A word of advice for those who are fairly skilled in music production on other operating systems: Linux should to be tuned in order to do precision audio work; those tunings include a low-latency kernel which is not available just anywhere, beware that if you start with a vanilla distribution of Linux, you probably won’t get those optimizations in the kernel, though the software will still work.

Final note: most Hammerfall cards are supported under Linux by the manufacturer.

unfortunatly, with the exception of podcasting, pro audio still eludes the linux, open source world.

as a pro, full time engineer working in proffesional studios with professional musicions.
protools is the defacto standard across the board.
it does everything. and has great surface controllers too.

i have looked at ardour, and some other less memorable programs. and with all due respect, linux has its work cut out for it.

with programs like ProTools LE, Reason ,ableton live, and the myriad of hardware simulations of priceless gear from the 60’s and 70’s.
there isnt much incentive for some one like me to ‘make the switch’

however, as the years go on and the software improves along with the learning curve, they may gain ground with younger generations.

i use linux mint for my ‘non-audio’ computer.
and i love what linux stands for.
but as far as audio goes, nope.

@Lithe. Thanks for mentioning us in your blog. You have an interesting site.

@Josh and @Keith. I have Ubuntu Studio on a partition of my hard drive at the moment, and love it. Dual boot is very useful! A decision to use Linux does not have to mean that you stop using Windows.

@Kevin. Thanks for mentioning dssi-vst. I had heard about it a few years ago, but forgot about the project when I wrote this article. Anyone interested can read more about it at
http://www.breakfastquay.com/dssi-vst/

@Spuffler. Thanks for your excellent points. I especially agree that users of “free” software should consider contributing financially. It’s one way of making sure the software you rely on is around in the future. The Ardour project has just lost a big contributor, but individual users have donated enough to keep the project going.

A few items that maybe didn’t get put up in flashing bold 72 point text:
a] This is Linux software; if you are interested in donating money to fund the software development, great, pick your price and paypal is often accepted; If you would rather not offer funding (and what starving artists has spare money?), then almost all of the Linux software you could ask for can legally cost you zero (MP3, WMA and similar codecs are still an issue, etc.);
b] You could use an older cast off PC just to get familiar with this software, that means your current composition platform does not NEED to be placed at risk and the older hardware might cost nothing if you haven’t thrown out that older Pentium 3 system;
c] My last point, and maybe best of all: you do not have to suffer with buying a new license of Vista or OSX – Linux is an operating system just like XP is an operating system and like OSX is an operating system (with a bit of homework, you will find that Linux can run Windows programs via an emulator such as Wine or Cedega, just don’t ask for low latencies).

HTH, and thanks for all the fish!