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.
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.
Are you intent on ableton and cakewalk (holy shit I haven’t heard cake walk in a minute)?
For ableton, I’d even consider Mac.
I have never personally used ableton and I was not very advanced with FL studio, but at least LMMS seemed to be FL studio like .
Cakewalk is what i learned on. It’s a dumpster but it’s my dumpster. Ableton is what my buddy and I decided to move to because he’s on mac and it works for both of us.
There are different DAW’s if you’re open to it on linux. You’d (probably) lose your ability to edit your existing files, but you could also dual boot for that
Only get the odd releases.
The kid is 1.5 months old and you don’t have time? Once that kid gets mobile you’ll really not have time! And I don’t mean crawling or walking, I mean rolling and scooting.
When my kid figured out how to get places by rolling I had gotten up with her early on a Saturday morning and was letting my wife sleep in… I went to the basement and turned on the Xbox to pay some Rocket League and in the middle of a game she started to roll out of the room. I put the controller down and went to pick her up… 4 years later that controller was exactly where I had put it. She’s now almost 9 and is a great gaming partner, and is getting into robotics, 3D printing, and is interested in programming, so I get to jump right back into my old hobbies, and pick up some new ones.
All that to say, Linux is only going to get better and Windows will continue to get worse, but there’s more important things for you to have to worry about in the very near future than troubleshooting an OS that you’re not familiar with, stick with Win 10 for as long as you can and some day you’ll sit down at your desk and realize you have time to look back in at Linux and you’ll find that it isn’t nearly as difficult to use as you remember. Congratulations on the kid, it can be an incredible journey watching, and helping, a person emerge.
Running daws on linux is bad. Just go to win 11
2 kids here.
Avoid any challenges until you can handle the most important one. Just come back when he’s 1 y/o.
I now game with them on my Bazzite Linux desktop PC and our Steam Deck. Kids love it.
I would say the biggest problem is the music production on Linux. Especially VSTs - those are still hit or miss. And unfortunately the DAWs you mentioned doesn’t have Linux support.
For example I was really trying to do music for several years on Linux, but in the end I gave up and now I’m dual booting Windows… 😿
Vst works fine with bitwig and yabridge I am not music producing but of curioosity I was trying to make this things works,even cracked paid big one part of plugins I maid to work
It works fine until it doesn’t … Some of the plugins were working fine but for example Line 6 Helix Native doesn’t… Also Yabridge stopped working for me few months ago because the developer didn’t have time to update some dependencies. 🤷🏻♂️
Your lack of time is the biggest issue, followed by your music needs (which are not impossible but I also know its not plug and play).
I would recommend going with win11 for simplicity and times sake. I would also recommend at least trying out ameliorated windows11. https://ameliorated.io/
Basically their stock run book makes the OS far more secure and private by setting up an admin account and then making your account a standard user (the way it should be done). Then it strips out all the bloat, restricts services, and installs open source alternatives like libre office and libre wolf. It also drastically changes the UI, which most of it I like and some is meh, but its all much better than the crap stock UI. I run this as a VM for all the stuff I still need windows for and I love it. Nothings ever going to make windows not windows, but this is pretty close and a simple click install. I highly recommend it.
How safe is this to run on an existing Windows install, without going through a VM? I’d love to run this on my home machine.
I’m not sure I can answer that in detail. Also, “safe” is kind of vague so I’m not sure what your threat model is.
But I will say that I would 100% be running it as my home windows if I wasn’t using Linux. Do I think it’s the equivalent? No. Do I think there’s a possibility of Microsoft turning things back on with updates? Yes. But its far easier than running O&O and a bunch of power shell scripts to try to remove bloat and telemetry hoping you got everything. I have no complaints.
I’d say look after your kid and try out Linux a bit later when you have Leisure for it. You can use Linux and Windows in parallel on two computers networked with Samba.
Dad of 4 kids here, I would say use the system that let you concentrate more on the kid and less on tinkering the OS.
Fedora could be a nice successor since it runs extremely stable, best way to be clean and safe are doing the updates, but I say this with 15 years of Linux experience.
Better stay on win 10. Family first.
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Dad of 4 kids here, I would say use the system that let you concentrate more on the kid and less on tinkering the OS.
Dad of 3 here with 20something years on Linux already. This is the correct answer. Just go for win11 if that’s the simplest route for you, Linux will be there once you have the capacity to learn it. With a new baby you’ll be exhausted, you have a crapload (sometimes quite literally) new things to learn already and you just won’t have the time to do all the things you used to (as you already know). Making things more challenging for you by switching to something completely new just eats the very little time you have for yourself.
My work laptop has 11 running on it and it’s good enough. OS on that thing is not my call anyways, but at least on my workload it gets the job done.
Some things designed for Windows just don’t work on Linux, Windows LTSC is a great choice for those situations. Some people have had better experiences, but debloating scripts have always been finicky and fragile for me. LTSC comes out of the box without the usual crap and there’s no risk of it all coming back after an update.
You can grab a copy of LTSC 2021 and activation if needed, which will come with the Windows 10 UI and updates until 2032.
A lot of Linux distros are set it and forget it these days. Nvidia can be finicky though, so i suggest a distro that installs proprietary nvidia drivers for you—I think Linux Mint and Bazzite do that, though I’m not personally familiar with either.
The other thing is music prod which I am not familiar with. I’ve heard that there’s a lack of Linux software for music prod but hopefully some other users who know more can explain what the situation is like on Linux these days.
Steam won’t pose a problem. Steam does something called Proton, a compatibility layer allowing Linux users to run Windows game, and the vast majority of Windows games run flawlessly with Proton. Similarly, you shouldn’t have to worry about losing saves, as Steam Cloud should save and transfer them all automatically.
I recently sucked it up and upgraded Windows 10 to 11. Music production is getting better in Linux, but there is still a whole lot of existing music software with no Linux support. Cakewalk for example has no Linux support, and I imagine getting it working in WINE with VSTs and whatever else would be an immense chore. Same story with Ableton.
That said, if you don’t mind migrating to a DAW with Linux support like Reaper, Bitwig, or even Ardour - which is open source and free - producing music with Linux is the easiest it’s ever been. Just don’t count on Linux support from a lot of VST makers who often require you use their software to install their VSTs. You can usually still install those VSTs, but it sometimes requires less than legal methods, and may be a hassle.
If you’re a producer who mostly just uses a DAW as a recorder for hardware, it would barely be a change to your workflow at all. If you are reliant on Cakewalk and Ableton specific processes and VSTs, it would be much more difficult
Rather than leave another long reply to read, I’ll leave my thoughts simple: if you have another computer you’re not using, try Linux mint and see if it fits your needs. If it’s too much and you can’t get the time needed to figure things out, 11 might be the choice (for now).
But either way, keep Linux on the second and learn a little bit as you get time to! :)
Just gonna add that Windows 11 Enterprise IoT Edition is Windows 11 without all the bloatware, and it’s easy to get it for free from the massgrave.
