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A musician tells his story of switching from Mac to Ubuntu

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Re: A musician tells his story of switching from Mac to Ubuntu

#11

Post by fooandbarify »

mitjak wrote: post #9

A musician and, more importantly, a computer geek tells his story of switching from Mac to Ubuntu His story, while informative, is nowhere near close to that of a typical musician or even audio geek. It's not the platform but the software running on it that counts. The first thing Apple did when they bought Emagic and, as a result, Logic Pro was to kill the product on Windows knowing well users would switch to OS X j…

Exactly. On top of that, popular DAWs have significant eco-systems built up around them - it isn't unusual for professional users to have hundreds or even thousands of dollars invested in plugins, making it more difficult to jump ship.

Re: A musician tells his story of switching from Mac to Ubuntu

#12

Post by dolugen »

Samuel_Michon wrote: post #8
wtn wrote: post #3

$600 Linux vs $3000 Mac upgrade? The programs he now runs on Ubuntu are all available on OS X. The more reasonable framing would be $600 Dell netbook (what he ended up buying) vs a low-end Mac laptop option.

Exactly. If all the author wanted was an affordable notebook to replace his >5 year old PowerBook, then he could've bought a $1,200 MacBook Pro [0], which has FireWire800 and Thunderbolt ports. The low-end MacBook Pro is far more capable than his old PowerBook, and it wouldn't cost him anywhere near $3,000. Regardless of which OS you'll choose to run on it, I doubt a Dell Mini 9 netbook will be a reliable mobile work…

He said that after trying Dell Mini 9, he bought Dell Studio 9.

Re: A musician tells his story of switching from Mac to Ubuntu

#13

Post by RK »

bryanh wrote: post #4

I've spent a lot of time dabbling with digital audio (especially recording) and my limited experience with Linux audio setups were difficult to say the least. Now, this may be changing with Ubuntu Studio, but unfortunately a majority of commercial hardware is still strictly Windows/Mac (and sometimes spotty at that). Our mostly self-recorded/produced/mixed album ( http://glasscannonband.com/albums/the-chill-room ) wa…

Never tried myself, but some people run Reaper under Linux with Wine.

Re: A musician tells his story of switching from Mac to Ubuntu

#14

Post by tintin »

mitjak wrote: post #9

A musician and, more importantly, a computer geek tells his story of switching from Mac to Ubuntu His story, while informative, is nowhere near close to that of a typical musician or even audio geek. It's not the platform but the software running on it that counts. The first thing Apple did when they bought Emagic and, as a result, Logic Pro was to kill the product on Windows knowing well users would switch to OS X j…

"Most musicians nowadays want more than the ability to record and play back audio tracks." This sounds like you can only record and play back audio on Linux. A very false statement. Renoise is available for Linux and can be used in live sets. Pure Data is widely used on Linux and also used in live sets. There are FX-stacks, MIDI trackers/composers, with Jack you can connect whatever you want. Qtractor is becoming more mature. Ardour is very good. There are a lot of musicians using Linux these day's.

Re: A musician tells his story of switching from Mac to Ubuntu

#15

Post by mitjak »

tintin wrote: post #14
mitjak wrote: post #9

A musician and, more importantly, a computer geek tells his story of switching from Mac to Ubuntu His story, while informative, is nowhere near close to that of a typical musician or even audio geek. It's not the platform but the software running on it that counts. The first thing Apple did when they bought Emagic and, as a result, Logic Pro was to kill the product on Windows knowing well users would switch to OS X j…

"Most musicians nowadays want more than the ability to record and play back audio tracks." This sounds like you can only record and play back audio on Linux. A very false statement. Renoise is available for Linux and can be used in live sets. Pure Data is widely used on Linux and also used in live sets. There are FX-stacks, MIDI trackers/composers, with Jack you can connect whatever you want. Qtractor is becoming mor…

I'm pointing out recording and playing back tracka because the author of the article emphasizes it as one of the main use cases.

Re: A musician tells his story of switching from Mac to Ubuntu

#16

Post by mitjak »

Bud wrote: post #2

This guy's talking about how his G4 Powerbook started 'showing signs of age' during 2009. Well, yeah. That would stand to reason.

Also, how come he really needed a, judging by the $3000 pricetag, 17" or a fully upgraded 15" MacBook Pro but was able to do just fine with a refurbished lower-end Dell?

Re: A musician tells his story of switching from Mac to Ubuntu

#17

Post by mitjak »

Flankk wrote: post #5

The operating system is irrelevant to any musician worth his salt. The important thing is that you have a robust DAW that supports all the VST plugins you use and does everything you need. Ardour is a laughing stock compared to Logic, Live or FL. Last I checked, it hasn't even caught up to the feature set of Garage Band, which is a stripped-down version of Logic designed for 12-year-olds.

Garage Band, which is a stripped-down version of Logic designed for 12-year-olds

Hey there, speak for yourself. I like to think of GarageBand as Notepad for music. Perfect balance of features just enough to jot down an idea or throw together a loop. Logic Express and Pro then allow importing of GB projects so the analogy tends to hold well.

Re: A musician tells his story of switching from Mac to Ubuntu

#18

Post by adhipg »

mitjak wrote: post #16
Bud wrote: post #2

This guy's talking about how his G4 Powerbook started 'showing signs of age' during 2009. Well, yeah. That would stand to reason.

Also, how come he really needed a, judging by the $3000 pricetag, 17" or a fully upgraded 15" MacBook Pro but was able to do just fine with a refurbished lower-end Dell?

I believe the $3000 price tag being talked about is hardware + software.

Re: A musician tells his story of switching from Mac to Ubuntu

#19

Post by brusch »

I just wanted to respond to all the hostility / negativity towards audio on linux.

I've started recording Audio with a refurbished PC (desktop from the company I was working with) with Ardour and Jack. Mixed everything at home in Ardour on a OS X system. Later changed that system to a linux based system and I am happy with it.

I've started with ardour so I never had the problem of "missing plugins" or VST plugins I "had to use". I really like the idea of having an inexpensive "recording computer" in my rehearsal room and having the beefier machine at home to mix the recorded stuff. For the last recording I've update the recording machine to a "newer" refurbished model and it still works great.

The linuxdsp plugins are great sounding plugins (http://www.linuxdsp.co.uk/) and there is even a commercial variant of ardour - the Harrison mixbus (http://www.harrisonconsoles.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_...).

There are some things going on in the linux audio world - and they may fit your bill.

Ardour doesn't do Midi in the current version - but this may be fixed with the upcoming version (I don't do Midi - so no problem for me)

Re: A musician tells his story of switching from Mac to Ubuntu

#20

Post by torpor »

RK wrote: post #13
bryanh wrote: post #4

I've spent a lot of time dabbling with digital audio (especially recording) and my limited experience with Linux audio setups were difficult to say the least. Now, this may be changing with Ubuntu Studio, but unfortunately a majority of commercial hardware is still strictly Windows/Mac (and sometimes spotty at that). Our mostly self-recorded/produced/mixed album ( http://glasscannonband.com/albums/the-chill-room ) wa…

Never tried myself, but some people run Reaper under Linux with Wine.

REAPER-on-Wine works very well on my UbuntuStudio workstation .. but I still prefer Ardour (since I have access to its source code..)
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