Why Linux

[Violette]

Why is some of the best audio software made exclusively for Linux?

[speed-goddamn-focus]

Such as?

[Snu]

actually... lack of good audio software is part of whats KEEPING me from linux... well, that and the fact that its a serious pain to do ANY form of configuration (like spending hours trying to get dual monitors working again after upgrading and they suddenly decided to stop working).

[Dictator]

Perhaps Linux is an easier platform to create music software than Windows. The incompatibility between Windows and Linux is keeping me away from it, and Windows has got all music software I need.

[xaimus]

Why is some of the best audio software made exclusively for Linux?

Rosegarden and Ardour do indeed look pretty slick, but those are pretty much the only really good music tools I can think of.  I can use neither, since they both require ALSA.  :(

There's a lot more music software for OS X and Windows, though much is not freeware/open source, simply because said platforms have more users and have stable audio APIs.  Still, FreeBSD is my preferred music environment; it's much more comfortable to me.


Snu, you seem to have terrible luck!  Once again, my own experiences with an open source unix clone are completely different.  I've been using the same X configuration ever since I installed FreeBSD, and have never had any problems with my dual monitor configuration.  The only reason I'm not using two displays now is because the second monitor died.

[mikosoft]

To add my five cents ...
I must have had terrible luck too because any linux distro I tried (namely Red Hat 9, Knoppix and Ubuntu) had problems with sound on my hardware. All the three were ran on slightly different configurations as I upgraded some components over time.
The problems were all common: playing back music using XMMS and OSS hung XMMS after a random number of played files with the Device in use error message. Behaviour after this message was also random on Red Hat - once the whole system hung, commonly only KDE hung. Sometimes only XMMS hung and once or twice I was able to continue playing music until another error message.
Knoppix behaved much better I only encountered few hungups.
Ubuntu on the other side had no problems but since I have three soundcards it chose the first one (which I normally not use because it's an onboard AC97 codec) and I found no way to change it.
So no matter how Linux didn't quite leave a good impression when it comes to sound sound.

[Waxhead]

AFAIK there are two "trees" of Linux. The red hat based distros and the Debian based ones. I have tried both red hat and debian and a few others and Debian is to my knowledge the most stable and easy system to deal with mostly to a superior packaging system. Linux is a pretty hard system to "get to know" but once you get the hang of it you will be surprised on how much more powerful and flexible it is than for example Windows. That beeing said I use Windows on my computers but I'm starting to run out reasons why

[residentgrey]

ZynAddSubFX, and about 500 other apps.