I'm interested in asking musicians for their experiences with linux.

Do you use linux alone, or keep windows for some things, or do all your music work on windows and linux for everything else, or use mac and linux, or mac for all music work, or what?

What programs for music do you use on linux?


Myself, I will relate my own experience. I do not call myself a musician, but I do like to try my hand now and then at making a bit of music.
On linux, I use a bunch of programs for making music:
Rosegarden4, Audacity, LMMS
Timidity++, fluidsynth
opl3emu

Rosegarden is an excellent program, and I use it very much. Audacity is a good audio editor, I use that a lot.
LMMS is a little glitchy and strange in some ways, but it's still pretty useful.
Timidity and fluidsynth are both good.

opl3emu is a small program that somebody wrote which emulates the opl2 sound chip that was on some soundblaster cards.
http://bisqwit.iki.fi/source/opl3emu.html

So with these programs I have been able to make some music. It's not professional quality music, but then I'm not a professional musician and I have no musical training.

>> "I'm not a professional musician and I have no musical training ..."

why not "i am not a musician" or something like that ... ^_^

recently playing with mp3 , mp4 , swf and flv on computers and usb connected things ... on windows and linux ...

i have to say that somehow i found out i really dislike those limited-edition apps with their "well-intentioned" <whatever>PRO app ... no choice but to solely relying on freeware and open-sourced apps but so far so good ...


//so i can get what you mean ...


.

Ardour2 - Still only available through SVN
Tuxguitar - Really nice Guitar-Pro clone... can even read GP3 and GP4 files - which is great because there are tons of sites with GP - transcriptions on the net: http://www.mysongbook.com/

Hydrogen Is an easy to use drum machine...

The last year were really hard times for music on linux. The 2.6 kernel didn't work without patching. But now there are two promising projects going on.
Jacklab Is alive!
And Ubuntustudio will be ready next month! And there are more low latency kernels available in Ubuntu Feisty that you will ever need.

I play guitar, piano, flute, Native American flute, and a few other instruments and while I don't play professionally I can easily produce professional mixes in Linux.

I use ardour2 as a teaching tool (e.g. record a student ensemble rehearsal and play it back). Hydrogen also works great as a metronome -- need to subdivide in 16th's: no problem!

Although it is not a sound producing tool, lilypond kicks a$$ as a score writer. ( I hate having to play 20 questions to put in a forte or piano marking, ala Finale).

For personal use, I do not use a lot of software synthesisers. I mainly record using ardour2, and the ladspa plugins are great. I have played around a bit with bristol for software instruments, and I like it. I use hydrogen for writing drum parts.

Freewheeling has to be my favorite jamming/creative software.