Linux producers let's chat!

Which of y'all are rockin' linux? Let's fire us up a geeky chat.

What are your setups for audio in linux? Reaper? Bitwig? Do you use vst? Any suggestions for plugins? How long ya been using Linux? What system optimizations and kernel patches do you have in place?

My current set up is a mixstream pro, mpc and a couple chromebooks i converted to linux and built custom rt kernels for. I use jack to transport audio from mpc to the chromebooks over ethernet and capture with reaper. I have lots of vst plugins cant settle on any its an endless chase.

If you have questions you wanna ask *me* go nuts. I am an open book. I want to connect more with the other power-users.

Interesting... Which distro are you using?

I'm not using DAWs currently, but I keep an old laptop with Debian and the Kx Repos I use as a sound module/VST player with Carla and the RT Kernel.

Sometimes I fantasize about building a Headless synth, but then I realize I don't have the time and there are already projects like https://zynthian.org/

I'm just using an older version of ubuntu. i update libc and the kernel once in a while to stay semi-current.

I stopped using a daw for a long time but after buying a pile of gear and restablishing my hardware set up i decided i should set up some place to mix and master my music since I dont seem to be very creative with automation on the box itself.

Heh i as well would like to build a synth but i want to take from inmusics playbook and buy a modular keybed and slap an soc into it with a touch screen. Like you i just havent found the time. I am not big on inventing if i dont have to im rather utilitarian.

or not! lol

Let me see, I first used Linux back in the early '90s, before they'd settled on the Tux mascot, but I didn't use it for music until about a decade later.

My daily driver is devuan these days. Audacity is my solution for mastering, mostly when I'll be putting something online after yanking it from my hardware. I also use Renoise, and sunvox, and VirtualANS. I've tried dicking around with Tracktion but quite frankly the interface is a pain and I don't think that the juice is worth the squeeze.

I've also tried LMMS, Muse, Rosegarden and of course Ardour, but none of them really managed to spin my wheels. Musescore is the one exception, but even then it's a specialised use case.

For detailed and weird sound design, sunvox and VirtualANS are the kings, while Renoise is the detailed sequencing king. That said, when I turn on the Force I mostly ignore the computer.

I tried many times over the years to get into production on linux and it didnt go well at all.

Mainly i as well prefer to rock out on my stand alone gear as well, but there are days where I am not enjoying sitting at mission control.

I set up a nice combo during winter thats not very complex but seems to work wonders. I am using a pretty crappy laptop so performance issues surface fairly quickly. These ones seem to be fairly kind on the cpu and memory.

Reaper
TAL Noisemaker
TAL Reverb
TAL Chorus
TAL Vocoder
Cardinal (Depends on how far you push it)
Monique
Helm
String
Speedrum

Sunvox is very, very efficient. It's the single most performance-tolerant piece of software that I use for composition that has any real sophistication to it. If you're on crappy hardware from any time in the last 10, or even 20 years, sunvox is probably where I'd start.

Pop!Os (whats in a name) is a linux port, no?

https://pop.system76.com/

Thanks for the heads up @ sunvox. I've never even seen that it looks pretty dope. Will definitely give that a try.

Pop! OS looks like a linux distro of sorts. I've never used it though.

If you want to get into sunvox, welcome to the party. Highly recommended. Fast, stable, insanely powerful. But it's a bit of a learning curve, so I recommend going to Youtube, and watching Solarlune's sunvox tutorials. They'll get you running faster than you think.