Also good luck in convincing Native Instruments and other musical instrument developers to also compile their plug-ins for Linux.

Do VSTs not work on Linux? I'm not being obtuse, I am in a situation where I'm about to build a new PC for writing / recording music and I saw that Reaper is supported in Linux, but was not sure about VST plugin support.

Conceptually the idea of a "VST" works on either platform, because VST is an API. However, VSTs are distributed as executables targeting a specific platform, and almost no VSTs are compiled natively for Linux.

If you're already content with Reaper as a DAW, use "yabridge" which runs VSTs in WINE. It's virtually perfect for most purposes. Getting Linux audio set up for low latency is another Linux rabbit hole, though.

how does this work for VSTs with DRM? Or protected by iLok/etc?

I think software iLok used to work if it were licensed to the yabridge environment; whatever device identity parameters it read were implemented in WINE. For hardware iLok and other stuff, yeah, you're pretty stuck, they usually use goofy hacks or custom drivers that can't be handled in WINE. Someone would have to reverse engineer the DRM and figure out how to redirect the licensing methods. Or just remove the DRM from the plugins (crack them), which is the honest answer to people probably do it in the real world.

Check out LMMS [0], I just found it yesterday to run VSTs, I normally stay away from them and just needed a minimal VST host for one I couldn't resist, and I was blown away at what it could do for free. Between that and the synth Surge XT [1] (another free and open source project), you can make any sound you would want to, and use either the sequencer on LMMS or an external hardware sequencer (yes, USB MIDI works, even Bluetooth MIDI).

[0] https://lmms.io/ [1] https://surge-synthesizer.github.io/

Thanks for the recommendation. Unfortunately I do mostly prog / metal stuff these days and while the occasional synth sound can be had for free, a lot of my sounds come from either Helix Native / Neural DSP for guitar / Kontakt for drums. I'll take a look at LMMS.

For what it's worth, Bitwig Studio also works on Linux.

The issue with most professional VST plug-ins is mainly the UI which is not compatible with Linux.

Ubuntu Studio LTS has VST bridges using WineLib.

Native Instruments is dying anyway.

How does that matter if you already invested 1000+ USD?

Go to Plugin Alliance [0] and select any plugin and when you scroll down you'll see that they are Windows and Mac only. Same for Plugin Boutique [1].

[0] https://www.plugin-alliance.com/en/products/amek_eq_250.html

[1] https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/1-Instruments/4-Synth...

It's because of obnoxious DRM garbage. I doubt helps these companies since the unlicensed users are starving musicians and kids with no money who aren't going to magically spend more.

As a company, or in your opinion of their products?

As a company. Since they have been bought by an "investment company" they have been in a downward spiral. It will take a few years but the process started.

The “year of the desktop” implies a solution for consumers, not professionals. That being said for almost every other kind of development Linux is by far the best platform. I cannot develop on Mac anymore due to Apple making things more difficult in every update.

Package managers are useless for getting the latest maven, gradle, or ant version. This in combination with there being multiple poorly-documented ways to set environment variables and there being no GUI for any of them means that setting up for Java development is massively worse than Windows the instant you step outside of your IDE.

> Package managers are useless for getting the latest maven, gradle, or ant version.

My package manager has the latest versions of maven and gradle. Ant is behind; upstream is up to 1.10.13 but my package manager only has 1.10.9.

did you have to enter some magic string like ppa:chien that literally no one would ever know

I'd say they use a rolling release distro like Arch or similar, where packages are updated very often. In fact, I believe Arch even has a tool to seamlessly manage multiple Java installations.

Maybe in 2054 Debian will figure out how to update packages.

No. They're not in an overlay. They're in the primary, central repo.

maven 3.9.4: https://packages.gentoo.org/packages/dev-java/maven-bin

gradle 8.2.1: https://packages.gentoo.org/packages/dev-java/gradle-bin

ant 1.10.9 (upstream is 1.10.13): https://packages.gentoo.org/packages/dev-java/ant

Oddly there's no overlay that has a more up to date version of ant. So even if I did want to enter magic strings, that wouldn't have helped.

lol gentoo. that's not available in debian, bruh

I’m sure the versions in AUR are up to date.

You should demand Linux software from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo.

>For playing games though - sure, Linux is already great. Steam Deck proves that by playing pretty much everything flawlessly.

The caveat is that this is only true when applied to games on Steam. I play games that aren't on Steam, and I've not even bothered to see if they would run on Linux because it's just not worth my time.

(No, I do not expect something in Japanese that communicates with DMM Game Player for user authentication and DRM shenanigans to work in Linux.)

Exactly. I refuse to use Steam, so linux is a no go for me.

I hate it so much when people equal games to steam.

Linux gaming is not restricted to Steam.

>>The caveat is that this is only true when applied to games on Steam. I play games that aren't on Steam, and I've not even bothered to see if they would run on Linux because it's just not worth my time.

I play Diablo 4 on my steam deck and it's so little effort to install it - you install Lutris, install battle.net and then it just works, you can launch it directly from the Steam Deck UI.

Wine is older than Steam on Linux. And Valve's enhanced Wine aka Proton can be used independently of Steam. The deciding factor is not whether the game is on Steam but whether it uses draconian DRM or anti-cheat that requires and actual Windows kernel.

There are plenty of niches that use proprietary tooks that don't work across platforms.

I don't think that's a fair criticism of the platform 'working'. That's just status quo / profit maximizing on the part of the tool selectors and developers.

Linux works very well with regards to hardware.

Calling out microsoft tools like visual studio as proof linux doesn't work is sort of dumb. It's a tool that targets windows (mostly) written by the developers that sell windows.

You don't have to look very hard for a world class c/c++ tool chain on linux.

>>Calling out microsoft tools like visual studio as proof linux doesn't work is sort of dumb

Oh sorry this wasn't my intention at all. I'm just countering the argument that I see a lot on HN(and tbf, maybe this isn't what OP was saying) - that Linux is so good that there is literally no reason for anyone to ever stay on Windows. Like......yeah, it's great and a lot of things work really really well - but some things still don't. That's all. It's not a criticism of Linux, or at least I don't mean it in that way.

Yeah, it isn't all roses on the linux side, for sure. It really isn't perfect on any of the platforms though. I have had no end of USB issues with MacOS, and with no indication it will be fixed. I am told to buy 'supported' (Apple) devices. That's not very 'universal'.

It is amazing how much improvement there has been in recent years. The main thing that makes me want linux ecosystems to be used is that at least they are slowly improving, not simply positioning for a rent-seeking position in the 'market'.

FWIW at least cl.exe and msbuild work just fine under Wine. I never cared for the IDE so no idea how well it runs but if you just need to build VS projects you can do that.