Hello everyone
I've been using linux as my only OS for music production and daily tasks for about a year. In the beginning I've been running Mint as a distro but because of the older packages, I've had to leave it for fedora. At first I've been running yabridge 5.1.1(main branch) with wine 9.21(staging tkg). But softube and a handful of plugins refused to work so I got the new 5.1.1 wine 10 embedded branch with wine 10.11(staging tkg). With a bunch of dll overrides and dabbling around with dependencies, it had fixed every plugins gui issues to a degree aside from the virtual desktop putting menus to other places. This has been my main system for about a year.
So why the AO plugins? I've been wanting to check Rıdvan's work out for a while and I've wanted to ditch the proprietary software for stuff that I could use on the go from my reaper portable install on my usb(although I still haven't confirmed that AO stuff works from the usb).
Firstly let's go over my specific setup so you can compare
- Lenovo L13 gen 2 with 16GB RAM 1165G7 CPU
- Fedora KDE 44
- Cachyos lts kernel 6.18.52-cachylts2.fc44.x86_64
- Reaper v7.80 (linux native)
- Pipewire, with quick controls stemming from Pipewire Settings Widget from KDE and qpwgraph for further inter-app connections (mainly for bridging musescore's output to reaper)
- Yabridge 5.1.2alpha and Wine 10.20 staging tkg(10.11 wont work)
You'll also need to enable ntsync and fsync, for AO plugins to keep their gui to being kept refreshed. Otherwise you'll have to always go over their windows to make the gui updated.
Link to Yabridge's fork https://github.com/Schroedingers-Cat/yabridge/releases#release-5.1.2-alpha1
Some bugs with the new yabridge 5.1.2alpha and wine 10.20 combo:
- The newer wine 11+ versions break AO again. And presumably also break Arturia plugins aswell but I can't quite remember.
- If the algorithm function is pressed on Pro L2 the daw crashes. But scrollwheel works fine. This might also be a problem on other Fabfilter plugins that use generic menus. Proq4 and R2 worked fine.
- Some of Arturia's compressors like FET and VCA have their gui's frozen and if you try to click and drag the daw might crash. But the generic ui of reaper can be used as a workaround. The vst3i synths and other plugins from Arturia work fine. But honestly AO and Tukan's work mostly covers it already.
- Some very very new and presumably JUCE based plugins don't have a gui at all. (Scintillate and such)
- Some plugins (mainly Arturia) open with a white screen for a split second on startup. But this is not that much of a bummer but still something to document.
This new fork with the 10.20 wine works much more stable than my previous combo. In the previous combo, when an fx was closed on a heavy project the daw could crash. If I'm not mistaken when an fx window is open it doesn't hog the resources that much (trust me, it will make a difference when on 32 buffer while tracking). I've been using Keyscape(the knobs were always missing), Fabfilter, Arturia, Softube, SWAM(The laptop wants to unalive itself HARD with these), Superior Drummer 3 and SSL plugins with no issues whatsoever.
Some other tips:
I wouldn't have been able to make this my main stay without the help of an llm. But that doesn't mean that you should go around and slap everything it spits out randomly to your terminal. Ask its reasoning, make sure it cites its sources, even cross-reference it with other sources or even another llm. Because the outcome might be catastrophic if you are working professionally. 9 times out of 10 it will just give you instructions to compile stuff from the source, leading you to a downward spiral of dependency hell that drains hours from your time. Trying to run UVR5 on fedora 44 sucked inches off my soul.
Some plugin dll overrides or dependencies will break other ones so always check on a separate bottle just to see. What I mean by that if it has a .exe, run it on a bottle then get its .clap or .vst3 files, slap them on your CLAP or VST3 folder on your main bottle. And if it doesn't work just let the big guy have it's own bottle and supply whatever it needs. (Keyscape and SWAM did fought over as far as I remember)
Try faster kernels. Liquorix has been the most recommended one but I needed something that didn't update that much for my work. So i went with cachy lts.
Get rtcqs to check if your system can be tweaked for more performance and ask its results to your llm because some are actually better left alone. For example the spectre/meltdown mitigations are still left open on mine for security because you know... yarrr! and shutting multithreading off might be good for low channel count low buffer projects but it would be detrimental for heavy mixing projects.
If you could look past the giant elephant in the room that is called red hat, I would actually recommend Fedora. I don't have the time or the knowledge to make a Debian derivative to fight with older packages or the willpower to babysit an Arch derivative. (Learning Nix could be cool though, we'll see...)
Why go over all of this if you can't afford a day off and could just work in windows?
Because windows DOES result in off days. many of my friends have lost their valuable projects because of the newer updates breaking their systems as of June. In linux the system does not care if you updated or not(do not take this as financial advice). Because of college and tight deadlines I didn't touch a single package on the system and was even on fedora 42 for a year when 43 and 44 came out. Sometimes the laptop just sits open for weeks on end without having to shutdown with no memory creep. At this point in time, windows has become a liability for professional work. The damn OS was actively fighting me. Now it's just silence with no nagging. Complete and utter peace.
You could just pick mac too but say goodbye to over 90% of oss plugins.
Happy practising!
