Bitwig works nicely and has been winning over some Ableton users. Reaper has a Linux version and Ardour is a pretty popular Linux DAW
this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2025
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I second Bitwig. I was an Ableton user before switching to Linux, and shopped around several FOSS DAWs before deciding to just keep a Mac around to use only for music production. But I later found Bitwig, and was able to use that to switch to Linux full time. I am just a hobbyist, but Bitwig is absolutely professional grade software.
I third bitwig, especially for an Ableton user. It was developed by former Ableton developers and is supposed to be similar to it. It's available as an official flatpak, and it has a 30 day(?) free trial. Some people seem to even like Bitwig better than Ableton. I've been seeing a bunch of videos on YouTube about people moving from Ableton to Bitwig after trying it out.
From what I understand, aside from whether the DAW you like will work you also need to check whether the VST plugins you like will work.
Much later edit: I forgot to mention https://www.zrythm.org/, which is an open source DAW which is supposed to be fairly similar to Bitwig.
Ooo thanks for the zrhythm reco. They might be suitable for me because i liked my time with the bitwig trial, but I'm below even a hobby music maker and only like to mess around every now and then so paying the price they ask for is probably not financially responsible for me at the moment.
You're welcome. I hope it works well for your purposes!
One other thing to consider is that Bitwig has 3 tiers, you can upgrade between them, and they have significant sales occasionally, like in the Summer. I think the 3 tiers were going for $79 ($20 off), $149 ($50 off), and $299 ($100 off) in the sale, from what I recall, and also significant education discounts if you're a student. Finally, there are legitimate places online to buy used licenses of DAWs.
Didn't know you could buy used licenses, I'll definitely have to look into them. Thanks again.
Yeah, it's definitely less well-known that this is possible. I don't know if all vendors allow it, but many do. You're welcome.
Another former Ableton user who moved to Bitwig after moving to 100% Linux.
The pricing of the various tiers is similar to the price of the Ableton equivalents but the upgrades are generally more expensive, however the upgrade process is different so most users find the value for money to be around the same
Reaper is definitely the way to go. While it is not FOSS I feel it has the spirit of Linux. It is extremely customisable and flexible and it has all the features you expect from a good DAW.
The real issue is finding instrument and effect plugins that work on Linux. The popular ones are all windows or Mac only because they depend on DRM control software that doesn't work on Linux.
Yabridge exist for windows plugins. Surprisingly works pretty good. My arturia pack works w/o any major issues. There is some virtual monitor thingy I do on sway to workaround weird performance bug. But I don't think it should surface on kde for example.
As for Reaper, DAWs and Linux: Make sure to have low latency setup for pipewire. I had to configure some stuff on arch and add pipewire latency variable with lowest values that my interface can handle to launch option for reaper. I prefer playing and practicing on Linux over the windows in terms of latency now. For how messy pipewire can be, when it's setup correctly, it's magnitudes better than windows for low latency audio not just because of latency, but because of current windows audio drivers limitations. I no longer record or edit for quiet some time, so can't say how it compares to other DAWs. Also why I'm personally using reaper: it's intuitive, fast, fair price, good terms (perpetual license with updates, there is eol for updates, but it's focused on specific version release, and for how release cycle goes it can last almost a decade, and you can still use the older versions after update eol, but better read terms yourself), and It has trial period over which I decided that it's best suited for me.
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Reaper is the GOAT
Another option for using vsts is to run the Windows version of reaper in wine and load in your vsts the same way.
The windows version of reaper was built with full wine compatibility in mind so doing it this way might provide less resistance than trying to get things working with yabridge
I've always struggled installing it on wine. But I've never been good at wine and other windows translation stuff outside of letting things like steam and heroic install and manage those things for me.
I like Ardour. It's got everything you need. It's what I've been using for the past couple years now. It even supports VST2/VST3 plugins through WINE
I also recommend using yabridge to set up Windows plugins to work on Linux, but be warned there is risk of compatibility issues with plugins on Linux when buying new ones!
EDIT - Resources:
- Ardour website - https://ardour.org/
- Recommend installing from your package manager tho
- Yabridge tool - https://github.com/robbert-vdh/yabridge
- A few plugins that work:
- Drum kit plugin I like (free) - https://www.powerdrumkit.com/
- Voxengo SPAN (Frequency Analyzer, also free) - https://www.voxengo.com/product/span/
- Luciano Dato's Noise-Repellant (free) - https://github.com/lucianodato/noise-repellent
- Typically use the built in LPF/HPF, Graph Eq, Reverb, and Compressor plugins. They work great
Wait a little while and low key Audacity 4 might release a fully capable DAW as well now that it's adding better clip support, plugin support, non-destructive editing for some effects like compression, reverb, etc. Of course, it will be mainly for if you do a lot of recording. For electronic, Ardour would probably be better even after Audacity 4 releases.
So top, IMO, is Reaper. Not FLOSS, but the developer has consistently had a reasonable user price set, you can download and install free, you get a short nag screen. If you like it, buy it.
Ardour is great, I suggest you to learn it even if you want to use some other proprietary ones, since it has an useful tool for fast mastering with setting optimized for social platforms. I also suggest you to use great floss plugins like SurgeXT, LSP-Plugins and Geonkick.
I want to get into using Ardour. I tried setting up my stuff via the Flatpak version, but it seems I should probably avoid that to get stuff to work properly, so I am planning to pay for the precompiled binaries soon.
But I am new to DAWs in general - do you or anyone else know of a good introduction to DAWs via Ardour?
The flatpak version is a little tricky to setup (directories) so I suggest you to use the distro pkg. "Unfa"on youtube has great tutorials. Ask me if you need something specifically.
Nice, thanks - I'll check out Unfa! I hope to get started soon, but I tend to be slow starting these things, so don't expect any DMs just yet - but I'm saving your post for future reference, so perhaps something will tick in eventually :) Thanks for the offer in any case!
I love Ardour. I use it a bunch
I am just starting to play around with SurgeXT, after coming from a metal background and playing mostly with amp sims, drum kits and some orchestral libraries. I feel like I've discovered a new world.
I am a FOSS enthusiast, and use FOSS whenever possible. However, my DAW of choice is Reaper. It may not be FOSS, but I love this application. It works well, on windows, on Linux. It's powerful.
I found bitwig to be really easy to use coming from Ableton. I am also keeping an eye out and supporting the ZRythm development and I hope it can become a decent FOSS alternative.
I literally just started trying out Ardour the other day. I'd say give it a try. All it'll cost you is a little time.
I use reaper.
Edit: i will add, I do some music stuff for income so I have to make sure my system is rock solid and works with all aftermarket plugins from big names.
To that end, I have a mac mini (soon to be mac studio) that is solely for music. Linux for everything else. In my experience nothing is more solid than osx with music production and recording (~15 years experience).
An m1 mac mini can be had for under 300 dollars now and will perform very well with all but the craziest power hungry plugins. Id recommend a mac studio though, im outgrowing my mini with some more involved productions.
Look at my reply here, where I explained the FOSS apps, their pros and cons: https://lemmy.ml/post/36874236/21366132
Bespoke is a synthesizer first but "like a DAW in some ways, but with less of a focus on a global timeline. Instead, it has a design more optimized for jamming and exploration." (youtube trailer, wiki, wikipedia)
bitwig is great, it is my favorite DAW that I've used (Logic and Ableton were previously used by me).
I really enjoy the flexibility and creativity I get with the grid.
Bigwig Studio is made by some of the original Devs of Ableton i believe and from what I've messed around with it in a trial. It's way better (stylish too). If I was less of an occasional dabbler in music production I'd absolutely pay for this. Linux is not a second class citizen to them which is great, any VSTs they release themselves always work on Linux natively too.
Theres also reaper, but I feel like the barrier to entry on that one can feel a bit daunting. It never feels just ready to go for a newcomer.
Theres also a bunch of different trackers that are Linux compatible some with VST support too, but that's a very different way of making music from the traditional DAW.
Lmms seems to still have activity on its github, though you're right that there were no proper release since 2020-2021. Most options i know of have been presented by others, i'll just put another reference to yabridge, as it could be useful to get some of your vst up and running.
Eh... not sure where you get your information but https://github.com/lmms/lmms last update was yesterday.
The github repo has activity, but the last stable release (1.2.2) released 5 years ago. I'm not really interested in using the nightly build
FWIW from https://lmms.io/download#linux one can get as AppImage (so nothing to build, no repository to modify) either
- 1.3.0-alpha.1.102 alpha
- 1.3.0-alpha.1.894 nightly
so from what I understood you could consider alpha, not nightly.
102 -> 894
Come on now. I know that asking for 1.3.1 is pure madness... But can't we get a beta version of 1.3.0 maybe?
If the nightly version is good, just put out a new release after 5 years. Are they shooting for some milestone or something? I guess I should look into it myself...
(Really tho I'm glad this project is still active and I'll check out the nightly version.)
FWIW not only is the project alive (last commit 17 hours ago) but distribution too (cf links above) and project management too (cf e.g. https://github.com/orgs/LMMS/projects/1 as example of complex set of tasks mostly done toward a major release).
So... I'm not going to give people working on LMMS any advice, but of course I hear you, and OP, when it shows for people who aren't deep into it a project that seems abandoned.
I do not know no why the project is in that state but what I hope I have shown is that for sure it's very much active.
Nightly (alpha) build is pretty good (infinitely better than the "stable" build), but I'm not a professional, so I cannot say how good it works with serious projects.
this is where ngl, the opensource community doesn't win. I prefer Ableton hands down.
I use LMMS although I'm planning on switching to reaper once I find out how to properly configure it and bring my LMMS presets in.
To use the latest version of LMMS, you have to click on the alpha or latest release version on the downloads page instead of whatever the main release is. If you ever want help figuring out LMMS, feel free to reach out.
I dual boot Windows for Cubase and Kontakt. Never could get Cubase working well on Linux and I probably could switch to Reaper and make Kontakt work with yabridge, but I have been using Cubase for over 20 years and haven’t had the inclination to switch just yet.
I also switched away from Ableton on Windows a couple years ago. At this point, after working in several of them, I swear by Ardour.
It's a little ugly, it's a fair bit to wrap your head around at first, but it does serve every one of my needs. It even recently got a clip launcher much like Ableton's "Live" view! The only thing I really miss from Ableton is its audio warping engine, but that's long been one of Ableton's killer features, even compared to Windows and Mac DAWs.
It kind of depends on your use case though; what are you using the DAW for? Demoing? DJing? Traditional tracking and mixing?
Also about people's comments about Bitwig and Reaper - yes, they are indeed damned good. If you want a 1:1 parallel with Ableton and don't mind spending a bit of money, Bitwig is about your best bet.
Renoise is sweet as far as trackers go.
Ardour was always my go-to although it's been crashing on me a lot.
Shout out to BespokeSynth for being amazing, I forgive the crashes because it's so cool and strongly foss.
DAW
It's fun to dereference initialisms the first time you use them.
I generally agree with you, but in this case if you don’t know what a DAW is then you’re probably not qualified to recommend one.
It stands for digital audio workstation, and is used for all aspects of music production.
IYKYK
Fender Studio is a newcomer that is free and works on Linux and mobile.
Fender Studio does seem like a nice alternative to something like Garageband.
I got used to the Workflow of Ableton so I understand the struggle. I got an 8-Track license for Bitwig from a friend which works like a charm. Other than that there´s Ardour, it´s FOSS and ugly - can´t say more since i haven´t played around with it yet but apparently it´s good? idk.
I'd recommend traktion waveform. There's a free version. Likely has most if not everything you need. Pretty sure the underlying engine has been open sourced.
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