I used to create songs in FL Studio when I used Windows, but now I have switched to Fedora. Does FL Studio run well via wine, or I should better pick a Linux-native DAW? How do I handle Windows vst3 plugins? It is possible to switch to native Linux solutions, but I would actually like to preserve my regular workflow within FL. Any relevant tips and advice are welcome
Reaper is a popular one
Oh boy
As someone who is a pretty solidly in the open source territory…
Reaper is great and I have absolutely purchased a license. I’m not often recording music these days, but I will say that anyone I know who is recording music still either uses reaper or is so apple obsessed they use logic pro and won’t glance in the direction of anything that isn’t an Apple product.
Mostly live production recordings for them, though a few do studio recordings as well.
Reaper is the DAW for audio-engineers that is well supported on GNU/Linux.
FL Studio can works well with Wine or VM but its plugins are another story.
A few WebApps worth knowing (might not suit heavy usage):
There is also LMMS but this is more for small hobbyst rather than serious work.
You might wanna try running in a VM or WinBoat and maybe it’s worth asking on the CrossOver forum to see how well things run with CO.
To expand upon the point of running Windows VSTs in Linux in FL via WINE, teh initial setup is very, very tedious, as you have ot install all the essential windows dependencies/bloat in order to make all of them run. off the top of my head i can think of .net framework and visual c++ (yes, you will need to install most.all of them, takes quite a while you cna imagine). and enve after that, once you have all your VSTs working (or most of them), one odd WINE update can either cause the GUI of a plugin to not render, leaving you to either go in blind or control the plugin by browsing its parameters (which pray the dev has made them automatable), or less likely but more devastating it just won’t work anymore, either by instafreezing your daw, or straight up crashing it. had that happen with Spectral Compressor, it will forever be missed. Lucily subsequent WINE updates can fix the UI break issue, but it’ll feel like forever until that update lmao
TLDR if you can deal with maybe a few of your plugins breaking, hopefully getting ifxed after a WINE update, and a chance that one or two plugins just don’t run (classic WINE jank), it’s pretty much smooth sailing cause FL actually runs pretty damn good in WINE, i’d say shockingly close to native. Only things that don’t work for me are the WebView rendered stuff (like diagnostics and gophr but i don’t use gophr. A friend of mine got diagnostics to work by installing dotnet and webview2, i already had them installed and it didn’t work). WINE can vary from system to system.
I think Bitwig Studio and LMMS both support VST2 plugins. Don’t know about VST3. I kinda like the LMMS interface.
I’ve never used FL but I’ve seen people mention they’re had success with it on Linux.
This guide looks legit.
https://linuxvox.com/blog/flstudio-linux/
When I first started with audio production it was with Audacity. When I realized it wasn’t the best way to record an album I switched to Ardour. It was compared to Pro Tools a lot at the time and I don’t know how similar they are but I loved using it. When I started working with some new people I switched to their preferred DAW, Reaper. Now I basically only use Reaper because it’s easier for some of the people newer to production. Ardour is still amazing and I think you should try them both and see which you like more. Maybe you can get FL working well but I think it’s better to use something that runs native so you can support the orgs that are producing software for Linux and so eliminate some headaches.
I use native plugins as much as possible but sometimes a collaborator will use something meant for Windows and Mac only. What I do is install the plugin with WINE, using default paths, de-selecting any bullshit I don’t care for, and then run a command to sync the plugins,
yabridgectl sync. Sometimes plugins don’t work perfectly because of missing fonts or whatever but there’s a lot of advice on the project page for individual plugins. I’ve had pretty good luck so far but currently there’s a rendering issue I’m waiting for an update on. Mouse clicks are offset for some reason. It’s probably fixed by now in the stable version. It’s been a month or two since I’ve checked on it since there are plenty of native and built-in plugins within Reaper.Reaper works great on linux.
This is where I landed. I got annoyed trying to set up FL through Wine, so I decided to just give Reaper a shot. There has been some learning involved, but I am enjoying it.
For whatever reason it was easier for me to learn a new DAW and native Linux Plugins than it was for me to learn how to properly set up FL and plugins in Wine.
I will probably give FL a go again when I have more time, but I just couldn’t wrap my head around the things I needed to fix.
Remember in Reaper you can change the theme and menus around all you want, so you can make it look and behave however you want if certain things annoy you.
FL Studio is great, it isn’t fair to compare other audio software to Reaper lol.
Sytrus is an amazing design for a synthesizer and Harmor is fascinating too.
FL studio runs well in wine. VSTs are hit-or-miss whether they work but you’ll be fine with it on wine it runs great.
Are there any performance issues with FL on wine?
Not that I’ve encountered. It used to be pretty janky but these days runs as well as on Windows.
SunVox is a really cool piece of software. Tidalcycles and Strudel seem pretty goddam dope as well.
deleted by creator
Best native Linux DAWS if you want to try:
- Bitwig - Like Ableton but better (paid, proprietary)
- Renoise - Tracker focused (paid, proprietary)
- Reaper - Clunky but very capable (cheap, proprietary)
- LLMS - Very simple daw (free, libre)
- Ardour - Full featured but rough around the edges (free, libre)
- Bespoke - Modular workflow, supports VSTs (free, libre)
- VCV Rack - Modular workflow, VCV modules only (free, libre)
All the paid daws have free demos.
FWIW I also release all my plugins with native Linux builds: https://replicataudio.com/
Got some cool new stuff coming out soon. HMU on discord and I will give you free copies (applies to anyone reading this comment).
Stick with native apps, audio drivers and passthrough is a pita as is, why further complicate it?
Reaper is my go-to but I come from an Ableton background and it just clicked for me so ymmv.
The nice thing is you can choose, Reaper was not the first software I chose but it’s the one I stuck with. I like to do lots of live recordings with some programmed drums, vst plugins, etc. It checks all those boxes really reliably.
I use a Focusrite Solo interface passthrough using AsioForAll (iirc) setup as the driver for it. I can connect my peripherals no problem, using the mic for Teams calls during the workday and headphone jack for daily use when docked. Guitar, other XLR jacks, 1/4" jacks, register fine. I also connect a couple Akai controllers and misc keyboards fine after setting them up.
Additionally, I’m running Arch (btw), Thinkpad lappy docked on a USB c type 110 watt dock. The whole architecture needs to be considered when setting up your machine for the studio. Good luck!!! Ask any questions you can think of if it’s helpful.
I’m weird that I use carla as my routing and vst host.
Orca as my sequencer Usb midi to hardware synths
