Bitwig which is primarily built on the same platform and tools Ableton uses (Bitwig are former Ableton developers) have successfully created a Linux version which works amazingly well. Bitwig uses the same GUI model and controls as Ableton with a different look and the backend code is very similar. So if a smaller company such as Bitwig can successfully build a Linux version that runs amazingly well, Ableton with its resources should have no problems doing the same. Ableton's code base is built on C++ which is very easy to port to other OS platforms. The front end is built using Python which again, is very easy to port to Linux. It's not a massive undertaking to take the C++ and Python components and get them to run on Linux because C++ runs across all platforms and just needs to be compiled and Python is native to Linux by default.
Reaper has also successfully built a Linux version that runs incredibly well. I use the Reaper Linux version often and it's rock solid. I am toying with the idea of just going all in on Reaper and moving away from Ableton if a Linux version is never released. I don't like the way Bigwig handles beat mapping and stretching or I would probably go that route. Overall, I think Ableton is an amazing DAW and I love it and that's why I am holding out hope they will eventually release a Linux version.
Linux holds close to the same market share as Mac OS at this point and is rapidly increasing with thousands of people abandoning Windows 11 due to all the security issues, ads and AI integration no one wants. The Windows 11 code base and updates are a complete disaster at this point. I have had to re-install Windows 11 twice now because updates locked me out of the OS from my PIN and secure boot the second time. If you haven't been closely watching OS market share lately but Windows 7 - YES Windows 7 - just went from 0% market share to 5% market share because people are so tired of the issues with Windows 11 people are actually installing Windows 7 to get a more reliable OS without all the AI, ads and bloat. Yes, you heard me right - Windows 7.
The rest of the user base is moving over to Linux (IE. Bazzite, Steam, Catchy OS, Pop OS) because Linux can now run almost all Windows games via Steam reliably. Steam basically kicked open the door for people to move to Linux which in turn has had many other large companies to follow suit. It's just a matter of time until most all other large software companies offer Linux versions due to market demand.
I have used Windows as my primary OS for over 25 years now. It's a great OS. I tried switching to Linux about 6 years ago when the stability issues along with the forced updates started affecting my work and it failed spectacularly because there was little to no game support, most Microsoft apps didn't work and driver support was spotty at best. I gave up and went back to Windows. About 3 months ago, I tried again and loaded Bazzite. The install was dam near perfect, all hardware works flawlessly and all my core programs work. The ONLY - and I truly mean ONLY - program I cannot run under Linux is Ableton. I am dual booting to Windows simply to run Ableton.
To give you a further example, with my Windows 11 install, I usually have at least 1 crash per day (often more) of either the system kernel crashing or browser sessions crashing related to kernel errors. I have re-installed the OS, fixed system files, etc and the crashes persist. When I dual boot to Bazzite Linux, the OS never crashes or has any issues. Granted this is on the exact same laptop with the same hardware. Bazzite has not crashed one time - not had a single system fault nor repeated application issues. Bazzite has been rock solid. In comparison to Windows 11, I have repeated kernel and system crashes regardless of what I do. Same laptop - same hardware.
Before I installed Bazzite, I thought my laptop had defective hardware and was going to open a ticket and have Lenovo fix the issues. I really thought the hardware had issues due to all the crashing and issues within Windows. After I installed Bazzite and everything ran perfectly, I realized it had nothing to do with the hardware and was issues with Windows 11. I have updated the BIOS on my laptop, all drivers, etc. It's not the hardware - it's due to long standing internal code issues in WIndows 11 specifically related to the patches and updates.
So I hold out hope that Ableton will one day release a Linux version because the user base moving from Windows to Linux is rapidly increasing. If you don't believe me, check the numbers on distrowatch or whatever stats site you would like to use. There is no denying there is a mass exodus of people moving from Windows to Linux right now and most of those people are not coming back.
The question is whether Ableton is going to stay with Windows and Mac and leave the Linux market to Bitwig and Reaper or it's going to get in the game and service that market as well.
So... Live on Linux?
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smccarthy945
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Re: So... Live on Linux?
Every one of these threads gets stuck on whether it's worth Ableton building a Linux version, which I think misses something. They already built one.
Push 3 Standalone runs Live on Linux. Not a companion app or some cut-down sequencer firmware, but the actual Live engine, the devices, warping, Max for Live, running on a custom Linux OS. And it's not even exotic hardware. It's an Intel 11th gen i3-1115G4 on a NUC compute element, so it's the same x86-64 architecture as the laptop I'd want to run Live on. Ableton maintains that build and ships updates to it.
So there is, today, an x86-64 Linux build of Live that Ableton wrote, maintains and sells. Whatever the hardest part of that was, it's behind them.
There's obviously work left. VST hosting, arbitrary audio interface support instead of the Push's one fixed piece of hardware, ALSA and PipeWire and JACK, window management, installer, licensing. I'm not pretending that's trivial, it's months of work by people who are presumably already busy. But a lot of what's missing from the Push build is missing because Ableton deliberately locked it down for a closed appliance with an i3 in it, not because it can't be done. It's the difference between removing restrictions and porting a codebase, and people in these threads keep arguing against a project that's already largely finished.
The market objection used to be fair. Linux desktop share was a rounding error and nobody sensible was going to spend engineering budget on it. That argument is getting weaker every year. Steam's hardware survey has Linux over 5% now. Windows 10 went end of support in October last year and a lot of people with perfectly good machines decided they'd rather learn something new than buy a new laptop. Linux is somewhere around 4 to 5% of desktops globally depending on whose numbers you use, which puts it in the same conversation as macOS in a few markets, and it's the only one of the three that's actually growing.
The consumer number isn't even the interesting one though. In April, France announced it's moving something like 2.5 million government workstations off Windows and onto Linux, run through DINUM, with every ministry required to have a migration plan filed by autumn. The reasoning they gave was digital sovereignty, wanting control of their own infrastructure, not being dependent on American vendors for something that fundamental. And it's not a one-off. Schleswig-Holstein has been moving its public sector desktops off Microsoft since 2024. Denmark's digital ministry is doing the same. France has been running six figures of GendBuntu machines in the Gendarmerie for years. The European Parliament voted to direct the Commission to find areas where the EU can reduce reliance on foreign providers. This has gone from a policy hobby horse to something showing up in actual procurement.
Which matters for Ableton specifically, because Live isn't only a bedroom producer tool. It's in conservatoires, universities, arts programs, public broadcasters, TAFEs, the sort of institutions sitting right inside those procurement chains. If a publicly funded music school in Germany or France gets told its labs are moving to Linux, and Live doesn't run on Linux, that school isn't going to keep buying Live and paying for Windows licences to run it. They'll evaluate Bitwig, and once a cohort of students learns on Bitwig, that's a generation of producers Ableton never gets back.
Ableton is a Berlin company. It's sitting in the middle of the most aggressive digital sovereignty push happening anywhere in the world, selling software that runs only on two American operating systems. That seems like a strategic problem worth someone's attention, not just a feature request from nerds on a forum.
On the engineering side, Bitwig settles the argument. Founded by ex-Ableton people, ships a proper Linux build, and by their own account Linux is a decent chunk of their users. Reaper's Linux build is rock solid. Neither company has anything close to Ableton's resources. Every producer who wanted Live on Linux and eventually gave up and learned Bitwig instead is a customer Ableton handed over for nothing, and that churn is invisible in their own numbers because those people uninstall Live and disappear from the telemetry. Saying the Linux user base is too small to justify a build is a bit circular when the reason it's small is that there's no build.
Worth saying too that Linux is a better fit for a machine whose only job is running a DAW. Nothing reboots your studio box overnight or decides to update during soundcheck. You can tune the kernel for low latency and that's a documented, supported thing rather than a fight. PipeWire has more or less cleaned up the audio server mess that made Linux audio a joke ten years ago, and low latency JACK-compatible routing works out of the box on most current distros now. No telemetry, no ads in the start menu, none of the consumer OS junk on a machine you earn a living with. A tuned Linux box running a DAW behaves more like an appliance than a computer, which is exactly what you want in a studio or a touring rig.
So what I'd actually like isn't a fully supported release next quarter. Nobody's expecting that. I'd settle for Ableton saying something publicly, one way or the other. Even "we have no current plans" would be more useful than the years of silence we've had, because at least people could plan around it. Right now the silence just means everyone assumes the answer is no and acts accordingly.
Better still would be shipping the x86 Linux build as an experimental download. Label it unsupported, no guarantees, community forum only. Reaper has done exactly that for years and their Linux version is more stable than plenty of software people pay for. The Linux audio crowd is technical and patient and will do an enormous amount of testing and bug reporting for free if you let them. It costs Ableton very little and it puts them in a market that European governments are currently building for them.
In the meantime, those of us who want to use Live on Linux are dual booting, or fighting with Wine and yabridge, or running a VM with USB passthrough just to keep using software we've already paid for. It sort of works. But every one of us is one bad session away from opening Bitwig and not going back.
Push 3 Standalone runs Live on Linux. Not a companion app or some cut-down sequencer firmware, but the actual Live engine, the devices, warping, Max for Live, running on a custom Linux OS. And it's not even exotic hardware. It's an Intel 11th gen i3-1115G4 on a NUC compute element, so it's the same x86-64 architecture as the laptop I'd want to run Live on. Ableton maintains that build and ships updates to it.
So there is, today, an x86-64 Linux build of Live that Ableton wrote, maintains and sells. Whatever the hardest part of that was, it's behind them.
There's obviously work left. VST hosting, arbitrary audio interface support instead of the Push's one fixed piece of hardware, ALSA and PipeWire and JACK, window management, installer, licensing. I'm not pretending that's trivial, it's months of work by people who are presumably already busy. But a lot of what's missing from the Push build is missing because Ableton deliberately locked it down for a closed appliance with an i3 in it, not because it can't be done. It's the difference between removing restrictions and porting a codebase, and people in these threads keep arguing against a project that's already largely finished.
The market objection used to be fair. Linux desktop share was a rounding error and nobody sensible was going to spend engineering budget on it. That argument is getting weaker every year. Steam's hardware survey has Linux over 5% now. Windows 10 went end of support in October last year and a lot of people with perfectly good machines decided they'd rather learn something new than buy a new laptop. Linux is somewhere around 4 to 5% of desktops globally depending on whose numbers you use, which puts it in the same conversation as macOS in a few markets, and it's the only one of the three that's actually growing.
The consumer number isn't even the interesting one though. In April, France announced it's moving something like 2.5 million government workstations off Windows and onto Linux, run through DINUM, with every ministry required to have a migration plan filed by autumn. The reasoning they gave was digital sovereignty, wanting control of their own infrastructure, not being dependent on American vendors for something that fundamental. And it's not a one-off. Schleswig-Holstein has been moving its public sector desktops off Microsoft since 2024. Denmark's digital ministry is doing the same. France has been running six figures of GendBuntu machines in the Gendarmerie for years. The European Parliament voted to direct the Commission to find areas where the EU can reduce reliance on foreign providers. This has gone from a policy hobby horse to something showing up in actual procurement.
Which matters for Ableton specifically, because Live isn't only a bedroom producer tool. It's in conservatoires, universities, arts programs, public broadcasters, TAFEs, the sort of institutions sitting right inside those procurement chains. If a publicly funded music school in Germany or France gets told its labs are moving to Linux, and Live doesn't run on Linux, that school isn't going to keep buying Live and paying for Windows licences to run it. They'll evaluate Bitwig, and once a cohort of students learns on Bitwig, that's a generation of producers Ableton never gets back.
Ableton is a Berlin company. It's sitting in the middle of the most aggressive digital sovereignty push happening anywhere in the world, selling software that runs only on two American operating systems. That seems like a strategic problem worth someone's attention, not just a feature request from nerds on a forum.
On the engineering side, Bitwig settles the argument. Founded by ex-Ableton people, ships a proper Linux build, and by their own account Linux is a decent chunk of their users. Reaper's Linux build is rock solid. Neither company has anything close to Ableton's resources. Every producer who wanted Live on Linux and eventually gave up and learned Bitwig instead is a customer Ableton handed over for nothing, and that churn is invisible in their own numbers because those people uninstall Live and disappear from the telemetry. Saying the Linux user base is too small to justify a build is a bit circular when the reason it's small is that there's no build.
Worth saying too that Linux is a better fit for a machine whose only job is running a DAW. Nothing reboots your studio box overnight or decides to update during soundcheck. You can tune the kernel for low latency and that's a documented, supported thing rather than a fight. PipeWire has more or less cleaned up the audio server mess that made Linux audio a joke ten years ago, and low latency JACK-compatible routing works out of the box on most current distros now. No telemetry, no ads in the start menu, none of the consumer OS junk on a machine you earn a living with. A tuned Linux box running a DAW behaves more like an appliance than a computer, which is exactly what you want in a studio or a touring rig.
So what I'd actually like isn't a fully supported release next quarter. Nobody's expecting that. I'd settle for Ableton saying something publicly, one way or the other. Even "we have no current plans" would be more useful than the years of silence we've had, because at least people could plan around it. Right now the silence just means everyone assumes the answer is no and acts accordingly.
Better still would be shipping the x86 Linux build as an experimental download. Label it unsupported, no guarantees, community forum only. Reaper has done exactly that for years and their Linux version is more stable than plenty of software people pay for. The Linux audio crowd is technical and patient and will do an enormous amount of testing and bug reporting for free if you let them. It costs Ableton very little and it puts them in a market that European governments are currently building for them.
In the meantime, those of us who want to use Live on Linux are dual booting, or fighting with Wine and yabridge, or running a VM with USB passthrough just to keep using software we've already paid for. It sort of works. But every one of us is one bad session away from opening Bitwig and not going back.
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smccarthy945
- Posts: 13
- Joined: Fri Nov 24, 2006 6:37 pm
- Location: west palm, fl
- Contact:
Re: So... Live on Linux?
Ableton's silence on the matter speaks volumes. Stop begging them to say or do anything.
Vote with your money - Go support Bitwig for building a Linux version. Bitwig put the time and effort to release a Linux DAW so go buy it and support it instead of begging Ableton to say or do anything.
Or as you have stated, go support Reaper! I have used it on Linux and it's amazing! I am seriously considering using Reaper long term. It's not as pretty but dam powerful!
Vote with your money - Go support Bitwig for building a Linux version. Bitwig put the time and effort to release a Linux DAW so go buy it and support it instead of begging Ableton to say or do anything.
Or as you have stated, go support Reaper! I have used it on Linux and it's amazing! I am seriously considering using Reaper long term. It's not as pretty but dam powerful!