Transcription
Hi everyone, hope you're doing well and welcome to my channel. But first things first, I should, uh, make a disclaimer. I am in no means an expert in the Linux operating system. So please view these videos and tutorials as a simple guide. And if you do find any mistakes in my presentation and the way I'm actually running it, please use the comment section below to inform me so that I can correct myself in my future videos.
Now that that's out of the way, let's start with today's video. This is episode one of running music production on a Linux operating system platform. I should explain myself why I'm actually using Linux Mint as my operating system for music production. Where there are a few other Linux distributions aimed for music and video production, especially Ubuntu Studio and AV Linux. As a beginner, as a non-expert in Linux operating systems, and going through many distributions, installing them, running them, and having a go, I found Linux Mint the easiest for me personally. It's simple enough to use, it's straightforward. It does have a very similar menu system to Windows. If, if you come from Windows, and easy to operate, easy to DIY. But having said that, I do have another operating system which I also like. And if you are coming from a Mac platform, then Pop!_OS is another alternative. Pop!_OS does have the visual aesthetics of Mac. And I will make a video about Pop!_OS in future tutorials demonstrating how easy it is to set it up for your music production.
So, as you can see, I'm running basically a live install. So I'm going to go ahead and click install Linux Mint, install a fresh copy. And in this stage, I'm actually using a virtual machine to install it because I don't want to use my main PC that I have already running Linux Mint for music production to demonstrate it. Because I want to go ahead and show you step by step what things to check, what things to install, what drivers, what systems, what, uh, modules and packages you're going to need to have a successful music production and audio editing, video editing platform running Linux. So let me go ahead, install a fresh Linux Mint. And within a few seconds, I'll be on the installed version and we can start from there.
Now, if you have never installed Linux before, there are plenty of videos on YouTube. You can go and watch those videos which are made by Linux experts. They'll guide you step by step. It's not as hard as one may think. Back in the days, yes, it was hard. But really, these days, it's very easy to install.
Now, why choose Linux as your operating system and platform to create music, um, record music and production and so on? There are many reasons, I guess. If you're happy with using Windows or or or Mac for your music production, by all means, you know, there's no reason to go to Linux. I will talk about the cons of running Linux, um, against Windows or Mac. But if you have issues with Windows or Mac, the way the operating system runs, especially Windows 11 these days, then I would highly recommend to give Linux a try because it's free. It does support many of the operations that other operating systems have. It's secure. And you can run most applications which are available on Windows or Mac alternative ones. And sometimes even Windows applications, you can run on Linux using an emulator called Wine.
Now, talking about the cons of running on Linux, because Linux is not as popular as the other operating systems, there are a few things missing in there in the music production. The most important ones are the VST plugins that you are used to running in Windows or under, um, Mac OS. But as Linux gets more and more popular, more developers will develop plugins under Linux, LV2. Some of my favorite plugin developers do actually have the plugins on all platforms, in Windows, on Mac as AU, as well as LV2 and CLAP on Linux. And in future videos, I will demonstrate how you can use certain programs using Wine and Yabridge to use your Windows plugins within Linux quite successfully. Of course, not every plugin, not every, uh, VST instrument, but the majority of them will run. I hope this gives you some of the pros and cons of using Linux as your operating system for music production.
Now, one personal recommendation I would make if you are diving into Linux and you want to give it a try is to go ahead and purchase an SSD drive, a new SSD drive. They're quite affordable. $50, $60 will get you a 256 gigabyte SSD drive. So unplug your hard drive and plug the brand new SSD in there and install Linux on there. That way, if you're not happy with it, or if you, uh, confront issues, or you see some of the cons like the VST plugins or the DAW that you are used to doesn't work on Linux, then all you've got to do is you just unplug it and plug your original hard drive back in and then you can continue.
Okay, Linux has installed and we are ready to start using it. And before I log on, um, I should also mention another reason why I like Linux Mint because it not only it supports the original X11 video composer, you can also select Wayland, the new composer, video composer, and I can select that from here. By default, you'll go to Cinnamon, which is a default X11. And here I can also select Wayland, even though it's experimental, but I had no issues with it. And all applications requiring Wayland will work without any problems. So I thought I'll just mention that where in many other distributions, you have to enable it or you have to install it first and then enable it and so on. So that's one other advantage in there. So let's log in to my brand new Linux Mint operating system.
So we have the "Welcome to Linux Mint" screen. We're going to go and there are a few steps I would like you to take when you install for the first time. I've done it, but I think it's a good idea to go ahead and use them to set up your Linux Mint desktop. Colors, you, you can go ahead and do whatever you like with the color if you don't like the colors of it. But the first step I would like you to do is System Snapshots. So this is a program, let me authenticate with the password that I would highly recommend for you to set it up. Very easy for the first time to set it up. So basically, it creates a snapshot of the operating system. And then if you have any issues after you install drivers, packages, programs, and you confront some issues and things look all messed up, you can always go back to a snapshot. So I'm just going to click next.
Now, initially, I would want that to also be on the boot, so that every time I boot, you'll create a snapshot, save it, so that as you are setting up your system, you always have a snapshot. So you can go back to a working state of Linux. And after that, whether you want to go daily, I would probably go weekly, so that way every week it's just going to save a snapshot of your operating system. This is not a backup system. It's not backing up your, uh, personal data. This is just, um, the Linux system. Like in Windows, you know, Windows has a recovery option. It's very similar. But initially, as you are setting it up, I highly recommend to use the boot, so that every time you boot, um, it will create a snapshot. And once you've finished installing and you're ready to go and start recording music and production, you can uncheck the boot option. And once a week, I think it's plenty. So I thought I'll just mention that that's part of the, um, what I would call, you know, housekeeping. So I'm just going to click create so I can create a snapshot right now as a fresh install. So as I install updates, as I install packages and applications, I know I can come back to exactly where it was right now.
Of course, once you have everything set up and running, including your DAW and all your plugins and ready to start recording, don't forget to install a backup system as well, so you can, uh, back up your personal files, personal projects, or an external hard drive. So that's your backup system. Make sure you don't forget that part of your housekeeping as well. Okay, that's done. It's good. We can close TimeShift now.
And Driver Manager is the next one. You can click, uh, launch and check. Make sure all your video drivers are installed. If you are, uh, using an Nvidia video card and proprietary drivers, you can install it using the Driver Manager. And Update Manager is obviously the next one you want to run to make sure that you've got the now the latest updates from the repositories of, uh, Linux Mint. So I'm just going to click that one. And of course, there's a new version of my Update Manager. So I'm just going to apply and update that one.
Okay, we now have the new Update Manager running. And as you can see, there are updates, uh, that I can choose to download and install. I personally, I would download and install all the updates, making sure that you are running on the latest versions. So I'm going to click, uh, install updates and we can continue from there.
Now that we have all of the updates done, it's probably a good idea to actually restart Linux and continue from then on. By default, Linux Mint comes already installed with PipeWire. PipeWire is basically the audio driver that sits on top of ALSA, which is Advanced Linux Sound Architecture layer that talks to the kernel. So PipeWire is basically your driver. But there are two other programs or drivers we need to make sure that they communicate with our DAW, and that's JACK and anything that's associated with JACK and PipeWire.
So for that, I'm going to go next to my Software Manager. And Software Manager is basically your application library. This is where you go in and download and install all the applications that you want, including system packages and so on. So at the top, I'm going to search for initially PipeWire. And as you can see, PipeWire is installed. We get a green tick there. ALSA is installed. We need to install PipeWire-JACK. JACK is basically your driver that sits and works with PipeWire to talk to your DAW. It's one of the important things with, um, for your DAWs and how it communicates. And that's pretty much it. And the next one we need is QpwGraph. And we need to install this one as well.
Now, as you can see, there are two options here: System Package and Flatpak. I will discuss, uh, in basic terms what Flatpak and System Packages are. But in this case, I'm just going to choose System Package. They're exactly the same program, except System Package only installs the missing application files, which is the main files, and all the dependencies would already be installed, um, or will be installed with the, with the install when I once I click install. But with Flatpak, it's sort of like, um, a complete package that every dependency file is included in there. So Flatpak usually a bigger file, um, for for it to happen. So, but in this case, I'm just going to select the System Package. If you want to learn more about the differences between System Packages and Flatpaks, I'm sure there are many documentation. You can go to a website called Flathub, and I will leave a link in the description. That's where you can find all Flatpak packages. But for this, I'm just going to install, um, as a System Package. And all of the dependencies that is required, which are not available, will download and install.
And QpwGraph is basically allows you to connect all of your audio interfaces together and all of their inputs and outputs into applications and, uh, outside outputs of, uh, applications into the output physical output of your audio interface. So think of it as, um, a patch bay of all your hardware and your software. So we've done that one. And the next thing that we are going to install is JACK itself. So I'm just going to clear that one and call it JACK. QjackCtl is what we need. Again, I'm going to install this one and all of its dependencies.
And that's pretty much it. We've got all of the drivers pretty much set up for our audio production. We can enable Realtime Priority. So that way JACK will have higher priority of the CPU and hence lower latency. And that's pretty much everything. So just for argument's sake, let's install a DAW. The free one available, uh, here is probably Ardour. Not sure if I spelled it correctly. Ardour. There we go. We can click and install. Of course, you can install Reaper, you can also install Bitwig, Waveform, Audacity if you are using audio editing. Harrison Mixbus, which is a derivative of Ardour, I believe they purchased the rights from Ardour and they have their own now. So Harrison Mixbus is what's maintaining Ardour at the moment.
Once we've got everything installed, it's probably a good idea to restart your PC so all the new drivers that we just installed, the system drivers like PipeWire, JACK, and so on, so they actually start running in the background. Now, I do have a feeling that this, because this is a virtual machine, even though I do have my audio interface connected to the USB, we might have some issues. So not sure. I'm going to give it a try. So I'm going to go to Sound and Video. And we can see we have QjackCtl here. So I'm going to run this one first. As you can see, at the moment, it's stopped, which is fine. So let's click Start and keep our fingers crossed. Yep, so it's all running in here. So this is JACK that is looking after all of the, um, audio routing. If you look at the graph, so we have system capture or input and output, and audio box is here as well for MIDI. And then we can also use the, the QpwGraph, which gives us a better indication of where things are at the, uh, inputs and outputs. Okay, so that's all good there as well.
So let's run Ardour and see if it's going to work. Fingers crossed, as I said, it's any failure, it could be due to the fact that it's a virtual machine, not a real one, and an empty one. So click open, indexing plugins, okay. And we have Ardour. So, um, double-click. Let's add an audio track. Mono one is fine. So add and close. We have audio there. Uh, obviously, we're not going to get any sound because I don't have any of the, um, uh, anything connected to the audio interface. But yeah, well, that's our DAW. So we are ready to start to record. I never used Ardour, so inputs, here we go. So there are our inputs, capture one and capture two, the inputs of, uh, the audio. Yeah, I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who know how to use Ardour better than me, but it's all, it's all running okay. So that's it. That's all we need to do so far. It's all working. Discard session and quit. Delete all. Done. So we are ready.
That's it for today's video. I hope that with the basic instructions that I've given, you'll get you started into installing Linux and setting up for audio production and installing even the free DAW available on Linux. But as I mentioned, you can also install Reaper or Waveform, Bitwig, and a few others that's available natively on Linux. And if you want me to make videos of how to install and set them up, let me know in the comment section below, and I'll try to fit them in into my episodes of Linux as a music production platform. If this video was helpful, make sure you give me the thumbs up. And as always, thanks for watching and have a great time making music. And I'll catch you in the next one. Cheers, you guys.