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.
The problem will likely be the warped perception of “low effort” users like you have, that I went in detail on here
This is indicated by phrases like these:
struggle around with all that crap and I need to keep my music shit
Which translate to me as “I don’t want to learn or change a thing, so tell me how I change the most fundamental part of my computing without doing that”.
As I wrote in the comment linked above, with an attitude like that you’d have a significantly harder time than some non-techy person who just wants to have a system that “just works” without preconceptions, not bother with the technical details, but is entirely open to using new programs and doing things differently, as long as they work reliably.
In your case, I’d say stick to Microsoft until you get your mindset and priorities straight. Because then you’d have an easy time without much tinkering at all. But as it stands I think you’d be setting yourself up for misery and failure.
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.
Really want an honest answer here and not a full blown Linux cult answer.
And so you ask in a linux community…
Not all of us have been absorbed yet. I’ve used Linux in passing for years, but only now have tried just diving on outright. Previously my issues were RAM leaks, having to run commands on a laptop on every startup just to initiate wifi, and WINE performance. The former seem to be fixed, the latter seems to be about 89% there with Proton (I even use it for nongaming). Lutris drove me nuts, so Ijust use Steam to do the hard lifting.
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.
Go ahead and update to the newest spyware. 🤷♂️
Debian 13 comes out in a week or so. I have 1 fewer corporation spying on me.
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.
If you’re going to have to change OS anyway you might as well try Linux first. I’m doing a trial run on Bazzite and so far has gone pretty smoothly with the gaming stuff. There’s other stuff I’m having to figure out but I’m pretty optimistic that I will not be putting Win 11 on my desktop.
I kept my ref # for 11, but yeah, Bazzite so far suits my needs. Just now really getting used to Linux, and learning as I go. OMV on an old machine for my NAS confuses me more admittedly. Only thing frustrating with Bazzite so far is the locked os. I would like to modify the menu scripts to include peazip options and extraction to Desktop as a menu item, but I can work around that and do things the longer way. Simple things though are pretty easy. Also sucks that I can’t get Doom Eternal to work on steamlink, but it’s of secondary use anyway. Bazzite is faster, no errors so far unless it’s something I tried to do to it. No RAM leaks like I experienced many moons ago with Xubuntu either (like 2015). I think it’s quite viable as an alternative now (especially since MS has lowered the bar so far)
Yeah so far the only weird issue I’ve had has been some apps will not open files from my file server when I click on the files in the file explorer. I can open them through the file>open function in the app but not the usual way I would do it. It’s something about the way the app is handling the smb:\ path. I found a github page with a suggested fix but haven’t had time to read through and parse what it is actually doing. That’s the only issue so far I was really annoyed by as IMO that’s something that should “just work”. As you said considering the pace windows is enshittifiying the Linux option becomes more viable every day, even if they don’t improve.
I’d try removing the share and readding it, make sure to select the remember checkbox. Then add to Places for the shortcut. Only prob I have with Folphin is extracting from shares (hence Peazip), but the workaround is to open via PZ, then extract within the app (would be great to have access to that menu to have another rightclick extract option for PZ to be fast, but meh, not too important.
Of note: Microsoft is offering an extended support program for Windows 10 consumers. It’s $30, or free if you opt in to Windows Backup, or you can buy it with Microsoft Rewards points. I would see if you have any of those points and go that route. It means you can delay 11 safely for another year.
Kick the can down the road. https://massgrave.dev/windows10_eol
Probably the best choice if OP is dreading 11. Put it off, hope that in 3 years Linux support has matured even more for their use cases.
MS support has used this software themselves in an edge case where they couldn’t get Windows to active properly.
You have two options here:
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Enable the extended support (no pay needed with this software but if OP absolutely refuses to run it they can pay Microsoft money directly though it takes work to find where to do that at) and run on that for 3 years until 2028.
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Upgrade to LTSC IOT using the method they outline at the link there. Again they have two options, one is free, the other is following that guide but paying for a gray-market key (G2a for instance) for LTSC IOT which would avoid running this software on their PC but would mean paying someone some money for a corporate volume key they’re not technically allowed to sell. Which means support until 2032.
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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
bro just grab a cheap ssd and enclosure, install linux on that, slowly play around and setitup, if you like it eventually swap ssds or install it on your main one
I went through the hassle of dualbooting and accessing my drive through linux (not that much hassle but as a beginner it was), ended up uninstalling windows, but i had time to tinker, which is key to making me like it, I was okay with not having a usable pc and I learned what I needed/wanted as substitutes. If you don’t have time experiment on a side device or using an ssd, they are fairly cheap now, you could even use a cheap fast usb if you don’t mind it shitting the bed eventually.
damn could usbs be used as disposable os, i guess thats why tails is used that way, since its bad for the usb to use it that way, they are getting pretty cheap for the fast ones, idk why youd need a dispoable os you could lose at any second tho, maybe if it was very connected to a cloud service
Yes but don’t use it for anything valuable. USBs have a high failure rate when used for heavy read writes.
You can get USB enclosures for M2 drives if you want to go that route a bit more reliably. Ensure you use USB3 (which will still be slow but not as boneachingly bad as USB2)
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.
