I'm putting my tin foil hat on and want to join the world of Linux, however I make music in Ableton. Do I just need to dual boot or does anyone have a better solution?
I'm putting my tin foil hat on and want to join the world of Linux, however I make music in Ableton. Do I just need to dual boot or does anyone have a better solution?
Like many others have suggested, you may want to try Bitwig. I understand that it's the alternative DAW that is the most similar to Ableton. The company was started by a group of ex-Ableton employees, so it's not a coincidence. Many people online feel that it's in general a better DAW than Ableton, so you may end up liking it. It supports Linux natively, even provides an official flatpak (or Ubuntu installer?)
It's not as expensive as some make it out to be, and it's on sale right now for a few more days. I just yesterday bought Bitwig Studio Essentials. They have 3 editions and Studio Essentials is the starter version, currently $79 (reg. $99). The next level up is Studio Producer, currently $149 (reg. $199), and the top level is just Studio, currently $299 (reg. $399). They also offer rent to own for $16/month for 25 months on Splice.
There are several commercial options for Linux. The most-Ableton software out there is Bitwig Studio that has a Linux port. However, it's expensive. The cheapest commercial solution, with a bit of learning curve but powerful nonetheless, is Reaper.
However, if you want to go 100% open source, there's Ardour and LMMS (which is a lot like FL Studio). Ardour 9, which is expected by the end of the year, will be more MIDI-friendly than it used to be. LMMS latest git version (offered as binary on their site) has some good new features compared to their stable version, however, there's still no vst3 support.
I'm an visual artist and I used Photoshop for years to edit my hand-painted scanned paintings. When I moved to Linux, and Gimp3 was out, I was finally ready to leave Photoshop behind. Some features of Photoshop aren't there, but I was ready to leave them behind. Same with video, I used to have a rather popular blog about color grading with Resolve. I moved to kdenlive, which has none of these tools or plugins. It's a decision that I simply had to make. I wanted to use foss tools, and that was the price to pay. I'm cool with my decision.
If you gotta go commercial, go with Reaper. The people (a small team of 3 or 4 I believe) behind it are really cool, and they're doing it for the love of it, their profit is very small.
Another good free DAW option with linux compatibility is Tracktion.
I use Ableton with Bottles (wine) with VSTs too, like Serum.
I wanted to get into Music with LMMS, but habe not succeeded in using VSTs via wine. How does one do this? I cannot wrap my head around it :(
If you want to use Ableton, then Install it with wine, if you sandbox the prefix copy the VSTs inside the prefix and use them thru Ableton.
Some VSTs may not work or could have some graphical glitches. For example with Serum sometimes some widgets gets black until I pass hover with cursor. There is a fix for this which didn't work for me that's about disabling "d2d1.dll" and installing "gdiplus".
Otherwise you can use a Linux native DAW and use VSTs with wine. Check yabridge and LinVst.
If you switch DAWs, bitwig is really very good and runs natively on Linux.
I can greatly recommend Reaper to you, in case Ableton + Wine doesn't work out.
I only recently got into music making as a hobby so my overall perspective might be limited, but other DAWs I tried included:
- Ardour
- Bitwig
- LMMS
- Zrythm
I settled with Reaper bc of it's customizability, freedom in workflow and cheap price without compromising in pro features. It's actually completely free as long as you are evaluating buying it, which is up to you for how long. And the customizability is off the charts compared to any other DAW.
But what really sold Reaper to me was the lack of hurdles that got into my way of learning to make music.
Have fun
Don’t forget renoise, if you like trackers it’s great and very affordable.
There are a couple of solutions, I'm using Ardour myself, but LMMS might be more like Ableton
There is a more or less complete list here: https://wiki.linuxaudio.org/apps/daw_apps
I am a hobbyist and was using ableton live before. As mentioned by others, unless you dual boot - try bitwig studio for similar experience. It is from people who worked in ableton. Have a trial, pirate if can't afford now.
Foss alternative - ardour is great, but you will have to bring your own plug in suit.
Yabridge tool can help you to run windows vsts on Linux, but not everything works. And beware - it does not work with flatpak version Bitwig, at least it did not.
I'd suggest no-one ever dual-boot Windows with anything. There are to many mishaps when Windows takes it into their head to fuck the bootloader.
Put the OS into a VM. If you only use Windows for one app put Windows into the VM. Otherwise put Linux into the VM until you find you're mostly using Linux.
Unless you have an old PC laying around ..
I have set up a good hand full of dual booted Windows/ Linux machines. Never had any major issues. However, I also noticed that I only use Linux except for games and that's slowly changing, too, so I would suggest trying the dual boot if it makes you more comfortable to realize yourself that you don't need it.
Typically the only issue is using the same drive, separate drives work fine.
I haven't personally used Ableton ever but am a hobbying musician, and pro-audio is possible on Linux as well as running non-native applications via Wine. I found this just searching, there's apparently a Discord group also dedicated to this project.
Usually doing a web search like "xyz windows program+linux" will produce results, and putting in your distro name will produce better. Anyway, good luck on your journey!
Someone in here mentioned bitwig.
I started on abelton and moved to bitwig around 3.X and have been with it ever since.
I love all the different modules and the grid which has give me a lot more expressive control over my sounds.
they are similar yet different; I believe the core bitwig team were ex ableton devs who wanted to take things in a different direction.
I know it's silly but one of the biggest things that I like about bitwig is customizable shortcuts; this is especially good if you're coming from ableton because if your a shortcut key wizard you can easily remap similar functions.
if you've got an extensive VST collection you can run them with wine + yabridge.
Bitwig is not the only option, but coming from ableton if you want to run single boot it is the most similar (IMO) to Ableton.
Happy to answer any questions you may have about it as well.
I'm a happy Ardour user
The .wav format is actually very simple. You should be able to write a bash script to produce wavs without too much trouble. If you'd rather not work that low-level you can always use the DAW features in emacs.
/s
If you're an Abelton user, I cannot recommend Bitwig enough.
The only comparable I was able to find is Bitwig Studio, but it's quite expensive and I wasn't doing so much music so I stopped making electronic music instead.
Not too long ago I broke down a the costs between Ableton and bitwig, and they are quite similar over time.
Ableton has the big #'rd updates where as bitwig you get all updates within a year from license activation.
Since BW will still run after the license runs out (you just cant update to any new versions) I don't always update until there is a new feature that I want to work with drops in an update.
I also limit purchasing licenses to sale periods as a license can sit on the shelf until you're ready to activate it - this significantly reduced the cost for me.
I think there are other ways to go about this though on the vast sea of the net if your sails catch the wind right ;). If you're making stuff for fun and not for profit I think everyone should have access to creative tools.
If you make money than it's worth considering sending some. money their way. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
According to WineHQ, Ableton's compatibility with wine isn't stellar. FL Studio works quite well in it, but switching DAWs can be a pretty major undertaking.
For Linux native DAWs, Reaper and Bitwig are the two best options. Reaper is the most affordable at 60 bucks, with an infinite free trial.
Focus on productivity and pleasure, so make the transition easier :
- try Linux without dual boot, e.g. https://distrosea.com/ (I made a 30min video discussion if you are curious)
- try Linux on a USB stick to get persistence and not be afraid of using private data
- try dual boot with default on Windows, your important data backed-up (e.g. music you created)
- try dual boot with default on Linux and Ableton or whatever you need on Wine, if it doesn't work in virtual machine
- try boot on just Linux with Wine
- try boot on Linux with Ableton FLOSS equivalents (few listed in this thread)
- try boot on Linux with e.g Ardour or LMMS but genuinely benefit from FLOSS by making and sharing your own plugins
The entire process must be risk free and fun!
I'm quite surprised Ableton haven't released a Linux version yet. They would have had to do some of the legwork to stand up Ableton Push.
I assume this is coming at some point, tbh
I personally reckon they're working on something YAbridge-esque to allow people to bring their VSTs to the push in standalone mode. If they can actually nail that, it's an absolute no brainer to then release a full Linux version of the DAW and finally allow people like me to make the switch
Every time I've tried to run Ableton on Linux over the years (most recently about Christmas last year), it's the VST support that lets me down. I've got hundreds of VSTs I've used in various projects over the past couple of decades and I can't switch unless I know they all work properly—projects not loading or sounding different is unacceptable. I need to be able to open anything I've worked on over the years and be able to get right into the creativity without tinkering, as that is what I already have today.
Until that day, I've got to begrudgingly keep windows around.
Yeah that sounds about right - VST is such an awful standard, and is only made worse by all the copy protection nonsense that companies pile on top of it. I wish there was an open standard that was cross-platform, portable and used PGP encryption for standard licencing, but alas, it's too late for that.
What’s weird is the Ableton groovebox is just Ableton on a Linux computer afaik they could release it they just cbf.
I recently started playing around with Reaper on Linux. It's no different from it's windows counterpart. You can use something like yabridge to use third party VSTs. All I had to do was point it to my VST folder and viola, almost all of them work. The only problem I have is that none of them work graphically. The sound works and they render just fine but for some reason clicking on a knob or button is waaaay off. For example in Pro-Q, if I put the mouse by the top of the plugin the frequency knob will highlight like the mouse is on top of knob. Nothing happens if the mouse is actually on top. This may be a yabridge issue. Their GitHub does say Wine versions greater than 9.22 don't work. I'm on the latest Wine and haven't fucked with different versions yet. If the fix is that simple then the experience is no different for me at least. Otherwise I just have to use the UI-less mode where Reaper turns the plugins into a series of sliders you can adjust instead.
I posted this already as a reply but if you like trackers check out renoise it costs 70€ and is very powerful and runs on almost anything.
I assume a simple virtual machine will work for Ableton.
You would not want to do this for latency reasons
I suspect a VM would introduce latency (big no no for music production), and I can't imagine getting ASIO working would be easy (though I've never tried it).
I've heard that Ableton+wine works, not sure about all the plugins though.
There's also lmms, ardour, Bitwig and reaper with native Linux builds
I always seem to run into roadblocks I can't figure out when I try to use wine and windows virtual machines. Dual booting is a hassle but afaik it's the least difficult way to go.
It’s frustrating, considering that ableton’s push runs on Linux, but I never had a satisfactory, or comparable experience running it on a Linux desktop. To be honest, this was the dealbreaker that kept me using a Mac.
Few weeks ago I have noticed that my Presonus account is offering me to download Studio One Pro 7, in deb or flatpak format. I use Linux desktop for everything except audio work (still use Windows machine for that) so when I checked my Presonus account from Linux box I was quite shocked.
Sadly, attempt to upload the image from the phone (using Boost app) doesn't work so I can't upload and can't be bothered to upload elsewhere then share URL, etc.
I couldn't get bothered to try installing it earlier since I don't want to run S1 on this box.
But just for the sake of it, I have now tried installing flatpak file and it completed.
I don't use flatpak much but trying to do...
flatpak run com.presonus.studioapp7
... failed with "Failed to connect to Wayland display".
I spent 0 seconds on reading about S1 Pro for Linux and have no intention to bother with it further but if you do use S1 on Windows you might have Linux download available as well. Give it a try if you are interested.
What exactly it requires to run, I have no idea.
But it is really surprising development.
Edit: hah, after i removed that flatpak i just installed, a notification popped up saying "Studio One is a Wayland application and won't run in X11 session."
Is this a reference to the most recent pewdiepie video? lmao
just use Deepin OS, it's much better!
I heard somewhere Ableton and Wine works