Linux is still not ready

[Artie Fichelle]

It depends, maybe you are not ready for Linux.

In the early 80ties, when I was 20 years old, I wished I had a four track recorder. Compared to that Linux is more than ready.
If you are making music to earn money, you want to take the OS or DAW that gets job done the fastest. That is probably OSX or Windows. But now you can also do it on Linux.
I am mostly using Mac OSX on a PC, i.e a Hackintosh. But thats me, having started 1981 with DOS 1.0.
Having had Southworks first Sequencer on a Mac. The EMU. Dieter Meier (YELLO) telling me, that he started with knocking sticks on a heater (they had one of the first Fairlights). I had the first DX7 in Switzerland, the OS was in Japanese!
Now, being older and smarter, I think I might switch to Linux.Because it is an open sysstem, while Windows and MAC OSX is not. It is freedom, which everyone should have, but most have not.
Maybe the learning curve is steeper, but isn't freedom better than slavery.
You might not believe it, but music is a spiritual thing, ethernal harmony. Of course not all the music made today, most of it is noise.
On the other hand, we have such great tools today, you can tune your plugins equal non equal, just, whatever you want. Of course the industry is mostly using equal tunings, how boring, but that is the industry, thats the mammon. But beyond that freedom starts, and Linux is an expression of that.
So the question is not, is Linux ready for you, the questions is, are you ready for Linux?
Kindly from Finikounda, there I just had "another day in paradise".

[Catharsis Cat]

It's probably not that useful Linux's suitability for audio use based on whether or not you can get it to connect to the internet. While frustrating, it's not really directly related to it's audio capabilities. Linux can be tough to switch too, but I find it helps if you both stick to hardware it is already known to work with and use Ubuntu, since it's larger userbase means more help if you get stuck and more stuff is made with it in mind.

Also the command line really isn't as scary as people make it out to be. You can just just follow directions off the internet and copy and paste to do things. You don't necessarily need to understand how it works.

As for whether Linux is ready for audio production, I would say its situational. If you are doing audio production and not already using Linux, there is little reason to switch unless you are fed up with Windows/OSX. Why stop using what works otherwise? If you're already using Linux and want to start doing audio work, then you're probably fine to use Linux for that too. The real big factor is the amount of choices you have, there is some good stuff for Linux, but the selection is small and it doesn't have everything.

[BertKoor]

based on whether or not you can get it to connect to the internet.

The world has changed. Since floppy disks and even cd-roms aren't used anymore for data transfer, a computer that is not connected is practically crippled, if not dead.

[dellboy]

based on whether or not you can get it to connect to the internet.

The world has changed. Since floppy disks and even cd-roms aren't used anymore for data transfer, a computer that is not connected is practically crippled, if not dead.

This.

Plus, Some distros detect the usb wi-fi dongle in the same manner as windows and mac, others do no not. Nor do they have a wizard. If one distro can make it look easy, and after all, the drivers to them are free, why are they not included with all distros ?

[stratum]

If one distro can make it look easy, and after all, the drivers to them are free, why are they not included with all distros ?

sometimes non-opensource drivers are excluded for ideological reasons.

[Catharsis Cat]

based on whether or not you can get it to connect to the internet.

The world has changed. Since floppy disks and even cd-roms aren't used anymore for data transfer, a computer that is not connected is practically crippled, if not dead.

USB drives can be used for data transfer for the most part. It doesn't change the fact that some stuff does still require the internet anyway, but it's worth noting.

Also looking over the internet thing again there are actually 3 solutions to the internet thing. The first is use a different distro as noted above. But there is also the option of using a different wifi dongle. Or you can just connect to the internet through a cable. Not all ideal solutions obviously, but it shows that it is less of Linux won't connect to internet and more, my distro won't work with my wifi dongle and I can't use a wired connection.

It's not actually even an issue of connecting to the internet, it's one of hardware support, which actually is a weak spot of Linux that can effect audio production directly. All my hardware works fine, usb class compliant stuff generally does, but maybe the hardware someone specifically wants to use doesn't or not all it's features are supported and that definitely can be a minus.

Plus, Some distros detect the usb wi-fi dongle in the same manner as windows and mac, others do no not. Nor do they have a wizard. If one distro can make it look easy, and after all, the drivers to them are free, why are they not included with all distros ?

Different distros are for different purposes. Some distros have different goals, like being able to setup from scratch being the point, or ideological commitment. Generally those distros aren't recommended to newcomers though. I am pretty sure Mint and Elementary are generally designed to be more casual user friendly, so this doesn't really excuse those particular distros at all.

It's probably best to think of Linux as a family of operating systems rather than a specific one, since while they share the same kernel, they can vary wildly past that. I mean Android OS is technically Linux. The community could really use to be both clearer on waht's casual user friendly and stop overcrowding that zone with too many competing distros however.

[Dunbar]

I'm inclined to agree, Linux is not an 'off the shelf' solution.

Twenty years ago Windows was in similar flaky position. Apple provided the go-to system that "just worked". At some point a complete Linux system will emerge that'll be transparent for the end user, until then you'll have to get you hands dirty with the command-line.

[fese]

My stance on this topic:

Linux won't become ready for mainstream audio until the applications (the major DAWs and plugins) are there. But those won't come until the market share is big enough and worth the trouble supporting yet another operating system.
It's the same old story: the applications decide whether an OS is a success, not the OS itself. The OS is probably much less important than people think.

The strength of Linux is that there are so many distro's.

Frankly, I disagree with that. It is just a weakness. Just think how many thousands and millions of work hours are lost, just because every Dick and Harry has to have his own distro, his own desktop and whatnot...
Linux would most likely work just as well and even better if there was only one distribution. That would mean much less work for everybody as there would be one standard and not several competing ones.
And it could be easily customized for different purposes through existing software repos and maybe slightly different base versions (one for servers, one for desktop).
It would be much easier for everyone, the developers and package maintainers, because they could concentrate on moving on instead of doing the same thing over and over again; the software vendors, because they could focus on one reliable platform; us linux admins because we wouldn't have to jump through hoops to make everything run everywhere.


But that won't happen anytime soon, because, as some already wrote, there's a lot of ideology going on in the linux communities, and until that is solved, Linux on Desktop in general won't ever reach a significant market share...

Which is a shame, because after 10 months with Win10 I am really fed up with it. Win7 was totally fine, but 10 is just broken, and I'm at the point where I really wish Linux was an alternative...

[stratum]

Before Linux there was GNU and its founder Richard Stallman, and the printer in the upstairs of MIT? computer science department whose closed source driver he couldn't modify (he couldn't do what he wanted to do with it because its closed source didn't give him the freedom to do so). That's the event that has started the project - open source is not about ease of use, it's about freedom to do whatever you want (if you have the ability). Afterwards Linus Torvalds has supplied a kernel for the GNU project because apparently the original GNU kernel was never finished and the resulting system became known as GNU/Linux or as Linux only by those who aren't picky about its history. Today GNU still supplies much of the important system components and for them their ideology is actually more relevant than anything else. Easy of use is not the primary concern, nor is achieving compatibility across distributions. When any of these is in conflict with freedom, their ideology will pick freedom.