There are several commercial options for Linux. The most-Ableton software out there is Bitwig Studio that has a Linux port. However, it’s expensive. The cheapest commercial solution, with a bit of learning curve but powerful nonetheless, is Reaper.
However, if you want to go 100% open source, there’s Ardour and LMMS (which is a lot like FL Studio). Ardour 9, which is expected by the end of the year, will be more MIDI-friendly than it used to be. LMMS latest git version (offered as binary on their site) has some good new features compared to their stable version, however, there’s still no vst3 support.
I’m an visual artist and I used Photoshop for years to edit my hand-painted scanned paintings. When I moved to Linux, and Gimp3 was out, I was finally ready to leave Photoshop behind. Some features of Photoshop aren’t there, but I was ready to leave them behind. Same with video, I used to have a rather popular blog about color grading with Resolve. I moved to kdenlive, which has none of these tools or plugins. It’s a decision that I simply had to make. I wanted to use foss tools, and that was the price to pay. I’m cool with my decision.
If you gotta go commercial, go with Reaper. The people (a small team of 3 or 4 I believe) behind it are really cool, and they’re doing it for the love of it, their profit is very small.
Another good free DAW option with linux compatibility is Tracktion.
It’s not FOSS (IIRC) but I think Resolve is fully available on Linux?
Resolve doesn’t do what Ableton does. It’s more of an audio processor and editor (like Audacity), but not a real DAW for music.
I use Ableton with Bottles (wine) with VSTs too, like Serum.
I wanted to get into Music with LMMS, but habe not succeeded in using VSTs via wine. How does one do this? I cannot wrap my head around it :(
If you want to use Ableton, then Install it with wine, if you sandbox the prefix copy the VSTs inside the prefix and use them thru Ableton.
Some VSTs may not work or could have some graphical glitches. For example with Serum sometimes some widgets gets black until I pass hover with cursor. There is a fix for this which didn’t work for me that’s about disabling “d2d1.dll” and installing “gdiplus”.
Otherwise you can use a Linux native DAW and use VSTs with wine. Check yabridge and LinVst.
There are a couple of solutions, I’m using Ardour myself, but LMMS might be more like Ableton
There is a more or less complete list here: https://wiki.linuxaudio.org/apps/daw_apps
I can greatly recommend Reaper to you, in case Ableton + Wine doesn’t work out.
I only recently got into music making as a hobby so my overall perspective might be limited, but other DAWs I tried included:
- Ardour
- Bitwig
- LMMS
- Zrythm
I settled with Reaper bc of it’s customizability, freedom in workflow and cheap price without compromising in pro features. It’s actually completely free as long as you are evaluating buying it, which is up to you for how long. And the customizability is off the charts compared to any other DAW.
But what really sold Reaper to me was the lack of hurdles that got into my way of learning to make music.
Have fun
Don’t forget renoise, if you like trackers it’s great and very affordable.
If you switch DAWs, bitwig is really very good and runs natively on Linux.
I haven’t personally used Ableton ever but am a hobbying musician, and pro-audio is possible on Linux as well as running non-native applications via Wine. I found this just searching, there’s apparently a Discord group also dedicated to this project.
Usually doing a web search like “xyz windows program+linux” will produce results, and putting in your distro name will produce better. Anyway, good luck on your journey!
I am a hobbyist and was using ableton live before. As mentioned by others, unless you dual boot - try bitwig studio for similar experience. It is from people who worked in ableton. Have a trial, pirate if can’t afford now.
Foss alternative - ardour is great, but you will have to bring your own plug in suit.
Yabridge tool can help you to run windows vsts on Linux, but not everything works. And beware - it does not work with flatpak version Bitwig, at least it did not.
I’m a happy Ardour user
I’d suggest no-one ever dual-boot Windows with anything. There are to many mishaps when Windows takes it into their head to fuck the bootloader.
Put the OS into a VM. If you only use Windows for one app put Windows into the VM. Otherwise put Linux into the VM until you find you’re mostly using Linux.
Unless you have an old PC laying around …
I have set up a good hand full of dual booted Windows/ Linux machines. Never had any major issues. However, I also noticed that I only use Linux except for games and that’s slowly changing, too, so I would suggest trying the dual boot if it makes you more comfortable to realize yourself that you don’t need it.
Someone in here mentioned bitwig.
I started on abelton and moved to bitwig around 3.X and have been with it ever since.
I love all the different modules and the grid which has give me a lot more expressive control over my sounds.
they are similar yet different; I believe the core bitwig team were ex ableton devs who wanted to take things in a different direction.
I know it’s silly but one of the biggest things that I like about bitwig is customizable shortcuts; this is especially good if you’re coming from ableton because if your a shortcut key wizard you can easily remap similar functions.
if you’ve got an extensive VST collection you can run them with wine + yabridge.
Bitwig is not the only option, but coming from ableton if you want to run single boot it is the most similar (IMO) to Ableton.
Happy to answer any questions you may have about it as well.
The only comparable I was able to find is Bitwig Studio, but it’s quite expensive and I wasn’t doing so much music so I stopped making electronic music instead.
Not too long ago I broke down a the costs between Ableton and bitwig, and they are quite similar over time.
Ableton has the big #'rd updates where as bitwig you get all updates within a year from license activation.
Since BW will still run after the license runs out (you just cant update to any new versions) I don’t always update until there is a new feature that I want to work with drops in an update.
I also limit purchasing licenses to sale periods as a license can sit on the shelf until you’re ready to activate it - this significantly reduced the cost for me.
I think there are other ways to go about this though on the vast sea of the net if your sails catch the wind right ;). If you’re making stuff for fun and not for profit I think everyone should have access to creative tools.
If you make money than it’s worth considering sending some. money their way. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Focus on productivity and pleasure, so make the transition easier :
- try Linux without dual boot, e.g. https://distrosea.com/ (I made a 30min video discussion if you are curious)
- try Linux on a USB stick to get persistence and not be afraid of using private data
- try dual boot with default on Windows, your important data backed-up (e.g. music you created)
- try dual boot with default on Linux and Ableton or whatever you need on Wine, if it doesn’t work in virtual machine
- try boot on just Linux with Wine
- try boot on Linux with Ableton FLOSS equivalents (few listed in this thread)
- try boot on Linux with e.g Ardour or LMMS but genuinely benefit from FLOSS by making and sharing your own plugins
The entire process must be risk free and fun!
According to WineHQ, Ableton’s compatibility with wine isn’t stellar. FL Studio works quite well in it, but switching DAWs can be a pretty major undertaking.
For Linux native DAWs, Reaper and Bitwig are the two best options. Reaper is the most affordable at 60 bucks, with an infinite free trial.
If you’re an Abelton user, I cannot recommend Bitwig enough.
I’m quite surprised Ableton haven’t released a Linux version yet. They would have had to do some of the legwork to stand up Ableton Push.
I assume this is coming at some point, tbh
I personally reckon they’re working on something YAbridge-esque to allow people to bring their VSTs to the push in standalone mode. If they can actually nail that, it’s an absolute no brainer to then release a full Linux version of the DAW and finally allow people like me to make the switch
Every time I’ve tried to run Ableton on Linux over the years (most recently about Christmas last year), it’s the VST support that lets me down. I’ve got hundreds of VSTs I’ve used in various projects over the past couple of decades and I can’t switch unless I know they all work properly—projects not loading or sounding different is unacceptable. I need to be able to open anything I’ve worked on over the years and be able to get right into the creativity without tinkering, as that is what I already have today.
Until that day, I’ve got to begrudgingly keep windows around.
Yeah that sounds about right - VST is such an awful standard, and is only made worse by all the copy protection nonsense that companies pile on top of it. I wish there was an open standard that was cross-platform, portable and used PGP encryption for standard licencing, but alas, it’s too late for that.
What’s weird is the Ableton groovebox is just Ableton on a Linux computer afaik they could release it they just cbf.
