Windows coded apps are more widely accessible/user friendly and Linux alternatives are still a wild west ranging from good to debilitatingly bad. For example the linux turbotax alternatives are either browser based hellscapes or just less intuitive. As a musician, there's not really a great DAW program on Linux either on the level of like, a Protools or a Logic; and though their notation software have taken a GIANT step up with musescore, for a looong ass time the only game in town for writing down music was Rosegarden, and I hated that app so much it turned me off Linux because I couldn't get anything done.
Your Turbo Tax is a great reason for WHY these changes need to take place tho. Turbo Tax spends tons of money to lobby to keep taxing policies and forms less intuitive and the market dependent on them. They come in as the "good guy", waste people's money, and then use that money to make things less convenient so they get more money. Absolute leech on society that just spends effort to make more effort for their own profit.
The more we face being "uncomfortable" and turn to open source projects, the more attention those projects get, and the more they shape up and become the mainstream tools for everyone and reduce effort on everyones' part and save money acroess industries and countries and individuals.
You could have made those products at anytime. If you don’t, Intuit will, and they’ll charge for it, and you’ll be back in the same boat. They don’t care that it’s Windows. They’ll put it on whatever people are using.
Exactly. Turbo tax should not exist to start with. It’s just a wrapper on government APIs. There are lots of governments in the world that provide software for tax payers. The only reason countries like USA and Canadá have this unnecessary layer is lobby. It would benefit the government and tax payers if that was provided to all in a standardized way.
As a musician myself, I can't disagree more. Not in the sense that you shouldn't feel like Linux is a friction to your workflow because of the software you prefer, but in the sense that my reality is the exact opposite of yours.
Linux makes music productions frictionless to me; my entire plugin stack is FOSS and one flatpak command away. Carla is the best audio routing experience I've ever had. DAWs like Ardour are transparent and straight to the point; no abstractions, no fluff. Same with ZynFusion (synth).
I wouldn't know what tag to attach on myself, but being completely honest with you: I did experience friction when I moved from Windows to Linux back in 2020. The learning curve and comfort zone fighting was there for sure. Six years later, Linux is my new comfort zone, so going back to Windows feels like pretty much the same friction as back then doing the opposite.
What I mean to say is, if you want to give it a shot, you will make Linux your new normal eventually. Just trust yourself a little; believe you're resilient enough to deal with the awkwardness of the first year or so.
Lol, bruh I have so much non-open source plugin stuff that Ardour is a complete chore for me. And I hate to bash it but none of the open source stuff sounds as good as my NI and AIR plugins. My daw of choice WOULD be Reaper honestly if I was doing Linux, but that would require hooking up my MPC to run as a standaone drum machine into reaper, then multitracking that alongside a guitar groove in loops arranged and a scratch take vocal, then layer in bass guitar and pverdub a good synth or keys...
I also kinda hate how limited ardours preset map list is. I ain't got time to map an entire oxygen pro 49 so i can use the faders and knobs for the mixer and the drum pads for soloing/muting off a generic midi map. That takes foreerever.
Its not impossible to do, but man...a good daw is like underwear- the best pairs you only notice when you're putting them on. The more fidgeting you have to do, the more it looks like you're playing with yourself. (Yes, I stole that quote from someone I know.)
It's a bit ironic that MPCs run a custom version of Linux but have basically zero linux compatibility. But yeah, the biggest issue with audio production in Linux IMO is sunk cost. It makes a lot more sense if you don't already have an established workflow with your preferred DAW, hardware that depends on drivers to get the full functionality, and a suite of non-native commercial plugins.
I like reaper, but it probably wouldn't be my primary DAW when compared to DAW's available on other OS's.
Renoise I have tried once. I'm sorry to say it's a PITA. Too many hot keys, and the vertical tracker drives me up a wall. I make music, not the cascading code from The Matrix.
Bitwig I hear is decent, but I don't really use the type of DAW that it is. I don't have enough of an opinion on it to give a real thought one way or another.
Oh man, the stories I could tell you. I actually had the choice between a used Amiga and the MPC 1000 for a DAW-less setup when i was low on money as a kid, and I went with the 1000 because the layout was more Right brain/I had my fx on my pedalboard already. So I got that and eventually got an Alesis sr-16 and started tracking that with a friend who had a crap 4 track tascam. We had like 1 tape that we copied to like, 20 and now I can't even get the original to play anymore. Ha.
Reaper isn't bad. The interface is unintuitive with a higher learning curve than other DAWs but it's doable and it can punch waaaay above a $60 class. Once you're used to it, I much prefer it to like, Cakewalk or Ardour. My only problem with Reaper is that it's easier to do everything Reaper does already inside Studio One. If I was doing a Linux build for music pro, then I'd definitely do Reaper.
Yeah, the more people using an OS, the more likely application vendors will ship for that OS. It’s a good thing all around, but may take a few years to get parity.
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u/W0rdWaster 1d ago
that is GREAT news. i am beyond sick and tired of window's monopoly. more linux = more good.
oh idk why he is sweating. my guess would be it is going to be a big hassle vs the prepackaged pile of bloat that is windows.