Cubase for Linux

I think you’re completely wrong. Do you think corporations with thousands of employees picked Windows because of games?

Almost all corporate Windows applications are moving to cloud services. DAW software and other relative niche applications are of no real interest to Microsoft, and the specialised hardware necessary means it’s not a candidate for Azure anyway. The days of the Windows client in the form of a high-powered PC are numbered – just have a look at the 2GB RAM/32GB SSD devices masquerading as laptops in stores these days. In hardware, gamers have led the way and DAWs have followed, so perhaps the idea is not so crazy?

Many applications are, but many corporations still haven’t switched over. There are plenty of reasons for why some corporations would want to retain data within their own networks.

I don’t think it is in the sense you’re using the phrase. Yes, sooner or later it’ll go away probably, but the same can be said for a bunch of other technologies as well. Because the “niche” software developers that develop for PCs (and Macs) won’t spend the money to develop for Linux. The field is tough to stay competitive and profitable in. Again, you tell me which developer will take the lead to develop for a fraction of a fraction of the market…

And it extends beyond the developers of the “hosts” - Steinberg and Cubendo, Avid and Pro Tools etc - it also includes all the third party developers who produces all the plugins we use. Who’s going to get Michael Carnes, a one man operation of spectacular plugins, to spend valuable development time to not only develop for another OS but then also provide continuous support for it? Or Izotope? etc…

I disagree that gamers “led the way” over DAW users. That’s just not correct I think. DAW users and other content creators went to more cores long before gamers did, and we still generally benefit more from more cores. It could be argued that content creators also benefit from more memory as well as way faster and larger storage. A content creator and a gamer just have way different needs as far as the platform is concerned.

But let me also ask the following: Can anyone recap for me what advantage Linux would have for me over Win 10 or OSX?

If you’re happy with WIndows or OSX, then none, at least not for you. The argument is not against other operating systems, it is simply an argument to give users the option to use Cubase on Linux.

From my original post, back in 2014:
3. Windows turning into a mobile phone
4. The high price of Cubase is more attractive if there is no cost for the OS
6. Live distros means Cubase could boot from a USB stick

… the list could go on. I could even conceive of a USB device that would incorporate soundcard, eLicenser and storage with an optimized Linux, all in single device, that would eliminate a lot of the variables people encounter with general purpose computers.

You can boot windows from a stick too…

C’mon it’s useless to prove Win user that Linux is cool. It has totally different paradigm. You can not be monkey key presser to use it.

What I say Windows doesn’t have any advantages. It used to have, when they rolled up DirectX and it was super fun to make games using it. And tones of games appeared. Also it was “cross computer” system in compare to OSX, you could install it on any PC. Lot’s of games available made Windows popular.

I hate windows with all my heart after I installed brand new Win8 and the next day I got USB Flash drive virus from my mother’s work, that infected all *.EXE files.

All dat crap with cryptoware and viruses make me sick of it.
So now I am dual boot and load windows only to make music.

Well, I’d like to see the rest of the list because the above isn’t particularly convincing in my opinion.

No, Windows is absolutely not “turning into a mobile phone”.

Whether or not Cubase is ‘priced high’ is very much up for debate. In my opinion it isn’t, unless you’re a hobbyist. If you’re a hobbyist then I see the point, but you then also have other options that are cheaper.

As for an “all-in-one” USB device: I can conceive of that too, but the issue is whether or not developers will be ok with bundling all of that, and even if you will be. Suppose your USB “soundcard” breaks. One of the analog components breaks for example. Then what? There’s often a tradeoff between consolidating features into “all-in-one” packages and on the other easier troubleshooting and replacement of individual features.

I’m not sure what a “monkey key presser” is, but it sounds a bit like an insult.

Just so you know, I was lobbying for porting Nuendo to BeOS back in the day, but the OS died. So it’s not like I’m against more operating systems or software running on more of them. And I’m also what I think you would normally call a “poweruser” since I make a living off of using Pro Tools (mainly) and Nuendo, on both OSX and Windows. So if you saw me work you’d see me make heavy use of key commands both for the respective OS and especially for the apps. So it’s not like I’m a user that knows nothing about technology.

So, yeah, you could absolutely convince me if you had something compelling to offer.

To you. Like I said, if you could educate me I might have the same opinion. But just for the sake of understanding where I’m coming from to some degree:

As I mentioned I’ve worked on OSX and Windows for years and years in pro post-audio. My first cellphone was a candybar Nokia and then finally I got the first multi-core Android phone. It didn’t age well at all and I got fed up with Android. So, at the time I switched from Android I had an Android phone, worked on both OS, had a third party media software (MediaMonkey, which I still use), Sansa mp3 player, Yahoo email etc. Rather than paying the price for Apple products I figured I’d try out Windows Mobile, and so now I use MS products across the board.

So the point here is integration into an ecosystem. People who hate MS and Apple hate this concept. And I used to hate the concept of consolidating so much data and information into a large corporation’s products. Here’s the point though; it actually does offer a large amount of convenience. Now, if Linux can offer the same then fine, but if it can’t then Windows does have advantages. I get my notifications automatically on all my MS devices at the same time. I get automatic sync and backup between online storage and devices, stationary or mobile, and so on.

And this of course ignores the chicken-and-egg software situation.

If you’re talking about the purely technical, maybe looking at some core functionality of the OS, then I can see how Linux would be better. But in practice many of us, most I would say, don’t limit ourselves to that.

Windows 8 was hated by a lot of people. I personally think the hate was completely out of proportion to what the OS was. But it’s an absolutely irrelevant point to make because the OS you’d get today is Windows 10, not 8. So whatever 8 was you can forget about.

And as for getting infected: It’s very easy to avoid that; don’t go to questionable websites, don’t install questionable software, don’t double-click on questionable files, and don’t connect devices you know nothing about. Android is currently the worlds most used OS if I understand correctly, and it has far more issues with security than Windows 10 Mobile. Why? Is it because W10M is more secure? It’s probably just because “nobody” uses W10M these days (except me and 4 more people). So, with popularity comes a target on your back, and that’s why Windows has always suffered and now Android (as well as iOS btw). So if Linux became as popular as Android it’d have just as big a target on its back, and probably just as much “crap”.

I haven’t had a virus on my computer for year and years. Zero issues. All it takes is a moderate amount of discipline.

+1 for Cubase on Linux! That would be awesome. All my machines are Linux except for the one running Cubase which is on Windows. Would love, love, love it!

Because Linux is not spying on you. Telemetry is hard coded on Windows 10 and OSX has it too.
With Linux you have real control over crucial features of the OS.
Microsoft and Apple are constantly trying to close the platform (Windows 10 S is a great example).
Apple uses OS X/iOS upgrades to cripple hardware so you have to buy new stuff.
Windows and OS X have a lot of bloatware installed and you cannot remove them.
Linux can be a lot lighter and more stable than Windows and OS X.

I could give you a lot more reasons if you want to, but the main thing for me is freedom.

Telemetry isn’t “spying”. The usage of that word is just silly. I really wish people would stop using it in this cnotext. “Spying” is something that’s done covertly. If this really was “spying” then these MS/Apple are the worst spies ever, telling users what they’re doing.

I have no idea how this relates to DAW work. Or other work for that matter. Are there examples?

Apple has in my opinion one of the worst upgrade paths historically, from an economic standpoint. I don’t disagree with that. Fortunately I don’t buy Apple products (for that reason, and because I find them overrated/overpriced).

Who cares if the OS contains bloatware as long as it runs as fast as you want it to?

Really the same objection as the previous one: Does Windows run as stable as I would like it to? I have read pretty much only good reviews regarding the stability of the OS by testers and system builders who us Win 10 + Cubase/Nuendo (7 or below). So I just don’t see how this is an issue.

If I was a data center builder, or did backbone stuff for banks or something, then maybe I’d care about this. But that isn’t the case, so…

Freedom is nice. I don’t argue against that at all.

Sending unknown and/or encrypted data and sending personally identifying information to known and unknown third parties is something a spyware would do. So I would call it spying.

Real-time kernel, memory management, use a desktop environment (DE) that has a low resource usage, specific audio performance tweaks…

And what Apple/M$ are trying to do is to lock you down into their ecosystem so you cannot get apps/software from other sources besides their own store.
I recommend you read this ~> Epic CEO: “Universal Windows Platform can, should, must, and will die” | Ars Technica

The thing is: it doesn’t. Everybody knows Linux (with a full feature DE) can be a lot faster/lower on resource usage than OS X and Windows.
And I want to be able to control my OS. If I want to uninstall something, I want to be able to do that (freedom!).

I don’t think Windows 10 is really that much better than Windows 7.

And Linux development moves a hell lot faster than OSX/Win10.

But don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Windows or OS X are crap. I think they are a lot better for audio than Linux right now.
Linux audio stack is still a mess ~> http://tuxradar.com/content/how-it-works-linux-audio-explained

But because development is extremely fast on the open-source world and Linux is free (as in freedom), I think it could be A LOT better than OSX/Win10 in the future.

People are always telling me that “the market isn’t there yet” but I think maybe it is. And it’s just waiting for the iniciative from the big ones to flourish.

I don’t trust M$ and Apple with my OS because they don’t care for their customers, they just care about controlling and making profit.

That’s like calling a bank clerk who asks for and uses your checking account number a white collar criminal. Hey, both of them got a hold of your account number, right?

It’s just not the same thing. And if you want to argue that MS sends off “personally identifying information to” “third parties” then I would LOVE to see just how and when that happened. Because I’m pretty certain it hasn’t.

People do “specific audio performance tweaks” on Win 10 as well. I just want to learn something about what this control is in real life, in practice.

In your personal experience; how do you manage memory to benefit a DAW on Linux?

Your problem here is that a lot of the top tier DAWs don’t run on Linux, so you can’t run DAWbench to figure out just how much faster it is.

But it’s absolutely beside the point (and I apologize for not being specific enough): If I assemble a Win 10 PC and I need to run X tracks with Y plugins at latency Z, how do I benefit from a 10% increase? Either my computer runs my DAW and does the job I need it to do, or it doesn’t.

So unless you can show how DAWs that we use will actually run better or faster on Linux in a way that benefits me as a user, I just don’t see why I would care.

Ok. I honestly don’t care unless the software I’m not using and can’t install slows me down. To my knowledge it doesn’t.

You’re quoting an article over two years old? Does the article discuss the stability of a work-dedicated DAW computer? It probably doesn’t.

Why would I want that? How does that development speed benefit me?

I wish you had said this from the start. I don’t understand why you disagree then. Of course Linux COULD become better, but it’s been around for quite some time and it still isn’t (according to you) after all this time.

I don’t think they care about control at all, they care about profit. Control is only interesting if it increases profit. That’s it.

Look, I don’t have a problem with people digging “free” and “Freedom” and independence and non-profit etc. I think that’s cool and even absolutely essential. I hope the movement not only doesn’t go away but grows. But for anything I can think of that I would actually need that type of privacy / freedom etc, it’s either just more hassle than it’s worth or it’s for things that I wouldn’t do anyway.

Just for comparison: I was one of the several billion people who got their Yahoo accounts hacked.And to me that was a bit… if not ironic at least eye-opening, because while everyone was crapping on Microsoft because telemetry supposedly sent your children to Asian labour camps and violated your buried grandparents it appears the actual threat that materialized and screwed up hundreds of millions of users’ privacy. That was a real threat that even materialized.

I hear nothing from the anti-Microsoft crowd about Yahoo. Nothing. Zero. I just find that curious.

PS: MS is still fighting the US government in court to keep user data private and away from the government when stored abroad. Major kudos to MS for taking that fight.

C’mon man, are you joking?
See for yourself ~> https://archive.is/QFL8e

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=windows+10+privacy

So just because YOU don’t care for privacy / being able to control your OS / fast-paced development (new features and bug fixes) we shouldn’t be able to have it too? I don’t think so.

I gave you more evidence than you need to see it would be very beneficial to have Cubase on Linux, but whatever…

PS: Don’t worry, I’m not just anti-M$. I don’t trust Apple, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, etc with my data either.

PS2: Bitwig is on Linux since it was released. Reaper has a native Linux client now. It appears that FL Studio runs fine on Linux via Wine.

I hope one day it will make commercial sense to support Linux. So +1 to that future!

If the avg daw user is already struggling with Windows or MacOS, all hell breaks loose when they try to use Linux, the amount of support topics will explode :slight_smile:

Probably not. Likely only 50 to 100 people would be using it. A hundred super-nerdy people.

Ok. Let’s try to have a rational conversation for just a couple of minutes, sounds good? Look:

See for myself what? What is the above supposed to refute? Have you even read that yourself?

You wrote that MS is “sending personally identifying information to known and unknown third parties”. I asked for evidence that that’s what happened. Can you go through those links and just quote the sections that show exactly that?

Because that would be rational. In a rational discussion if you claim the above and I ask for proof of it, the evidence isn’t some link to a long data log which does not show any personal information. And it is not showing general telemetry traffic either.

I mean, do you understand the difference between sending personal data to third parties and simply sending telemetry data to MS to be able to run the services Win 10 uses?

Again, let’s try to be rational: Where did I say I don’t care for privacy? I never said that.

And where did I say that you shouldn’t have what (you think) I don’t care about? Where did I ever suggest that? I asked you for good reason why I would benefit from Cubase/Nuendo on Linux.

Clearly I disagree.

Well, this is about Cubase which is a top-tier DAW, not those other ones. I mean, if I were you I’d just switch over to one of those DAWs instead since Linux appears to be fairly important to you.

…and vocal…