3 title: Why Write a DAW for Linux?
7 It is fairly understandable that existing proprietary DAWs do not run on
8 Linux, given the rather small (but growing) share of the desktop market
9 that Linux has. However, when surveying the landscape of "popular
10 operating systems", we find:
13 <li>older versions of Windows: plagued by abysmal stability and
14 appalling security</li>
15 <li>newer versions of Windows seem stable but still suffer from
16 security problems</li>
17 <li>OS X: an amazing piece of engineering that is excellent for
18 audio work but only runs on proprietary hardware and still lacks the
19 flexibility and adaptability of Linux.</li>
22 Security matters today, and will matter more in the future as more and
23 more live or semi-live network based collaborations take place.
26 Let's contrast this with Linux, an operating system which:
29 <li>can stay up for months (or even years) without issues</li>
30 <li>is endlessly configurable down to the tiniest detail</li>
31 <li>is not owned by any single corporate entity, ensuring its life
32 and direction are not intertwined with that of a company (for a
33 contrary example, consider BeOS)</li>
34 <li>is fast and efficient</li>
35 <li>runs on almost any computing platform ever created, including
36 old "slow" systems and new "tiny" systems (e.g. Raspberry Pi)</li>
37 <li>is one of the most secure operating systems "out of the box"</li>
40 More than anything, however, Ardour's primary author uses Linux and
41 wanted a DAW that ran there.
44 Having written a DAW for Linux, it turned out to be relatively easy
45 to port Ardour to OS X, mostly because of the excellent work done by
46 the JACK OS X group that ported JACK to OS X.<br />
47 Although OS X has a number of disadvantages compared to Linux, its
48 ease of use and its presence in many studios already makes it a