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Comment by qppo | Hacker News Reader

Is this a joke? There's so much overhead in getting a working setup compared to MacOS, and only one of the major DAWs even runs natively on it. The tools are far from "excellent" compared to the offerings on MacOS and even Windows.

I can't even get the Jack server to start on my Ubuntu machine. It's not snobbiness, the software isn't there and what is there is user hostile.

I know the reply to this comment is "have you tried X, or just do Y then Z!"

On Mac I install software and double click it. I plug in my interface. Maybe I plug in a dongle if I need it. That's it. There's no messing with configurations, installing or uninstalling dependencies, drivers that work, driver management software that works (or just exists), and no bullshit like jack needed at all.

Linux, including Ubuntu Studio is miles away from being sensible for any audio content creation. The experience is horrible.

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> I can't even get the Jack server to start on my Ubuntu machine.

Interesting. Recently I've tried JACK to play with Jamulus - and having used it the last time around 10 years ago, I expected a long configuration battle to make it work.

But... it just worked. PulseAudio automatically suspended itself and JACK simply started and worked fine. I could even make PA output to JACK with a single command, so all the other apps continued to work simultaneously without any wrappers or other tricks to route them to JACK.

It was almost disappointing :P

Ubuntu Studio works on par with the other DAW's.

I think there is a lot of prejudice against this platform - the others require immense investment after all - and this is supported by your last line ..

But really, the prejudice against it is not valid.

I agree with you, unfortunately. Obviously Linux has a great deal of flexibility, but the basic tools one relies upon for audio editing either aren't there or are significantly handicapped. I once tried a basic project idea on my linux laptop to see how well I could get it to work; after three days it was almost usable. The same project took me an hour on my Mac with Logic Pro X.

Either your experience is really not so up to date, or you are being disingenuous about your own professional skills with Ubuntu Studio. Perhaps you have shitty hardware that requires vendor proprietary drivers - I don't. All my digital I/o is supported by Linux out of the box on JACK. I don't have to configure anything to get my 56+ channels of digital I/o (Presonus) working - just wire up to JACK and get on with work.

Another thing: in my configuration, REAPER runs better on Ubuntu Studio than it does on Windows - and not to forget that out of the box you have everything in a base Ubuntu Studio install, ready to go. Literally hundreds of plugins, already installed. Tons of usable DAW apps onboard, ready to go. No iLok, no downloads, no Catalina-style upgrade disasters disabling everything that was once working - oh, but we do have sources for everything, though.

Now, what you describe matches my experience with Mac recently, specifically after a Catalina upgrade in which absolutely nothing worked and that particular part of the studio was not production-ready for days of paid customer time until it all got sorted. Good thing we had REAPER on Ubuntu Studio to use for tracking while a junior engineer struggled to get the MacOS DAW back in shape ..

I'm glad your experience with Ubuntu Studio was positive! I don't know why you accused me of being disingenuous; I assure you I was not. Recording audio in was seamless, as you mentioned. Plugins were frequently unstable, however, and crashed my computer. It was hard to figure out what worked, and it was hard to find a decent convolution reverb that sounded as good as Space Designer. The only software I found that had easy timing adjustments was Tracktion, and that also crashed frequently. It was hard to use MIDI tracks side by side with audio, both because the interface of Ardour was confusing and because (shock) it crashed frequently when I tried to. And it took way too many steps to load an SFZ library. I certainly have problems with macOS too, but I really am desperate to leave Apple entirely, and I wish Linux worked for music for me.

All that crashing sounds to me like you had bung hardware somewhere.

Anyway I can only encourage you to have a closer look at Ubuntu Studio in a fresh instance. It really has been very stable and quite productive for me.

This is not a joke, but I don't think you could've even tried Ubuntu Studio as a professional - seems more likely you sniffed at it as a hobbyist and couldn't deal with it.

I haven't found it to be any hassle to get a working, stable and low latency setup with Ubuntu Studio AT ALL, but then I've chosen my hardware properly: Presonus for everything. Its amazing, and very good latency - exceeding even the results I get when I put a Mac on the same chain.

56+ channels of digital audio, countless external synths and effects, literally hundreds of onboard synths and fx and processing plugins, including some stuff that you won't get elsewhere. (Plus: sources for everything in case a professional engineer in our studio gets the urge to extend functionality between sessions...)

Yes, it works out of the box very well. Far less stress than getting a recent new UAD acquisition going on our iLok'ed Mac DAW, even.

(Catalina, FFS!)

>On Mac I install software and double click it. I plug in my interface.

All you do with Ubuntu Studio is install it and maybe do a package update using standard onboard tools. After this, the system is ready to go, out of the box, without too much fuss - all the apps you need to start recording multitrack professional audio - nothing extra to install, no iLok, and literally hundreds of amazing plugins, fx, synths, and so on to explore, already installed.

Ardour is easily a productive professional DAW, like any other, and REAPER is even native on Linux now, with a very easy single binary to download and double click .. matching your user needs on MacOS, even.

You should really give it a try if you haven't done so yet. Your prejudice for the mainstream might be keeping you from having an honestly astonishing experience.

My professional experience includes developing tools for major production environments (7-8 figure budgets for audio content). I don't really want to launch into a rant here, just to say that my "prejudice" is very much post-judice based on a decade of industry experience, and like many Linux users - your experience has not been mine, because my knobs are turned to different positions and I can't recreate the environment that you describe.

I'm glad that your environment works for you.

FWIW, I also dev for pro audio. Perhaps that has something to do with my enthusiasm for the emergence of this new platform...

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