Hey,
atm i am considering switching over to linux on my main pc. I have some experience with different distros ( i have fedora on my laptop) but i am not sure if it is really worth it. I mainly use my PC for Music Production, some Gaming and graphics stuff (Affinity Suit).
For my music production i use a lot of stuff from Native Instruments. I have a Maschine mk3 as my hardware DAW (in combination with Maschine Software) and NI Komplete with lots of vsts. I also have some Arturia vsts and vsts from smaller companies (all paid). My Software DAW is Bitwig (wich has native Linux support). After some research i found out that there are ways to get at least some software from NI running with yarbrigde, but this does not account for my Maschine mk3 and seems very tedious and unstable. Also it is suggested that i have to use older versions of my software as the current version of Native Access does not run at all. I am willing to put in some effort but all of this seems a little bit too much. I also found out that you can run windows in a vm and give it direct access to hardware so i could Use my Maschine mk3 and all of the software of course. My main concern with this is, that i will end up using windows anyway so why bother switching to linux if it is basically just a host for Linux in this case.
Do any of you have experience with the soft and hardware i use under linux? Or maybe some suggestions how i could solve my problems? Is running windows in a vm a viable solution or should i just stick with windows? Any input is welcome and much appreciated!
The big issue is not the DAW. Reaper will work fine (as well others, I’m sure). The issue is plugins, particularly wrt extended functionality with NI stuff (Maschine, etc.), and a variety of other ones, from Plugin Alliance, etc.
Yes, you could probably get a lot of this stuff to work (though to what extent, I don’t know), but it will not be supported. If things start having issues, or if a new version comes out, there are no guarantees. I had a wierd glitch with a certain PA plugin but since I was using Reaper, they wouldn’t support it - this was on windows.
Also, although you could likely get your interface to run, it’ll not be supported.
In the end, if the fun for you is the challenge of making it work (even with duct tape and bailing wire) then go for it. It would honestly be fun.
However, if the goal is to make music, you run the risk of spending valuable time grinding away on compatibility issues - time that could be spent doing the music thing.
There’s a reason why people gravitate towards MacOS for music - it just works, even more so than with Windows. That said, I just can’t stand Apple computers (it’s the walled garden that gets to me - YMMV - it’s a personal choice) and settle for Windows on a home built PC with a healthy dose of WSL.
The other big thing holding me back is Adobe - lightroom, mobile, cloud, are all very much part of what I need. No joy there in *ix-land.
FWIW, I exclusively ran linux (and FreeBSD) for several years. Switched back to windows for the sake of compatibility with my workplace.
Let us know what if you end up trying it out - I am tempted to test it out too, but I am unlikely to switch.