Hello everyone, I need help choosing my first distro. I want to be able to run Audio software for editing and mixing. So I need also VST plug ins and others. Currently I use Windows 10, and Reaper.
I have worked with macOS and Chrome OS in the past so the desktop and Linux is not something I can’t get used to.
I also need to run Plex and Torrenting software.
I’m a computing engineer, so I can troubleshoot most issues, but I’d like to be able to fix most things. Someone recommended me Lubuntu.
Mostly, I’d like to hear your opinions. Thanks.
First off, I want to make it clear that the distro doesn’t really matter. Different distros are just what it comes pre-packed with by default.
TLDR:
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For something easy to use: Linux Mint
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For something that has pre-installed audio software (but maybe not the ones you want): Ubuntu Studio
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If you want to build your system from scratch: Debian (or Arch if you want the latest and greatest software, and don’t mind the occasional update breaking your system around once a year or so, and needing to spend an hour fixing it)
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Regardless of which distro you get, use JACK or PipeWire for your sound server. PulseAudio (on its own) has too much latency.
More details:
I first tried Ubuntu Studio. It comes with a lot of software related to audio production. But I found it to be insanely slow, and it didn’t even come with Reaper anyway.
I tried OpenSUSE because I liked that it had the option to manually deselect the software you don’t want (and I was too much of a beginner to know how to pick my packages from the ground-up). It worked well.
Eventually I moved to Debian. I didn’t want any of the extra fluff and found it was pretty easy to choose everything myself. One thing that’s important is that you don’t want to use PulseAudio. Either use JACK (which I think needs to be used in conjunction with PulseAudio actually) or use PipeWire, which is what I use.
For any Windows software, use Bottles to emulate them on Linux. I actually ended up needing to go back to windows because of one audio software: Wwise. There was no way of running it in Linux. A VM probably would’ve worked, but that would’ve been a massive hassle for how I’d need to use it.
Free Linux VSTs: https://vital.audio/ https://lsp-plug.in/ https://github.com/TukanStudios/TUKAN_STUDIOS_PLUGINS
Paid Linux VSTs: https://www.acmt.co.uk/products/index.html https://librewave.com/ https://www.audiodamage.com/collections
As an aside, distro doesn’t matter but should make sure realtime is set up properly for the optimal latency. That usually requires the linux-rt kernel. The default one isn’t quite as bad as it used to be, but linux-rt will be able to guarantee low latency processing without dropouts. Also worth tuning/hardcoding latencies in JACK or PipeWire if the audio delay is too big out of the box.
Thank you for your input and experience. I’ll go with Debian then. With that I’ll have a project that seems to be fun. How is the latency on Linux?
I didn’t get to spend too too much time doing pro audio on linux because as soon as I realized Wwise will not work, I didn’t spend much more time in Reaper after that. But it was good, especially with an audio interface (if you’re buying an audio interface, check to see how well it works with linux. Apparently some may have issues)
By the way, the whole point of Debian is that it has older software, and in exchange you’re almost guaranteed to have a system that doesn’t break. But for some professional software you’ll want the newest version. I recommend using Flatpak for that stuff instead of Apt (like for Reaper)
When installing Debian, when it asks “Allow login as root?” be sure to select “no”. This one step is why some people don’t recommend Debian, saying it complicates the install process. But if you get that right, then you’re all good. Or I think sometimes it will instead ask you to create and type in a root password, in which case you should leave it blank and click next. You only want to make a password for your user, not for the root.
Be aware that there’s a Linux Mint Debian Edition if you want a Debian base with a few QoL improvements.
Those Tukan plugins are not VSTs, they are reaper specific plugins.
I have no idea about Bottles but most people use yabridge these days which is really easy to use and works very well.
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I don’t think an audio distro is needed nowadays. I use endevour os, with a zen kernel or real time one (trivial to set up, just install one package) and used this tool to fine tune the setup https://codeberg.org/rtcqs/rtcqs Then it’s pipewire, reaper, yabridge and not much else.
If you are new to Linux just use Fedora. Everything will just work and you can install all your apps via the store.
Specifically, I’d recommend Fedora Jam. It has all sorts of audio stuff preconfigured/preinstalled for musicians
Check out ubuntu studio. It comes preloaded with a ton of software which can help expose you to plenty of options to find what you like.
Even if you end up going with a different distro, id recommend booting it up and playing with it for a while to explore.
AV Linux is pretty damn good.
I would say Arch because the AUR is amazing and Arch all around is so good but you’ll need to be making a lot of decisions during install that you know nothing about. If you want to learn then I think it’s the best overall.
I’d suggets Void. It has Ardour in the repo (not Reaper though) and PiperWire with JACK should work out of the box. If you want Reaper, you’d have to install it manually though. I’m working on a template for Reaper, but it’s not finished yet. If you’re willing to wait a month or so, you’ll probably have Reaper in xbps-src as well.
Last time I looked there were not enough plugins available for it to be good for a beginner wanting to use it for audio.
Plugins as in VSTs?
Yes. LV2 and VST3
I thought most of the FOSS ones were like libraries, just drop them in the adequate shared directory and that’s it 🤔. You could check dependencies with ldd and look for the adequate package with xtools.
They can be dropped into local directories, assuming the devs provide binaries, otherwise they need building. I know it’s not difficult to git clone and build but it’s not really a beginner friendly process and not ideal to have to remember to check for updates (and not ideal to not have them packaged for updates if there are binaries provided by the devs). I was considering using 10 years ago or so and this was one of the main reasons I decided against it in the end (along with other audio tools not having packages), it’s a shame it hasn’t really moved forward in this respect because it looked really nice otherwise.
What, they don’t offer binaries 🤨?
Well, at least there is one thing that makes building on Void easier. xbps-src works with templates, so you could just write the template or write on GitHub for help from someone in the Void community. I’ve asked for help many times and people are usually very helpful ☺️. Once you have the template, updating the VST is a matter of just chaging a few things in it (version, hash, etc.) since things like UI dependencies or libraries don’t change that often in releases, those are major changes and usually come with a prior warning by the developer. Meaning, you could just make the template and just change the version numbers and hashes, recompile it and most of the time, that will be just that, bam, you’re up to date ☺️. Sure, there are major updates, but let’s face it, there are very rare. And, you can share the template with others on the official void xbps-src repo or your own repo, however you like 😉. Hell, you could even share the binaries so that other people don’t have to go through the trouble of compiling them manually 😉.
