"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.