Reaper and top Linux samplers as plugins: how to even set up?

[pigeonw]

All seems promising except the Fluida font and font size.
You can rescale the main UI in Reaper, but the dropdown list of instruments and file browser text size remains tiny, it's even tiny on my 1080p monitor but on my 4K monitor is almost unusable. Almost impossible to navigate to my needed instrument in a GM soundfont.
And the font, dear God, what were they thinking?

[Kott]

I don't get why documentation is so bad with Linux audio stuff.

Maybe you didn't wrote it?

You're putting the cart before the horse. If I knew enough to write a manual myself, why would I ask for a manual? I hear this argument often and it never makes sense.

It was a response to your rant. No one owes you anything here.

Fluida fonts are fine, check your setup. Drop-down list doesn't scale, yeah, feel free to report this problem https://github.com/brummer10/Fluida.lv2/issues

Screenshot_20240123_165541.png (67.86 KiB) Viewed 1170 times

[pigeonw]

It was a response to your rant. No one owes you anything here.

So the smiley was fake and it really was passive-aggressive. Thanks for confirming.

Maybe if you didn't take things personally, reported real problems to the devs instead of finding excuses and getting defensive all the time, maybe the Linux music production ecosystem wouldn't suck as much.
Anyone new has to go on an internet adventure just to figure out which samplers have actual DAW plugins which are the norm in the industry instead of only being standalone, they have to go through countless data online to figure out where the plugin files are even stored by each, they have to dig through abandonware and mediocre projects on github in search for a decent 3rd party plugin solution to samplers the devs didn't bother providing plugins for, they still have to get mediocre results, post for help here and get people like you calling it a rant rather than being helpful.
Such a wonderful reality you're contributing to.
Meanwhile on Windows you can download any of the many .vst files and call it a day. Gee I wonder why most producers don't bother with Linux? I'm sure it's purely Native Instrument's fault, like it's the fault of Microsoft for not offering Office and game developers not offering native support fo their games. Definitely not the ecosystem itself sucking. Let's keep getting defensive and the problem will vanish.

I don't owe you anything eiter, if you want things to keep things sucking and you defending it then you don't have to respond and engage in a discussion. Otherwise I can ignore your response.
This Linux "but it's free" mentality has got to go.

check your setup.

Wow such useful feedback.

[Impostor]

Maybe if [..] maybe the Linux music production ecosystem wouldn't suck as much.

Anyone new has to go on an internet adventure just to figure out which samplers have actual DAW plugins which are the norm in the industry instead of only being standalone, they have to go through countless data online to figure out where the plugin files are even stored by each, they have to dig through abandonware and mediocre projects on github in search for a decent 3rd party plugin solution to samplers the devs didn't bother providing plugins for, they still have to get mediocre results, post for help here and get people like you calling it a rant rather than being helpful.

Well, either that or put up with Windows (or Mac). You have options.

I'm kind of amazed that you have been using Linux for 15 years, but aren't yet used to the necessary figure-it-out-yourself mentality that comes with the territory.

And really, what do you expect? Most Linux stuff is made by volunteer hobbyists. If a dev, or a user, doesn't want to sacrifice his valuable free time to creating documentation, so be it. Even commercial parties who get paid for their work don't always want to provide full support for their Linux products, probably because it costs too much time. They simply declare their Linux versions to be "beta versions, expect trouble" *).

*) Case in point: Reaper: "REAPER for Linux builds are considered experimental/unsupported versions - use at your own risk!"
U-he: "Please be aware that the Linux versions of our plug-ins are still considered beta. We are not able to provide the same level of support for these products as we do for the macOS and Windows versions."

This Linux "but it's free" mentality has got to go.

It's not just mentality, it's a fact of life. What's the incentive to do a tedious job in your spare time if you don't get paid for it?

[pigeonw]

Oh here we go, even more defensiveness and ignoring the responses to the points you've just repeated. I'll try one more time and move on. Feel free to respond and I'll actually read it, but no offense: I won't respond to this as this is turning into a flamewar.

Well, either that or put up with Windows (or Mac). You have options.

The argument wasn't about having options, it was about the Linux music production ecosystem sucking, with explicit examples provided. Your response to it is "don't use it lol", you're either acting dumb or being disingenous regarding what the discussion is even about, probably because you're too getting defensive and making a snarky comment instead of having a mature discussion and beautifully proving my point.

I'm kind of amazed that you have been using Linux for 15 years, but aren't yet used to the necessary figure-it-out-yourself mentality that comes with the territory.

I'm kind of amazed about Linux users who have apparently been stuck in their bunkers for the last 15 years and haven't heard of distros like Mint or SteamOS and how it in fact, does not "come with the territory".

Also, I can build PCs and even 3d printers and CNC machines from scratch and I've used Arch Linux before, doesn't mean I will and won't consider it a waste of my time: prebuild PCs and laptops exist which I can buy, prebuilt 3d printers exist and user-friendly distros like Mint and SteamOS exist which you can use without ever having to touch the terminal.
Maybe it's time for you to re-evaluate the options when it comes to the Linux landscape you claim to know about.

Most Linux stuff is made by volunteer hobbyists.

What are you even talking about? And you're the one amazed?
Is Linus Torvalds a hobbyist, the payed professional programmers at the GNOME Foundation and KDE ( https://kde.org/community/donations/ , https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Engageme ... igital.pdf ) or the maintainers of Mint who get 100K USD in funding a year ( https://linuxmint.com/donors.php )?
Or maybe all these Linux FOSS programs that don't suck are made by "volunteer hobbyists"?: Audacity, OBS ( https://www.patreon.com/obsproject ), GIMP ( https://www.patreon.com/zemarmot ), Krita ( https://krita.org/en/support-us/sponsors/ ), Inkscape ( https://inkscape.org/support-us/donate/ ), Blender ( https://fund.blender.org/ ), LibreOffice ( https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.or ... 2X56jZSKL5 ), Okular ( https://kde.org/community/donations/ ), Firefox and Thunderbird ( https://stateof.mozilla.org/ ), qBittorrent... Or maybe you don't know what you're talking about and most FOSS is made by actual professional developers and even when they don't do it full time, they accept donations and are still pros, not hobbyists.

If a dev, or a user, doesn't want to sacrifice his valuable free time to creating documentation, so be it.

If the community, you being a great example, wants the ecosystem to keep sucking by making excuses instead of accepting real criticism as feedback, then so be it.
Also, if a dev doesn't respect my time why should I respect him?

Case in point: Reaper: "REAPER for Linux builds are considered experimental/unsupported versions - use at your own risk!"

How about you don't grasp at straws and research your own claims?:

Not a single sign of that in the main and download pages:
https://www.reaper.fm/index.php
https://www.reaper.fm/download.php

In fact the only time Linux is mention is "REAPER supports Linux on Intel and ARM architectures"
Oh, look: https://forums.cockos.com/showthread.php?p=2565419
Outdated info.

It's not just mentality, it's a fact of life.

No it's pure mentality, otherwise all the examples above wouldn't exist.

What's the incentive to do a tedious job in your spare time if you don't get paid for it?

I just proved many decent FOSS projects actually get quite a bit of yearly funding.
But if that wasn't the case, I'd suggest you to redirect that question to Richard Stallman and anyone who's made a FOSS project before that didn't suck, like the ones I linked above. You think you're defending anything here but you're actually just insulting the devs by claiming they're making sub-par software because they don't have incentive. How about you spend 50% of the effort you wasted here on this pointless debate to report bugs and issues? I just did, I posted the Fluida issue in Github. Apparently I wasted my time since the dev is a "hobbyist" who doesn't have "an incentive to do a tedious job" anyway. Maybe I should have defended and claimed how great it was instead.

[Audiojunkie]

It was a response to your rant. No one owes you anything here.

So the smiley was fake and it really was passive-aggressive. Thanks for confirming.

Maybe if you didn't take things personally, reported real problems to the devs instead of finding excuses and getting defensive all the time, maybe the Linux music production ecosystem wouldn't suck as much.
Anyone new has to go on an internet adventure just to figure out which samplers have actual DAW plugins which are the norm in the industry instead of only being standalone, they have to go through countless data online to figure out where the plugin files are even stored by each, they have to dig through abandonware and mediocre projects on github in search for a decent 3rd party plugin solution to samplers the devs didn't bother providing plugins for, they still have to get mediocre results, post for help here and get people like you calling it a rant rather than being helpful.
Such a wonderful reality you're contributing to.
Meanwhile on Windows you can download any of the many .vst files and call it a day. Gee I wonder why most producers don't bother with Linux? I'm sure it's purely Native Instrument's fault, like it's the fault of Microsoft for not offering Office and game developers not offering native support fo their games. Definitely not the ecosystem itself sucking. Let's keep getting defensive and the problem will vanish.

I don't owe you anything eiter, if you want things to keep things sucking and you defending it then you don't have to respond and engage in a discussion. Otherwise I can ignore your response.
This Linux "but it's free" mentality has got to go.

check your setup.

Wow such useful feedback.

I'm not disagreeing with you about the faults of Linux, but I want to let you know that Kott is a very dedicated developer and a generous volunteer that works hard to support Linux. He pretty much runs the OpenSUSE side of Linux Audio, and is a well respected member. He may be gruff at times, but he's a good guy. Also, Imposter is an active fixture of this forum as well. We all try to help each other and share what we learn. We all contribute. Nothing is perfect--we've got lots of different views of the ways that things should be done. We're all here doing the best we can to help others. In an environment like this, sometimes it requires each of us to be more. We each have to "be more" understanding with each other's points of view. We each have to "be more" cautious with how we express our concerns. We have to "be more" understanding that we are a world forum and we all come from different cultures and languages--this makes misunderstandings even easier to have. That's the only way things can work here.

[sysrqer]

I just proved many decent FOSS projects actually get quite a bit of yearly funding.
But if that wasn't the case, I'd suggest you to redirect that question to Richard Stallman and anyone who's made a FOSS project before that didn't suck

Maybe take this up with the devs for not providing documentation and making it 'easy' for you then rather than attacking the few people who might actually be able to help you? Not really sure what you are trying to achieve by coming here and shitting on us and the software we choose to use.

[Impostor]

I don't see anything objectionable in my post for you to assume such an antagonistic attitude, but okay....

Your response to it is "don't use it lol", you're either acting dumb or being disingenous regarding what the discussion is even about, probably because you're too getting defensive and making a snarky comment instead of having a mature discussion and beautifully proving my point.

You're reading snarkiness where none was meant. I just meant to say, one can put up with Linux quirks, or choose to put up with Windows quirks. Quirks abound.

You think you're defending anything here but you're actually just insulting the devs by claiming they're making sub-par software because they don't have incentive.

Maybe I wasn't clear enough, but I was specifically talking about the incentive to create documentation for their software, which I can imagine can be a very tedious job. It seemed to me your main complaint was about that. Not about sub-par software.

I'm kind of amazed about Linux users who have apparently been stuck in their bunkers for the last 15 years and haven't heard of distros like Mint or SteamOS and how it in fact, does not "come with the territory".

I use Mint, and definitely still spent quite a lot of time online to figure out how to accomplish stuff (but not necessarily specifically Mint related) with it, wading through a lot of dated, obsolete information.

How about you don't grasp at straws and research your own claims?:

https://wiki.cockos.com/wiki/index.php/REAPER_for_Linux

Or maybe you don't know what you're talking about and most FOSS is made by actual professional developers and even when they don't do it full time, they accept donations and are still pros, not hobbyists.

Okay, I wouldn't know the actual numbers, but I definitely get the impression that most pro-audio stuff is developed by hobbyists. Who may certainly also be professional day-job developers, and may accept donations for their work too. There's no dichotomy here.

[pigeonw]

Members can be great people and still fall prey to getting defensive and tribalistic over nothing.
I understand what Audiojunkie is saying but try not to sound patronizing either, I haven't discovered the internet and internet forums yesterday and don't need a guide on this.

Being accused of "attacking" anyone instead of accepting criticism for what it is does nothing but show defensiveness and tribalism and prove my point. When you're being defensive you unavoidably become the one attacking instead, feeling justified to do so.

The referenced wiki page for Reaper was last updated 6 years ago and is clearly outdated based on the data on the main site and the discussion on the forums about the state of Reaper on Linux.

A professional is by definition not a hobbyist on the same topic.

I won't say anything more, this is a waste of everyone's time.

[Audiojunkie]

Members can be great people and still fall prey to getting defensive and tribalistic over nothing.
I understand what Audiojunkie is saying but try not to sound patronizing either, I haven't discovered the internet and internet forums yesterday and don't need a guide on this.

Being accused of "attacking" anyone instead of accepting criticism for what it is does nothing but show defensiveness and tribalism and prove my point. When you're being defensive you unavoidably become the one attacking instead, feeling justified to do so.

The referenced wiki page for Reaper was last updated 6 years ago and is clearly outdated based on the data on the main site and the discussion on the forums about the state of Reaper on Linux.

A professional is by definition not a hobbyist on the same topic.

I won't say anything more, this is a waste of everyone's time.

Sorry. It was not my intention to sound patronizing. I was trying to remind everyone (all at the same time) that we are all trying to work together, and it just happened to come out while I was responding to your post, making it look like I was responding only to you. Please accept my apologies.

We all have good and bad days. I am absolutely sure that I've got lots of responses on this forum that could have been handled better. I can think of one from just a couple of days ago where I responded in a quite snarky manner to @tavasti (my apologies, by the way). An hour or two later, I regretted it. When you first posted, I too responded poorly and then deleted and rewrote my post--trying to be more helpful.

I guess what I'm saying, is that I hope you will stay and become an active and contributing member of our group. Please do ask questions! It may not seem like it, but we really do want to help if we are able.

[Impostor]

The referenced wiki page for Reaper was last updated 6 years ago and is clearly outdated based on the data on the main site and the discussion on the forums about the state of Reaper on Linux.

Well, so things do improve on Linux now and then!

A professional is by definition not a hobbyist on the same topic.

So a professional photographer can't also engage in photography in his spare time just for the pleasure of creating art? The latter makes him a hobbyist in addition to being a professional, both in the field of photography, not?

[Kott]

It was a response to your rant. No one owes you anything here.

So the smiley was fake and it really was passive-aggressive. Thanks for confirming.

Passive, aggressive, whatever, but it's an answer to you - if you're unsatisfied - improve it.
I'm aware enough of "the Linux music production ecosystem" and can assure you that problems have to be fixed on your side, with Fluida fonts, with searching a very basic information (with 15 years of professional work on Linux) and with communicating to people.

check your setup.

Wow such useful feedback.

You should really do or/then report to the devs, instead of throwing a shit on fan with like:

And the font, dear God, what were they thinking?

[Largos]

Anyone new has to go on an internet adventure just to figure out which samplers have actual DAW plugins which are the norm in the industry instead of only being standalone, they have to go through countless data online to figure out where the plugin files are even stored by each, they have to dig through abandonware and mediocre projects on github in search for a decent 3rd party plugin solution to samplers the devs didn't bother providing plugins for, they still have to get mediocre results, post for help here and get people like you calling it a rant rather than being helpful.
Such a wonderful reality you're contributing to.
Meanwhile on Windows you can download any of the many .vst files and call it a day. Gee I wonder why most producers don't bother with Linux? I'm sure it's purely Native Instrument's fault, like it's the fault of Microsoft for not offering Office and game developers not offering native support fo their games. Definitely not the ecosystem itself sucking. Let's keep getting defensive and the problem will vanish.

I use Geekos DAW, a repository for OpenSuse which allows me download a huge amount of great plugins and other audio software through the package manager, I don't need to go on any internet adventures. That's the wonderful reality that Kott is contributing to.

Windows has moved on from just downloading .vst files to installers, license keys, DRM etc. That's an ecosystem that sucks.

[Kott]

I use Geekos DAW, a repository for OpenSuse which allows me download a huge amount of great plugins and other audio software through the package manager, I don't need to go on any internet adventures. That's the wonderful reality that Kott is contributing to.

Our repo (GDAW) web page requires improvements, that's true.

[pigeonw]

Well, so things do improve on Linux now and then!

Sure. But why must we argue in extremes? Why must it all either suck or all be just fine? Isn't this the most basic false dichotomy?
I'm specifically upset about the state of samplers. The core is there, is great, but when it comes to VSTs/LV2s of samplers, it's a shitty experience. The point is, it doesn't need to be so.

So a professional photographer can't also engage in photography in his spare time just for the pleasure of creating art? The latter makes him a hobbyist in addition to being a professional, both in the field of photography, not?

This is a semantics argument at this point, isn't it?
Hobbyist and someone with a hobby is not the same. If you're a professional programmer or photographer, you don't become a hobbyist when you do it also in your spare time, you're still a professional. But again, not worth the argument.