He There from Me.

[The Customer]

Hi folks. I've just joined this place to try and get my lazy self off Windows. I use a lot of free VST plugins so I'm hoping there is a way for me to continue with at least some of them. I use Reaper [repear.fm] but I could use any DAW similar. I have been using them since SAW+ on Windows NT back in the mid 1990s, and an old RME Multiface on both 32bit PC and 64bit Laptop on which I use a PCMCIA interface which could only be made to work via a Star-Tech Expresscard - Cardbus interface even though I specifically bought one of the few i-7 laptops with a PCMCIA slot! Anyway, I use my ow recordings as the basis of my work, and I use AMS Soundfiled microphone and PZM microphones to capture the sounds.

I will of course browse the boards for advice, but basically I primarily want to run Linux from a pen drive, and have internet access as well as the multi-channel audio editing as the most important feature. I will also try to run alongside Win XP on my old audio PC and bit-by-bit move over to just Linux.

Just point me and I will go! And I will always try not to waste people's time.

[Michael Willis]

There are a number of people around here that seem happy using Reaper on Linux, but if you want to look around, you might check out Ardour, Qtractor, and maybe a couple of others. I'm not sure how much luck you're going to have running Linux audio on a pen drive, if you try to capture/replay audio with that as your storage it may end up being a bottleneck.

Go ahead and ask whatever questions on this forum, nobody will chase you off (maybe unless you act really belligerent). It's a pretty friendly place.

[finotti]

Just a quick note: Reaper has a native Linux version, but also it seems that the Windows version runs really well under Wine. In the latter case, your plugins might work just like if you were in Windows. If not, there are things like Carla (as well as other methods, whose names escape me now) that allow you to load some Windows VSTs in Linux. Not all of them work, I suppose, but a lot of them do.

[CrocoDuck]

I'm not sure how much luck you're going to have running Linux audio on a pen drive, if you try to capture/replay audio with that as your storage it may end up being a bottleneck.

I remember doing that in the past. Performance wise there weren't problems: I could get low latency and low glitches (0 glitches actually) when I tried this at the end of the 2.X kernel era. But yes, my persistent 4Gb pendrive would take less than half an hour of recording in Ardour before being filled.