Did you also have success running Steinberg plugins like Retrologue?
I’ve dabbled with trying to install anything Steinberg stuff with Wine in the past, but it refused to work out of the box.
Arturia stuff worked great with Wine and Yabridge without any tinkering.
That was on Mint with an older version of Wine though.
Still dreaming about Linux support for Cubase/Nuendo.
Time is ticking away.. make it happen before it is too late. Make it work on linux. No more exuses, please. Other software company are doing it.. Why ? Because, we no more can trust U.S.A . (i was user of steinberg before cubase and nuendo - remember ATARI? - and then .. long way to here..)
I’ve moved all my computers to Linux except the one that I use for Nuendo. I can even edit my video work with DaVinci Resolve under Linux. Hopefully Steinberg can see the value in offering Nuendo/Cubase that will run under Linux.
It would be enough if Steinberg just made Cubase compatible with SteamOS and Proton. It would also mean that Cubase could be sold and bought from in Steam cloud, and would increase Cubase markets.
Bravo! I have a similar hybrid setup (with more machines still on Windows compared to you though), and I’ve mentioned before (probably more than once in this thread) that I almost made the full jump to Linux last year. But it didn’t work out (yet again) and I decided to stick it out with Windows for the time being due to some positive developments (IMO) and my need for specific plugins that don’t run under Wine. But I LOVE to hear when people make even a partial transition to Linux. While my opinion of Windows has changed (in a positive direction) due to people like Microsoft’s Pete Brown, I still dream of a Linux future at some point!
This may be an interesting related side story: over the last few weeks I’ve been in discussion with my son (now a young new professional musician) about what new DAW he should be using. He knows more or less what I have used over the years (which includes most DAWs, including on Mac, Windows, and Linux), and of course we talked about Cubase. As his dad, I’ve been supplying him with tech for years (you know the routine, Christmas presents, birthdays, etc.), but now he’s been forging his own paths.
I had assumed he was still stuck on Macs (I bought him his last Mac and at the time he wanted Studio One) and I figured he was going to be another long-term Mac user, eventually a Pro Tools user, and so forth. So when we talked about DAWs, I always like being really clear and honest about the landscape so that he can make an informed decision for himself. Of course I was hoping he’d pick Cubase, since I prefer to compose in Cubase, etc.. Previously he had chosen Studio One but he was losing confidence in it, so he needed to make a decision about another DAW for his next phase. So now we were discussing the possibilities of Cubase, Logic, Pro Tools, and Reaper, as the primary candidates for him.
But then out of the blue, to my utter SHOCK, he said he wanted to dump Macs and move to Linux in the future. WHAT?!?!?!?! He said he was sick of the “big corporate operating systems” and wanted to go Linux.
Now this is completely without me trying to persuade him in any way. He knew I loved Linux, but he never showed any real prior interest in it, and didn’t share his disappointment with current commercial OSes. Until now.
Then our conversation obviously changed completely to his NEW preference of future plans with Linux, that anything we collaborate with should be able to run on Linux too. Again, I was totally shocked by this.
I try to present information to him in an unbiased way (as much as I humanly can), so he can choose for himself. I was honestly holding out hope he’d choose Cubase. And he said if Cubase ran on Linux, he would choose it. BUT, after our discussion and my explanation of the landscape of Linux, and his personal preferences, he decided on, you guessed it… Reaper.
So what a shocker to me. In my mind I thought he was going Mac/Logic/ProTools, or MAYBE Mac/Cubase. But it was very interesting that his FIRST choice was Cubase on what?!?!? CUBASE ON LINUX. But since Cubase wasn’t on Linux, he didn’t want to even bother learning it and getting used to it, and would rather just dive in to Reaper.
Truth is, he’s a smart young man, and a very talented young musician, and if I personally didn’t ALREADY rely on the tools and workflows in Cubase, plus all the gazillions of plugins that I need for work (that DON’T run on Wine), I can theoretically see myself right there with him on Linux too! He’s right at the perfect age when he is able to make this kind of decision, and I post this story here because it’s kind of red flag to Steinberg because they are literally missing out on the kind of customer from Gen Z that they SHOULD be courting. He’s an ideal young long-term pro musician Cubase user.
And he said he’s done with the big corporate OSes, and where does he want to go? Linux.
Word to the wise at Steinberg HQ who is perhaps hopefully paying attention to this thread: You are losing young potential customers entering the professional world right now. My own son would have been a GREAT long-term paying customer from this new generation of young musicians, and he ALMOST chose Cubase… but passed on it because it doesn’t run on Linux.
Now this could all change of course (for a variety of reasons, he is still young after all), but if Steinberg announced interest in supporting Linux, I’m guessing that would have a positive impact on people like my son. You never know, things change, people change. BUT that seems like a long shot.
And since it’s a big dream of mine to collaborate with my son on projects from time to time, I’m obviously going to try to accommodate him! (After all, dads don’t always get to have cool opportunities like this with their grown kids, so I don’t want to create unnecessary barriers to collaboration!)
So now I’m going to set up a special computer just to collaborate with my son when he finally sets up a Linux machine, and guess what? It will be running Reaper of all things. The very DAW I was using less and less recently, due to the excellent C14/N14 release.
Of course I’ll keep running Cubase, etc., for my main stuff, but TBH I’m excited to collaborate with my son on whatever platform he wants to use. Fortunately, both Cubase and Reaper support DAWproject (thank goodness!) to some degree, so I can maybe start some of my stuff in Cubase, move it over to Reaper to work with him.
Crazy days, folks! CRAZY DAYS!
+1
Put me down as another person that would even pay to crossgrade from Nuendo for mac/win to Nuendo Linux
Reasons:
Sadly, I am getting more and more worried that the people in charge of most companies, including music tech companies, are too in bed with M$. I think they have this thought lingering in the backs of their minds that PERHAPS Satya Nadella is right, and that somehow AI is going to be the future… The answer to every problem. And that the integration of AI directly into the OS is the final solution to computing.
This is of course not the case. In fact, there is no evidence to support this, what so ever, but rather a lot suggesting that it’s quite the opposite.
I really hope that the companies with long track records of producing high quality music production software isn’t going to get stuck “waiting to see” and suddenly find that the rest of the world has moved on, and they are too late to change course.
I’d rather use Cubase than Reaper or Bitwig, but with each new Windows update trying harder and harder to infect my computer with AI telemetry and auto-pilot like features, it’s becoming increasingly more clear that I’ll need to move away from this s**tinfested OS soon. It’s like each new update adds another layer of crap, adding to overall system latency, that needs 3rd party tools to clear it out. Without Winaero Tweaker, Windows would be absolutely useless.
I’m very happy using Bitwig and REAPER (for the nifty stuff it does) on Manjaro.
Overall though I really like the combo of Nuendo and Bitwig and would like to keep using both in the future. However, I hopefully won’t be forced to use macOS or Windows in the future anymore, unless something fundamental changes, as they keep hindering my digital well-being and less intrusive alternatives exist.
If something AI will kill Microsoft Office as we know it. AI will likely replace most of all intellectual work, including music and programming for any commercial use. However Im sure people will continue to play music with or without technology. Music and singing is part of our nature and we will do that until judgement day.
Indeed. We’re nearing the end of the era of live music rescinding and original music venues closing. In the end, within 5 or so years, the only guarantees we’ll get that we are hearing something human produced is live music and artists who we can trust aren’t overly using AI. Even the traditional electronic musician will be sought out, after this AI boom.
Curated lists of artist-produced music will become more prevalent. And as the world order changes as it surely is now, Linux will be more popular.
This really needs to happen. Music production would be so, so much better. Currently we are stuck with two bad choices, PCs and Macs.
Macs are great machines, with the best OS by far, but they were never that upgradeable before the switch to ARM, and now they are impossible to upgrade. I spent $5K on a Mac Studio M1 Ultra in 2022, and I thought that 64 GB of RAM was more than I could possibly need. Then I got into music with large orchestral libraries, and the machine was begging for mercy. 64 GB is nothing, unless you only work with audio tracks, in which case it’s plenty. But I can’t upgrade my Mac Studio to even 128 GB of RAM.
PCs have the benefit that you can build your own, choosing the best components according to your budget. And, if you can’t afford the maximum amount of RAM today, you can upgrade in the future. There are many more benefits compared to Macs when building your own PC. But there’s one big problem. The ruling OS, Windows, sucks on way too many levels. This gorgeous lady lays it out in a much better way than I could: https://youtu.be/xQ65kBnZl6k?si=SU-jJ2s3XqMFRZsH
But the great advantage of building your own PC is to be able to install Linux, which is far from what it used to be, an OS for programmers and nerds. I don’t know if all distros, but Mint and Ubuntu have become very consumer friendly OSes that anyone can operate without being a geek. They are much faster than Windows, even than macOS. And, they don’t have absurd hardware requirements that make your PCs obsolete. Windows 11 has the requirement of TPM 2.0, so many PCs that are not that old were left stuck with Windows 10, which wouldn’t be a problem if Microsoft hadn’t stopped support for it.
Apple changes architectures not too often, but when they do, your current Mac might have updates for about 3-5 years and that’s it. macOS Tahoe will be the last one with support for Intel Macs, but that doesn’t even mean that it supports all Intel Macs. I have a 2015 Macbook Pro that I paid $2,500 for that year, and the last macOS to run on it I think is from 2021 at best.
But guess what? I downloaded Linux Mint, made the USB installer, installed it on that machine, and it runs as fast as macOS did when it was just installed. Problem is, I can’t do much with it. I can run Blender, DaVinci Resolve and Fusion Studio have Linux versions but I think only for CentOS, and I thought Cubase didn’t even have a version, but I did a search and see that some people are running it? I would like to know more about that, and if VST3 plugins also run or would have to be recompiled by their vendors.
But there’s also the other factors, like my MIDI keyboard, or the Maschine Mikro pad, USB interface, etc. Most likely there aren’t Linux drivers for those things. But the industry has to realize, Windows is becoming such an obtuse and crappy OS that it doesn’t have much of a future. Microsoft wants to put AI at the forefront, and based on what I see, people hate AI. Especially that Copilot thing, it’s insufferable. I used it to create a couple of simple apps, and it kept throwing flowers at me all the time for asking it to do this or that, and the process was much longer and annoying than it had to be. Not to mention that you tell it that you want to modify something, and it does, but in the process breaks other things. And that’s what Microsoft wants to base Windows 12 on? I think Windows 12 will be the nail in the coffin for Microsoft.
So Steinberg and all the VST vendors need to realize that Linux is the way to go, at least Linux Mint and Ubuntu.
Steinberg supporting Cubase/Nuendo on Linux is needed now more than any previous time.
Microsoft is now actively working against it’s own customer-base, and I’m stuck in the unenviable position of having heavily invested in the audio ecosystem that currently is only compatible with Windows or MacOS.
This can’t be too difficult, since MacOS is half BSD.
I will not be moving to Windows 11, Microsoft has made it clear its intentions to leverage everything possible in Windows 11 to siphon as much personal data as possible and to treat the end-user as an idiot.
If Cubase eventually becomes Win11+ compatible, this will be the end of my ability to use my favorite DAW.
I think the artist community has to be more vocal about the near future. Like you said, the future of Windows is rather dark, with Microsoft getting inside every facet of your life and trying to push AI into everything. The fact that these days you cannot even have autosave in Word or Excel unless you save your document to Onedrive is downright despicable, especially when you have to pay $10 a month to have those programs. Also despicable is not to let you use local accounts, which among other things is terrible in terms of security, because any hacker that has your Microsoft account also has your computer’s admin account password, while in macOS you always have a local account. iCloud is an add-on that you can choose to not use if you prefer. But on macOS, the only way your iCloud account has the same password as your Mac account is if you’re dumb enough to set the same password for both.
The big problem with macOS is that you need a Mac, and they are expensive, but also, once you chose your configuration, you’re stuck with it for as long as you own it. You ordered it with just 64 GB of RAM because it seemed more than enough at the time? Sorry, you need to buy another Mac Studio with plenty of RAM.
Artists, whether they are musicians, videographers, motion graphics designers, etc, etc. need beefy PCs that they can build themselves (it’s very easy), or buy custom built from small companies, and install Linux Mint or Ubuntu. Or another Linux if they prefer, but those are the two most user friendly. To me, that’s the only real choice for the next 20 years or so. I love the PC I built this year, and unlike most people, I don’t hate Windows 11. It has a great look (except where they drop the ball and still have the classic GUI elements that don’t abide to the dark theme), and it works fine most of the time. But the constant push to always use Onedrive for everything is despicable, and so is the same but for AI. I can’t even imagine what a piece of garbage Windows 12 is going to be. One thing is to have AI as an additional feature, like opening Copilot if you need to do anything with AI, and the rest of the OS behaves as it always has, but an AI centric OS? That’s a recipe for disaster.
Yes, the recent events raised the question of my dependency of US systems as an European, and even if I spent part of my life working on those systems, I will work to get ride of them, as the thank-yous leave a bitter taste : bye bye windows and MS 365, bye bye Google, Facebook and X (former Twitter) left years ago, as LinkedIn, one pb could be youtube. And welcome linux.
So I hope that Steinberg, as an EU company will help me leave Windows and switch on Linux…or I will leave Cubase sooner or later.
I just want to add another voice of a Cubase user who would support a move to Linux.
After almost 30 years of saying I was going to do it, this year I actually moved my workstation over to Linux. Every thing I do with a PC I am able to do under Linux now… except run Cubase. For that reason, and that reason alone, I’m doing the dual boot thing with the Windows install being for nothing other than Cubase.
But I wont keep that up for ever. I really dont like the current Linux alternatives but new ones are coming (like Studio One) so I see this as a critical point of inflection for Steinberg and Yamaha: port Cubase to Linux fast enough to keep loyal customers and gain new ones, or be late to the game and see that money go to someone else.
I will NOT “upgrade” to Windows 11. Cubase is the main reason I have windows at all. I see two paths forward:
Either option works for me. Windows 11 does not. It has no future that I can see. Even business users are dumping it. Steinberg should be reluctant to support it.
There’s another issue with windows 11. If it’s going to have poor performance due to constant screen captures and unstoppable AI interruptions of workflow, then it’s going to be impossible to have reliable real-time computing. This is absolutely necessary for audio production. Imagine working on a project and then an ad pops up, or the OS wants to make you save everything to a cloud, or AI comes up with some brain-dead suggestions for mixing. Oh yes it will, because it’s an agentic OS.
That is impossible, because only Microsoft owns the source code. Without that you can not provide any update.
But it was still Microsoft bulding OS2, from this they built the OS2-killer Windows NT, only at that point IBM took back control of OS2…
Steinberg can of course support win10 as long as possible. However I Microsoft owns the eco-system so eventually you will be forced to drop support for older systems. Steinberg have to taste their own medicine that they gave to VST2 partners. (Steinberg have eaten the crow, and VST3 is now MIT-license). I think the same thing will happen for MS-win, but you (or steinberg) might need to buy a “pro-multimedia-producer-edition” extension to be able to turn the garbage off.