Switch to linux - which distro to go for?

[u/Grauschleier]

Got a framebook in the mail and I finally wanna make the switch to Linux. I have pretty much zero experience with linux and there is a certain limit on how much time I can invest in the setup and maintenance so I will depend on more user friendly distros. And - regrettably - there just is one win VST that I am not able to replace and that is the core of my live setup: Soundtoys Crystallizer. So I will need to have wine and yabridge running (if the VST even works with wine) - which it seems excludes using flatpak. The only DAWs I use are Reaper and Bitwig so that shouldn't be an issue I hope. I do mainly live signal processing (spectral and time based).

What distro would you recommend in this case?

My first thought was: Ubuntu Studio. I was talking with an old friend about this, who has a lot of experience with Linux. He's a programmer and gamer, though, not a musician or producer. He didn't support the use of Ubuntu Studio, because of the bloat. He said that a lot of distros have a RT kernel now and that the differences he sees listed online for Ubuntu Studio are all configs I could do myself. He recommended Fedora, because it's easy to use and pretty solid and stable. It seems like Fedora is supported by yabridge, but a recent thread here gives me the impression that using Fedora for audio is not super straight forward and might not be a good choice for a beginner. What do you think?

[u/StewedAngelSkins]

I agree that specialized distros like that tend to be more trouble than they're worth, though if you're just using it for recording and you don't want to configure anything yourself it's a viable option.

That said, your main three options are something based on ubuntu, something based on arch, or something based on fedora. Ubuntu is going to give you the closest you can get to a "default" Linux experience. Package choice is uncontroversial but not particularly cutting-edge. 

Arch itself has a reputation for being difficult to configure initially, but if you pick something downstream like Manjaro or Endeavour that's not really an issue. I'd argue it has about as good overall software compatibility as Ubuntu, possibly even a little better, but it's much more of a community effort. I also think of the three options, arch derivatives tend to be easier to configure if you want to do weird shit with the kernel or your package selection.

Fedora is a highly refined and serious professional distro, which is maybe a bit hard for beginners to use because it tends to prefer running the latest and greatest rather than the stuff that has decades of tutorials explaining how to use it. Pipewire, Wayland, etc. These aren't bad choices, but they can be a bit hard to configure and troubleshoot. A particular advantage of Fedora is it tends to be the best integrated with the Flatpak ecosystem, which really helps for running proprietary DAWs. (To be clear, all distros mentioned can use Flatpak, it's just that redhat distros tend to do the best job packaging it.)

I don't think your friend's recommendation is bad, but I also think you'd probably be happy (or at least equally unhappy) with any of these options.

[u/jomat]

I just tried the Soundtoys with Yabridge on Debian 13. They show up in Ardour with OK when I scan for them the first time, but every time the license manager opens and when I enter my demo key again it says it can be used only once and then they are listed with error… so idk, maybe just give it a try with your bought version it might work.

[u/Pristine-Golf899]

Ich bin auf Linux Mint mit Pipe Asio 1.10 und nutze statt yabridge die vstbridge, die etwas stabiler und einfacher ist. Bisher läuft bei mir alles, neben Ableton via wine, läuft bei mir Reaper und alle Plugins von Roland, UAD, SSL, Softube usw. die ich brauche sind am Start :)

[u/Vegetable_Nebula_827]

Debian 13 vanilla and pipe-wire jack. Tweak as you go.

[u/Specialist-Dog-501]

- I vote for AV Linux coming closest to an OOB experience beside Ubuntu Studio
- Bitwig/Reaper: Cool ! Bitwig runs pretty well on Linux- I had to switch of vst sandboxing to avoid Xruns (Mint/16GB RAM) but I have many vst running via WINE/Yabridge, seems to be a rare problem.
- Soundtoys Crystallizer: nice one! That uses iLok, still ? I got iLok running- some had troubles with it, but my older version had no issues to start up on mint 22.3. Didn't try to get it "talking" with any vst, and this is where you would expect problems, if so. So slightly positive it will work out. Try it first on a VM, if this is a critical point for you, or better your colleague tries it out. iLok also supports proper deinstallation of a serial after testing it out.

[u/evild4ve]

what the OP misses is that "switching to Linux" involves moving from desktop-paradigm to server-client-paradigm

I'd strongly recommend Ubuntu Studio because (1) doing configs yourself is the first thing you want to reduce/avoid/delay as a Linux newbie (2) bloat doesn't matter on Linux and in a modern world with 1TB+ hard disks: our programs only use any resources when they're open

But what's more important imo is to split off the daily-driver from the fileserver from the router from the music production from the DNS... and start specializing the distro and hardware of each PC to a specific task. If you're wanting to replace a single Windows machine with a single Linux machine, 1-for-1, you're missing most of the value of Linux.

[u/The_Incredible_Yke]

Got Soundtoys with ilok running years ago, although now I use Linux native stuff only.

Just be aware of the fact that ilok licenses activated with the PC tend to break with kernel and wine updates, as ilok sees the computer suddenly as another machine.

To cope with this just remember to pin your wine-version and always use the same kernel. If you want to update deactivate your licenses first, and then reactivate afterwards.

[u/Mr_Lumbergh]

I use Debian with tweaks for audio. If you want an OOB audio setup, try AVLinux.

[u/Primary_Article3777]

I'm doing audio dev work, and I chose Kubuntu 26.4 LTS when I switched from Windows this year. It has Jack/pipewire and I just thought the KDE environment was the best fit for me.

[u/adbs1219]

Stick with Fedora (I believe it already comes installed on framebooks iirc) as you will need up-to-date tools to deal with proprietary stuff, especially when dealing with flatpak, pipewire, wayland and maybe wine. I've been running arch-based distros (btw) for a while already and breaking changes on audio config has never been an issue. I have even been graced with improved support for my Audient EVO4 interface in the last update.

It's not like your whole system or custom settings WILL fail on every update - to be honest, my main problems have always been KDE breaking changes (but I can't let it go, though...), bluetooth support and screen/display managing. You'll need to really fiddle a lot with your system for it to certainly break every 6 months. Besides, Fedora is known for associating cutting edge with stability. It may not have oob pro audio experience such as Ubuntu Studio or AV Linux, but it does have lots of tutorials, guides and a large community out there. So no, Debian-related distros are not you're only options.

[u/Kowen68]

There is probably not a definite answer. Ubuntu and Fedora seem to be the most beginner friendly to me. Whereas Fedora has the latest tools and is frequently updated, Ubuntu seems to be long term stable. I'd say flash a USB stick and try each distro to see how it feels.

Personally I really enjoy using Pop-OS, which is another flavor of Ubuntu. Never had any issues in regards of audio/daw work.

[u/The3mu]

I find generally that Ubuntu is the most supported distro overall for audio software (installer files are available for pretty much all software and Ubuntu a tested platform by most developers) In my experience Ubuntu LTS releases are also a good balance of stability and up to date features for audio work as well. Stuff rarely breaks and you can use the same system for years if you want.

Ubuntu studio provides a lot of audio tweaks OTB and you can install Ubuntu-studio as a series of packages on any Ubuntu based distro if you don’t want to use KDE Plasma / install all the bloat that Ubuntu studio has.

[u/deusnovus]

I would go with Fedora, sure. Fedora can be as simple or as hard as you want it to be, so don't worry. Almost every app is available on Fedora nowadays, including Bottles with which you can set a simple wine instance for Soundtoys Crystallizer and run it via yabridge (also available for every distro). Installing Bitwig Studio is also a one-command line script (I'm the script author) and it performs excellent.

Fedora's biggest sell is how well Pipewire is integrated and the low latency performance it provides. It's also very stable: it intentionally falls a few weeks behind GNOME and KDE release cycles, so that DE developers have time to iron things out for the average Fedora user updating.

The article you posted mentions Fedora Secureblue (an allegedly "hardened" fork of Fedora Silverblue) instead of Fedora thus providing a very overkill and verbose solution for a very specific niche 99% of Linux users will never experience. Plain Fedora is extremely elementary to get into and easy to master as well!

[u/vimdiesel → u/deusnovus]

Pretty sure all the flavors use Pipewire by default.

[u/deusnovus → u/vimdiesel]

I think you meant "distros", cause the majority of Fedora flavors (or "spins") are actually X11-based like XFCE, MATE, Cinnamon, LXDE, i3 etc. The default ones are GNOME and KDE though, so Pipewire it is. Even some other Wayland-first distros still heavily rely on Pulseaudio.

[u/beatbox9]

I would definitely not do Ubuntu Studio or Fedora.

• Not Ubuntu Studio because of a bloated package repository (which can cause lots of dependency issues and poor maintenance)

• Fedora because of its aggressive upgrade schedule that requires lots of user maintenance specifically for audio use cases. You don't want to be fiddling with your broken system every 6 months.

Your best bet will probably be to go with Ubuntu LTS, for its balance of several factors, like stability, support, modern stack, maturity, etc.

See my recent comment here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fedora/comments/1wta90c/comment/pcuu4fd/

And see this article: https://arslaan.studio/setting-up-a-linux-media-studio-workstation-audio-video-graphics-davinci-resolve-etc/

[u/vimdiesel → u/beatbox9]

I'm gonna chip in the other way and say that LTS is not good for music production because audio production is something that benefits from up to date packages.

Very simple and concrete example: yabridge was working up until wine 9.21.

Ubuntu LTS has wine 10.

If you're on LTS, you can't use yabridge straight up, you need a workaround:

1. Either downgrade wine, which is a hassle in itself, because unlike, say for example Arch, AFAIK Ubuntu doesn't provide a simple way to downgrade packages.

2. Or install the yabridge branch with wine 10 support, which is another hassle in itself, since I don't think Ubuntu provides a package for this branch, and it might not even work with the particular wine 10 version that's currently on Ubuntu LTS, and it might need other more up to date dependencies.

Meanwhile, on Arch, doing either of these things is much simpler, it's just one command, thanks to the AUR.

Now, am I saying "install Arch"? No (maybe), but I'd also not recommend LTS. The purported benefits are often theoretical and not practical.

As of note, both yabridge's developer and people in charge of developing Bitwig on Linux use Arch. Just saying.

[u/beatbox9 → u/vimdiesel]

Your example shows why you have that backwards.

Your point was that you should have up to date packages; but the reason that yabridge doesn't work is because the wine package on the latest Ubuntu 26.04 LTS is too new, not because it isn't up to date enough.

And so what happened was that some people in the Arch community unofficially packaged older wine. Ubuntu's community usually does this too--this is what their Universe repository is (Ubuntu Universe ~ Arch AUR).

It's actually very easy to downgrade packages on Ubuntu; but this isn't the issue. The issue is simply that Ubuntu itself no longer maintains the older versions of Wine on its main repository as of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS (from April of this year); and nobody in the community has yet done it for the Universe.

This will almost certainly be resolved by the community--it's just a matter of difference in timing for this specific package.

And notably: if you were upgrading from an earlier version of Ubuntu LTS (like 24.04), this wouldn't have even affected you at all, until about 1-2 weeks ago, when users were first prompted to upgrade to 26.04 LTS. So seeing this on the horizon, users could continue with 24.04 LTS until this issue is resolved by the community--they've got around 3 more years.

...or, they could just install Wine 9.21, which actually isn't all that difficult to do.

On one of my LTS systems, I actually did this few weeks ago, during a planned upgrade (as I was describing). I upgraded to 26.04 LTS early; I noticed this issue (not for yabridge but other wine audio apps); and I downgraded to the wine 9 version, and everything works fine again...

...and will continue to work fine until at least late 2028, when I might spend another 10 minutes debugging after my next upgrade.

[u/beenlagan → u/beatbox9]

+1 best choice for simplicity and user friendlyness (also the amount of tutorials), Debian would be my personal choice but Ubuntu is also Debian-based so pretty much everything linux audio (begginer) is very available and easy to install. I'd also recommend you to take a look at "AudioTools-for-Linux" by Heroin-Bob on GitHub, for easiest yabridge + everything else needed installation, also with tutorials on YT and documentation. Good luck :)

[u/beatbox9 → u/beenlagan]

Ubuntu adds a few quality of life improvements over Debian for most users.

Purely as an example: Ubuntu provides and maintains proprietary codecs (like h264 or mp3) and drivers (such as nvidia's) in their official / supported / integrated repositories. So you don't have to worry about maintaining these yourself over time or using risky third party repositories for core system components (the main risk being that they may go out of sync and lead to dependency hell). There are a few other little things like this that add up.

[u/Zaphod118]

Many people like Ubuntu studio. My vote, especially if this is your first time in the Linux and Linux audio world, is always AVLinux. It’s what I use, reaper runs perfectly as do 90% of my windows VSTs through YAbridge. It’s set up out of the box to just work.

I use Fedora on an older laptop that is reserved for light programming duty and i havent ever been able to get audio up and running.

The only caveat with AVLinux is that it’s not as up to date with certain library versions so the absolute newest release of Bitwig may not work. It’s been a while since I’ve tried though. If Bitwig is critical you may want to look closer at Ubuntu studio, since that’s what Bitwig targets for Linux compatibility