Really want an honest answer here and not a full blown Linux cult answer.
I’m a new dad (kid is 1.5months old) who used to game pretty hard and do music production in cakewalk and ableton, but the crotch goblin is getting in the way. With windows 10 support coming to an end, I’m faced with a choice to either jump on the Linux train or take the safe way out and eat win11. Please keep in mind that I run a super clean machine (no porn (that’s what mobile is for) or tormenting or anything sketch) and have no intention of doing anything unclean. I have a lot of music prod data that I don’t want fucked and a steam library that I want access to but don’t really care about the data associated with them (saves, profiles…i could care less). So it’s really my ableton and Cakewalk files I want to keep. There was a time I college 2010-2011 where I borrowed a CS majors Ubuntu laptop for a few months to just get work done (just webbrowsing and office app stuff). Shit was annoying and difficult to understand but I was able to make it work-ish.
I’m savvy enough where I can adult Lego a PC together but struggle when it comes to software and troubleshooting and really don’t have the time for that stuff.
Basically, I’m not in the position right now to learn a distro and struggle around with all that crap and I need to keep my music shit. I also despise Microsoft and AI in general but I’m perfectly fine just eating it for simplicity. Is there a low effort Linux solution to my situation? Looking for automatic updates where I just click “express install i don’t fucking care” and im not searching for drivers every day.
My build is basically what’s shown below minus the SLI’d 1080s and with 32gbDDR4. Any upgrade apart from the gpu would essentially mean a wholesale at this point. I used the 2nd card to build my wife a pc since SLI is effectively useless now.
I notice there are only a couple replies here that have experience with music production. Obviously core desktop stuff works great, gaming is pretty universally fixed, but music production is a different story.
I have extensive experience with linux and music production. You can use yabridge to run Windows VSTs. However, they can be extremely fussy with graphics compatibility. I estimate that I couldn’t manage to get about 20% of my plugins to work despite hours upon hours of troubleshooting. This is coming from a Linux-native software developer. If you’re just learning Linux, you could be in a world of pain.
I’m sure folks out there have gotten all of it working individually, but I doubt anyone has your exact setup working perfectly.
Ableton and FL Studio will have to be ran through Wine. I experienced major performance issues with FL Studio before switching to Bitwig.
Linux is great. But the music production industry is not kind to it. If you’re cool with being a linux music producer you’ll have to accept that some things just will not work well. But if you want 100% access to everything you’re used to, stick with Windows.
i would like to second this. though i’m not really experienced with it, creative work can be quite the pain in the butt from what i’ve been hearing.
for general usability and gaming it’s generally not really any more difficult than windows it feels like. i would just always recommend to check whether the things you really need run on linux or have an equivalent. this includes checking areweanticheatyet and protondb for the games you wanna play. some companies block linux in their games because some windows hackers exploit linux comparability… some other companies are stupid and think that a single player needs anticheat…………
also your choice of distro very much matters when it comes to how easily you get your things to work. for example i love bazzite for gaming, especially on laptops with igpu and nvidia, but it may not be the right choice for creative work, like i wont use it for my work related programming. there i use fedora KDE.
I hope you mean torrenting and not tormenting 😸
Just install Linux on an external SSD and test it.
Autocorrect is OP. Thinking of going that route. I have a 2tb SSD I’ve been meaning to install for a while now
I use Windows 11 for work and honestly don’t know why so many folks complain about it. I like working in it better than 10.
The forced Microsoft login is absolutely a valid privacy concern - I get that. The copilot integration is annoying and not helpful but can be turned off. The general UI and compatibility is pretty good. I’d just go ahead and upgrade to 11.
I had my first kid a little over 2 years ago, and my interest in twiddling with my OS plummeted. I use Linux, and it’s great for what I do, but I don’t do any sound stuff. I bet you could do it but that there’d be a lot of twiddling with your OS.
Not the exact answer you’re looking for, but a $500 Mac mini would be a fantastic solution. That or an entry level MacBook Air.
I run Linux on my desktop for most things but all my music production is done on MacBooks. If you want a turn key solution, this is the way.
Every vst, midi device and mixing console I have just works. Well worth the sub $1000 investment.
Hell, my touring setup runs off a 8 year old MacBook Pro you could likely pick up for under $400.
I started with a dual boot. Very easy to do, if you have two hard drives. I have landed on Bazzite because I just game and watch movies at home. It does those things very well.
I use my desktop primarily to play online shooters, so I don’t see Linux really being an option in the timeframe I have to decide. If Proton/Bazzite/whatever gets the anti-cheat shit for games like Call of Duty and Battlefield together by mid-October, I’ll probably do an about face. But as of now, it just doesn’t make sense to make it so I can’t use an expensive thing for its intended purpose just to stick it to the man or whatever.
Your win10 computer doesn’t get nuked from orbit after magic date. Others pointed out music software is not portable enough.
I got a new win11 computer with space for linux. Can remote desktop (free options) into old computer. This is more convenient than dual booting. If you don’t use internet or install new software, not much will break on it. My old computer didn’t work for linux because of waking from sleep issues. My new computer is $450usd minipc 7840hs dual lan, 2 usb4 ports, that allows me to expand from 3 to 4 monitors with a desk edge portable touchscreen usb monitor. win11 is not that bad because it allows for a single task bar on the front monitor. The iGPU is a big upgrade over 1650super I had, and 32gb/1gb nvme is also an upgrade that gives me the room to install linux. I haven’t yet.
Linux is pretty easy for software installs. Mint is a good choice, because google will have the most hits. There are some distros that come with closed GPU drivers, but that is not particularly difficult to do yourself. win11 on a new computer can be ok, though, but I have had issues with every monitor waking from sleep every time (unplug/replug solution), or sleep command not lasting more than 3 minutes. Boot time is much quicker on new computer though, so shutdown not as painful. But if sleep worked flawlessly on this one in linux, would be good reason to go with.
It’s 2025. Any internet connected machine on any EOL OS or without updates applied in a timely manner should get nuked from orbit.
And that goes for all Linux and Android users out there too. Update your bloody phones.
I have a Windows 10 machine with firewalls, updates and antivirus all turned off, for a single specific software. Works fine, and will keep working fine for a long time, but that installation will never again see a route to the internet.
that installation will never again see a route to the internet.
That’s what I was suggesting for OP, other than perhaps a cakewalk/audio software update. Firewalled RD should be safe enough?
Depending on what plugins and software OP runs, that might not be possible or at least kinda annoying. The music production software industry loves to require phone home with regular intervals for licensing.
In short: I jumped on Mint some months ago and it just works.
The first time I jumped on Linux, I got burned haaard. I picked openSUSE, and I’m not sure if my hardware was crap or that distro is finicky, but nothing worked and it was just issue on issue on issue and I hated it.
Fast forward a couple years and Mint is nothing like that. It worked as it should out of the box and the only real tinkering I had to do was update the driver for my GPU manually because it was still so new.
Sure, some things work differently, but it’s not too complicated to get into.
You can enable automatic software updates and configure the built-in backup program Timeshift, so you can revert the system to a previous snapshot if ever something should go real wrong.
But with all that said, I see that neither Cakewalk or Ableton are easy installs, as they’re not officially supported on Linux. Will require some tinkering to get working. So maybe for that reason only Win11 would be the better choice. Or try dual booting to get a feel for it, best of both worlds.
the crotch goblin
you’re disgusting
Sex trophy?
This is your own child you’re talking about.
Massive financial burden?
normally id say “linux is free, there’s no harm in giving it a go”, but between your lack of free time, nvidia graphics card, dependence on proprietary software, and previous experience (and slight distain) for linux i’d say just go with win 11.
there may be a way to get your music software to work in linux, but youll likely need to mess around with wine configs and it may never actualoy work right.
if you are interested ever, fire up a vm and play around with linux to get comfortable with it. maybe when win11 reaches eol (or even before) you’ll want to make the switch.
none of this is said to scare you away from linux. searching for drivers is rarely a thing in linux. there are built in tools in most distros to deal with graphics drivers, but apart from that, given the open source nature of linux, everything else is just handled by kernel modules and are basically seamless unless you have some weird proprietary hardware. linux is fairly easy to use these days, but there is quite a bit of a learning curve because it is a fundamentally different os than windows, and the way you solve problems is very different.
I’ve wanted to be able to spend the time to jump to Linux for a while but the sex trophy demands attention. Maybe when I can leave him alone without fear of strangling himself on a stray wife hair or less, i could look into it. I’ve also thought about just dropping another 2-3K on another future thinking machine and using my current for Linux experimentation. Maybe I start the crotch goblin on Linux with this machine after I buy new and transfer everything to a new one.
Save your money. Kids are expensive. Dual boot or use a live ISO and toy around with Linux mint. Keep Windows 11. You got a lot on your plate. I loathe saying this but use windows for the important stuff and get your Linux thrill from a dual boot or side project. Linux can be full time but until you can jump all in you seem to want backup from others to tell you to go the sane/safe route for now.
I’ve also thought about just dropping another 2-3K on another future thinking machine and using my current for Linux experimentation. Maybe I start the crotch goblin on Linux with this machine after I buy new and transfer everything to a new one.
This is actually a pretty good idea considering your current specs may not actually be able to support Windows 11. It’s a little unclear whether you’ll be able to get it running because while your motherboard meets the TPM 2.0 requirement, your CPU is technically listed as not being supported.
It won’t officially work, but it’s not too hard to get it going. I just moved a similar box to 24H2 LTSC.
OP, you’ll probably need to run “setup.exe /product server”, or follow a recent guide. You’ll also need to do this for every major upgrade (i.e. yearly)
I agree though with the plan to use this as a test ground. I also recently upgraded a Lubuntu system to similar specs, and it runs pretty smoothly. But learning Linux takes a lot of time they don’t have.
Alternatively, consider the following:
- look around for a $50-100 used PC/mini-pc/laptop that someone is getting rid of because it won’t run Win11
- install something easy like Mint on it and use that for day-to-day stuff like browsing and office-type stuff.
- unplug the music PC from the internet and keep DAW, games & win10 on it
- explore and learn the Linux stuff in a low-pressure way, at your own pace.
Could also just setup a bootable Linux USB and run his system from that
The problem will likely be the warped perception of “low effort” users like you have, that I went in detail on here
This is indicated by phrases like these:
struggle around with all that crap and I need to keep my music shit
Which translate to me as “I don’t want to learn or change a thing, so tell me how I change the most fundamental part of my computing without doing that”.
As I wrote in the comment linked above, with an attitude like that you’d have a significantly harder time than some non-techy person who just wants to have a system that “just works” without preconceptions, not bother with the technical details, but is entirely open to using new programs and doing things differently, as long as they work reliably.
In your case, I’d say stick to Microsoft until you get your mindset and priorities straight. Because then you’d have an easy time without much tinkering at all. But as it stands I think you’d be setting yourself up for misery and failure.
Really want an honest answer here and not a full blown Linux cult answer.
And so you ask in a linux community…
Not all of us have been absorbed yet. I’ve used Linux on passing for years, but only now have tried just diving on outright. Previously my issues were RAM leaks, having to run commands on a laptop on every startup just to initiate wifi, and WINE performance. The former seem to be fixed, the latter seems to be about 89% there with Proton (I even use it for nongaming). Lutris drove me nuts, so Ijust use Steam to do the hard lifting.
“Basically, I’m not in the position right now to learn a distro and struggle around with all that crap and I need to keep my music shit.”
If you don’t want to have to learn anything new, then switching your OS to something you don’t know how to use is a stupid idea.
Thanks for the tl;dr
If you’re not in a position to change your workflow and deal with new stuff, you can simply use windows 10 lts for a longer support and postpone the decision between linux and windows 11.
Personally, I’d recommend trying linux some day. It can drain some free time at first, but in the long run, you will find yourself dealing with much less bullshit than windows, and actually saving time in your life. Some linux users like to make things complicated and pass their time tinkering with the system, so it passes an image of linux being like that, but if you run a simple and stable distro, things will work nicely and will rarely require your time. I’m running fedora for a few years, and my laptop became so boring. I just use it for my work and hobbies, and turn it off when done. No bullshit.
Go ahead and update to the newest spyware. 🤷♂️
Debian 13 comes out in a week or so. I have 1 fewer corporation spying on me.
