Linux

if you're going to be too time pressured to have fun with Linux, probably don't for now

Man, you're basically saying "I want to move to a new country, but I don't want to lose any of my friends, I can't change my job, I don't want to learn a new language, I want to bring all my furniture and appliances with me, and we just had a new baby a month ago so I'm sleep deprived and don't have any spare time. How do I do it?"

No idea about Cakewalk etc but your Steam games will almost all be fine and Linux is honestly great right now and always getting better.

Having used Linux Mint, Windows 10, and Windows 11, I can honestly say that Win10 is okay and Win11 is annoying dogshit. I'd recommend taking the Linux plunge of course, but if you're desperate for Windows I think paid extended support for 10 might be a thing?

But like I said 11 is dogshit and there's no time like the present to just grab 3-4 USB sticks at Microcenter, download a bunch of ISOs and Rufus or Balena Etcher, and just dick around. Linux Mint with Cinnamon or KDE will probably give you one of the slickest Windows-like experiences OOTB. Only recommendation: some wifi cards (with certain chips, I forget which) in my experience have required me to go hunt down a driver, so check reviews for any card you're looking at to see if people report it working out of the box.

I would suggest installing Fedora Kinoite, poke around it for 20-30min and if you find it too confusing then just putting windows back.

My point is that it's not a big decision/commitment. And it's trivial to undo!

Hey there! I'm an avid music producer and gamer.

I made the jump to bitwig while I was still using Windows in 2019, and made the full jump to Linux as my daily driver late last year.

My mint journey was Mint (Cinnamon) > Debian (KDE Plasma) > Garuda (Dr4g0niz3d KDE plasma)

I think mint was great and I was still able to do a fair amount of gaming on it and Cinnamon desktop environment is very similar to windows so it's not too big of a jump.

Debian was fine - I wanted to use Plasma as the desktop environment because I wanted a touch customization for how I can set up windows, widgets, and different desktop panels. I had issues with some games on this though.7

I like Garuda but I would not recommend if you're not too familiar with tinkering and troubleshooting. In hindsight I probably should have gone with Kubuntu (Ubuntu with KDE plasma as its desktop environment). I have experienced some odd bugs with the desktop environment and I think it has to do with how nvidia and Wayland play with one another.

I haven't had a game that didn't run, the only odd bug I've had is some games won't recognize my new soundcard from bitwig.

using WINE and yabridge I've gotten all my plugins to work seamlessly as well - and that includes Omnisphere which is a beast on resources.

I was really fed up with the direction that windows has been heading for quite sometime.

TL;DR: I think mint or some Ubuntu distro would be a good fit for right now, and any future GPU upgrades consider something from AMD.

Go with windows. Especially because of your abelton use, you will not be able to keep it. With steam if you play multiplayer competitive games then it won't work either on Linux.

Here's a dad's reply in a similar place - Win 11 is fine. I put it off for a very long time and just upgraded a couple weeks ago. It hasn't really been an impact.

Is Linux better? Yes. Does win 11 just work without too much fuss? Yes.

I still have Linux on many machines in my house except for my gaming rig, just because I don't want to have to break it and spend time refreshing it because my Linux skills aren't up to par. I have a full time job and young kids and don't have as much tinkering time as I used to.

That being said, I'm migrating ALL machines that aren't compatible with win 11 to Linux to avoid tossing them in a landfill like many will do, like my son's gaming PC.

If you want to dip your feet in without making any permanent decisions, try using a virtual machine or a live USB.

The virtual machine is effectively no risk but slightly slower. The live USB gives you a more realistic experience (except for boot times) but it is possible to erase your data if you miss the several warning messages and press the "I know what I'm doing, proceed anyway" button.

If you feel like Linux could work but you're not ready to fully commit, you can dualboot. I had both Windows and Linux for 2-3 years before I was comfortable enough to not boot Windows.

My personal preference is Linux Mint because it looks and feels very similar to Windows (I'm currently running LMDE). Any distro with KDE should also feel fairly familiar. Bazzite is more designed around gaming, but should still be adequate for most of your needs. It does have the reputation of being unbreakable.

So, the questions really are can your hardware support Windows 11 and if not can you easily flip to Linux.

1. The Asus Z170 motherboard looks like it supports TPM 2.0, but it doesn't look like the i7-6700K does as that is a 6th gen Skylake CPU and Win11 starts at 8th gen. You might double check that with the TDM tool Microsoft offers though.

2. Cakewalk and Ableton appear to work in Linux, but not without some tweaking.

My suggestion would be to do nothing. If you can't update without a rebuild and you can't migrate without a lot work, just do nothing. Your Windows 10 installation will still work. You won't receive any additional updates for it, but if that is the best solution for you at this time, then that's what you should go with.

For the kiddo: Get a body wrap. It lets you because hold the baby to you securely while you do other things. I worked on-call shifts handling downed MPLS circuits for a carrier back in the day with my daughter strapped to me. A couple years later she would get to visit me at work. She was the only 2 year old who technically had PBX configuration experience (I didn't know the keyboard was still connected).

Kick the can down the road and download the MASgrave Win10 script (I think that's it, I don't use windows) that puts you on the Long Term support - iirc that gives you until Jan 2027. That's enough time to get through the zero parental sleep phase and be able to think clearly...

If that's of interest I'll dig the correct details out (ping me) or I'm sure someone else knows what I'm waffling about & will drop the link

Stay on win10, if so the choice comes. Just get it debloated and maybe a better protection. If you are sure, get mint or other stable distribution, which I would recommend if you can have some spare time to figure out your setup. Most of the stuff should work out of the box

Linux for gaming is easy. For the most part it’s plug and play. I’m on an AMD CPU and an NVidia GPU, and I even do VR in Linux.

As someone who does a decent amount of stuff with DAWs; VSTs are tricky. You might be able to create a similar workflow to what your used to, and many plugins might work decently well, but for me at least it was a lot of fiddling about and it isn’t as smooth as I’d like. My comfort compressor works, but the UI doesn’t render.

I’ve gotten my music workflow to work alright, but it’s wonky enough that I don’t do it as much anymore. Thinking about trying to start over with a new DAW and whatnot.

If privacy is a concern there’s a decent amount of stuff you can do to strip down Windows 11.

The kid is 1.5 months old and you don't have time? Once that kid gets mobile you'll really not have time! And I don't mean crawling or walking, I mean rolling and scooting.

When my kid figured out how to get places by rolling I had gotten up with her early on a Saturday morning and was letting my wife sleep in... I went to the basement and turned on the Xbox to pay some Rocket League and in the middle of a game she started to roll out of the room. I put the controller down and went to pick her up... 4 years later that controller was exactly where I had put it. She's now almost 9 and is a great gaming partner, and is getting into robotics, 3D printing, and is interested in programming, so I get to jump right back into my old hobbies, and pick up some new ones.

All that to say, Linux is only going to get better and Windows will continue to get worse, but there's more important things for you to have to worry about in the very near future than troubleshooting an OS that you're not familiar with, stick with Win 10 for as long as you can and some day you'll sit down at your desk and realize you have time to look back in at Linux and you'll find that it isn't nearly as difficult to use as you remember. Congratulations on the kid, it can be an incredible journey watching, and helping, a person emerge.

Add another SSD and dual boot. Keep the windows 10 install for the audio software and use Linux for everything else. Nvidia cards will work in Linux, you just have to install the driver. That's just a couple of clicks in many distros. I would suggest sticking with a distro that uses X11 since Wayland can still cause some issues with Nvidia GPUs.

Back up your music data to an external & a cloud backup. Then the OS matters less.

Your lack of time is the biggest issue, followed by your music needs (which are not impossible but I also know its not plug and play).

I would recommend going with win11 for simplicity and times sake. I would also recommend at least trying out ameliorated windows11. https://ameliorated.io/

Basically their stock run book makes the OS far more secure and private by setting up an admin account and then making your account a standard user (the way it should be done). Then it strips out all the bloat, restricts services, and installs open source alternatives like libre office and libre wolf. It also drastically changes the UI, which most of it I like and some is meh, but its all much better than the crap stock UI. I run this as a VM for all the stuff I still need windows for and I love it. Nothings ever going to make windows not windows, but this is pretty close and a simple click install. I highly recommend it.

Tldr, I recommend sticking with Windows or using two separate machines, one for music production running Windows, the other for running everything else with Linux.

Music production isnt great on Linux in my experience at least right now. If you use any paid plugins that are windows only, there's a good chance they won't run. I haven't used ableton or cakewalk but I use reaper which has a native Linux version, and even that had a lot of issues. Anything with ilok is a no go, even plugins that dont, I had a hard time getting working or if they did work, they crashed A LOT.

Gaming and other general use has been fine for me, ive even done video and photo editing on Linux and been happy with it.

If you want the easiest experience, I typically recommend Fedora KDE spin or kubuntu. KDE is a desktop environment that is very similar to windows and highly customizable. You'd likely feel at home on it. Immutable distro might also be a good option if you really want the "IDC just do the update" path. Harder to break, easier to manage from what ive heard but I haven't used them personally so maybe others that have can chime in.

I made a windows only box for music production and use Linux on my main PC. It runs windows 10 and is rarely connected to the internet except when I need it to be. If you wanna run Linux and make music, it can be done, but I had a terrible time with it and have given up for now.

So make a separate machine for music production and run Linux on your main pc or just run Windows is my advice. So far, this has been the best setup for me. I don't worry about my privacy, I can make music when I want, and I don't have to worry about incompatible plugins, crashes, stupid nonsense that gets in my way when i wanna make music.

There's no reason to hope that you can change to a new operating system and you can copy paste exactly what you did in the other, completely different operating system. However that doesn't mean its hard. There are distros that make it really easy to transition too. I had a really easy moving over, but I was fine with adapting to new workflows and software and OS.

I run Linux while having 3 kids, my fiancee, a full time job that has a lot of OT, family health issues I have to support etc. Life is always busy and will always be busy. I pace myself with what I want to learn based on how busy my life is at that time. Not pacing I would burn out. I advise the same.

I also think being pissed off at Microsoft isn't enough to get into Linux for the long term. Its enough to just start. You need to be able to want to learn something new because if you make the switch, run into an issue with some distro, can't get past it, you'll end up right back where you left off.

Best of luck either way. Definitely do your research first and follow good rules for backing up your data.

I don't know what all these doomsayers are doing. I installed Bazzite and it just worked. I decided I didn't want an immutable system so I switched to Garuda, and it just worked. I have Nvidia and didn't have to do anything extra.

Are you intent on ableton and cakewalk (holy shit I haven’t heard cake walk in a minute)?

For ableton, I’d even consider Mac.

I have never personally used ableton and I was not very advanced with FL studio, but at least LMMS seemed to be FL studio like .

You can do Linux if your situation meets these criteria:

• your hardware is supported. it likely is, but check. Usually running a live usb is sufficient.
• The proprietary software you want to run is supported in some stable way - like, platinum steam support, or the developer supports and intends to continue supporting Linux. do dual boot temporarily and make absolutely sure.
• you are psychologically capable of declining to try to fix everything. While Linux just works for me, I've learned to recognize escalating effort in getting some new cool piece of software or hardware to work. wait until what you want is at least in beta. aside from that, it's just not supported. Don't frozzle the frimfram as /u/linuxminordeity told you to, because after that, you'll have to bidnap the uperpon. ..and on and on. just accept that people are working on it and it's not ready. contribute somehow, if you feel like it. but accept. If it can't be installed through typical channels (website package for linux, the repositories, or flatpak) it just doesn't work.

tbh, it sounds like you don't want to have to think about and test it. ..and if that's true, then you shouldn't be switching operating systems if you can reasonably avoid it.

It all boils down to how willing you are to troubleshoot an odd problem or post on a linux nerd forum. I transitioned from win10 to fedora KDE pretty painlessly, though I did have to hit up the fedora forum for an answer to a weird hardware issue specific to my machine. Learning to use the command line for doing a few weird customizations I wanted was a bit of a stumble too (though I've heard from my mint using buddy this isn't an issue on Mint?)

My steam library works fine with the default proton option enabled and my day to day experience has me forgetting that I'm even on a weirdo operating system made by FOSS cultists (love you foss cultists, mwah.) I literally do just press a button every couple of weeks that updates the system in the way that you're looking for.

From what I've heard of seen in the Linux community music production on Linux is not easy. There is a fair amount of tweaking to get audio working and connecting instruments.

I'd say look after your kid and try out Linux a bit later when you have Leisure for it. You can use Linux and Windows in parallel on two computers networked with Samba.

Your easiest way is to upgrade windows normally and if you dislike all it's bloated software, just install Atlas OS on top of it. It's just a software that will go through your windows and debloat it as much as possible. Simple as that. Easier done than reinstalling windows for an LTSC version. I personally have a dual boot with a win 11 with Atlas OS specifically for the software I can't install on Linux.

I would NOT recommend biting the bullet for Windows 11. If you want to use it, just make sure you have a virtual machine of Windows 11, and have specific purposes for it. That way, you'll be able to sandbox the data as necessary.