Ok all - here's the thing

Right now, I use a mix of Win7, PC-BSD, FreeBSD, and Ubuntu on my work/home machines (depending on what they do) so I am comfortable with all.

The trouble is, I have been getting really heavy into DJ/Electro/House music again, and all my old software is OSX (PPC) based stuff.

Been playing with demos of products and suggestions, and right now I am planning to drop $500+ on Ableton Live (my favorite from the ones I've tried, like Logic, ProTools, Reason).

Is there *anything* nearly as good for linux? I'd rather donate this money to Linux or a charity than use it to make a corporation richer.

I've tried Ubuntu Studio a bit, but I couldn't figure out how to get simple stuff like rex loops and VST plugins to work. I had a heck of a time trying to get my Akai and M-Audio gear working, and ended up giving up on it.

Does anyone do serious music production under Linux? Do you have any pointers? I need stuff for live performance, authoring (AIFF and MP3), and mixing. It needs to be stable and flexible, so that I don't waste composing/performing time screwing with it - and if it's under Wine... why bother?

/edit FYI - I have read the other DAW threads that seem to pop up on here every couple years, but none seemed to end with "This is working great!" or anything positive.

hi

you may like these links?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LV2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_audio_workstation

mainly plugins info
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari..._audio_editors

mainly distro names and software names
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...audio_software

Thanks - There's a couple there I haven't checked out yet (Traverso, for example). I will keep poking into it, and lurking on the Ubuntu Studio forums.

Quick update (so that this thread doesn't end up like the others)

I have Ubuntu Studio 64bit 11.04 Beta (for various reasons) running on my laptop. It's screaming fast, I'll give it that. My latency is between 5-15ms normally, while it was 75-100ms under my (vendor image) Win 7 64 install.
This is very good.

I am still trying to learn Ardour and LMMS - the learning curve is *extremely* steep on these (at least for me). MIXXX however is fantastic, and I've had a lot of success with it in my test rehearsals.

If anyone wants to point out something that approximates Ableton Live for live performances/remixes (especially the minimalist live performance view and tools - the 'authoring' piece is approximated well by LMMS), I would be VERY grateful.