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.
Well it kind of depends on what kind of music you want to make. If you're just recording WAV files of you playing guitar or whatever, yeah maybe you could make it work but it would be a pain in the ass. If you want to use any VST plugins, synthesizers, samplers etc then it's a non-starter. The only VST plugins that are available for Linux are like rinky dink proof of concepts that some random people in the open source community made as a pet project and probably aren't maintained and aren't quality anyway. If you rely on any VST's like Native Instruments or whatever, Linux simply will not work.
hmm, well I'm mainly looking to do pretty simple multitrack recording via my hardware rig, and then maybe some resampling of the recordings back onto hardware/tape, all thru a mixer/interface set-up.
I posted a picture of this set-up here. i don't really have much of a need for softsynths at this point, if I use a synth I'd probably just sample it thru hardware and plug it thru like everything else.
what do you think would be the biggest stumbling block for trying to use this approach on Linux that I should look out for?
edit. using mastering vsts like izotope would be cool, but ultimately I can just master onto tape and it'll probably have a better outcome for what I'm making anyway
I've only really dabbled in Linux music production. Getting everything set up and just doing seriously basic shit was just too much work so I gave up pretty fast.
Personally if I were you I would go for a dual boot system and save yourself the headache. But, if you wanna go 100% in on Linux, with that set up since it's all just analogue feeding in you could probably make it work.
Keep in mind that drivers for audio interfaces are NOT going to have Linux versions for them. So while you might be able to get an audio input, it may not work as expected.
jeez, this is a frustrating learning curve just to figure out how to approach the issue, haha. thanks for your feedback. i'll look into dual-boot, or maybe even going for two cheap systems, linux for privacy and general use, and mac for music.
Good luck!
Linux is great for general purpose stuff, but for highly specialised niche shit like pro audio it's not even close to being suitable, unfortunately.