One of the main reasons I have to quit Linux for almost two years before reinstalling it again this month, is the music software. I'm finishing my degree on music composition and most of the programs I have to use are windows/mac only, my teachers always talk about Sibelius and Finale, they teach us how to use Max/MSP and Adobe Audition. For a long time, when I begin my career, I tried to avoid using non-free software, I used to write my scores on Lilypond, edit audio on Audacity and try to learn Pure Data. But after a while I simply couldn't use them anymore. Writing scores on Lilypond is slow, like really slow, specially when you start writing contemporary classical music. It takes you like 5 minutes recompiling over and over again your program only to rotate a glissando, or you could spend more time reading the internal reference to know how to edit something. Musescore 3 was never really an option, the program is too basic, and the format is terrible, never really tried Musescore 4, I was using Dorico when it was released. Audacity was simply slow, the preview button to preview effects takes too much time to load and I never managed to use Ardour on my Linux Mint machine, so I didn't even test it. The only really good software is Pure Data and Supercollider, both are free software and are the best. The only problem with pure data was the terrible interface, every patch turn instantly into a mess, and it simply looks ugly, I tried Purr Data but have some bugs that make me come back to Pure Data. Finally after reinstalling Windows I started using Max, only for the interface and the documentation.

This month, after two years of using only windows, I installed Linux, first I installed Arch, mainly because that's the OS I used before switching to Windows, but I get bored really fast, I tried to remake the set up I used to have. BSPWM with a bar running a bash script to get the information, feh, picom, kitty and neovim. But it's so much work, and to be honest I don't really have the time or the motivation to reinstall and configure everything again. So I installed OpenSUSE because it shipped with KDE and it's a Rolling Release distro.

This time I dualboot with windows to have the programs I get used to use. The idea was to have a Windows-only partition that I will use only to make music, and a Linux partition for everything else, but I started to check again some of the programs I used before and there are so much interesting things now. I finally get to install Ardour on my computer and, even thou it's really hard to learn and not really comfortable, it's really powerful. The only downside it's the lack of plugins for Linux. Pure data also got some really interesting new things, specially the Porres's plugin ELSE. There's also PlugData, a version of Pure Data with an improved interface that looks so cool, unfortunately it lag on my computer. The only software that made me come back to Windows is Dorico, I really don't want to come back to Lilypond, with Dorico I can compose directly into the computer without having to hand write the music and transcribe it later, and Musescore 4 it's not an option with the formatting issues and the lack of contemporary writing methods.

I'm really happy with the current state of music software in linux. The software quality it's improving a lot, and I trust that in a not-so-far future it will get much better.

Thats all I have to say for today, this post got really long and there's still a lot to cover. I'm probably going to keep testing software. I'm planing to make another blog on a custom domain and post an updated and improved version of this blog.