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.
EDIT: Didn’t notice your system specs at first. While it looks like your motherboard technically supports the TPM 2.0 requirement for Windows 11, it also looks like your processor might be too old to be supported by Windows 11. Check to be sure before going down the path below. You might only have an option of going to Linux in this case.
Unpopular opinion from a user who uses Linux as his daily driver for everything:
If you’re using stuff like Cakewalk/Ableton and want to be able to do so again in the foreseeable future, stick with Windows. You said you’re not super savvy at troubleshooting, so I wouldn’t want to send you down the path of trying to get Windows software running on Linux through WINe because it’s sometimes pretty finicky. Especially with a rugrat in the mix, you just don’t have the time to be fucking with it.
Windows 11 Activation: https://massgrave.dev/ (In case you no longer have a free upgrade path)
WIndows Debloat: https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat (A powershell script for getting rid of bloatware, telemetry, and other crap from Windows)
How To Set Up Windows 11 Local Account: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlhyl3P5Dxw (to avoid having to use a Microsoft account to log in)
Also, I strongly suggest a clean wipe instead of upgrade, as the upgrade path leaves a lot of weird stray stuff that can be annoying. Back up everything that’s important to you on an external drive (or really any drive except the one your OS lives on) and re-install the OS, set up a local account during install, use Massgrave to activate Windows, and then use the Debloater to get rid of bloat.
But isn’t ableton works fine in bottles as I remember they have autoinstaller of it.
That’s still asking for them to learn to use something entirely new that they might simply not have the time to learn about: Bottles. This person said they’re not savvy at troubleshooting. The last thing they need to be confused about is even getting Bottles running and then installing Ableton.
If its difficult to boot up I’ll prob never record music again. The struggle is real.
bro just grab a cheap ssd and enclosure, install linux on that, slowly play around and setitup, if you like it eventually swap ssds or install it on your main one
I went through the hassle of dualbooting and accessing my drive through linux (not that much hassle but as a beginner it was), ended up uninstalling windows, but i had time to tinker, which is key to making me like it, I was okay with not having a usable pc and I learned what I needed/wanted as substitutes. If you don’t have time experiment on a side device or using an ssd, they are fairly cheap now, you could even use a cheap fast usb if you don’t mind it shitting the bed eventually.
damn could usbs be used as disposable os, i guess thats why tails is used that way, since its bad for the usb to use it that way, they are getting pretty cheap for the fast ones, idk why youd need a dispoable os you could lose at any second tho, maybe if it was very connected to a cloud service
Yes but don’t use it for anything valuable. USBs have a high failure rate when used for heavy read writes.
You can get USB enclosures for M2 drives if you want to go that route a bit more reliably. Ensure you use USB3 (which will still be slow but not as boneachingly bad as USB2)
normally id say “linux is free, there’s no harm in giving it a go”, but between your lack of free time, nvidia graphics card, dependence on proprietary software, and previous experience (and slight distain) for linux i’d say just go with win 11.
there may be a way to get your music software to work in linux, but youll likely need to mess around with wine configs and it may never actualoy work right.
if you are interested ever, fire up a vm and play around with linux to get comfortable with it. maybe when win11 reaches eol (or even before) you’ll want to make the switch.
none of this is said to scare you away from linux. searching for drivers is rarely a thing in linux. there are built in tools in most distros to deal with graphics drivers, but apart from that, given the open source nature of linux, everything else is just handled by kernel modules and are basically seamless unless you have some weird proprietary hardware. linux is fairly easy to use these days, but there is quite a bit of a learning curve because it is a fundamentally different os than windows, and the way you solve problems is very different.
I’ve wanted to be able to spend the time to jump to Linux for a while but the sex trophy demands attention. Maybe when I can leave him alone without fear of strangling himself on a stray wife hair or less, i could look into it. I’ve also thought about just dropping another 2-3K on another future thinking machine and using my current for Linux experimentation. Maybe I start the crotch goblin on Linux with this machine after I buy new and transfer everything to a new one.
Save your money. Kids are expensive. Dual boot or use a live ISO and toy around with Linux mint. Keep Windows 11. You got a lot on your plate. I loathe saying this but use windows for the important stuff and get your Linux thrill from a dual boot or side project. Linux can be full time but until you can jump all in you seem to want backup from others to tell you to go the sane/safe route for now.
Alternatively, consider the following:
- look around for a $50-100 used PC/mini-pc/laptop that someone is getting rid of because it won’t run Win11
- install something easy like Mint on it and use that for day-to-day stuff like browsing and office-type stuff.
- unplug the music PC from the internet and keep DAW, games & win10 on it
- explore and learn the Linux stuff in a low-pressure way, at your own pace.
I’ve also thought about just dropping another 2-3K on another future thinking machine and using my current for Linux experimentation. Maybe I start the crotch goblin on Linux with this machine after I buy new and transfer everything to a new one.
This is actually a pretty good idea considering your current specs may not actually be able to support Windows 11. It’s a little unclear whether you’ll be able to get it running because while your motherboard meets the TPM 2.0 requirement, your CPU is technically listed as not being supported.
It won’t officially work, but it’s not too hard to get it going. I just moved a similar box to 24H2 LTSC.
OP, you’ll probably need to run “setup.exe /product server”, or follow a recent guide. You’ll also need to do this for every major upgrade (i.e. yearly)
I agree though with the plan to use this as a test ground. I also recently upgraded a Lubuntu system to similar specs, and it runs pretty smoothly. But learning Linux takes a lot of time they don’t have.
Could also just setup a bootable Linux USB and run his system from that
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. 🤷🏻♂️
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.
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.
not a dad, signed in just to upvote
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.
I notice there are only a couple replies here that have experience with music production. Obviously core desktop stuff works great, gaming is pretty universally fixed, but music production is a different story.
I have extensive experience with linux and music production. You can use yabridge to run Windows VSTs. However, they can be extremely fussy with graphics compatibility. I estimate that I couldn’t manage to get about 20% of my plugins to work despite hours upon hours of troubleshooting. This is coming from a Linux-native software developer. If you’re just learning Linux, you could be in a world of pain.
I’m sure folks out there have gotten all of it working individually, but I doubt anyone has your exact setup working perfectly.
Ableton and FL Studio will have to be ran through Wine. I experienced major performance issues with FL Studio before switching to Bitwig.
Linux is great. But the music production industry is not kind to it. If you’re cool with being a linux music producer you’ll have to accept that some things just will not work well. But if you want 100% access to everything you’re used to, stick with Windows.
i would like to second this. though i’m not really experienced with it, creative work can be quite the pain in the butt from what i’ve been hearing.
for general usability and gaming it’s generally not really any more difficult than windows it feels like. i would just always recommend to check whether the things you really need run on linux or have an equivalent. this includes checking areweanticheatyet and protondb for the games you wanna play. some companies block linux in their games because some windows hackers exploit linux comparability… some other companies are stupid and think that a single player needs anticheat…………
also your choice of distro very much matters when it comes to how easily you get your things to work. for example i love bazzite for gaming, especially on laptops with igpu and nvidia, but it may not be the right choice for creative work, like i wont use it for my work related programming. there i use fedora KDE.
If you move to Linux, you gotta be committed. I didn’t learn Linux until I said “fuck it” and forced myself to use it exclusively.
You will run into problems. You’ll have some days where you’ll spend 10hrs fixing something that no other person on the entire planet has encountered before, only to realize you needed to type in 1 very simple command to fix it.
As much as people hate AI, it can help with Linux troubleshooting. There’s also wikis and manpages.
If you switch at all, pick something that won’t break. Debian will run on your hardware just fine. You won’t have the latest and greatest packages, and as a newbie you DO NOT WANT the latest and greatest.
Nvidia drivers are a hassle, be prepared.
If all that sounds doable, send it.
Well said.
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! :)
The problem will likely be the warped perception of “low effort” users like you have, that I went in detail on here
This is indicated by phrases like these:
struggle around with all that crap and I need to keep my music shit
Which translate to me as “I don’t want to learn or change a thing, so tell me how I change the most fundamental part of my computing without doing that”.
As I wrote in the comment linked above, with an attitude like that you’d have a significantly harder time than some non-techy person who just wants to have a system that “just works” without preconceptions, not bother with the technical details, but is entirely open to using new programs and doing things differently, as long as they work reliably.
In your case, I’d say stick to Microsoft until you get your mindset and priorities straight. Because then you’d have an easy time without much tinkering at all. But as it stands I think you’d be setting yourself up for misery and failure.
If you’re going to have to change OS anyway you might as well try Linux first. I’m doing a trial run on Bazzite and so far has gone pretty smoothly with the gaming stuff. There’s other stuff I’m having to figure out but I’m pretty optimistic that I will not be putting Win 11 on my desktop.
I kept my ref # for 11, but yeah, Bazzite so far suits my needs. Just now really getting used to Linux, and learning as I go. OMV on an old machine for my NAS confuses me more admittedly. Only thing frustrating with Bazzite so far is the locked os. I would like to modify the menu scripts to include peazip options and extraction to Desktop as a menu item, but I can work around that and do things the longer way. Simple things though are pretty easy. Also sucks that I can’t get Doom Eternal to work on steamlink, but it’s of secondary use anyway. Bazzite is faster, no errors so far unless it’s something I tried to do to it. No RAM leaks like I experienced many moons ago with Xubuntu either (like 2015). I think it’s quite viable as an alternative now (especially since MS has lowered the bar so far)
Yeah so far the only weird issue I’ve had has been some apps will not open files from my file server when I click on the files in the file explorer. I can open them through the file>open function in the app but not the usual way I would do it. It’s something about the way the app is handling the smb:\ path. I found a github page with a suggested fix but haven’t had time to read through and parse what it is actually doing. That’s the only issue so far I was really annoyed by as IMO that’s something that should “just work”. As you said considering the pace windows is enshittifiying the Linux option becomes more viable every day, even if they don’t improve.
I’d try removing the share and readding it, make sure to select the remember checkbox. Then add to Places for the shortcut. Only prob I have with Folphin is extracting from shares (hence Peazip), but the workaround is to open via PZ, then extract within the app (would be great to have access to that menu to have another rightclick extract option for PZ to be fast, but meh, not too important.
“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.”
If you don’t want to have to learn anything new, then switching your OS to something you don’t know how to use is a stupid idea.
Thanks for the tl;dr
Nothing to learn if you’re just doing desktop stuff.
Really want an honest answer here and not a full blown Linux cult answer.
And so you ask in a linux community…
Not all of us have been absorbed yet. I’ve used Linux in passing for years, but only now have tried just diving on outright. Previously my issues were RAM leaks, having to run commands on a laptop on every startup just to initiate wifi, and WINE performance. The former seem to be fixed, the latter seems to be about 89% there with Proton (I even use it for nongaming). Lutris drove me nuts, so Ijust use Steam to do the hard lifting.
Go ahead and update to the newest spyware. 🤷♂️
Debian 13 comes out in a week or so. I have 1 fewer corporation spying on me.
