Hi everyone,
I’m getting fed up windows and want to switch my laptop to linux. My laptop also doesn’t meet windows 11 standards so I figured nows a good time to switch. I don’t do a whole lot on my laptop, but there are some programs that I do need to use. I have an E drum kit and right now I use reaper and Steven slate audio center to play and record my drums through my laptop. I looked at reaper, and I see linux options for download. But for Steven slate , I only see windows and Mac. This is pretty disappointing and so I figured I ask to see what would work for me.
I was going to go with Ubuntu, because it seems to be the most user friendly and has good support. I also use mullvad VPN on my laptop very frequently, which was another reason I chose Ubuntu.
Any help is appreciated. I’m willing to look at other distros too if there is one that better fits my needs.
EDIT: I have successfully migrated to linux mint and have reaper working with yabridge. Thanks, everyone, for your help and suggestions!
Right now I’d say the best open-source DAW for Linux is LMMS if you want to do everything just on your laptop, or Ardour if you want to use external instruments.
LMMS has some shockingly versatile built in synths, including a port of ZynAddSubFX, supports LADSPA/LV2 plugins, and supports using Wine to run 32-bit Windows VSTs. I’m unsure of Ardour’s VST support, but it at least supports LV2 plugins. Either of those, if you install them through your distro, will likely include Calf Studio Gear, an extensive collection of LV2 effects and a couple synths. As for ones that run natively on Linux, there’s synthv1, samplv1, drumkv1, and padthv1, though I’ve had trouble getting them working myself.
I’ve found some good stuff on the Linux Audio Wiki but IDK how up to date most of it is.
That’s really helpful. Thanks for the info. I will look into Ardour since I exclusively use my e kit. And thanks for the wiki page.