3 There are already a number of excellent digital audio workstations. To
4 mention just a few: ProTools, Nuendo, Samplitude, Digital Performer, Logic,
5 Cubase (SX), Sonar, along with several less well known systems such as SADIE,
6 SAWStudio and others. Each of these programs has its strengths and
7 weaknesses, although over the last few years most of them have converged on a
8 very similar set of core features. However, each of them suffers from two
9 problems when seen from the perspective of Ardour's development group:
13 <li>they do not run natively on Linux</li>
14 <li>they are not available in source code form, making modifications,
15 improvements, or bugfixes by technically inclined users or their friends or
16 consultants impossible.</li>
20 It is fairly understandable that most existing proprietary DAWs do not run on
21 Linux, given the rather small (but growing) share of the desktop market that
22 Linux has. However, when surveying the landscape of "popular operating
27 <li>older versions of Windows: plagued by abysmal stability and appalling
29 <li>newer versions of Windows seem stable but still suffer from security
31 <li>macOS: a nice piece of engineering that is excellent for audio work
32 but only runs on proprietary hardware and still lacks the flexibility and
33 adaptability of Linux.</li>
37 Security matters today, and will matter more in the future as more and more
38 live or semi-live network based collaborations take place.
42 Let's contrast this with Linux, an operating system which:
46 <li>can stay up for months (or even years) without issues</li>
47 <li>is endlessly configurable down to the tiniest detail</li>
48 <li>is not owned by any single corporate entity, ensuring its life and
49 direction are not intertwined with that of a company (for a contrary example,
51 <li>is fast and efficient</li>
52 <li>runs on almost any computing platform ever created, including old "slow"
53 systems and new "tiny" systems (e.g. Raspberry Pi)</li>
54 <li>is one of the most secure operating systems "out of the box"</li>
58 More than anything, however, Ardour's primary author uses Linux and wanted a
63 Having written a DAW for Linux, it turned out to be relatively easy to port
64 Ardour to macOS, mostly because of the excellent work done by the JACK development
65 group that ported JACK to macOS.