was using yabridge for a few Windows VSTs.
If you are mostly recording your guitar play and aren’t using a lot of plugins, then Linux is a great solution. I highly recommend Bitwig as a DAW on Linux. If you’re on a tight budget, Reaper is also a great solution on Linux. It didn’t vibe with me (Bitwig is my favorite DAW), but a lot of people love it. I hear that the Reaper community is very active and inviting and the DAW is very customizable.
Music production software, e.g. FL Studio (Fruity Loops), Ableton Live, Logic Pro, Garage band (I guess?), Bitwig Studio, Pro Tools, Studio One, Reaper, Reason, etc.
Sorry for hijacking this beautiful conversation you talented gentlemen are having, but can help me out?
I wanted to learn electronic music creation. I learnt very briefly how fl studio works, and then got busy due to my workload. Now I want to give it a go again. I heard llms is good for Linux, but I don’t understand how to get various instrument samples like fl studio. How do I set it all up? Can you point me to any good resources. I am also not committed to lmms and am open to suggestions.
I cannot comment on LLMs for music generation but, if you are starting from scratch, there are a few methods that I think are interesting.
Sequencer/Groovebox: Hardware like the Elektron Digitakt and Polyend Play+ use the “piano roll” style generation that you find in most DAWs. How you import and edit samples, then sequence them in the piano roll, varies from one to the other. Fortunately, you can find a lot of video tutorials for most DAWs and hardware based sequencers on YouTube.
Music Trackers: Whether it is a hardware tracker like the Polyend Tracker or the M8, or a software tracker like Renoise, this type of sample edit and sequencing really lends itself to electronic music. Plenty of tutorials on YouTube.
Samplers: Here you have hardware like the Roland SP404 MKii, the MPC One, and the Teenage Engineering EP133 KO II and DAWs like Native Instruments Maschine (also requires Maschine hardware). If you have a tablet, check out Koala Sampler. It might be the best $5 you’ll spend this year.
In my opinion, trackers are an extremely fast and powerful way to create electronic music. The main complaint people have is the learning curve since almost everything else uses the “piano roll” method. Since you are starting from scratch, that complaint doesn’t really apply because no matter what you select, you’ll have to learn from zero.
Depends on budget. Obviously you are familiar with FOSS offerings. Outside of FOSS, if you want a paid products for not too much money, then Reaper is a favorite and Renoise is VERY interesting. If money is no object but Linux compatibility is still a main concern, then Bitwig, 1000%. The top Bitwig package costs $399 but they also have more limited versions for $199 and $99.
PS: No matter what, Koala Sampler is worth the buy.
I have, over the years, spent quite some money on (windows) VSTs. I’ve tried in the past to get them running on Linux, but with no success : even when the installer worked fine in wine, the tools used to get the VSTs to run using bitwig either introduced too much lag, or the sound was stuttering.
Have you had some more success and if so, can you give me some pointers?
On Linux I use Bitwig for live guitar play and the Renoise music tracker for sample chop based beat making. Eventually everything I make on Linux goes to the Mac for the bulk of the finish work. I stuck with Mac for most music for the same reasons as you but also because I could not find anything that comes close to my M2 Max based system in a compact laptop format. Those Apple chips are crazy.
I don’t know the reason why I didn’t use it the last time I tried ( about 2 years ago?), maybe I didn’t find anyone mentioning yabridge at the time (I never asked, I just searched), maybe another reason.
But now I remember I ended up using Carla with an extension that let it use Windows plugins, which I would advise against.
If I get the VSTs that mean the most to me running well enough on Linux, then there’s nothing keeping me on Windows
Yabridge is the way to go. I used to use LinVST in the past but with very mixed results. With yabridge, ~90% of my plugins work perfectly, including Native Instruments plugins which have always been my favourites.
Just know that Wine >9.4 is currently bugged and will not work with yabridge. There is a discussion on Github about installing 9.4 and holding it from updating.
I did try LinVST, but at the time I couldn’t get the converted VSTs to run in anything I tried. Maybe I was being stupid at the time, or maybe it wasn’t as stable at the time compared to now, but thanks for reminding me, as now I will try to use it again the next time I try to make the switch, together with yabridge.
I’m wondering this too. There’s only a couple windows VSTs in my work flow but I’d hate to lose them. Someday if I can ever get my PoS laptop to boot from a live USB I’ll try.
What he said is that he does the majority of his hobby on a Mac, but also installed music apps on Linux.
Apple managed to grab a good chunk of the market by making some well-functioning creative apps early on, but I’m not sure if they really have any advantage over Windows anymore.
Music production on Linux is still somewhat behind, due to limited software. People get paid for making that stuff on other platforms, so Linux developers are scarce.
Some of it is also moving to tablets and phones these days, so the kind of person to buy a Mac only for easy music production will probably just get a dongle for their iPad.
You’ll still need a pc/mac for the full studio experience. Not because of software, but because its difficult to rig an entire music studio into a touchscreen with a single usb port. I mean, sure it’s possible, but you don’t want to. Latency, multiple monitors and a shit load of controllers make it physically impossible unreliable.
On the bright side for Linux, music production is actually very low demanding, so it makes perfect sense to run an old laptop with a low spec distro and still have the same options as the state-of-the-art rig. Young starving artists will probably go that way instead of buying Mac.
Music production on Linux is still somewhat behind, due to limited software.
Audio support has historically been dogshit, and still to this day can be incredibly finicky. Audio latency has also typically been by far the best on Mac OS. But I think lately with Linux with the exact right combination of hardware and software it can be better. Can.
Apple didn’t make Logic originally, they bought it. Same with Final Cut. This is also a pretty short-sighted take on the history of Macs and creative apps which actually stretches back to early 90s. Windows was originally pretty terrible with all kinds of multimedia and it wasn’t until XP that they finally really even started trying.
Of course it’s brief. Lots of stuff happened, but saying that XP was the first is also wrong. Adobe Audition used to be a freeware program for Win95 called CoolEdit… in the 30+years that Adobe has owned it, they have only added VST effects…
As of today, you can make music on any kind of hardware, even obscure handheld devices from before smartphones, and they’ll perform better than the original Logic. There’s nothing technical setting Apple’s “industry standard” apart from freeware these days.
At this point I use Linux for everything except my music production hobby (Mac for that) and even then I use Renoise and BitWig on Linux. I’ve been on Linux since 1996 but I haven’t been 100% Linux until the past two years.
Fuck yeah Bitwig. I mainly chose it so I’d have the flexibility to move to Linux in the future. That and the unmatched sounds design and modulation abilities.
I bought Abelton Live 12 before I tried Bitwig and now I have a bit of buyer’s remorse. Bitwig and Renoise are so good. Bitwig is also far more inspiring IMHO. I couldn’t get into Reaper though.
Yeah inspiring is a great word for it. I managed to get Bitwig via rent-to-own.
100% agree, bitwig also supports Pipewire! I have multiple USB audio interfaces having access to all of them in bitwig is awesome.
I’m a newbie bedroom music producer but I’ve actually had more luck with my audio setup on Linux than I did on Windows 10.
I’m using an older Scarlet 2i2 to record guitar and back on Windows I was always having driver issues or Windows randomly resetting the sample rate making my DAW freak out at me.
On Linux it just works right away without me needing to download or tweak anything. Only part of my setup that needed tweaking was using yabridge for a few Windows VSTs.
If you are mostly recording your guitar play and aren’t using a lot of plugins, then Linux is a great solution. I highly recommend Bitwig as a DAW on Linux. If you’re on a tight budget, Reaper is also a great solution on Linux. It didn’t vibe with me (Bitwig is my favorite DAW), but a lot of people love it. I hear that the Reaper community is very active and inviting and the DAW is very customizable.
DAW?
Digital Audio Workstation
Ty
Music production software, e.g. FL Studio (Fruity Loops), Ableton Live, Logic Pro, Garage band (I guess?), Bitwig Studio, Pro Tools, Studio One, Reaper, Reason, etc.
and Ty.
I used Reaper back on Windows but switched to Ardour for Linux, it’s abit weird to get used to but I’m getting the hang of it.
We need a bedroom music producer community.
Sorry for hijacking this beautiful conversation you talented gentlemen are having, but can help me out?
I wanted to learn electronic music creation. I learnt very briefly how fl studio works, and then got busy due to my workload. Now I want to give it a go again. I heard llms is good for Linux, but I don’t understand how to get various instrument samples like fl studio. How do I set it all up? Can you point me to any good resources. I am also not committed to lmms and am open to suggestions.
I cannot comment on LLMs for music generation but, if you are starting from scratch, there are a few methods that I think are interesting.
In my opinion, trackers are an extremely fast and powerful way to create electronic music. The main complaint people have is the learning curve since almost everything else uses the “piano roll” method. Since you are starting from scratch, that complaint doesn’t really apply because no matter what you select, you’ll have to learn from zero.
…I think the previous comment is mistyping LMMS software to LLM.
Ah.
Thank you kind sir. I meant the LMMS DAW. Can you recommend me a good DAW to start?
Depends on budget. Obviously you are familiar with FOSS offerings. Outside of FOSS, if you want a paid products for not too much money, then Reaper is a favorite and Renoise is VERY interesting. If money is no object but Linux compatibility is still a main concern, then Bitwig, 1000%. The top Bitwig package costs $399 but they also have more limited versions for $199 and $99.
PS: No matter what, Koala Sampler is worth the buy.
With The Finals finally enabling linux support in their anticheat, I not longer use windows for anything. It’s going fantastic.
I have, over the years, spent quite some money on (windows) VSTs. I’ve tried in the past to get them running on Linux, but with no success : even when the installer worked fine in wine, the tools used to get the VSTs to run using bitwig either introduced too much lag, or the sound was stuttering. Have you had some more success and if so, can you give me some pointers?
On Linux I use Bitwig for live guitar play and the Renoise music tracker for sample chop based beat making. Eventually everything I make on Linux goes to the Mac for the bulk of the finish work. I stuck with Mac for most music for the same reasons as you but also because I could not find anything that comes close to my M2 Max based system in a compact laptop format. Those Apple chips are crazy.
Using yabridge?
I’ll try that as soon as I can.
I don’t know the reason why I didn’t use it the last time I tried ( about 2 years ago?), maybe I didn’t find anyone mentioning yabridge at the time (I never asked, I just searched), maybe another reason.
But now I remember I ended up using Carla with an extension that let it use Windows plugins, which I would advise against.
If I get the VSTs that mean the most to me running well enough on Linux, then there’s nothing keeping me on Windows
Yabridge is the way to go. I used to use LinVST in the past but with very mixed results. With yabridge, ~90% of my plugins work perfectly, including Native Instruments plugins which have always been my favourites.
As I own Komplete 14 Ultimate that’s very good to hear! Thanks!
Just know that Wine >9.4 is currently bugged and will not work with yabridge. There is a discussion on Github about installing 9.4 and holding it from updating.
https://github.com/robbert-vdh/yabridge/issues/320
Was LinVST among the tools you tried? It works really well for my purchased VSTs.
I did try LinVST, but at the time I couldn’t get the converted VSTs to run in anything I tried. Maybe I was being stupid at the time, or maybe it wasn’t as stable at the time compared to now, but thanks for reminding me, as now I will try to use it again the next time I try to make the switch, together with yabridge.
I’m wondering this too. There’s only a couple windows VSTs in my work flow but I’d hate to lose them. Someday if I can ever get my PoS laptop to boot from a live USB I’ll try.
Wait, you do or do not just use Linux for music production?
What he said is that he does the majority of his hobby on a Mac, but also installed music apps on Linux.
Apple managed to grab a good chunk of the market by making some well-functioning creative apps early on, but I’m not sure if they really have any advantage over Windows anymore.
Music production on Linux is still somewhat behind, due to limited software. People get paid for making that stuff on other platforms, so Linux developers are scarce.
Some of it is also moving to tablets and phones these days, so the kind of person to buy a Mac only for easy music production will probably just get a dongle for their iPad.
You’ll still need a pc/mac for the full studio experience. Not because of software, but because its difficult to rig an entire music studio into a touchscreen with a single usb port. I mean, sure it’s possible, but you don’t want to. Latency, multiple monitors and a shit load of controllers make it physically
impossibleunreliable.On the bright side for Linux, music production is actually very low demanding, so it makes perfect sense to run an old laptop with a low spec distro and still have the same options as the state-of-the-art rig. Young starving artists will probably go that way instead of buying Mac.
Audio support has historically been dogshit, and still to this day can be incredibly finicky. Audio latency has also typically been by far the best on Mac OS. But I think lately with Linux with the exact right combination of hardware and software it can be better. Can.
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F1c923fvcwyla1.jpg
Apple didn’t make Logic originally, they bought it. Same with Final Cut. This is also a pretty short-sighted take on the history of Macs and creative apps which actually stretches back to early 90s. Windows was originally pretty terrible with all kinds of multimedia and it wasn’t until XP that they finally really even started trying.
Of course it’s brief. Lots of stuff happened, but saying that XP was the first is also wrong. Adobe Audition used to be a freeware program for Win95 called CoolEdit… in the 30+years that Adobe has owned it, they have only added VST effects…
As of today, you can make music on any kind of hardware, even obscure handheld devices from before smartphones, and they’ll perform better than the original Logic. There’s nothing technical setting Apple’s “industry standard” apart from freeware these days.
Yes and no. I use Bitwig mostly for free play (guitar and keyboards) and Renoise for beat making. Everything else is on my Mac.