Technology

I used to use it as a daily driver about 20 years ago. I use it on an old laptop currently (though thunderbird is... unpleasant).

I use WSL constantly.

I'm quite familiar with Linux.

But until hardware vendors actually support the OS, it's a matter of scraping some eager coder's git repo for things that work. Sort of. But not really.

Very frustrating.

Two main things are Lightroom and Maschine.

I know about Darktable. And lots of others. The photo editing application is the easy part - lots of options. The lightroom secret sauce is fully integrated workflow with mobile and desktop. I am content to pay money for this as it deserves to cost money. However, Adobe does not play nicely with Linux. For this use case, I could likely dual boot (or virtual box).

Music production is a challenge though. Dual booting isn't an option as it's my main use case. Maschine (the HW) doesn't run on Linux. Yes, I know someone a few years ago wrote a partially functional driver for a previous incarnation of the HW, that works in midi mode, but that's not how I use it. Paid good money for it - not keen on burning it.

I even considered running it in a box (assuming can pass through the usb), but as I started to tally up the dependencies, I would come close to having to put it all on the vbox, ending up with a setup that could only be appreciated by the most zealous Rube Goldberg afficionado...

On the software side, I can likely get wrappers to run a lot of it, but it's an ongoing dice roll. The DAW is easy (Reaper). But I have a bunch of stuff I use constantly that I paid for and I don't want the OS to work against me. (And I want to be able to hold the vendors' feet to the feet when things don't work properly - I've had support concerns (for legit bugs) that fell on deaf ears when I said I use Reaper, which was not officially supported by a certain vendor. How much luck would I have with Linux?

Then there's the audio interface. Yes - it'll probably run. But it's certainly not supported.

Unless vendors actually start supporting Linux (flatpaks/snappaks/whatever would be just dandy), running Linux remains an obstacle, not a solution. However, they won't start supporting until user base grows. Chicken. Egg. Ugh.

It's most unfortunate - I definitely try to kick tires on it to see if it's feasible every few years, but I continue to hit a wall.

In the meantime, I, and, I hope others will keep pressure up on vendors whenever possible.

Edit - spent a few hours last night trying to get plugins to work on Linux/reaper. Yabridge. Couldn't get a single one to work. Tried Vital. Linux version crashes - the recommended solution seems to be to run it under the windows version under Yabridge! I haven't even got to trying my more heavily used stuff! I know most, not all (and some stuff that used to run will no more as wine doesn't support some of the new features in Windows), of these things have solutions, but

I sincerely take pleasure in getting things to run in Linux. I really do. But sometimes the effort becomes about trying to get what you need to work to work, rather than actually doing the work you needed to do in the first place!

I will keep trying periodically.