cross-posted from: https://lemmy.studio/post/3409116

Ideas and Tips for Dual Boot and Audio Things on Linux (2011 Laptop)

Research post

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Hi there,

not even sure if this community is still active, but I will give it a go ;) I’m looking for distro ideas and tips for setting up Audio.

So, here’s the situation: I’ve been thinking about switching DAW for a while now and just tried LMMS so far, which I didn’t like at all. I’m curious to check out Reaper and/or Ardour next while also considering Bitwig as another option.

Currently I use an old MacBook Pro (~2011) for Music Production - running MacOS and Ableton Live 10. The plan is to Dual Boot this machine for now, but I’m unsure which Distro to go for. SSD is new, I can dedicate around ~250 Gigs to this install, which is a lot since I mainly use external storage usually. 4 GB of RAM, I think some swap space would be ideal.

On my main machine I’ve so far tried Ubuntu Studio for about 3 Weeks, so this is absolutely not an option. Then I’ve tried Mint for literally just 3 Days because I really hated the look of it (maybe no surprise as a long-time Mac user). I’m on arch-based/Arch with Plasma 5/6 + pipewire now since around 2 years. Haven’t been touching on anything Music Production related on here, just the average everyday use to play Videos and Music (which just worked out of the box) so I’m not really familiar with anything Audio-related on Linux.

I want the Music Laptop to just be pretty minimal, a bit of Note-taking and Office stuff besides the DAW’s. The Laptop is usually offline, so I think going for Arch/ a rolling release is not very ideal. I thought about just Gnome or Plasma 6 on Debian, as I wanted to try out Debian for future projects anyways. Not sure how this will play out on that old Laptop, so just thought I’d ask if there’s any experience with older machines before I get into it. Also open for other recommendations in case I missed some other good distro option, I feel like I’m also in an experimental phase currently and wouldn’t mind distro-hopping for a bit.

Then, I feel a bit overwhelmed by the whole audio thing, so I would be very thankful for useful tips, videos, websites or similar that might help me to figure things out.

I own a Focusrite Audio-Interface, and it will be a problem if I can’t get this running, but I will definitely try it out before I buy a new one. Another issue with this Laptop is that the Audio jack broke years ago inside the machine, so it’s not even possible to get any sound out of this thing if not via the Interface lol. Well, actually there is: Bluetooth Speakers, which I also do own but… meh. Usually on Headphones for Music Prodcution, so I kinda need the Interface. Not a huge VST user, so this is less of an issue for me. I mainly use my Interface to record Instruments/Mics or just my field recorder and Samples.

Hope I can get some feedback on my throughts and recommendations, thanks a lot in advance!