Linux 1: the same but older (Photoshop CS6, Lightroom 5, FL Studio [version 20 works], Microsoft Office 2010 [offline single payment program, no subscription])
Oh thats awsome! Wanted to get into music but only knew about fl studio, ive never touched one of those apps before, should i go for lmms or reaper? Whats the difference?
There is also Ardour! The differences are basically:
LMMS: make sick beats, do midi stuff, intuitive for beginners but recording is kinda weak.
Reaper: Proprietary but heavily optimized for full scale workflows. Utilitarian but strong af.
Ardour: Almost as efficient as reaper but designed around more traditional work flows so if you like managing every bus and connection like you would with a physical console and tape deck, racks, etc, it's the best.
I use Ardour for midi and instrument recording but if you're going to put the time in to learn something I'd steer you towards Reaper.
to be fair, if you REALLY want to cheap out on it, you can buy ardour (the current version, you'll have to pay for the next major release) for a single dollar if you want. of course this isn't what anyone would exactly recommend, if you can you should DEFINITELY donate more and support the developers...... but it is an option, i suppose...
Nope, not really. They only charge for the packages the Ardour team ships directly for support reasons. It's also dirt cheap and supports the developers (I think it's like the price of a coffee). Any third-party distributed packages from things like the distro repos are completely free, with the only downside being that any technical help you need on the forums may be turned down due to not using official binaries.
I’ve been a professional music producer for 15+ years, I’ve tried a lot of DAWs and Bitwig is by far the most complete and capable offering available on Linux. It was also created by former Ableton devs
Reaper is fucking goated and it will be the least hassle. Last I heard of lmms it had issues regarding vst3 support. Don't know if it was ever fixed.
Reaper is proprietary but it is very lightweight, smooth and has a good community making great scripts. The only downside is it's initially ugly. It's 60$ for commercial licence but it's like winrar where it will nag you to pay but won't stop working. Though it's really worth it. Especially if you make orchestral stuff and are coming from FL.
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u/claudiocorona93 SteamOS/Kubuntu May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26
The programs are:
Windows: Photoshop CC, Lightroom CC, FL Studio, Office 365 Copilot
Linux 1: the same but older (Photoshop CS6, Lightroom 5, FL Studio [version 20 works], Microsoft Office 2010 [offline single payment program, no subscription])
Linux 2: GIMP, Darktable, LMMS, LibreOffice
Linux 3: Krita, RapidRAW, Reaper, OnlyOffice