For those who are interested, Ardour is an open source Pro Tools clone that runs on Linux and OSX.

As with PT, the original did not feature MIDI support, but the new version does, although the editing facilities are initially basic compared to contemporary commercial DAWs.

Ardour is open source and free, but downloading a compiled copy requires a donation to the developer- as little as $1!

It works with Jack (Linux’s technically more capable ReWire) and something notable is how well it interfaces with other equipment, such as SMPTE/MTC/MMC etc.

I’ve been wanting to switch to a Linux system for a few years now, but some of the software I need hasn’t been available. This is rapidly changing though- I’m at present reloading a laptop after a HD change and that’s going Linux as I’ve lost my Win7 disk!

I’ll try to keep you folk updated about this, meanwhile it would be great to hear the experiences of others.

The Linux/Jack setup looks from a technical perspective a potentially better platform than Windows for music creation, and Jack looks like it can sync video based applications too. Worth looking around YouTube for some super demo videos users have made.

I am underway on a pretty similar project, having put Ardour3 on my Ubuntu Studio machine a month or so ago. Robert (gurdonark) came over and we made some progress, but I would *love* to share notes with you. Could be as simple as a shared Google Doc among us? Would need yr email ..