The reason I thought long and hard before posting this as a feature request was that I knew it would not take long before people would begin passionately defending whatever OS they currently use, thereby completely missing the point. Yes, I use Win7x64, but does that preclude me from asking for the option to use Linux as well? If Cubase was Windows-only, and someone requested a Mac version, would the response then be to praise Windows more?
I’m not asking that Cubase be made available on Linux instead of Windows, just that it be offered as an additional option. No need to feel threatened. This is not an “OS wars” discussion!
As for Windows 7 as an upgrade for XP users, yes, I agree! That’s what I did. But think about this: if you don’t want to go to Windows 8,9,“X”, or whatever, and you don’t want to end up in years to come having to buy each separate feature as an “app”, or having to be online to use the product you paid for, or having to sign up to some social networking site in order to log in, then you might want to give some thought to where personal computing is going.
The user base for Linux is no longer as small as some may think, and there are certainly not many on this forum, seeing as there isn’t yet a Linux version of any Steinberg product, but I believe there are plenty of people who would like to retain control over their own computers and as far as I can see, the only way to do that in years to come will be via open source operating systems.
To put this another way: if the next version of Cubase drops support for Windows 7 and forces me to use Windows 8, then I will certainly be looking at Bitwig. That’s just me … but maybe, just maybe, it’s not just me?