Was primarily looking at something running Pop!_OS to start. Someone here suggested System76. I'd be migrating from a chromebook that can't handle any music software/DAWs at all, so even if it takes a little more legwork to get going on Linux, it'd still be a step up for those capacities as well as hopefully for privacy, as I'm learning. EDiT: I'm also unable to install Linux on this chromebook.

Anyone have any experience producing music on Linux? I'm mostly going to be recording but also interested in live modulation. For those reasons I'd probably be using Reaper (which I have a good deal of experience with) and Bitwig/Ardour. Would love to hear peoples' thoughts.

  • axolotl [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    so are the main problems you're encountering that the DAW forgets your preferred settings, and that the interface mutes out? i've heard of people having big difficulties with MIDI, which makes sense compared to apple's stock support for it, by comparison. i don't use MIDI though and don't intend to run into that problem.

    how's latency for you in what you're making? and is it pretty plug-in heavy music?

    • Phish [he/him, any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      The DAW settings are fine, it's jack, which I'm using as my audio environment. Jack is nice because it's easy to tell the DAW what inputs to listen to and what to use for outputs. Jack also helps with latency. I did have some latency issues early on but it turned out that was because I had my interface plugged into a USB on my case instead of the motherboard. Once I plugged it in directly the latency went away.

      • axolotl [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        oh, i see! i didn't realize that something like jack would be necessary. so it's like a software mixer/bussing station, in a way? not for individual tracks but overall sound inputs and outputs?

        • PorkrollPosadist [he/him, they/them]
          ·
          4 years ago

          The real value of Jack is that it allows you to pipeline audio and MIDI from any program which supports it. The low latency streaming is obviously important, but being able to synchronize a DAW with a drum machine and a MIDI sequencer driving a synthesizer pipelining through some effects processing and back into the DAW is just... Incredible. When it works, that is. :)

        • Phish [he/him, any]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Yeah, I think it's full name is Jack Audio Connection Kit. I don't think it's completely necessary but all the folks on the Linux audio forums use it for it's real-time connection ability so I figured I'd use it too. It works pretty well once you figure it out.