There is always some issue I run into that makes me angry and go back to Windows. Usually it is some random issue that breaks my installation at the most annoying time that I don’t have time to fix.
I’ve tried twice recently to mainly run Linux on my laptop (Framework) and ran into compatibility issues. First, the wireless card in my laptop worked on the installed kernel version for their recommended distro (Fedora), but when I updated the OS it upgraded to a kernel that didn’t have the Wifi driver. The other distros I tried had other hardware that didn’t work. I tried again a few months ago and that was fixed, but then I discovered that two pieces of software I need to run cannot coexist because one had graphical issues if you don’t use Wayland and the other only supports xorg. No issues running the same combination of software in Windows.
Sadly, just software compatibility - doing music with specific programs needed for assignments etc - If drivers and compatibility weren’t an issue, I never would have switched. :) I will consider using Linux again full time if my current machine ever gives up though, now that gaming has advanced so much further. :)
The only way I could level up is to go back to university and get a PhD in music… I studied it for 6 years and am happy with the level of my musical process.
I would definitely argue that Linux has good music software… But better? By what metric? I love what I’m using, it doesn’t get in the way and lets me explore ideas at will, it performs perfectly, its very stable.
Now, for me, the perks to Linux are freedom and privacy. This is excellent, and in this specific use-case, I find this within what I’m using on Windows. Even during using Ubuntu Studio as my daily os, I had to keep a copy of XP available in case I wanted to use a particular bit of software, a plugin, or a technique.
I agree that the solution would be for software vendors to target Linux… But they don’t, and not having the choice to use these tools would mean an interior result. Linux can’t and shouldn’t be the answer to every issue, It only serves to mislead if it isn’t true.
I would definitely argue that Linux has good music software… But better? By what metric?
By the metric that windows is a closed box while linux can be tuned to be a much better machine to play and make music. Not having the possibility to route audio is a joke and an even bigger joke is using windows to play live with 0 control over what it does
Okay, imagine I can see windows in all its inefficient, telemetry riddled candy crush glory… in a better of minutes I can start making music with my hardware, with absolutely no setup besides plugging in some cables and downloading my program.
I spent months trying to convince JACK that my PC had a line-out even with the help of some lovely people over at JACK and Ubuntu forums, the answer we all came to was to try using Windows 7, which grudgingly got on with it, no issue at all.
I really, really wanted to ditch Windows for good, and did so proudly for almost five years, I have no loyalty to companies because that’s daft. But part of maturing is knowing that someone tried a thing, it didn’t work for them, and what works for you may vary. My build on my computer has been rock solid for performances, live recording, making entire games… I can’t fault the damn thing try as I do!
I think it does the amazing work of the FOSS world a disservice to go after people exercising their choice to use whatever they want. It also makes these people feel unwelcome, and less likely to want to touch Linux with a ten-foot-pole.
I had various distros, and would to this day run LXLE proudly if I didn’t have a need to use the music software I do. I still rock FOSS projects as much as possible (an old Audacity build gets much of what I need to do with game audio done, I take great glee in never touching Adobe products).
That said, in my subjective use case, I can’t in any way say that the ethics of Linux made me make better music, but it did make me interested in technology, and that’s also good. Arguing with Ardour and Jack to get Audio out was tedious, and I lost months of productivity through trying to will things to work.
I hope that’s a constructive and helpful way to expand on this. :)
I was taught using Ableton Live, and Max MSP mainly - this was back in 2014 or so, they might be wine-able now but I’ve not tested in years! :) There’s Bitwig now, which is very similar, but I had to submit Ableton Live projects and Max Patches to show my workflow.
I’m back to hobby musicking, and I sometimes think about putting together a Ubuntu Studio build again - ardour was cool, and I enjoyed LMMS for sequencing :)
In fact, I need to get off my backside and make more music in general! It’s amazing how fast life can take over, I miss it! :/
These are good programs, however, I would argue that Pure Data is the only one that offers the same or better functionality.
Don’t get me wrong, I used to use Ardour and LMMS for everything, Ardour is fantastic for tracking and composing linear stuff.
But Ableton’s compositional abilities and creative live performance put it in its own category in comparison - Ardour would be more of a Logic, Cubase, ProTools alternative in my mind. The ability to perform almost collaboratively with internal logic, the simplicity of connecting seemingly any device to a session via an M4L patch- it’s just so different.
As I said, I was studying electronic music, and my lecturer was teaching us Ableton, assessing us based on a final recording and the project itself. There’s no way I could have abstained from that without a big old zero on my grade- and missing out on some truly great experiences, performances and knowledge picked up on the way.
Sometimes ideology isn’t a simple thing, I use FOSS projects as much as possible, even contribute when possible, but I need to work and live on the way.
I would also like to add that Jack circa 2014 was an utter mess, I’m sure it’s come on leaps since, but that was always something I felt I fought to get working rather than used. Making the same audio connection in Windows would be automatic, and Jack felt more like a seance.
Anyway, my point is that there’s a lot of details and thoughts to people’s choices in these things, and if there was one OS and audio workstation for music, it would be a very, very bland thing. :) Anywho, have an excellent night :)
I got tired of having to endlessly maintain it, vs windows which generally just works (no fighting with audio drivers, wifi drivers, gpu drivers, suspend to disk works without glitching, etc) and i like playing video games without having to deal with wine. Still run linux on servers, and my work desktop and laptop are linux since we have an IT department which maintains it for me.
Oh also windows has handled high DPI monitors and mixed DPI multi monitor setups perfectly for a decade or more, I think linux only more recently started handling it ok and it’s still got quirks.
I think the experience depends a lot on what ditros you’re using and your hardware configuration. I started out on Manjaro and that ran terribly for me, then i went on to Linux Mint which i liked a lot and that was solid, but since i got a new GPU i needed a distro with a newer kernel which made me switch to Pop!_os and that is also running great. But i won’t deny that audio was a bit flakey on Mint for me until i messed with it, seems solid on Pop though.
Every few years I try Linux again. At this point I’ve decided that when I can install linux, and use all of my hardware/software without having to open a terminal window, I’ll try it again. Until then, I only use it when I’m paid to.
If I have to open a terminal just to get up and running, the UI has failed. If something that basic has failed, there are other much larger problems to deal with still. None of which I want to deal with.
Also I’ve spent 40 years working in various versions of dos and PowerShell interfaces, and there’s enough difference with all nix type interfaces that I don’t want to deal with swapping back and forth. I do that enough with the programming languages I use every day that it’s a constant annoyance.
Couldn’t have dual monitors due to Nvidia drivers not working correctly. Couldn’t play Overwatch. Deep Rock Galactic ran very badly and slowly. I’ve used Linux in the past for years but it’s just not good on a gaming laptop.
ah yes, those highy sought after delights of being restricted, linux is not bad, it’s just like a very strict parent that takes away all your gaming consoles and tells you it’s for your own good, and you know what? i’m happy to be violated everyday by the whims of such a helicopter parent, it’s a feature!!! If possible I would like daddy Linux to remove all my rights to music, movies, entertainment, and leave me only a code editor, a console and a chatroom with my employer, that way I would only work night and day to make money, it would be heaven to be trapped into a world where my only possible thoughts are of code and work.
The first time I used Linux, I couldn’t get it to work with my NIC so I couldn’t play Counter-Strike. Big nope.
The second time, it wouldn’t work with my GPU properly so anything that used 3D graphics either didn’t run at all, or gave single digit frame rates.
The last time I tried, Wine just wouldn’t work with anything or would constantly crash.
Until Linux is just super easy, plug’n’play, “it just works” like Windows, it will never become my daily use OS. The only thing I would run Linux on currently are purpose specific machines using a raspberry pi or similar computer, a server, or my phone.
Now that Steam is all in on the Steam Deck and SteamOS there is much better support for games on Linux. See ProtonDB.
Also, the Linux distro Pop!_OS has worked quite well for me for games. I use the NVIDIA version which bundles NVIDIA’s propietary library blobs which also helps with the game compatibility.
But all in all I agree with you that even with all of this it is not as smooth as just click and play on Windows. 🙂 Plus some games just don’t work on Linux at all so there’s that. Lol.
I hate the CLI and every time I had an issue every manual or forum or user would give me the solution using the CLI.
Also gaming. There is lots that runs fine on Linux now, but there is also lots which does not. Especially gaming peripherals like my Fanatec wheel and pedals.
I used Linux for maybe 15 years and I have to say I absolutely love it. I even attended Fedora Flock conference, I was really into all the FOSS world. But at some point I guess I got really tired of editing text files on a command line and googling to solve specific problems or just plain OS settings.
I can’t say that I don’t miss it though and especially more now than ever the itch is there and I am curious to install and use Linux again, so I dunno…
Hate to say it but, laziness… bought a new gaming laptop with windows 11. My old laptop was running Mint for a couple of years and I really loved it. Software wise everything I needed just worked.
Reading a lot of these comments I think people are under the wrong impression of the current state of Linux. I think you’ll have a better experience with a bleeding edge distro like Arch or Fedora.
A lot of your productivity apps are on Linux, a higher percentage of your games work than you think, and you could see a performance boost over windows. Plus there are multiple app alternatives that are even better.
I ditched Windows three years ago. 99% of my 450 Steam library works (yes AAA games) thanks to Valve with Proton. What doesn’t? Call of Duty, because of invasive kernel level anti-cheat and I’m good with that.
Steam, Zoom, Slack, Teams, Spotify, Plex, Jellyfin, Discord are all on Linux.
Edit: Also there is no “look/UI” to Linux. It’s your DE, and you’re free to choose one, or a Window Manager. Gnome, KDE, Cinnamon, XFCE, i3, Awesome, Openbox, XMonad, Sway, Hyprland.
It’s more of a “why do I keep Windows on my main machine and only use Linux for my servers?”
The answer is two-fold
a) most of my games and a (dwindling) amount of productivity software are windows based. I know things are improving… But the fact remains that I am still literally invested in some software that is only supported on Windows (that pile is shrinking).
b) there are a few everyday tasks that are still just too frustrating to be practical for non-technical people. For example, why in the fuck do I need to deal with user and mod permissions for files on an external harddrive? I get why for system files, but for media files on an external drive? It’s a level of pedantry I’m just not ready to deal with.
That’s almost exactly my problems with Linux. Adobe is what holds me back the most, a few games that I play also don’t run, and dualbooting has been really annoying. Also, audio drivers, audio problems drive me nuts, and the solutions are absolutely bonkers complex weird setting stuff, specially becaus I’m using a laptop. That said, I love Linux and open-source software, just can’t afford the compromises.
I got my wife a netbook when they were popular. It came with Windows 7 Starter Edition. Shit was kind of slow, but it worked. I thought about installing Linux cause people say it’s lighter and faster. When I started looking up Linux there were so many versions. I can’t tell the difference between a Mint, Cinnamon, KDE, etc. As a noob (I’m still a noob) I don’t know which one to choose so I settled on Mint cause I liked the theme. After the install it was slower than Win7SE. VLC video playback was trash. At the time I was using Photoshop 6 and Gimp was a not so great alternative. In the end the experiment failed. The netbook ended up being donated to the sis in law (teen). Best thing about Linux is the ability to run it off a CD/thumb drive. I think I’m too use to Windows though… It’s not worth the headache to switch Operating System unless I have to. I won’t switch to Apple/iOS cause I’m use to Android. I currently run Win10 on my desktop/laptop and Win11 on my wife’s Surface laptop. I fucken hate how Windows is always asking me to sign on with their account. I probably switch to Linux if Windows ever goes full online subscription base.
mostly because I had to stick on Windows for video games. and for now, the amount of effort I’m already putting into making Windows functional when it’s supposed to work out of the box, makes me scared of going back to Linux. Mostly a worry about changing so many habits and diving back into the unknown
buy hardware that’s supported. For some things (storage) virtually everything works. For others, (video cards, latest-gen wifi) you need to make sure it’s supported out-of-the-box. It’s not worth the headache of trying to get it to work unless you just like geeking out.
if some piece if software or hardware doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. If you spend more than a half hour (or whatever your limit is) trying to get it to work, just say to yourself ‘not available on Linux right now’ and move on. Linix has way more access to beta and alpha-level stuff, and that can make it tempting to try to fix whatever problem. Just don’t bother.
That said, most of the systems I use Linux on, it just works.
Gamepass and Minecraft Bedrock mostly. Gamepass is something that I use a lot that will never work with Linux, and my friend group is split between console and PC for Minecraft so Bedrock edition works best for us. I still use SteamOS on my Steam Deck and enjoy it, but switching operating systems on my main computer just to play games is a bit excessive
I tried to install a package and apt started uninstalling my desktop. Maybe if I didn’t panic and hit Ctrl-C I would have gotten all the packages it was removing replaced with shiny new ones? I doubt it somehow.
All the customization you can do is neat, but after that I was pretty much done with fiddling with my OS and finding FOSS versions of stuff I was already used to and wanted something that would just work. These days I have a small form factor PC with Mint that I run some server apps on, but I’m holding off on making it my daily driver again until Microsoft really puts the screws on the consumer.
That seemed to be a major bug in POP_OS at one point, the youtuber Linus Tech Tips fell victim to it while trying it and it ended up being patched VERY fast
I’ll add one bit of info from me. I’ve installed aptitude on Mint, as it was supposedly the best package dependency conflict resolver. I don’t remember what conflict I had, but when I launched aptitude to fix that broken package, it begun to uninstall every package. After reinstall, I’ve been using Mint as computer for modifying bootloaders in phones, and some minor works, returning to modified windows 10.
Tbf I’ve had a similar thing happen like 6 years ago. I’ve been using Linux still but at the time I didn’t have much going on that system outside of a few games so it just turned into a long reinstall weekend. I forget exactly what happened but I also had another issue where I tried to install KDE Plasma desktop environment and it completely nuked my system. Idk if it was a user error or what.
I’m still a Linux fanboy but it’s not without its own set of issues. I try to be a bit more careful in the terminal after all that and I haven’t had any major issues since. I do need to do a fresh install sometime in the near future though.
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