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.
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.
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.
Dad of 4 kids here, I would say use the system that let you concentrate more on the kid and less on tinkering the OS.
Fedora could be a nice successor since it runs extremely stable, best way to be clean and safe are doing the updates, but I say this with 15 years of Linux experience.
Better stay on win 10. Family first.
not a dad, signed in just to upvote
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.
Rather than leave another long reply to read, I’ll leave my thoughts simple: if you have another computer you’re not using, try Linux mint and see if it fits your needs. If it’s too much and you can’t get the time needed to figure things out, 11 might be the choice (for now).
But either way, keep Linux on the second and learn a little bit as you get time to! :)
“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
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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You basically answered your own question, to be honest. Linux is clearly not for you. Look into windows 10 LTSC. Teksyndicate made a couple of videos about it. Here is the one where he shows how to install it. He is also stuck on windows because of music. And for debloating windows 10, look into Chris Titus’ Windows Utility script
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.
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.
if you’re going to be too time pressured to have fun with Linux, probably don’t for now
I would say the biggest problem is the music production on Linux. Especially VSTs - those are still hit or miss. And unfortunately the DAWs you mentioned doesn’t have Linux support.
For example I was really trying to do music for several years on Linux, but in the end I gave up and now I’m dual booting Windows… 😿
Vst works fine with bitwig and yabridge I am not music producing but of curioosity I was trying to make this things works,even cracked paid big one part of plugins I maid to work
It works fine until it doesn’t … Some of the plugins were working fine but for example Line 6 Helix Native doesn’t… Also Yabridge stopped working for me few months ago because the developer didn’t have time to update some dependencies. 🤷🏻♂️
Nothing to learn if you’re just doing desktop stuff.
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.
I recently sucked it up and upgraded Windows 10 to 11. Music production is getting better in Linux, but there is still a whole lot of existing music software with no Linux support. Cakewalk for example has no Linux support, and I imagine getting it working in WINE with VSTs and whatever else would be an immense chore. Same story with Ableton.
That said, if you don’t mind migrating to a DAW with Linux support like Reaper, Bitwig, or even Ardour - which is open source and free - producing music with Linux is the easiest it’s ever been. Just don’t count on Linux support from a lot of VST makers who often require you use their software to install their VSTs. You can usually still install those VSTs, but it sometimes requires less than legal methods, and may be a hassle.
If you’re a producer who mostly just uses a DAW as a recorder for hardware, it would barely be a change to your workflow at all. If you are reliant on Cakewalk and Ableton specific processes and VSTs, it would be much more difficult