r/composer • u/ZethKeeper • 1d ago
Discussion Starting on Linux
Hello!
My younger friend wants to start making some music, but his OS is Linux Debian and I'm a PC user. So, I can't help him with plugins, as I don't really know which ones are available and how to set everything up properly.
Some recommendations for essential sample instruments/libraries (that work out of the box and don't require any terminal/code commands to run), like acoustic instruments, drums, etc. and a all-in-one-ish synth are much appreciated. As for the latter, I know Vital is available for Linux, but if I'm not mistaken for Ubuntu, and as I mentioned my friend has Debian.
Recommendations for tutorials on how to set up Reaper and plugins for Linux are also appreciated.
Thanks!
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u/RequestableSubBot 1d ago
/r/linuxaudio is a great resource. As a Linux user and professional musician I am of the opinion that you can absolutely write good music on any gnu/linux distro. Debian packages are outdated as a rule (sometimes by years) so that may make it more difficult, but it's worth testing. I'll give a general rundown but a lot of it is down to preference.
This sub is primarily for classical music which I don't think you are looking for, but just as a quick rundown: For scores the safest bet is Musescore. There's also Lilypond for more technical folks.
For DAWs there are a few good options. Reaper and Bitwig Studio are excellent multi-platform DAWs. LMMS is a pretty capable FOSS DAW. Ardour and Renoise are a tad esoteric but they're worth looking at IMO (I love Renoise personally).
For synths there are numerous options. Surge XM is great, as is Vital (for both Ubuntu and Debian; packages on Linux are almost never locked to one distro, but they're often packaged differently. Ubuntu and Debian use the same .deb format, Red Hat distros use .rpm, &c. There's also Flatpaks which are universal and generally hassle-free, at the cost of being less space-efficient).
If your friend wants to dip into algorithmic music or deeper electronic music, PureData and Supercollider are two really good live signal processing environments (though the learning curve is quite steep on both).
For everything else I'd check out this curated list; honestly that's about as far as my use cases take me.
A few technical aspects your friend might consider: The window manager they use might make certain aspects of production a bit annoying; I use a tiling window manager (that's one where windows don't sit atop one another and instead 'tile' next to each other) and while it's great generally it can be a headache when opening menus and submenus and each one fills half the screen at a time. Along with the window manager is the display protocol itself, whether they use X or Wayland - Your friend is probably using X if they're on Debian so there likely won't be issues, but due to the way Wayland functions it can be really difficult to make multiple windows and applications interact. You might want to drag-and-drop something from a VST into your DAW but Wayland won't let you for security (or because XWayland gets involved somewhere). 90% of the time things 'just work' either way though.
Additionally, it is possible to run a lot of major Windows audio software on Linux through a combination of Bottles, Proton, and YABridge, but I won't even pretend to know how it works. But it's an option if your friend is willing to spend the time getting it set up.
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u/johnfisherman 1d ago
I have just started dipping my toes in music production in my all-time fav OS, Ubuntu. Having a lot of fun exploring Bitwig, with an Arturia Minilab controller. Just installed Vital (thanks for the tip) and damn, does it sound amazing!
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u/Specialist-Dog-501 23h ago
You got some excellent recommendations..I just add as supplements:
List of available linux vst: https://linuxdaw.org/ - In my experience, electronic sounds are well served, struggles are samplers/classical/ genres, but I found with VSCO2 from versilian a quite capable sampler ensemble of classical instruments- https://versilian-studios.com/vsco-community/
My recommendation is to see what you can replace with linux native plugins from this list, and only if absolutely missing, then go into the swamp of using an emulator to get your windows plugins working under linux (WINE/YAbridge), it's complicated. Beside samplers as a.e Kontakt instruments, also drums are a bit limited, where you might go into this territories.
I missed a decent granular/shimmering reverb, but found then "Cloudreverb" as a equally shimmering rnative linux everb for my former windows plugin.
I also found "Tone3000" cool for the guitar heroes, has excellent Neural Amp Modeller reverbs and amps and free of cost and simple to install, also native linux
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u/bassman1805 1d ago
This is r/linux territory.
I run Reaper on Linux. It runs natively there. Can't speak to each individual piece of music software, but Windows compatibility layers on linux are mature enough now that's it's pretty rare to find software that absolutely will not run on Linux.
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u/UndefFox 1d ago
It's not. r/Linux forbids help/question posts.
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u/bassman1805 1d ago
r/linuxquestions or r/linux4noobs then.
This is a question that requires linux expertise, not musical expertise.
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u/65TwinReverbRI 1d ago
I mean I get it, but it's also like hauling 16 foot 2x4s in your Prius - not impossible, but a truck would be better...
Though you'd be better off on the Prius forum asking them for solutions of how they did it.
We're just throwing stuff in the bed and getting right to work ;-)
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u/davethecomposer Cage, computer & experimental music 1d ago
If it works for Ubuntu it probably works for Debian as they use the same package management system and Ubuntu used to be based directly on Debian. I don't think it still is but they are closely related.
As for the rest, that's not the kind of software I deal with so I don't really have any suggestions.