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Hey.
I don't have too much time to spare to mess with computers these days. And am not curious about the inner workings of a kernel.
But MS is trying to nuke old cpus, so, got to switch. Very sad.
I have a Roland MIDI keyboard and Focusrite Clarett USB. Also some Millenium el.drums. I am probably gonna go and try to make it all work in some Linux.
But how has you're experience been with trying to get your peripherals work in Linux?
..not just musical devices. Wifi antennas, ID-card readers, and whatnot.
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03-06-2025 01:41 PM
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I still think Linux is a good idea, but if failed for me. I tried to run it on a Mac Mini. I actually spend all my time downloading, or trying to figure out how to download all the 'stuff' from the repositories to make it work the way I wanted. The concept is good, but maybe better on an IBM style machine.
For example just to get the Command V, Command X etc to work was a nightmare. Never figured it totally out. Hours of trying to download various keyboard hacks, etc. Also I had difficulty trying to get the menus of the graphic interface to work. Once I did get stuff working there was a lot of latency in recording.
On this CD I used the Linux based audio workstation software to make and record most of the tracks. Came out ok but it felt like ten times the work compared to using Opcode Vision on my Mac Quadra from '92.
Fur Tree : Wind in The Dust | Valco.
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I switched to Linux Mint from Windows several years back. Easy install, no peripheral issues, and no regrets so far.
That said, I'm not yet writing sheet music or recording sound/videos, but I don't expect any problems there - Linux has come a long way. During Covid, I did attend a virtual court hearing using Mint, Zoom, my camera, and an OTS mic - no issues whatsoever so I expect video/sound recording and editing to work just fine. I plan to convert my Luddite wife's Windows PC to Linux Mint this year as the Mint interface is very similar to Windows.
FWIW, my gamer son tells me that Linux doesn't have the gaming drivers that Windows has. I don't play so it was never a concern for me.
You'll have to look at the devices you have and determine if they'll work with whatever Linux distribution you pick.
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I used MS for work, Linux as a hobby for years. I got tired of the support work at home. If the software/hardware you need to run works on a Mac, you’re in business. It’s hit or miss for commercial software support on any version of Linux.
I’ve been all Apple at home for over 10 years, but maybe my software requirements aren’t as rigorous as some. My new mini is great.
ymmv
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Linux has been pretty close to Win & Mac for years. You have to live with compromises to use any OS. Linux is still a bit more challenging, but most of the current distros have only very minor idiosyncrasies. There are open source substitutes for most winmac apps, and most peripherals also do fine with modern Linux.
There are several excellent DAWs for Linux, and almost all DAIs also work with it out of the box. I run Ubuntu Studio with no problem on a 15 year old HP with 8G of RAM. The last USB problem I had with Linux audio was with a TASCAM 1800 about 15 years ago when I tried to use it with the HP. I converted a 2005 Toshiba laptop to Ubuntu years ago and it’s still going strong. It won’t do 24 track recording, but I can do 4 simultaneous tracks with real time monitoring.
Ubuntu and its variants are excellent for the untech user, as is Mint. The older and weaker the computer, the lighter the OS has to be to get anything approaching modern performance from it. Linux Lite, Lubuntu, Absolute, and Puppy are all great easy to use choices for older hardware. If your computer is 32 bit, there are fewer options and modern performance isn’t going to happen. Still, you have choices - but even my ‘05 Toshiba is 64 bit, so 32 bit mainstream PCs are old old old.
I also run 7 Raspberry Pi variants from Zero through 3b to the latest 4. I haven’t tried a 5 yet because mine are used as Roon endpoints and similar dedicated devices that don’t need any more horsepower. Four of the Pis run Linux and 3 are on Raspberry pi OS, which is a derivative of Linux. I even used one of them for a portable digital recorder until I got my TASCAM DR-40x.
Linux is excellent and it’s no longer just for geeks. Unless you’re seriously challenged by technology, it’s worth a try - especially to rejuvenate a computer you can’t use with Windows any more. No, you can’t get every app you ran on Windows, but you can get enough for most uses.
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Everything is harder with Linux.
If you don’t have time or capacity for windows troubleshooting, go with Apple and buy Apple products.
I’ve been restarting Ubuntu for 3 days trying to get a firmware update to actually install.
Most programs don’t work without some level of coding on the terminal and how comfortable are you just grabbing random code you don’t understand from Linux forums and running it on your computer that no longer has Microsoft antivirus software.
Tech savvy people talk a big game with Linux, but if you aren’t savvy, it’s a nightmare.
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Specifically to answer this question. I have accepted I can’t make peripherals work with Ubuntu and stopped using them.But how has you're experience been with trying to get your peripherals work in Linux?
..not just musical devices. Wifi antennas, ID-card readers, and whatnot.
Depending on how many hours and days you want to spend troubleshooting, you might fare better.
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I installed Kubuntu on my 2013 Macbook Air. It recognized all my onboard stuff (WiFi, Bluetooth, etc.) without any trouble. Kubuntu does push the hardware, battery life is much, much shorter and you need to install a Mac fan control daemon to keep it cool. Software installation is a snap using apt-get. Keeping it updated has been seamless so far (sorry, Allan). I have not used it or any other computer as a DAW so I can't opine about that. I use Lilypond for writing lead sheets and that probably works a bit better on Kubuntu than it does on my Mac (although the Lilypond team has managed to remove most of the kludgy stuff that hampered it on MacOS).
Some of the apps for mail, etc., are not as good as Apple Mail in terms of interface and graphics. Interfaces are not as consistent as either Windows or Mac. And it doesn't sync with my other Apple products.
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You’re almost certainly doing something wrong. Ubuntu recognizes and functions with all of my peripherals. This includes multiple printers, DACs, DAIs, my Parasound preamp, cameras, USB keyboards (both music keyboards and QUERTY), webcams, MIDI guitar, Roon endpoints, WiFi and BT devices, etc etc.
Originally Posted by AllanAllen
There are many Ubuntu distros. Some require you to add in a lot of the functionality that’s already baked into Ubuntu Studio. If you don’t let Ubuntu install it all with the OS, you have to jump through a lot of hoops to add it all yourself. And you should be using the latest version (24.10 - aka Oracular Oriole). If you run Ubuntu Studio (the comprehensive distro for media creators), the LTS (long term support) version is built on 24.04 .
The other limiting factor is your hardware. If you’re trying to get an old 2 core machine with 2k of RAM to do everything a current machine will do, you’re in for major disappointment. Ubuntu is great - but it’s not magic.
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I abandoned Windows when XP was current, and never looked back. The learning curve was much steeper back then, but now I can't get anything done using Windows. I have family members who still use it, and they're on their own. For me, Linux just works. If you can't get it to work, your technical skills need work. I recently installed Windows in a virtual machine on my Linux desktop, just to see what I was missing, and the answer was "nothing except aggravation". In Linux, the hardware drivers are in the kernel, and you don't need to install any, they just work. I tried finding something to do with the Windows VM, seriously tried, and couldn't find any use for it at all. It's still taking up storage space on my drive, but nothing else. I use Debian, because that's the basis for almost all the popular distros, including Ubuntu. The Ubuntu developers take Debian Testing, tweak it until it barely works, and ship it out the door, ready or not. I recently installed it for grins, and didn't find much to grin about. Debian isn't the flashiest, and doesn't have the absolute latest and greatest software versions, but it's rock solid and just works for me, and I'm mostly using the Unstable version. Debian Stable is mostly for use in servers, where it has to work 24/7/365. The Stable designation must means it never changes, never gets new software versions, because it's remotely possible that a new version of some package could break other packages. The Unstable branch just means it does change, and new software versions are made available. That's the best way to go for a consumer desktop system. I run Debian on an old Chromebook from 10 years or so ago, and it runs fine. I also run it on an Asus chromebox from about the same vintage, using it as a file server. On a newish Intel box, it's even better. I'm about to install it on a used Thinkpad from eBay, and I expect it to by my daily driver, once UPS finally gets it to me.
Sorry, I sometimes get carried away with this. The short version is that you can do anything on Linux that you can do on Windows or an Apple machine. The software has different titles, and may do some things a little differently, but it's all there. Having the hardware drivers in the kernel makes working with peripherals easy. The hardware manufacturers provide the drivers to the Linux kernel developers as they come out with new equipment, often faster than for Windows, because the server market is so big. The internet runs on Linux, not Windows, not Apple.
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I haven't tried Debian directly. 25+ years ago, I had some old Macs sitting around and wanted to install a UNIX system on one of those as a file server and Web server. It was a Mac IIci, if I remember correctly. The only thing that would install and run on those at the time was NetBSD. About as basic and crude as could be; a GUI wasn't even possible so it was all console, but the power of the UNIX command line is amazing and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Eventually my company moved to professional web services and we didn't need an old computer in my back bedroom masquerading as one.
Linux and GNU have turned out something that is every bit as usable and powerful as what Microsoft and Apple offer, perhaps not necessarily as good in terms of eye candy and interface consistency but those are easily dealt with. And the FOSS attitude towards freedom and software ownership is much more consumer friendly than the proprietary OSes will allow. With Microsoft and Apple comma you don't buy their software; you buy a license to use the software (on their terms only); with Linux the software is yours to do with as you please.Last edited by Cunamara; 03-08-2025 at 05:24 PM.
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My most favorite memory from 20 years ago was some KDE GUI. I felt embarrassed to dismiss it because Linux was no good for gaming. Originally Posted by Cunamara
It felt sublime and looked beautiful. It made me feel so sad about needing to use Win-something just because of my gaming addiction.
This was 20 years ago, when 'puters were slow. And KDE had this going... and nothing really happened. I don't remember what it was exactly.
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As a software Engineer, I've used Unix for many years, but I use both Windows and Linux at home, because some software I use will only run on Windows, they are not Linux compatible. Examples include: midi, samples, some recording software.
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As a long time Linux user both in my work as a software engineer doing embedded systems (i.e. emulators, cross-compiling, etc.), and at home since the mid-1990s. I have written some stuff that is in the Linux kernel (or was a few yeas ago) and wrote device drivers for some of the hardware back in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The first version of Linux I installed was 0.99 on something like 30 5 1/4" floppies. These days, you download the ISO image for the distro you want to run and install from USB flash drive. I am running Ubuntu, but have switched around on occasion for fun. I don't find Ubuntu broken, but then I am used to tinkering without considering it out of the ordinary at all.
With that said, one thing for prospective non-technical Linux consumers need to consider is something most people never think about when buying a computer at all. When you have your own computer, you either have to be your own IT support person or impose on friends and neighbors for that support. It doesn't matter what operating system and software you use, this is just an unavoidable fact of life. Living in a condo building of 72 units, I see this all the time and over the years, have become that person for my neighbors, whether it is Windows (most of them), Mac (a few), or Linux (me and one other guy). So I speak from direct experience. Once folks find that you are a "techy", they show up for help with all manner of problems - regardless of operating system. Linux seems more stable (in my opinion) than Windows once you have it set up, which as others here have pointed out, has become MUCH easier in recent years.
Given that, it is likely much easier to find such people versed in Windows and Mac than Linux. As far as I know, businesses such as the Geek Squad don't support Linux either.
So, while I agree with those who speak well of Linux in this thread, I am also painfully aware that there are folks who just don't get along well with technology, and without help from those around them, probably would not be able to have a long term relationship with using computers on a daily basis. I don't understand why this is, but I do try to help my neighbors faced with this problem (which is most of them).
So if you are not particularly technical, determine what support you can get locally if you intend to run Linux. With Windows and Mac, you can usually pay for such support, but those folks typically don't support Linux. You can learn it as you go and the answers to almost any problem you might have, has already been faced and resolved by somebody, somewhere in the world and for such help, Google is your friend.
Tony
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Linux doesn't get a lot of love from developers of commercial software. The market just isn't that big. One example that keeps irking me is that I use Proton, for mail, calendar, cloud storage, passwords, and more. I like the fact that all my data is encrypted on my machines, and what leaves is always encrypted. I don't trust Google or Dropbox or any of the other cloud storage companies with my files. But Proton has no Linux desktop sync software, and has no particular plans to provide it - just Windows and Mac. I have a workaround, using a Linux app called rclone, but it's not a true sync, I just do a regular backup through a cronjob. Proton gets lots of complaints from Linux users, but apparently not enough to actually pay some developers to work on it. But it's still possible to get a usable solution.
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And Linux users expect that software includes the code and is modifiable as per the GPL; few commercial/proprietary software companies will go for that.
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The missus likes Linux. She says 'you type the thing and it does the thing'. She says husbands are not like this and that if she types -f he doesn't do the thing, she also says 'sudo shutup -f' but apparently that doesn't work either.
She also doesn't like resolving dependencies but says that's what Docker is for.
I have no idea what any of this means.
I'm old enough to remember VMS
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My wife starts every morning with “sudo su” and the -f flag is implied. She is also a fan of the -s flag, except when I’m supposed to somehow know there is an implied -v flag I’ve missed. Originally Posted by Christian Miller;[emoji[emoji638
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She also doesn't like resolving dependencies but says that's what Docker is for.
I have no idea what any of this means.
I'm old enough to remember VMS
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
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It's interesting that Android is basically Unix, so the majority of mobiles phones are using a Unix based OS.
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Android does use a very old Linux kernel, but that's where the similarity ends. Android basically runs on Java. Most Linux distros discourage the use of Java, some outright ban it. The blessing, and the curse, of Linux is that there is total freedom, thus the plethora of distros, with slight differences. Linus Torvalds controls the kernel to some degree, but little else. Microsoft and Apple have tight control over their products, and so can keep the user experience identical for everyone. The source code is closely guarded. The source code for the entirety of Linux is open, and required to be by license, so anyone can change almost anything, and often does. This is the basis of security, because anyone can read the source code for the kernel and for any application, and a surprising number of tech-oriented people do, and find bugs before they can be exploited. I've never run an anti-virus program on Linux, because it's unnecessary and just slows things down.
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I was under the (mis)understanding that the Android Linux kernel is the part of the operating system that manages the hardware for running Android software. Originally Posted by sgosnell
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I started my PhD thesis in '90 with a brand spanking new Mac IIx (with a whopping 8Mb or RAM IIRC) and promptly added a 160Mb external disk to it with A/UX2 installed on it. Originally Posted by Cunamara
That's actually very debatable. Ever tried to discuss about user-wishes with Gnome developers, for instance? A good part of FOSS developers has "this is my plaything" attitude that can be very irksome if you happen not to agree perfectly with their ideas.And the FOSS attitude towards freedom and software ownership is much more consumer friendly than the proprietary OSes will allow. With Microsoft and Apple comma you don't buy their software; you buy a license to use the software (on their terms only); with Linux the software is yours to do with as you please.
The "software is yours" isn't entirely true either. Yes, you can do what you want to it as long as you keep it to yourself, but most of the big projects are actually owned by associations if not corporations that just give you a free license for its use.
KDE Plasma4 was really nice, by the time its latest releases came along it was IMHO on par with the concurrent OS X (10.9 or so). The DEs of both have evolved in directions I care much less about since. Originally Posted by emanresu
I think most Linux users couldn't care a rat's ass what license software is under. But I use the term user in a more restricted fashion. People who just spend time keeping their "distro" up to date and designing desktop themes out of an angry kid's wet dreams aren't users in my book. Originally Posted by Cunamara
I think you meant that Android is basically Linux! Originally Posted by GuyBoden
The Mac OS has been a certified Unix since 10.0, and I'm pretty certain that iOS is just a specialised version of it.
There are now Linux-based distributions that aim to require the user to be even less tech-savvy. They don't all provide the same software bouquet though.
FWIW, on an older computer that will no longer run MSWin-latest I'd definitely give Devuan a spin. That's Debian without systemd (supposedly lighter on resources).
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Very astute observations. Additional (not disagreeing) comments on the various flavors of GPL. As you said, individual Linux users don't (and shouldn't need to) care about these licenses. Where they come into play is generally when one intends to make money off the code. Most often, if one uses some Open Source code in a project, the entire source for that project is to be placed in the Open Source community. Originally Posted by RJVB
On some engineering projects, what I would do is wrap that code to run as a daemon and use sockets to connect to it. Then, we could release that wrapper into Open Source, but since we didn't compile it into our code, we didn't need to release our own code. We always had attorneys involved to go over the licenses associated with various pieces of Open Source code we used, and we engineers often disagreed with the scope of some of their assessments because we felt that the company, being that we used Open Source code as well as running Linux on our engineering computers, should give back what we can to the Open Source community. There is the concept of being a good citizen of the Open Source community.
There were times when we would just give directly to Open Source such as one time I found a bug in the memory management area of the Linux kernel. I sent that directly to Linus Torvolds rather than going to the attorneys. Of course, he had a team who went over such code so when it goes into the kernel, it looks and acts as it should with whatever else they are doing in that area, but they used the algorithm, if not at least some of the code.
As for what constitutes a Linux user, I would say (my personal assessment) is anybody who uses the Linux environment. I suppose one could then say that those with Android-based cell phones as well as those using so-called "smart" TVs would be Linux users.
There is a guy in my condo building whose nephew installed Linux on one of his desktop computers. He felt that it was better suited to his needs than the Windows environment. Considering that he is in his 80s, I felt that I could make his environment easier to use, so I wrote bash scripts to do most everything he needed and connected those to icons so all he has to do is click on an icon, and it brings up whatever he needs to do. He buys accordions cheap, fixes them up, and resells them. He does this on both reverb and ebay.
I installed video recording software and a few other goodies so that he can record himself playing the accordion and then upload that video to his youtube channel, then link to that in his ads on reverb and ebay. I also created some goodies such that he could create mailing labels on the site from his seller account, and print them on his local printer - anything I could do to automate his process. Linux is great for such things. In my opinion, he is a Linux user, even though he really doesn't know what he is doing on the computer. He was a professional accordion player and has definite skills in both that and reviving dead accordions. The Linux environment is, for him, just a tool to do his accordion work. Whenever he encounters some problem, he calls me to take care of it.
As I understand it, at some point Apple put a version of BSD under their GUI. I could be wrong since I am not a part of the Apple ecosystem.
Tony
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More or less, yes, but that's far from the entirety of the OS. Software written and compiled for Linux or Unix (they are not the same) won't run on an Android device. It is possible to combine things to some extent, however. ChromeOS allows running Android, Linux, and native ChromeOS software simultaneously and seamlessly on chromebooks. Originally Posted by GuyBoden
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That IS interesting! I learn something new every day. Originally Posted by sgosnell
Tony
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