Operating systems

Linux is the direction of travel#

For professional work, I find Linux is now a more compelling operating system than macOS. Omarchy, the distribution I use, already beats macOS in functionality, in speed, in tiling window management and, in my opinion, in aesthetics. A full tiling window manager and a keyboard-driven workflow come out of the box, so you barely touch the mouse. Meanwhile macOS keeps getting watered down for novices at the expense of professionals.

Omarchy is an Arch-based setup with the Hyprland window manager.

Computer power#

Modern computers are so fast that a Mac Studio-class machine is usually unnecessary for audio. An entry-level mini PC or Mac mini is often enough. Storage is usually the main limit, so I'd add an external SSD.

My battered 2015 MacBook Pro has keys so worn you can't read them, and is no longer supported by Apple for security updates. It was extremely slow running mac. With Linux on it, it boots lightning fast and runs a hundred instances of Dogma.

Windows and professional work#

Windows isn't POSIX-compliant, and it lacks basic tools that every serious operating system has had for decades. It pushes you into an online account just to set it up, which means asking permission to use a machine you already own. The start menu, which used to launch programs, now advertises things to you and in various places you are littearlly subjected to unsolicited political propaganda.

It's also more painful and expensive to develop for. Every time something breaks during my builds, it's because of Windows for a whole host of unpredictable and insanely stupid reasons.

Signing my binaries on the Mac costs 99 quid a year in Apple developer fees. Doing it properly on Windows means paying a certificate authority something like €500 every year, sending all sorts of documents and waiting months, and nobody cares anyway. It's shocking that an operating system this bad still exists and people actually still use it with a straight face.

Bringing professional audio tools to Linux is my mission#

If you want a job done, do it yourself. All of my plugins have supported Linux from day one, and that is where I'm putting my effort: professional audio tools that run natively on Linux. Initially that means plugins, because that's what I make. I'm not going to make my own DAW. Reaper has run natively on Linux for years, and Bitwig runs there too, so it's already covered. See DAWs.

Audio companies and Linux support#

Porting an entire DAW that wasn't built for Linux in the first place is admittedly a big job. But some of the software that runs natively on Linux comes from very small teams. If they can do it, a company with far more resources that can't, may be telling you something about the state of its own codebase. And now that AI has made writing code dramatically cheaper (see AI), the excuse is even thinner.

There is one understandable case: Logic Pro. Apple wants to keep its own software on its own platform. That's a business decision. For everyone else, I can't think of a good excuse. If the one program you need doesn't run on Linux, my suggestion is to write to the company that makes it and tell them to get their act together.