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For me it's been nothing but problems. The primary reason is I'm probably doing things that (almost) nobody else is doing but I assume both countless people are

For me it's been nothing but problems. The primary reason is I'm probably doing things that (almost) nobody else is doing but I assume both countless people are and it should be working fine. Once I hook up some midi devices, want things to be recorded, run a synthesizer stack through pw-jack, expect the midi clock to go down the USB bus, etc, all kinds of interesting behavior starts happening. It even completely locked up my machine a few times. Like hard freeze. I had Audacity just nope right out. It somehow corrupted the local configuration and I had to blow it away to get it to start up again. And then there's the whole new suite of programs you have to learn where their implementation is constantly in flux so the documentation isn't exactly accurate. pw-record for instance. That "--list-targets" option it tells you to use is long gone (that princess is now in the "wpctl status " castle). You gotta check the date of everything written online because the month it was written matters. It's still far from great. I used an Amiga about 30 years ago to do similar things. Now that was something that genuinely just worked. People are still using it. That's how functional it was. But like all these things, I should find the motivation to shutup the complaining and get to cracking on the code to make it suck less. When it comes to linux and things are broken, your assumption on how many people have seen it and who is working on the section of code it's caused by is invariably an order of magnitude or two too high. That's why you can't find any fixes on the web. You're one the first to see it. Exciting, isn't it?

opyate 2y ago
It would be helpful if folks on here who say "works for me"/"doesn't work for me" would indicate which flavour/version of Linux they use. Some distros don't have the latest pipewire stack, and you're left to fend for yourself, having to follow some incomplete or poorly written blog post to side-step what your distro does and put pipewire on top. Me: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, and happily using carla, ardour, lmms and a bunch of midi devices with pw-jack. (I'm aware pw-jack is not required anymore, but that was my old workflow, and it speaks to the backwards-compatibility that the stack offers.)
- kristopolous 2y ago
  Understood but I thought it was clear at least from my post that this isn't a distribution problem. I've certainly tried the distribution version, building from source, and various other things. I have a counter-request: It's really frustrating when people are like "It just works! I had no problem! It's so easy!" in response to someone who has clearly struggled to get things working. It'd be like someone telling you they just had a car crash from a mechanical failure and you responding "Well I didn't! I drove home just fine!" Instead, if you're going to respond at all, something like "I'm sorry, don't give up. I hope you figure it out" would be nice.
  - opyate 2y ago
    I hope you figure it out :) I think the stars just aligned for me, and it worked. Not an expert at all on these things.
  - woolion 2y ago
    Have you tried Linux audio forums/community? I think the problem is that, by experience, regular musicians will just say "you need to use windows (or mac) to do anything serious" so it's complicated to find enough people that are competent in both skills.
    - kristopolous 2y ago
      > Have you tried Linux audio forums/community Actually I've gotten everything to work adequately but claiming the alsa/pulse/jack to pipewire transition wasn't just a new nightmare would be wrong, well for me. > "you need to use windows (or mac) to do anything serious" Correct and maybe! Serious as in commercial or production? Yes! Serious as in exploration in HCI and digital instrument creation and what kind of new sounds can come from that? Now we're back into Linux! I try to (poorly in my opinion) explore the uncharted, I'm not really looking to make a single penny. Take for instance, the classic chaotic pendulum (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yQeQwwXXa7A https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yQeQwwXXa7A), you can hook that up to an Arduino sensor pack and convert the values to midi notes that get piped through a synthesizer or they can be the filter control of the synthesizer. How can the arrangement of the chaotic magnet surface affect the aesthetics of the sound? For instance, if you hook the values up to a sequencer playing arpeggiators and limit the chord choice wisely, it kinda sounds like bach. Especially if you do time dilation and don't try for things to be real-time. Recording a composition is a sequence of 2D diagrams with time signatures. Here's another one, this time with synesthesia. You take a number of sticky notes in various colors and aim a camera at a wall and then assign different roles and rules to the colors and their adjacencies and do a similar pipeline but this time you're playing a concert by sticking post-its to a wall on top of each other. And yet a 3rd. You take a couple hour capture of rush hour from a freeway traffic camera and assign instruments to the lanes, scale signatures to their densities and then you can hear an orchestration of Friday traffic. In all these you're still "playing" music because you're taking an active role in a bunch of aesthetic decisions and constraints, it's just a new relationship.
aa-jv 2y ago
Would you use a distribution that doesn't prioritize the use-case for which you intend? Use a Linux distribution that is intended for professional audio use. >Once I hook up some midi devices, want things to be recorded, run a synthesizer stack through pw-jack, expect the midi clock to go down the USB bus, etc, all kinds of interesting behavior starts happening. On Ubuntu Studio [0]/[1] - this Just Plain Works™, you know. I've been doing exactly this for years on my Ubuntu Studio machine, and I just don't have any of the issues you've encountered. [0] - note that ubuntustudio is a metapackage you can install on most Ubuntu instances, which will set up audio for professional use. [1] - see also, Zynthian: https://zynthian.org/ https://zynthian.org/

opyate 2y ago

It would be helpful if folks on here who say "works for me"/"doesn't work for me" would indicate which flavour/version of Linux they use. Some distros don't have the latest pipewire stack, and you're left to fend for yourself, having to follow some incomplete or poorly written blog post to side-step what your distro does and put pipewire on top. Me: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, and happily using carla, ardour, lmms and a bunch of midi devices with pw-jack. (I'm aware pw-jack is not required anymore, but that was my old workflow, and it speaks to the backwards-compatibility that the stack offers.)

kristopolous 2y ago
Understood but I thought it was clear at least from my post that this isn't a distribution problem. I've certainly tried the distribution version, building from source, and various other things. I have a counter-request: It's really frustrating when people are like "It just works! I had no problem! It's so easy!" in response to someone who has clearly struggled to get things working. It'd be like someone telling you they just had a car crash from a mechanical failure and you responding "Well I didn't! I drove home just fine!" Instead, if you're going to respond at all, something like "I'm sorry, don't give up. I hope you figure it out" would be nice.
- opyate 2y ago
  I hope you figure it out :) I think the stars just aligned for me, and it worked. Not an expert at all on these things.
- woolion 2y ago
  Have you tried Linux audio forums/community? I think the problem is that, by experience, regular musicians will just say "you need to use windows (or mac) to do anything serious" so it's complicated to find enough people that are competent in both skills.
  - kristopolous 2y ago
    > Have you tried Linux audio forums/community Actually I've gotten everything to work adequately but claiming the alsa/pulse/jack to pipewire transition wasn't just a new nightmare would be wrong, well for me. > "you need to use windows (or mac) to do anything serious" Correct and maybe! Serious as in commercial or production? Yes! Serious as in exploration in HCI and digital instrument creation and what kind of new sounds can come from that? Now we're back into Linux! I try to (poorly in my opinion) explore the uncharted, I'm not really looking to make a single penny. Take for instance, the classic chaotic pendulum (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yQeQwwXXa7A https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yQeQwwXXa7A), you can hook that up to an Arduino sensor pack and convert the values to midi notes that get piped through a synthesizer or they can be the filter control of the synthesizer. How can the arrangement of the chaotic magnet surface affect the aesthetics of the sound? For instance, if you hook the values up to a sequencer playing arpeggiators and limit the chord choice wisely, it kinda sounds like bach. Especially if you do time dilation and don't try for things to be real-time. Recording a composition is a sequence of 2D diagrams with time signatures. Here's another one, this time with synesthesia. You take a number of sticky notes in various colors and aim a camera at a wall and then assign different roles and rules to the colors and their adjacencies and do a similar pipeline but this time you're playing a concert by sticking post-its to a wall on top of each other. And yet a 3rd. You take a couple hour capture of rush hour from a freeway traffic camera and assign instruments to the lanes, scale signatures to their densities and then you can hear an orchestration of Friday traffic. In all these you're still "playing" music because you're taking an active role in a bunch of aesthetic decisions and constraints, it's just a new relationship.

aa-jv 2y ago

Would you use a distribution that doesn't prioritize the use-case for which you intend? Use a Linux distribution that is intended for professional audio use. >Once I hook up some midi devices, want things to be recorded, run a synthesizer stack through pw-jack, expect the midi clock to go down the USB bus, etc, all kinds of interesting behavior starts happening. On Ubuntu Studio [0]/[1] - this Just Plain Works™, you know. I've been doing exactly this for years on my Ubuntu Studio machine, and I just don't have any of the issues you've encountered. [0] - note that ubuntustudio is a metapackage you can install on most Ubuntu instances, which will set up audio for professional use. [1] - see also, Zynthian: https://zynthian.org/ https://zynthian.org/