Distro Choice Help - Gaming and DAW stuff

[Ralyks]

Sorry to ask the same boring question, but can anyone think of a Distro that does these two very different things well, and will be user friendly?
Gaming and Audio Editing/Engineering through DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) use.

I have ZERO Linux experience other than hearing about it growing up. With the tyranny and dystopian privacy invasion that Windows 11 is basically making mandatory, it's finally time to get onboard with Linux. I have the parts for a new gaming rig coming in a week or two and will also be converting this system over to Linux as well.

I'm sure there's some great beginner friendly Distro's that will do both of those things just fine, but it's not a combination I've seen anyone highlight nor have I seen anyone recommend the same Distro in both independent lists.

 

[KGIII]

Any mainstream distro will help you with that. They all generally have the same software available, though .deb packages are more common. So, stick to the Debian family if you want a good start into Linux. Debian, Ubuntu, or even Mint -- but I'd go with one of the first two.

Also, because so many people use distros with that package manager, there's a ton of support out there. Most any questions you have will have easy answers found via Google.

There are a variety of DAW choices. I choose to pay for Bitwig, but you have other choices that work just fine. In fact, I do quite a bit with just Audacity.

 

[Ralyks]

Sorry to ask the same boring question, but can anyone think of a Distro that does these two very different things well, and will be user friendly?
Gaming and Audio Editing/Engineering through DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) use.

I have ZERO Linux experience other than hearing about it growing up. With the tyranny and dystopian privacy invasion that Windows 11 is basically making mandatory, it's finally time to get onboard with Linux. I have the parts for a new gaming rig coming in a week or two and will also be converting this system over to Linux as well.

I'm sure there's some great beginner friendly Distro's that will do both of those things just fine, but it's not a combination I've seen anyone highlight nor have I seen anyone recommend the same Distro in both independent lists.

Any mainstream distro will help you with that. They all generally have the same software available, though .deb packages are more common. So, stick to the Debian family if you want a good start into Linux. Debian, Ubuntu, or even Mint -- but I'd go with one of the first two.

Also, because so many people use distros with that package manager, there's a ton of support out there. Most any questions you have will have easy answers found via Google.

There are a variety of DAW choices. I choose to pay for Bitwig, but you have other choices that work just fine. In fact, I do quite a bit with just Audacity.

Thx man, that's what I thought. One of the big ones would probably just do everything. Ubuntu was always the one everyone talked about when I was younger and that's probably what I’ll go with. I'm sure that visual customization is also going to be easy to do with Ubuntu, yeah? Dark Mode stuff for browsers and maybe animations for the OS or something?

 

[KGIII]

Ubuntu was always the one everyone talked about when I was younger and that's probably what I’ll go with.

Ubuntu is a fine choice, close to Debian in many ways. Don't forget that Ubuntu has a bunch of official flavors. Those are all still Ubuntu, but they're packaged with different desktop environments and different default software. You can still install any of the software, it's just a different starting point.

 

[Ralyks]

Ubuntu is a fine choice, close to Debian in many ways. Don't forget that Ubuntu has a bunch of official flavors. Those are all still Ubuntu, but they're packaged with different desktop environments and different default software. You can still install any of the software, it's just a different starting point.

I'm guessing a simple search for "Which Ubuntu distro" will help me decide?

 

[Ralyks]

Ubuntu is a fine choice, close to Debian in many ways. Don't forget that Ubuntu has a bunch of official flavors. Those are all still Ubuntu, but they're packaged with different desktop environments and different default software. You can still install any of the software, it's just a different starting point.

Think I'm going with Ubuntu Studio

 

[KGIII]

I'm guessing a simple search for "Which Ubuntu distro" will help me decide?

You'll get a bunch of conflicting results.

At the end of the day, it's a very personal choice. You can also try them as much as you'd like. Most of them have a 'live boot' experience where you load the OS into RAM and use it that way. You can try a bunch that way.

If you're up to it, you can use virtual machines and test that way -- but it's better (I think) to test on your real hardware.

 

[KGIII]

Think I'm going with Ubuntu Studio

Excellent choice, or so I think.

 

[JasKinasis]

Think I'm going with Ubuntu Studio

A great choice for any audio/video production tasks!

As a bit of background, I drum for four bands. All of whom are about to start recording pre-production demos for upcoming albums.

But a week or so ago, I botched an upgrade from Debian 11 to Debian 13 (completely skipping 12 - which was probably my fatal mistake!). In order to get my home/mobile studio up and running again as quickly as possible, with minimal fuss, I decided to install Ubuntu Studio. Purely because if I re-installed Debian I'd have to re-install and reconfigure everything. Whereas Ubuntu Studio has everything preinstalled for audio production.

I use two Behringer audio interfaces. A 10 input UMC-1820 and an 8 input ADA-8200, connected together via their digital ADAT ports, giving me 18 simultaneous inputs.

In Debian 11, I had to manually configure some settings to allow me to access the last 6 of the 8 inputs on my secondary audio interface. I dreaded having to manually set everything up again after installing Debian 13 from scratch. But in Ubuntu Studio, everything works out of the box. No manual configuration was required.

I've been a Debian user for over 20 years. Once all of my bands demos are finished and things have quietened down again, I'll probably go back to Debian. But for now, I'm sticking with Ubuntu Studio!

 

[Mutant-Strain-X57]

I have the same requirements but I could help you with 2 good distro's for gaming: Arch Linux and Mint.
I checked in the Steam app what Linux distro's gamers use and Arch came up first at 0.32% of gamers using it and Mint came up second at 0.24%.
Arch Linux is not a distro for beginners though so I suggest you try Mint first. A third good gaming OS would be Pop!_OS (I found out by checking out some YouTube videos).

But I'm going to try Mint first myself, installing it on an external ssd so that Windows can't mess it up.
Hopefully this is a bit helpful, I'm a newbie (kinda) myself.

 

[MikeWalsh]

TBH, it's summat of a self-sustaining effect, this "recommendation" stuff. User A recommends distro X to User B on a forum. User B tries distro X, thinks it's the dog's b****cks, and immediately recommends it to Users C, D & E on a different forum. Who promptly turn around and recommend it, ad-lib, to a bunch of other users on assorted other forums.....frequently without actually testing it themselves, but keen to be seen to be recommending what is obviously seen as "the best thing since sliced bread" by everybody else..!

It's the "herd" effect.

This is the kicker, y'see. Just because distro X works fine for User A on his/her hardware doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be the best choice for YOU. There's a ton of silly "memes" and 'tropes' surrounding the use of Arch anyway.....and because of this somewhat laughable reputation that distro's community has become saddled with (which they perpetuate themselves!), despite that Arch may well be brilliant for some people, it's not necessarily the best choice for everybody.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~​

Realistically, there isn't going to be a ready-made,"turnkey" solution for every single use-case out there. Often, you're just as well-off to find the best distro for YOU (which will henceforth act as your 'base').....and then install the necessary additional software from there.

This is how many of us do it. Linux is NOT short of choices, y'know? And customization to get something just the way you want it is going to take a certain amount of effort, no matter WHO you are, OR how good you may happen to be...


Mike. .

 

[Condobloke]

@MikeWalsh ^^^^.... That's a damn good summary of the dog's bollocks method of spreading what amounts to totally untested info, to the far corners of the world, Mike. I love it !
This should be mandatory reading for every "which distro should I use" thread that is posted here (and everywhere else on the 'net)

 

[Mutant-Strain-X57]

Yes of course, it's all eye/beholder stuff that applies to pretty much everything (tv's, speakers, games, music, movies, ...) but it'd be a bit stupid to have to follow every recommendation post one makes with "this is just my personal opinion". Just my personal opinion.

 

[wendy-lebaron]

ubuntu studio is all right. when somebody has the computing horsepower. and especially the disk space and ram.

cannot be annoyed any longer. that "noble numbat" iso is over 7gib. and "resolute racoon" due next spring. will be even larger.

it comes with a lot of fonts. and audio plug-ins. that most people would never need or use. some people like being fed with freeware applications. but others like me become annoyed by worthless articles. like phasex and sooperlooper. somebody else could use them. but i can't and i don't care. it will also come with outdated releases. of the likes of inkscape and qtractor. then have to install via appimage, flatpak or snap. causing even more disk space spent on unused software.

i'm somebody who becomes disturbed. at how many files "fsck" reports while a linux operating system is being booted. if it's 300k or more. like mx linux "libretto" with fluxbox. then it bothers me a bit. it bothers me. although most of it are icons and other "support."

once in a while. i go into a debian "bullseye" with xfce deskop. that barely has 140k files on it. boots fast. just cannot say the same thing about anything released later. admittedly, it has a few applications on it. only the ones i think i need. but it has the old wine 5.0.3 with at least 1gib of baggage. i use openmpt with it. and vst2 plug-ins.

it's a bit of ranting. ubuntu studio used to be the only choice. for somebody desperate to get an equivalent. of using an external sound card with asio driver on windows. to run his/her "in my room only" music studio. but with 64-bit and cpu's getting much faster. even with single cores now being faster. than any single 32-bit cpu could ever hope to be. it has come down to using whatever distribution considered general purpose. "in case i have to do serious work also." ubuntu studio wins here as well. comes with libreoffice and gimp at least. but it could also be done. with linux mint or other "popular" linux operating system.