Really want an honest answer here and not a full blown Linux cult answer.
I’m a new dad (kid is 1.5months old) who used to game pretty hard and do music production in cakewalk and ableton, but the crotch goblin is getting in the way. With windows 10 support coming to an end, I’m faced with a choice to either jump on the Linux train or take the safe way out and eat win11. Please keep in mind that I run a super clean machine (no porn (that’s what mobile is for) or tormenting or anything sketch) and have no intention of doing anything unclean. I have a lot of music prod data that I don’t want fucked and a steam library that I want access to but don’t really care about the data associated with them (saves, profiles…i could care less). So it’s really my ableton and Cakewalk files I want to keep. There was a time I college 2010-2011 where I borrowed a CS majors Ubuntu laptop for a few months to just get work done (just webbrowsing and office app stuff). Shit was annoying and difficult to understand but I was able to make it work-ish.
I’m savvy enough where I can adult Lego a PC together but struggle when it comes to software and troubleshooting and really don’t have the time for that stuff.
Basically, I’m not in the position right now to learn a distro and struggle around with all that crap and I need to keep my music shit. I also despise Microsoft and AI in general but I’m perfectly fine just eating it for simplicity. Is there a low effort Linux solution to my situation? Looking for automatic updates where I just click “express install i don’t fucking care” and im not searching for drivers every day.
My build is basically what’s shown below minus the SLI’d 1080s and with 32gbDDR4. Any upgrade apart from the gpu would essentially mean a wholesale at this point. I used the 2nd card to build my wife a pc since SLI is effectively useless now.
“Basically, I’m not in the position right now to learn a distro and struggle around with all that crap and I need to keep my music shit.”
If you don’t want to have to learn anything new, then switching your OS to something you don’t know how to use is a stupid idea.
Thanks for the tl;dr
I notice there are only a couple replies here that have experience with music production. Obviously core desktop stuff works great, gaming is pretty universally fixed, but music production is a different story.
I have extensive experience with linux and music production. You can use yabridge to run Windows VSTs. However, they can be extremely fussy with graphics compatibility. I estimate that I couldn’t manage to get about 20% of my plugins to work despite hours upon hours of troubleshooting. This is coming from a Linux-native software developer. If you’re just learning Linux, you could be in a world of pain.
I’m sure folks out there have gotten all of it working individually, but I doubt anyone has your exact setup working perfectly.
Ableton and FL Studio will have to be ran through Wine. I experienced major performance issues with FL Studio before switching to Bitwig.
Linux is great. But the music production industry is not kind to it. If you’re cool with being a linux music producer you’ll have to accept that some things just will not work well. But if you want 100% access to everything you’re used to, stick with Windows.
i would like to second this. though i’m not really experienced with it, creative work can be quite the pain in the butt from what i’ve been hearing.
for general usability and gaming it’s generally not really any more difficult than windows it feels like. i would just always recommend to check whether the things you really need run on linux or have an equivalent. this includes checking areweanticheatyet and protondb for the games you wanna play. some companies block linux in their games because some windows hackers exploit linux comparability… some other companies are stupid and think that a single player needs anticheat…………
also your choice of distro very much matters when it comes to how easily you get your things to work. for example i love bazzite for gaming, especially on laptops with igpu and nvidia, but it may not be the right choice for creative work, like i wont use it for my work related programming. there i use fedora KDE.
You have a 1.5 mo old. You don’t have time. Be a dad. Be a husband. Be a hobbyist.
Take the easy route now. Come back when your kid and family are in a flow state.
I’m same boat and just want to say please come back. Dont leave your kids to the mercy of Microsoft Apple Google. Their learnings from your trials will help them grow. Be a dad, be a dad that helps your kids push past corporate ownership.
For music production on a hobby level? Linux is not what you want.
The VST availability is abysmal. For a DAW, you can choose between Reaper and Ardour. Both are reasonably good, but without decent third party VSTs you’ll suffer. You won’t get iLok working, you won’t get any commercial plugins working. Your old project files won’t open.
Now, if you are exclusively working with Airwindows plugins (look it up!) in Reaper, you could get away with a Linux migration. Cakewalk and Ableton? Not a chance in hell.
Go buy a cheap used 16GB M1 Mac Mini. Music production stuff ”just works”. Given your config, looks like that could be within budget. Or upgrade your old machine to Windows 11, pick your poison.
I will have to disagree with that, as you can use Yabridge for the Windows VST’s when using Wine, provided they don’t require iLok. While yes, there is an issue with iLok (because I think they hate Linux users), you could still get a great selection of things specifically for the likes of Ardour, Reaper, Bitwig, LMMS, and other options. My producer, Neigsendoig, and I use Ardour and Zrythm. As for Cakewalk and Ableton, I could see how they don’t work. Apparently, FL Studio can with WINE ASIO from what Neigsendoig researched.
Neither of us would recommend a Mac at all, due to Mac being basically BSD, but with code that could raise major privacy concerns. I think Sendo (Neigsendoig) has tutorials on CoculesNation about setting up Linux for music production.
Also, I hadn’t talked about this yet, but I’d recommend OP look into Ardour, Zrythm, Reaper, and maybe Qtractor as the DAWs of choice.
I know it’s possible to run music production on Linux, in fact it’s better than ever.
But:
- OP explicitly asks for keeping his Cakewalk and Ableton files working.
- OP has a small child and just wants a working music production machine with minimal fuff and time investment.
- Like 95% of people doing any kind of music production (outside of our Linux bubble) will have an iLok licenced favourite plugin somewhere. Never seen a professional without several.
Please stop recommending Linux to people who aren’t ready for it yet. Find the people who are, get them over. The rest will follow.
As far as I’m aware (I could be wrong on this), there’s no way OP will be able to use Ableton and Cakewalk on Linux. That’s why I recommend OP look into the DAW’s I mentioned.
If you move to Linux, you gotta be committed. I didn’t learn Linux until I said “fuck it” and forced myself to use it exclusively.
You will run into problems. You’ll have some days where you’ll spend 10hrs fixing something that no other person on the entire planet has encountered before, only to realize you needed to type in 1 very simple command to fix it.
As much as people hate AI, it can help with Linux troubleshooting. There’s also wikis and manpages.
If you switch at all, pick something that won’t break. Debian will run on your hardware just fine. You won’t have the latest and greatest packages, and as a newbie you DO NOT WANT the latest and greatest.
Nvidia drivers are a hassle, be prepared.
If all that sounds doable, send it.
Well said.
No idea about Cakewalk etc but your Steam games will almost all be fine and Linux is honestly great right now and always getting better.
Having used Linux Mint, Windows 10, and Windows 11, I can honestly say that Win10 is okay and Win11 is annoying dogshit. I’d recommend taking the Linux plunge of course, but if you’re desperate for Windows I think paid extended support for 10 might be a thing?
But like I said 11 is dogshit and there’s no time like the present to just grab 3-4 USB sticks at Microcenter, download a bunch of ISOs and Rufus or Balena Etcher, and just dick around. Linux Mint with Cinnamon or KDE will probably give you one of the slickest Windows-like experiences OOTB. Only recommendation: some wifi cards (with certain chips, I forget which) in my experience have required me to go hunt down a driver, so check reviews for any card you’re looking at to see if people report it working out of the box.
Only recommendation: some wifi cards (with certain chips, I forget which) in my experience have required me to go hunt down a driver, so check reviews for any card you’re looking at to see if people report it working out of the box.
With Linux mint, with one machine, I had to explicitly open the driver manager and tell it to use the drivers for the wifi. It wasn’t obvious but I’d read it on some random forum and remembered. Once I knew that was a thing, it was easy. Opened the driver manager, plugged in the install media (USB stick) when it asked, and then told it to use the proprietary drivers.
I hope you mean torrenting and not tormenting 😸
Just install Linux on an external SSD and test it.
Autocorrect is OP. Thinking of going that route. I have a 2tb SSD I’ve been meaning to install for a while now
Man, you’re basically saying “I want to move to a new country, but I don’t want to lose any of my friends, I can’t change my job, I don’t want to learn a new language, I want to bring all my furniture and appliances with me, and we just had a new baby a month ago so I’m sleep deprived and don’t have any spare time. How do I do it?”
I use Windows 11 for work and honestly don’t know why so many folks complain about it. I like working in it better than 10.
The forced Microsoft login is absolutely a valid privacy concern - I get that. The copilot integration is annoying and not helpful but can be turned off. The general UI and compatibility is pretty good. I’d just go ahead and upgrade to 11.
I had my first kid a little over 2 years ago, and my interest in twiddling with my OS plummeted. I use Linux, and it’s great for what I do, but I don’t do any sound stuff. I bet you could do it but that there’d be a lot of twiddling with your OS.
Not the exact answer you’re looking for, but a $500 Mac mini would be a fantastic solution. That or an entry level MacBook Air.
I run Linux on my desktop for most things but all my music production is done on MacBooks. If you want a turn key solution, this is the way.
Every vst, midi device and mixing console I have just works. Well worth the sub $1000 investment.
Hell, my touring setup runs off a 8 year old MacBook Pro you could likely pick up for under $400.
If you want to dip your feet in without making any permanent decisions, try using a virtual machine or a live USB.
The virtual machine is effectively no risk but slightly slower. The live USB gives you a more realistic experience (except for boot times) but it is possible to erase your data if you miss the several warning messages and press the “I know what I’m doing, proceed anyway” button.
If you feel like Linux could work but you’re not ready to fully commit, you can dualboot. I had both Windows and Linux for 2-3 years before I was comfortable enough to not boot Windows.
My personal preference is Linux Mint because it looks and feels very similar to Windows (I’m currently running LMDE). Any distro with KDE should also feel fairly familiar. Bazzite is more designed around gaming, but should still be adequate for most of your needs. It does have the reputation of being unbreakable.
Here’s a dad’s reply in a similar place - Win 11 is fine. I put it off for a very long time and just upgraded a couple weeks ago. It hasn’t really been an impact.
Is Linux better? Yes. Does win 11 just work without too much fuss? Yes.
I still have Linux on many machines in my house except for my gaming rig, just because I don’t want to have to break it and spend time refreshing it because my Linux skills aren’t up to par. I have a full time job and young kids and don’t have as much tinkering time as I used to.
That being said, I’m migrating ALL machines that aren’t compatible with win 11 to Linux to avoid tossing them in a landfill like many will do, like my son’s gaming PC.
I started with a dual boot. Very easy to do, if you have two hard drives. I have landed on Bazzite because I just game and watch movies at home. It does those things very well.
I mean Windows 11 can do annoying things, but it’s not gibberish. Reminds me of XP to Vista, but less about performance issues and more about incessant GUI tweaks no one asked for.
I’d say update it and make do, then move to Linux down the road if it annoys you enough to motivate that decision.
It’s not all bad, I am enjoying the HDR features, which is the only reason I updated before the Win10 EOL.
That said, I do plan on making a Linux VM and playing around to get a feel for it.
I don’t know what all these doomsayers are doing. I installed Bazzite and it just worked. I decided I didn’t want an immutable system so I switched to Garuda, and it just worked. I have Nvidia and didn’t have to do anything extra.
