I am a long time Linux user (switched from Mac around 2003). At the time, I used Reason to compose music as a hobby. The highlight of my "career" was scoring a soundtrack for a documentary film a friend made to enter a Canadian film festival, didn't actually make it into the festival unfortunately
When I switched to Linux I mostly gave up my hobby, every now and then I looked around for tools but never found anything adequate. I recently found SunVox which has somewhat rekindled my interest in composing again, while it's unfortunately not open source it seems to be the best software I have found so far on Linux. Its editing abilities are a little limited for my tastes though, or maybe I just don't quite understand how the editing is supposed to work.
I do my "composing" with a midi controller, recording a track at a time, and then editing and fine tuning as needed. I need something like Reason or SunVox where the music is synthesized because I do not have the equipment to record live audio. One of the biggest problems I have found is understanding what kind of samples/sounds are supported by each piece of software and where to obtain them. Where does everyone get their sounds? I am not opposed to paying money for them. Something like Garritan's orchestra would be really cool, but I don't know if there is any software for Linux that can use it.
I look forward to being a part of these forums and benefiting from everyone's experience!
