Final paragraph sums it best:
Don’t want any bloatware or subscription services preinstalled on your computer? Consider installing Linux instead of Windows the next time you’re reinstalling your computer.
Guess it depends on the industry. I’m a web developer so it doesn’t matter what OS I use, and frankly it’s far easier to install and configure the tools I need on Linux than it is on Windows. I can leave a Linux system online for weeks at a time, which in some cases is the entire length of a contract.
Windows is good, but it requires just as much training as any other system to become a real power user.
I disagree. If you consider a power user using PowerShell or terminal, then sure. But simple things on windows are more complex on Linux. Like installing a program, if you can do it through snap or apt get then great, still more complex for the average user compared to windows where you just download and click.
Sure, and once you’ve clicked through the “finish setting up windows” pop up that inexplicably appears every few reboots, done the mandatory updates it keeps nagging you about and threatening to reboot if you happen to walk away for too long, and cleared out all the ads in your notifications, you can get right to it!
You know, I’ve never had this happen to me at all, but I am using the Pro version, so maybe that’s why.
I’m quite interested in using Linux, but it won’t run many, if any of the 100s of plugins I own, let alone my audio interface, or my production software.
At least, that’s my assumption. I did a search and can see there’s a decent DAW for Linux (the amusingly-named Cockos Reaper), it’s affordable at $80. But I’d also need to buy a new audio interface, there’s a few that have Linux drivers. An expensive experiment. My interest is because it’d be amazing to have a stable system to play music live, with no weird Microsoft shit happening in the background guaranteed.
Maybe Ardour can fit? You can pay $1 or more for the binary or compile it yourself.
Reaper is the best there is for Linux. There are other alternatives of you want FOSS, but they are not as good.
Ardour is very appealing to me because it supports VST3! There is a ‘wrapper’ available to make VST3 compatible with Linux, but that’s just adding the complexity and potentially bugginess that I’d be trying to escape from.
Does the interface that you have now work under Linux? Linux has pretty good support for a lot of things now, so you may be able to use what you have. Reaper also has a generous free trial, so potentially this is a free experiment. (I’m no expert and just tinker with this stuff, but I have Reaper and I find it similarly easy/difficult as every other DAW I’ve used) Several distributions have “live images” where you can run it from a flash drive without copying anything to the hard drive. I don’t know if you could set up Reaper and your interface from a live image.
If you do decide to do an installation, consider buying a different hard drive and installing Linux on that. You can install both Windows and Linux on the same drive, and it’s not difficult, but it is slightly easier to use a separate drive and they are not expensive.
I have used Linux and Windows a lot, but I have only used Reaper in Windows, so unfortunately I can’t say whether it’s a similar experience.
Unfortunately, not only is my interface not supported, but it straight up doesn’t work with linux (according to all the forum posts I’ve seen of people trying, failing, then asking UAD why no Linux compatibility). It’s a UAD Apollo USB, ASIO-only.
I’ve got a frankly ludicrious number of M2 / SATA drives in my music PC so installing on a separate drive is no problem. Thanks for the tip! I bought a new interface for mobile production / live work, so maybe I’ll fare better with that than the UAD beast. Certainly wouldn’t want to stop using that because it’s an absolutely fantastic interface, not to mention the 2x SHARC chips which allow me to run CPU-intensive UAD hardware recreations without smashing my CPU.
Reaper is awesome indeed. But the DAW isn’t the issue, it’s the VST, very few work on Linux
The ‘proprietary software’ you’re referring to is Cubase, which is one of the industry standard DAWs. I think I’m OK relying on the DAW / company that created the VST protocol and is used by pros all over the world.
If you want to try Linux, try Ubuntu or mint. Those are the easiest to make an entry into.
Well yeah, because we don’t have the marketing billions and monopoly that Microsoft/Apple enjoy. So we gotta do the promoting ourselves.
Most of us actually have software to run, not endlessly tinkering with a failed desktop OS
a failed desktop OS
Windows still has over 60% of desktop market share. You may not like it, but it isn’t a failed OS.
Lemmy has a strong bias towards Linux. I wouldn’t say Linux is a failed desktop OS (but hey look at the marketshare) but the transition to Linux is not easy for majority of less tech savvy users. I know you guys have setup Debian/Ubuntu for your grandma and it has been working great since, you don’t have to repeat that.
As someone who’s been trying to move over to Linux for years and fallback to Windows every time I tried, there’s always issues I need to troubleshoot, the most recent one would be mixed refresh rate monitors ie. running at 60Hz instead of 144Hz until I made specific change to a config file. And as a gamer, it makes it even harder - I am aware Proton is a thing now and ‘most’ games work out of the box, I have Steam Deck for my portable needs. Pay attention to the keyword ‘most’, when it doesn’t work, I ain’t wanna spend my previous time to troubleshoot so that I can play the game.
As for my Windows 11 experience, it hasn’t been that bad. There’s no more active prompts for update and restart your computer now or the world will end. UI also looks better with minimal tweaks. Is privacy concern something I should care more? Absolutely, but at this stage of my life, I value more on the consistency and expected behaviour from my PC.
Server use case on the other hand, Linux > all.
