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.
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.
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!
