Linux Mint the right choice ?

[Mindmachine]

Hello everyone !

Right now, I am using Windows 8.1 but I think about switching to Linux Mint for quite some time.
The reasons why I want to switch are not so important, but I would really like to know if I could be able to work with Mint almost the same way as I do with Windows ?!

The point of my question is : I am a hobby music producer / singer / songwriter and I mainly work with Cubase 5.1, FL Studio 11, tons of different VST´s and Audacity.

Would you recommend to switch to Linux with a hobby like that ? or is it nearly impossible to get those "special" software to work on a Linux OS ?
Or would you rather say : "don´t touch linux, better stay with windows for the musicproduction" ???

Maybe there are some hobby musicians/producers around here who could give me some serious tipps and advices to help me decide

Any help would be appreciated


greetz

[BBistheKing]

I work with multi-media creation too and on one of my pc's I use Ubuntu Studio. You can check out the software list on that, they will work on Mint because they are both based on Ubuntu. I think there is a difference with the type of linux kernel used though. I think Ubuntu Studio uses the low latency kernel (for the sake of live feedback without delay among other things, I believe).

My point is there is a heap of good quality virtual studio type software on linux (just ask Dreamworks ) and they will more than likely work on Mint. I do things from music production to animation and video production and only use Linux distros. Explore by searching for a particular thing you might want to do (such as multi-track recording on linux, or 2-D animation on linux etc).

As far as cubase is concerned you could take a look at linux equivalents such as Ardour and Rosegarden and see if they are to your liking. You could search for tutes on youtube too.
http://www.osalt.com/cubase

Oh and also check your hardware is compatible, openbenchmarking.org/phoronix is a good start, or you can post a list of your hardware here. Hardware compatibility isn't as big an issue any more but better to be safe than sorry.

[dagon]

Yo!

The point of my question is : I am a hobby music producer / singer / songwriter and I mainly work with Cubase 5.1, FL Studio 11, tons of different VST´s and Audacity.

Would you recommend to switch to Linux with a hobby like that ? or is it nearly impossible to get those "special" software to work on a Linux OS ?
Or would you rather say : "don´t touch linux, better stay with windows for the musicproduction" ???

Maybe there are some hobby musicians/producers around here who could give me some serious tipps and advices to help me decide

Well. You would have to run Cubase, FL Studio and your VST's through a Windows compatibility layer called Wine. It makes it possible to run a lot of windows software under Linux but not all. Your mileage may vary, as they say... I don't have a lot of experience with Wine myself unfortunately. You could also check out some of the native software, LMMS (FL workalike) and for recording Ardour is one of the more professional looking. Audacity is cross platform already so it's no change there.

Bitwig, the first bigger commercial DAW's that targets Linux as platform actually made their official release today:
http://www.bitwig.com/en/bitwig-studio/overview.html

LMMS is also releasing the first stable (1.0) package just about now. It's also cross platform and the Windows packages are out already so you can try it today:
http://lmms.sourceforge.net/
Lmms 1.0.0
https://sourceforge.net/projects/lmms/files/lmms/1.0.0/
You can use your VST's with LMMS in Windows. It also works with VST's under Linux, again with Wine but not all packages. I personally just use the built in synths. It pretty much rocks and is under heavy development right now. I'm a bit biased here as I'm doing a bit of coding on this thing myself.

[Mark Phelps]

or is it nearly impossible to get those "special" software to work on a Linux OS ?

My own opinion is -- YES.

Wine runs SOME software well, other software poorly, other software not at all.

To find out for yourself, go to the Wine HQ application compatibility site, search for the apps and versions you want to use and look at the ratings: http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.p ... nding=true

Anything NOT listed, or rated lower than Gold, is essentially a waste of your time trying to get it working in Wine.

[H.Remedy]

My opinion is that Wine is only for the desperate. I don't have much experience with it but it rarely works perfectly, and it often works badly. Better to stick to the native software options. You can, however, check to see how your software has performed for other Wine users (I think someone else here gave this link, but here it is again just in case: http://appdb.winehq.org/).

You mentioned Audacity. I use that from time to time, and it's available for Mint. I'm not familiar with the other software you mentioned - I'm guessing it's proprietary Windows-only stuff? That will probably not be available in Mint, so if you definitely need that software and no other software, stick to Windows. On the other hand, if you are flexible, I'm guessing you will find some decent open source alternatives. I've done some basic video editing with OpenShot and Avidemux, for example, and had a good experiences with them.

Why not just install Mint on a separate partition and see how well it performs your tasks over a couple of weeks? If it fails, you'll still have Windows installed.