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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

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Help me decide my first distro for Audio. (lemmy.world)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hello everyone, I need help choosing my first distro. I want to be able to run Audio software for editing and mixing. So I need also VST plug ins and others. Currently I use Windows 10, and Reaper.

I have worked with macOS and Chrome OS in the past so the desktop and Linux is not something I can't get used to.

I also need to run Plex and Torrenting software.

I'm a computing engineer, so I can troubleshoot most issues, but I'd like to be able to fix most things. Someone recommended me Lubuntu.

Mostly, I'd like to hear your opinions. Thanks.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (5 children)

First off, I want to make it clear that the distro doesn't really matter. Different distros are just what it comes pre-packed with by default.

TLDR:

For something easy to use: Linux Mint
For something that has pre-installed audio software (but maybe not the ones you want): Ubuntu Studio
If you want to build your system from scratch: Debian (or Arch if you want the latest and greatest software, and don't mind the occasional update breaking your system around once a year or so, and needing to spend an hour fixing it)
Regardless of which distro you get, use JACK or PipeWire for your sound server. PulseAudio (on its own) has too much latency.

More details:

I first tried Ubuntu Studio. It comes with a lot of software related to audio production. But I found it to be insanely slow, and it didn't even come with Reaper anyway.

I tried OpenSUSE because I liked that it had the option to manually deselect the software you don't want (and I was too much of a beginner to know how to pick my packages from the ground-up). It worked well.

Eventually I moved to Debian. I didn't want any of the extra fluff and found it was pretty easy to choose everything myself. One thing that's important is that you don't want to use PulseAudio. Either use JACK (which I think needs to be used in conjunction with PulseAudio actually) or use PipeWire, which is what I use.

For any Windows software, use Bottles to emulate them on Linux. I actually ended up needing to go back to windows because of one audio software: Wwise. There was no way of running it in Linux. A VM probably would've worked, but that would've been a massive hassle for how I'd need to use it.

Free Linux VSTs: https://vital.audio/ https://lsp-plug.in/ https://github.com/TukanStudios/TUKAN_STUDIOS_PLUGINS

Paid Linux VSTs: https://www.acmt.co.uk/products/index.html https://librewave.com/ https://www.audiodamage.com/collections

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Those Tukan plugins are not VSTs, they are reaper specific plugins.

I have no idea about Bottles but most people use yabridge these days which is really easy to use and works very well.

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