The Postminimalist

proprietary software that I don’t trust, or programs that aren’t on zypper

They’re speed bumps

It’s updated whenever your package manager puts up the new version. If you’re using something like Ubuntu or Mint, then you’re using apt as your package manager, which takes a while to update stuff because they like to test it for a while first.

Not everyone feels like having a mascot fits with their branding

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.

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:

• For something easy to use: Linux Mint

• For something that has pre-installed audio software (but maybe not the ones you want): Ubuntu Studio

• 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)

• 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

Regardless of the distro, you can install as many desktops you want. It doesn’t have to be during the OS’s installation screen.

You’ll want to decide on a desktop environment or window manager (or compositor). That’ll be the biggest determining factor of what things will look like. From there, you’ll want to either read the manual or arch wiki on how to customize the different aspects of it.

If you decide you want a tiling window manager, Hyprland is nice since you mentioned you wanted animations. But it’s only recommended on rolling release distros at the moment. It also might not work well with Nvidia.

What kind of “app behaviour” customizations are you wanting to do? That sounds like it would be app-specific. My main form of app customization is to find ways to change the colour scheme (to fit everything else), and also to change the keybindings (I like using vim-like key bindings whenever reasonable)

You haven’t given any info regarding what you want to try.

If you just want to try something different, Arch Linux is an obvious one. A nice learning experience. However, I’d say rolling release is not as recommended on a machine that you’ll be using less than twice a month, since I hear people say you want to update your stuff no less frequently than once a week on a rolling release OS.

So another idea is NixOS. I think it comes with a stable release option? I haven’t tried it, but it’s another option if you want to install something for the learning experience.

If you want something easy to install but different, consider Fedora or OpenSUSE (either version)

For desktop environments, if you want a learning experience for something potentially fun, try a tiling window manager. Sway is one that I’m trying right now (it’s just i3, but with Wayland). Or for something easy but different, any of the big DE will do, like Gnome. I haven’t tried anything other than KDE or Sway.

I’m glad the option is available, but I still suggest people try using Reaper over Studio One. More powerful and more affordable.

Pipewire is much better than Pulseaudio, especially for pro audio work because of its low latency. Another popular option is JACK, which must be used in conjunction with Pulseaudio. Harder to set up, but is also great for pro audio. Some audio engineers were having issues with Pipewire when it first came out so they went back to using JACK, but I think Pipewire has improved. Pipewire has been flawless on my end.

If you’re not in pro audio or any kind of multimedia work, it doesn’t really matter and you can just stick with whatever comes pre-configured on your distro. But my vote goes to Pipewire as the best server for pretty much anyone.

Which is why they need their own bike lanes. And if these bike lanes are getting congested, then theyre doing their job and we need wider bike lanes.

Generally, people ride on sidewalks because the alternatives on the road are even more dangerous. I hope Olivia Chow really improves Toronto’s bike/mobility lane network with something more than just a painted gutter lane.

I’ve never heard of him suggesting any actual wealth redistribution. I don’t follow MSN at all, but I’d imagine by higher taxes they mean slightly more taxes on people making 6 figures. I don’t care about people making only 6 figures. I don’t believe Bill Gates is out there promoting policies that will relinquish his financial power.

Are you from the US? I think the lack of a leftist political party has skewed what Americans view as left. Not even any of the third parties (with a leader eligible to be president) are left. The democratic party of the USA is most closely aligned with the conservative party of canada, from the policies that I’ve seen

I don’t like a lot of the stuff Ubuntu comes with. The thing I liked about OpenSUSE is the advanced options of being able to select exactly what you want to install on there. Debian is also attractive to me because it comes with a more proper minimal install. I like having a higher control over my install, and don’t want to have a desktop environment anyway.

Honestly, there wasn’t a single piece of software in Ubuntu Studio that I wanted except for Gimp, Carla and maybe Pure Data. I don’t even like the preconfigured sound server, since I just use PipeWire instead of Jack. It’s easier and faster to install what I do want from a minimal install of Debian than it is to uninstall everything in ubuntu studio. I also didn’t like snaps, and any flavour of Ubuntu was just really slow. If you already like most of the stuff it comes with, then hey that’s awesome!

I’m wanting to do a full transition to Linux for audio work, but I couldn’t get Wwise to work, even with Wine/Bottles. Just will refuse to install. Identical issue on other people’s linux systems.

I also started with Ubuntu Studio, but 90% of the stuff it comes with is irrelevant to pro audio, and it was just running super slow. OpenSUSE Leap works like a charm for everything (except Wwise of course). Though Leap might be getting axed and no longer worked on in the future (nothing is certain yet). So I might also try Debian.

Because Wwise wasn’t working, I never got around to testing out all my VSTs though. Have you tried using either Wine or Bottles for them?

To me, it’s about removing the ability for a few people to hoard wealth that they’ll never use for the sake of power and control. It’s about people helping their community to whatever extent is reasonable, so if you make 7 figures a day, either pay a big chunk of that money back to your workers who do most of the heavy lifting, or give it back to the community as a whole, rather than stuffing it in a Swiss bank.

It’s about building our city’s infrastructure in a more livable and accessible way for the general public, like affordable high speed transit and bike lanes for those who just want to go from A to B without dealing with the headaches of a car if they don’t need one.

It’s about being against capitalism and the way it gives power to giant corporations, and allows them to create a monopoly, disallowing most innovative small businesses from getting anywhere.

It’s about working on the high cost of living inside cities where most people must live in order to cover important jobs, using techniques like buildings made by either the government, where rent equals only the cost of upkeep, with no further outward profit, or buildings built by a private company, where they need to have at least a certain percentages of units have its rent cost only enough to cover upkeep costs.

Liberals are none of these things. They are driven by what makes a profit for corporations and their shareholders. Conservatives are not much different. I believe conservative voters think they’re different, but don’t realize that in office, conservatives and liberals vote on all the same stuff ghat gives corporations this level of power and growth.

I do not agree that MSN is left. Maybe it’s liberal, but liberal is not left.

So I work in game audio. I have a masters in music composition, and beginner knowledge of coding just to add a few lines of audio-related code to my client’s spaghetti code.

What you’re asking for is not a simple task, and will certainly need AI or machine learning or something along those lines. You could more easily make something like this if its just a single melody with no other backing tracks (and there’s plenty of software that does this), but to understand and distinguish separate instruments, including drums, hear them all as separate voices, and turn them into a whole other medium, is on a whole other stratosphere. If someone’s going to make something like this, it’s going to be made by a corporation and sold as a $1000 plugin.

But hey, at least it will most certainly be in C++, because that’s the language of choice for most audio plugins.

God I wish he promoted socialist policies. But he certainly does not. I do not agree with the statement that “the biggest capitalists in the world are actually socialists”.

People on the left are generally anti big tech, anti-google, anti-microsoft, anti-NSA. Anti-government is also not inherently right wing, especially if you look at anarchists instead of tankies. But adding restrictions onto giant corporations (that effectively become more powerful than the government) is more of a leftist opinion.