There are many use cases where Linux can be the best option for the operating system. But we're talking about audio production, mixing, mastering, etc. Knowing your tools and having a productive and reliable workflow is the requirement no matter what OS you use.
When it comes to paying for software and licenses, that point becomes moot when you are all using software from sister site anyway. There are plenty of legal free options if that is the goal. It's great to say you can look and even audit the code for open-source software, but let's face facts. Few people using audio software within the scope of this discussion are doing so, or would know what they were looking at if they even did. Like the commenter above about CLI, touting the benefits of Linux; but who is exactly that sort of user; while running the most Windows-like linux distro they can find just to say they are running nix and just slowing themselves down the entire time.

There are always limitations in audio software, which a experienced user in the software will just know exactly what to do. Then there will always be someone who doesn't know what they are doing, who will come up with some "brilliant" new feature to request because they cannot understand the idea of workarounds. Your comment was about time management. For all the various tweaks and modifications people come up with to have all of this "more control", you'd think we'd be hearing all this new music reflecting that. Nothing could be further from the truth.

 

My original comment was about a user who understands that tools like Linux or Reaper are more advanced and give him more power but simply doesn’t want to spend time learning them. He dismisses the very idea of doing anything himself prefers something that doesn’t require much involvement, the same like choosing fast food over homemade.

We’re not talking about constantly editing or compiling code or writing scripts many of todays nix users are like those on other major OSes don’t do that, as you said yourself. What we’re talking about are the capabilities this type of software offers and the flexibility to expand it if you suddenly need to.
Simply declaring something “bad” or “unsuitable” because you don’t want to get too involved, spend time yet still expecting results, is exactly the mindset I was critiquing. Dismissing curiosity and exprimentation the chance to do things your own way instead of following the beaten path when you want it as inefficiency completely misses the creative side of using tools differently. Tools which, let me remind you, were created precisely to encourage that creativity...
But to each his own...

 

We shouldn't become technological slaves to our own inventions. Technology should make our lives easier and more convenient. We need easy-to-use, error-free, inexpensive, or free software that also protects our data and our privacy.

 

and based on abandoned code, I don't even think when that port becomes abandoned, just like 99% github stuff that's maintained by individuals (regardless of being made for Linux or not)

 

I'm happy to report that it works just fine even under Asahi Linux on a M1 Mac. Portable.

Abandoned or not, these third party RME apps seem to go a long way, just like the RME hardware. Or thanks to the way the hardware is designed.

BTW, what's the thing with the DSP in the Babyface Pro FS? A simple 3-band EQ and a not particularly inspiring reverb/echo. Am I missing something?

 

it's a complete mixer and audio interface at once,
-EDIT- Babyface and Babyface Pro doesn't have some DSP functions like Dynamics, because of its usb-powered-only design limitation,

let's say you want to record a drum kit with a playalong/metronome, not only you can individually set individual levels at basically zero latency (as it stays within mixer), you can do individual panning of all the sources (as far as I know, no budget audio interface on market has pan knobs on its hardware inputs, usually both mic/jack inputs are "mono" for direct monitoring),
or if it's a whole band, every physical output is an aux/submix where you can freely route anything to anyone's headphones, utilize onboard DSP Dynamics as simple brickwall limiters for headphones so musicians won't go deaf, and when recording for ex. bass slapping you can make use of DSP dynamics/comp and its headroom without clipping recording path, EQ can help with ambient noise or agressively emphasize frequencies for deaf musicians (as option that can be used for monitoring but not for recording that can remain clean),
and if you want to use it for live streaming you can even choose whether to use onboard DSP "for record" so it gets printed into audio driver path, utilize its internal Loopback to for ex. stream your DAW output into any other pesky app without adding any other cpu load (compared to software loopbacks)

if you'd want simple audio interface without any of those feature, then I'd say NI Komplete Audio series are decent at way lower price and Linux can handle them fine

 

Well, thanks for clarifying, but I was under impression that most of it is already provided by the bbfpromix app. Everything except the EQ and reverb/echo, for which I don't care much.

Having learned the craft back in times when tools were much sparser that today, I'm used to EQ things at the source, by mic choice/placement.

The reverb in the headphone mix, on the other hand, is very important and the one in the Babyface DSP is not good enough for my taste.

I would use the DSP compressor for what you described, but it's not available in the Babyface Pro FS.

Everything else, different routings, mixes, levels, panning, mic pre gain, phantom power, I can control using the bbfpromix app.

That's why I meant that the loss of the EQ and reverb/echo isn't such a big deal and certainly not grounds for declaring the entire Linux platform unusable for music production.

 

Feels like a Jason Statham line… just before delivering a knockout punch to a laptop, with a reminder of Windows 10 support ending on the screen

 

Microsoft is running low on bullshit to add to their speech in front of the investors.

For years, they've been promising lies and lies, both to users and the money men. They first started by saying that Windows 11 needed new hardware because it was going to be the next big step in the future, security, privacy, and user control. That accounted for millions of devices becoming obsolete, with non-tech-savvy users and companies disposing of Windows 10 like if a Cesium container had fallen into their hands.

Then, Shitshow Nadella started bombarding users with the best that Win 11 offered! Ads.

Bloatware everywhere, unstoppable ads in every corner, Edge smashed deep into every aspect of the OS, not even mentioning the desperate begging when you searched for Chrome, Brave, Opera or whatever other browser you wanted to use. Also, they made it ridiculously difficult to change the default browser, unlike Windows 10. And, by the way, you cannot easily stop background apps, something that was easily done with 10!

Forced login with an online account and actively cracking down on methods to bypass it.

Copilot + Recall, opt-out since the beginning. Faced major backlash and even with that, TO THIS DAY, they're still trying to shove it down our throats, at least with Copilot, which has now replaced the absolute marketing king that "Office" was with "Copilot 365" just to account for billions of users that, well, they aren't.

You don't know how to enable secure boot and TPM 2.0? Go fuck yourself. People with older systems that wanted to upgrade faced a big ass ridiculous "your hardware is not compatible with Windows 11" when trying to do so, even with reported cases of HW that indeed worked.

Microsoft is the embodiment of what happens when you give a company so much power that they think they can act like God. This is the "always" approach that we're accustomed to: companies doing bad things until the backlash is so massive that they backtrack a little bit, but never to the original or previous way. There's an infinite list of moments like this with other major companies. But Microsoft really wanted those numbers, I've never seen a company so big that was growing quietly, hated by the few that really knew the intentions behind their acts and their pretensions, go out ablaze in front of a bulletstorm of unsuspecting users that only needed their systems to work.

And that egregious crap of "30% of the code being written by AI"? Like, WTF? Who thought it was a good idea?
I hate MS with all my soul. They had no business exposing themselves like this; I love that we're talking about Linux more than ever.

I love what Valve is doing with SteamOS. And for most users, you can get almost anything with Arch, Ubuntu, Mint, etc. I personally don't abandon ship just because of some niche driver things that I need working for security reasons in my job. But hell, if Windows 11 LTSC didn't exist, I wouldn't be using this useless software, not even for the slightest most minimal task.

Sorry for the rant

 

I have several computers. On some of them I have Windows 10 LTSC. They work great.

But on 3 latest machines I bought Windows 11 was preinstalled and I decided to keep it. Different versions (Home and Pro, 23H2, 24H2 and 25H2). I blocked updates using WUB and removed several dozen processes using ShutUp10++. Still, the 25H2 is nothing else but malware.

I keep Windows 11 24H2 LTSC/IoT ISO just in case, because there's less bloat in it and it may be the last really usable version of Windows if Microsop finds a way to forcefully "upgrade" my machines. (See: although WUB is on, some components still update themselves, like e.g. VC++ redist - I didn't ask for it. It don't want anyone else to do any changes in MY machine.)

So a month ago I decided to try Linux Mint. Well, nothing fancy - it JUST WORKS. I have the whole system + apps on pendrive. Even my old M-Audio Fast Track Ultra interface (not officially supported in Windows 10+) worked from the start. Reaper works, but uses a bit more CPU than the Windows version. Didn't bother to try my RME, because I know there is no TotalMix for Linux (yet).

I wish we had some dedicated sub-forum here just for people migrating from Windows to Linux. So far I hadn't tried Wine + yabridge, because I read yabridge is not ready to work with Wine 11+ (there is some fork allegedly, but I don't have enough time to do all the necessary experiments myself.)

I wish we could discuss problems and also success stories to let people ditch Microslop for Linux in an easier way.

 

Last edited: Feb 16, 2026 at 3:08 PM

I'd really love if the witches or someone with vast experience really created a distro of Linux oriented towards music producers, but i mean, a really thorough and integral one. Of course that we can make a sort of "alliance" and create one ourselves with a little bit of crowdsourcing, but letting an experienced group that also understands how piracy works could make a lot of folks here interested.

For the moment, i think that creating a post with companies, DSP's and software in general that works well with Linux (clarifying which distro) is a good step forward, something like;

Software companies:
Analog Obsession ✅
Fabfilter ❌
....
Specific software:
Reaper ✅
Pro Tools ❌
...

And under that a sublist with;
- Mint 6/10
- Ubuntu 8/10
- Etc, etc, etc...

You get the idea

 

I get your point, something like Open Gaming Collective?
https://opengamingcollective.org/

I don't think it will work out,
audio world has always been about selling snake oil to hifi folks,
Linux is about open standards, complete opposite...
I can imagine full software audio/multimedia stacks, but you still need some kind of audio interface to get audio out and audio in, which involves some kind of technical experience on higher level than let's say smart home gadgets

 

There is (or at least there was) a thread on Gearspace, comparing ton of audio interfaces regarding their rountrip latency. The table is refreshed every couple of months. For the past 15 years it was always my go-to source before buying a new interface.

I wish we had something like that, but dedicated to Windows plugins on Linux. I mean a TABLE (not just pages and pages of single posts), where anyone could quickly check what works and what dependencies it requires. I see it this way: The OP publishes the initial post, then people post their experiences in details, and once in a while the OP updates the table, preferably both in the thread and in his first post.

The columns would be e.g.:

Plugin name + version | Legit/warezed (which group) | Which version of Wine | Which fork of yabridge | Other solution (if not W+YB) | Comments

 

Well they may "work" but I would NOT be hazarding any firmware updates with linuxOS on a more expensive piece of RME hardware in that it may just brick the card/device. Since there is no direct driver support for it (no totalmix or totalmix fx) on linux OS you're basically stuck with what amounts to a very expensive sound-blaster.


I get that the winOS & appleOS are lame in the fact that they are basically corporate driven magnets for obtaining personal information and dictating the OEM's policies of what you need as a user and the OEM enforcing those policies to the teeth. However, in the case of winOS the corporate b.s. can be shaken loose from the system (by the user) making it perfectly fine and safe to use in a wide variety use cases. Cutting one's creative workflow off to spite corporate intrusion tactics (which are correctable) seems to me to be a high price to pay relegating to kludgey, obtuse, and IMO, self deprecating circumstances just to prove a point. If/when a *NIX ever becomes a viable and properly supported production platform, and is NOT part of some corporate power grab to rule over its users, then I'll be there. Until then it's biz as usual.

 

Last edited: Feb 16, 2026 at 8:56 PM

Have you tried 0patch? (Zero patch) I am using it on both my Windows 10 machines, they say they will patch Windows 10 for as long as there is sufficient demand from customers. They are still patching Windows 7, I think.
Windows 10 isn't that bad, I can't imagine moving to Linux with all my music software, all my games in GOG and Steam libraries (and some from the High Seas). I'm sticking with Windows 10 in the hope that eventually Microsoft will wake up and produce another version of Windows like Windows 7, the most beautiful Windows theme ever created. (And to think they produced the God awful Windows 8 after Windows 7!)