Picture the scene: You’re in your studio, the creative juices flowing liberally and freely, working on what is sure to be the most important moment in the history of music since John turned to Paul and said “D’you fancy forming a band, mate?”. You’re in the zone. Every note a symphony, every EQ adjustment, compressor tweak and fader move a perfectly judged masterstroke. And then it happens:
“Windows will now restart to install updates.”
The situation is little better with macOS. It may not be quite so insistent on installing updates whenever it feels like it, but Apple’s treadmill of incessant OS version updates can often leave mission-critical hardware, software and workflows broken and non-functional. Particularily if you’re a user of the older end of the software world.
With every update, the walls of Apple’s and Microsoft’s ‘walled gardens’ grow higher. Sure, Microsoft’s ankle-high bordering comes in stark contrast to the towering edifices surrounding Apple’s plot, but it, seemingly, also envies and admires those walls, and is slowly raising its own by way of response.
Windows and macOS run many background tasks that may be entirely irrelevant to how you use your computer, or be tasks you actively do not want running – snooping and analytics, for example. This stuff gobbles up the raw computing power you paid for when buying the machine, yet even if you disable unwanted features, they’ll invariably be re-enabled by the next OS update.
In short, your right to choose your computer’s software, hardware, features, workflows and update cycles has been lost. But what to do?
The only potential alternative is Linux. As a general purpose OS for web, email, document writing and such, there’s nowadays little to choose between Linux and the ‘Big Two’. But what about music production? Does Linux yet have the hardware and software support that would make it a good fit in the studio? The short answer is “yes”…
What is Linux ?
Get to know some of the key Linux lingo, and the flexible ‘kernel’ at its core
The first thing to understand about Linux is that there is no single Linux operating system but rather a Linux kernel that’s used as the core of many different operating systems. (A kernel is the core code of an OS that’s loaded into memory and run when the system boots.) The Linux kernel is free and open-source software, aka “FOSS”. This means that anybody can use the kernel without paying a fee, and that anybody can view the source code, search it for bugs and vulnerabilities, make their own modifications, and submit code changes to be considered for inclusion in the official kernel. Unless you are a developer, though, the Linux kernel on its own is not very useful. To become useful it needs to be wrapped up with system software, tools and applications – in other words it needs to be built into a full operating system.
Distros, desktops and repos
An OS built on the Linux kernel is known as a Linux ‘distro’, short for distribution. There are many distros kicking about, and whilst some include proprietary code and so aren’t FOSS, many are developed by communities of developers and remain free to use and fully open source. Therefore, as with the kernel, you can view and modify the source code, make contributions, or even ‘fork’ the code to adapt into your own operating system. Indeed, many distros are themselves based on another distro, which itself is likely based on yet another distro.
Linux is very flexible when it comes to GUIs, or desktop environments. There’s a wide choice available, from those that are very light on the hardware through to examples that lean heavily on it. You can even use Linux with just a command line and no GUI at all.
The desktop environment goes deeper than just the visuals, impacting many aspects of how system and user interact. Choice of desktop is largely down to personal taste and the capabilities of your hardware, then, but be aware that some apps rely on particular desktop environments, and whilst this can usually be worked around, such fixes can still result in visual bugs.
Linux distros typically handle software via a package manager; monolithic installers as used by Windows and macOS aren’t the norm. The package manager stores a list of online software repositories, or ‘repos’ for short, and accesses these to download software and find updates. The system is intelligent, identifying additional software components – or ‘dependencies’ – needed by the software and installing/updating these automatically.
Breaking through
Linux experts and enthusiasts often hail the imminent arrival of “the year of Linux on the desktop”. This reflects a belief – or hope – that Linux is on the verge of a tipping point into wideranging adoption across the desktops of the world. This belief has so far proved to be wrong, and for one key reason: users are unlikely to want to adopt an OS unless the software they wish to use is available for that OS, but developers will not develop software for an OS unless there are sufficient users of that OS to make it financially worthwhile.
This vicious circle keeps both consumers and developers locked into the effective duopoly of Windows and macOS, and is the fundamental reason why there is no Linux-compatible version of, for example, Cubase… or not yet anyway, because the picture is changing.
Linux-compatible alternatives to widely used creativity apps are getting better all of the time, and many are now ported to the Big Two, breaking down OS-specific lock-in by winning over new users. More importantly, an increasing number of Linux-compatible versions of premium apps are being released too, bringing the fabled year of Linux that bit closer.
The inherent effi ciency of Linux can breathe new life into old hard ware
Inherently virtuous
One nice thing about Linux is that it can run from a USB memory stick, making it really easy to try out, but when you’re ready for a more permanent installation you have a few options. You can, of course, buy a completely new computer, sans pre-installed Windows. However, the inherent efficiency of Linux can breathe new life into old hardware, so that old laptop lurking at the back of the cupboard could be ideal.
It’s also possible to create a dual boot system on either a Windows PC or an Intel Mac (aged PowerPC Macs struggle with modern apps and desktop environments, while Apple Silicon Macs can’t boot to anything other than macOS… those garden walls again!). Take great care if going down this route, being sure to have full backups.
A further option would be to run a Linux distro in a virtual machine, using something like DOSBox or VMWare. This can work just fine but a VM’d Linux may not play nicely with your audio hardware – there’s nothing lost by trying it out though!
Choosing a distro
A solid basis for any Linux system is Debian thanks to it being longestablished and well supported. Debian isn’t exactly a general purpose OS, but it can be configured as such. You could do this yourself, but it is less kerfuffle to just install a general purpose distro that’s based on Debian; a good choice here would be Ubuntu or an OS based on it, such as the very efficient Mint. Add software from a repo such as KXStudio, which contains a stack of DAWs, plugins, instruments and other music tools, and you’re all set.
But this is the world of Linux, so there are distros out there that bring these elements together for you. One such is Ubuntu Studio, an official member of the Ubuntu family designed especially for all areas of creative work. It’s our preferred music-making Linux distro and the one we’re using throughout this feature.
Choosing a distro
A solid basis for any Linux system is Debian thanks to it being longestablished and well supported. Debian isn’t exactly a general purpose OS, but it can be configured as such. You could do this yourself, but it is less kerfuffle to just install a general purpose distro that’s based on Debian; a good choice here would be Ubuntu or an OS based on it, such as the very efficient Mint. Add software from a repo such as KXStudio, which contains a stack of DAWs, plugins, instruments and other music tools, and you’re all set.