#249

Has anyone out there made a complete switch?

I presently use a Apple Macbook Pro with the ElementaryOS Linux operating system.

My Laptop Computer is an old MacBook Pro with an even older Wacom Tablet. I use it mainly for front-end work , be it layouts, websites, movies and games.

  • System : MacBook Pro Retina, 13". 2014
  • Operating System : ElementaryOS
  • Processor : Intel Core i7 3 GHz
  • Memory : 16 GB
  • Mouse : Wacom Intuos 3. 2005

Software Links

12 Likes
#250

Thought Iā€™d add a little note to the thread.

Just been exploring the Linux audio space (pushed by the Catalina hassles and wishing for a super stable/reproducible setup) and making rough drafts of a guide to the basics. Iā€™ll share it here once itā€™s a little more complete. For reference the tools Iā€™ve settled on so far:

  • thinkpad x270
  • Manjaro Linux (like Arch without the setup, or like Ubuntu without the bulk)
  • jack
  • renoise with airwindows plugins (simple/powerful and good enough as a test case)
  • roland rubix interface (class compliant)

Iā€™m processing live bass guitar through it and making comparisons with my MacBook Pro + UA Arrow setup. The results arenā€™t bad at all.

I can get round trip latency of 9.728ms @ 96khz (using jack_delay), which seems ok for a class compliant USB interface.

Iā€™m pretty keen to try and get an equivalent setup going in NixOS, also quite interested in what could be achieved with netjack inside containers).

3 Likes
#251

I use Linux since the late 90ies (when it quite frequently happened that after booting your GUI was gone). Over the years I tried different distributions (Slackware, Debian, Ubuntu, Crunchbang, Arch) but I am now using Mint with OpenBox. I canā€™t help it but I still feel like a beginner (although I am not after about 20 years :wink: ); this is probably due to the fact that Linux kind of forces you more to get to know the system as other OSes - you have to make your hands dirty at some point but on the other hand I am no expert at all and more of a user than a programmer.

I also have a rather old iMac, which I sometimes use for working with Photoshop. Actually this is the only program I miss on Linux because I never bothered (and I donā€™t want) to get used to Gimp. Apart from that I never ever miss anything on Linux - at least not anything which I could get from using Windows or OSX - besides the mentioned exception.

Audio on Linux is probably still a construction site and I find myself sometimes struggling with it. On the other hand: If you get aquainted with Jack and your system runs stable it is generally easy to use and works well; I know, this is kind of inconsistent but does exactly reflect my feelings about it. I am a long time Emacs user (actually Spacemacs since a while) and though also here I am sometimes struggling, I have no intention to use something else.

For audio I sometimes use Audacity, I really like Sonic Visualizer (for analysis and quick sample editing), Helm as softsynth (keep an eye on its creator Matt Tytel, he is about to release a very interesting wave table synth called ā€œVitalā€ sometime next year, see here if you are interested), from time to time ZynAddSubFX (or Yoshimi) and predominantly Sonic Pi (which currently you will have to build on your own on Linux). I can recommend Carla by falkTX (who by the way is also the current maintainer of Jack) as plugin host.

I find it quite difficult to think of a reason to convert to OSX (actually Apple and its universe has become an unpleasantly closed system during the last years, which I really dislike) and I can by no means think of any reason to use Windows again.

4 Likes
#252

Helm looks interesting! I didnā€™t dive too deep but is it a single channel soft synth or does it host multiple channels you can trigger from different midi channels?

#253

Thanks for reminding me about sunvox! I was playing with orca and sunvox last night inspired by your post. Krita is great.

#254

Well it is a polyphonic synth but I have not seen a mult-channel mode.

#255

What prompted me to replace my os this time was turning on the computer and immediately hearing Cortana wanting to walk me through the set up. My reaction was ā€˜no, absolutely not!ā€™. While there are things I like about win10 over previous ones Cortana and that the start menu is an app store out of the box makes me tired.

#256

Iā€™ll try it out. Thank you.

#257

I cannot live with anyone taking over my computer. But I must admit you need to walk that extra mile, to avoid itā€¦

#258

Iā€™ve lost track of how long Iā€™ve been linux (desktop only). Of the specialty programs that I use, Kdenlive does me for video editing, and QLC+ serves as a stage lighting controller.

This year I finally broke down and bought a used windows computer to play the odd windows game and to configure some music hardware.

2 Likes
#259

Unless you want to play just released triple A titles I donā€™t feel Windows is required anymore. Pretty much all (older) games Iā€™ve tried work well with current wine + DXVK or alternatively with Steam Play/Proton. Even multiplayer with friends on Windows works fine.
See https://www.protondb.com and https://appdb.winehq.org/ for a searchable compatibility list.
The only remaining troublemakers are annoying DRMs, they sucked in Windows and they continue screwing us over on Linux.

DAWs are probably a pretty personal thing, but Bitwig seems like the better Ableton Live to me. The grid is awesome, itā€™s easy integration with modular (when you have a DC coupled interface) is super nice and the extension API is quiet cool.
Iā€™ve never been a hardcore Ableton user though, so ymmv.

Overbridge support I donā€™t expect to happen. For this itā€™s simply class compliant devices or nothing.

And hardware support for stuff like scanners, printers, etc is usually better on Linux, especially for older hardware for which there are often no Windows 10 drivers. Still, it will depend on the make and model that you have how good the support is.

Personally Iā€™ve been running Linux only for 4 or 5 or so years now, before that I had Linux on my desktop and macOS on my MBP, but I got fed up with things in my workflow breaking and everything becoming less and less configurable with every macOS release.
The only things Iā€™m missing are niche/specific things:

  • Good CAD software like SolidWorks, Iā€™m using onshape for now which is good enough for the stuff I currently need to do. Iā€™d love for FreeCAD to become usable (i.e. it needs an assembly mode and a bunch of polish) but that will take some time.
  • Motorsport ECU and datalogging software: This is Windows only unfortunately but mostly works in Wine. I might need to run a Windows VM for some of this unfortunately. Note that this whole industry is way behind the times and most of it doesnā€™t run on/support Windows 10 either so itā€™s bad in general :stuck_out_tongue:

Apart from that itā€™s been a breath of fresh air with myself finally being in full control and my OS not getting in the way.
Iā€™d say do it! :slight_smile:

3 Likes
#260

Itā€™s not official, but:

I believe our own @mzero has some experience with it.

6 Likes
#261

Looks nice, but doesnā€™t seem to support lastpass through extension like firefox, chrome and opera :frowning:

#262

this christmas holidays i will be leaving my old MBP (macOs && arch), and move to using a rpi4 with 4gb as my home computer.

i will be using it to make my website, play with pd, sc and csound, record stuff with Audacity(?)

is there a lightweight DAW i can run on rpi?

Has anyone here configured an rpi to use alsa + jack successfully that can point me in a good direction?

#263

What do you want to do within the DAW? Mainly audio or mainly MIDI or both?

#264

I did use Ardour on it quite successfully. But of course performance is not like a proper desktop computer. All other open-source DAWs have been a big failure for me and I think Iā€™ve tried them all.
At least I havenā€™t found one that would not crash all the time or be totally inadequate feature-wise.
Depending on your needs Audacity might do the job as well. But itā€™s not really a DAW, at least not a full one.

Iā€™m on the verge of doing a complete switch once in a while, because Iā€™m not really happy with the direction commercial OSes are heading. What holds me off is mostly just ā€œlegacyā€ things. Iā€™ve invested in a few software packages over time, both financially and learning-time-wise. I mostly use Live, Reaper and a bunch of plugins Iā€™ve bought over time. Doing a complete switch would mean to start from scratch. Learn a new DAW (Bitwig? Ardour?), put together a new pool of plugins and learn how to use them, waste time getting things to work properly again, etc.
I guess thatā€™s what keeps most people from using Linux, isnā€™t it?

3 Likes
#265

x270 + Manjaro (i3 version) is my setup here too! Havenā€™t really benchmarked, but overall very happy day to day with this pair.

#266

Mainly midi and some audio files sequencing. I donā€™t think iā€™ll need FX, just some volume / panning automation and EQ.

Audacity i was planning on using it to record and process some samples to later be sequenced. If now DAW i might as well use it to sequence audio tracks

#267

Maybe not lightweight enough, but what about Traction T7?

#268

Seems like a full modern DAW.
I will certainly investigate.
thanks.