With both OS you eventually have problems and if you are willing to solve them you can put a lot of time and effort into doing so. The only difference is the openness of the system. With Linux, you can easily go much deeper (for many reasons: community, available source code, multiple implementations for different system components, custom kernels). But don't get me wrong: More options aren't necessarily better, because it can take a lot longer until you run out of options.

> In Windows or MacOS I would have been up and running immediately.

Over the years, I have thought so too sometimes, but every time that I tried, I had to tinker with Windows too (not necessarily to solve the same issue, but then something else)...

"Just use asio"? Had a borked driver cause blue screens on bootup for a piece of hardware, talking 5 digit price tag hardware... Same driver randomly doesn't present an Asio device.

Want to stick to "windows default audio engines" well, wasapi is what you should use now right? KS has the best latency ( wasapi should be calling that under the hood ), how about the other 3 options?

When it "just works" it's great. When it doesn't you cannot "dig in and find you need to go directly to ALSA(the KS alternative for linux)" because the driver you have loaded may not even present a KS interface, if your DAW even allows you to use something which isn't ASIO...

I have my faie share of pain with audio on windows, I wouldn't trade that pain for audio on linux granted but honestly, never had a single issue on macOS...

I only ask because I too had audio issues with Ubuntu LTS and Debian (both stable and unstable in hopes to get newer packages) in the past. I never got past the problems I had so I reverted back to Windows but if I go down that rabbit hole again I'd likely try Arch just to see what happens.

In that vein, I ended up looking into Linux from scratch this weekend. I'd love to have a laptop that runs reaper and that's it.

Someday, but for now, a minimal Ubuntu install is doing the trick for what I need.

[1] http://www.bandshed.net/avlinux/

[2] https://ubuntustudio.org/tour/audio/

>This article describes how to configure your system for recording, mixing and playing back audio as well as using it to synthesize and generate sounds. Those activities are subsumed under the term professional audio (pro audio) and typically require low latency performance.

First link.

I then I noticed screen tearing in my browser (fresh install of Ubuntu 22.04).

Oh ok, well maybe I've got the wrong drivers and it's eating CPU.

Run all the tests to ensure I have the right Nvidia drivers. All checks out.

Then I find something about hybrid graphics mode. Sure enough, I needed to set my graphics to discreet mode in the BIOS. Screen tearing is now gone.

Well now that I'm on it, why don't I move to LXDE from Gnome? Can't hurt right?

No dice.

I look up my laptop. Find that only 20.04 is "officially" supported by Lenovo. Ok, well I need to install that now to rule that out.

While I'm waiting for that to install, I stumble upon real time kernels, apparently popular for audio stuff.

Try that, marginally better but latency is now unstable. Switch kernels again.

Now I dig into Reaper settings. There are tons of things that can improve latency (that I'm also familiar with). Bitrates, buffers, sample rates, etc.

This is all to say I didn't think I'd have to change whatever the hell pulseaudio is to ALSA. Why should I have to do anything? I don't in Windows.

This whole thing was a project to get myself off of Windows and my point is it shouldn't be this hard. I've used various DAWs in Windows over the last 20 years and it was never difficult.

> In Windows or MacOS I would have been up and running immediately.

I watched a couple of videos yesterday by musicians using Ableton on their new Apple M3 Max laptops with latest MacOS, talking about how it was dropping audio frames audibly during live performances

I don't think it's safe to assume MacOS would reliably solve your audio latency problem. You may have to experiment.