Agreed! That’s why I think this is unlikely to happen any time soon. BUT I like to hold out a bit a hope. My own Linux timeline is not set in stone, and it depends on a few other factors… obviously, Studio One for Linux just accelerated my timeline, but there’s still time for Steinberg IMO.
I personally think that if Steinberg dips its toe in Linux, it will test the waters with some other app or plugin first, whichever one has the cleanest reliance on JUCE, for example. I would buy that instantly. Cubase, on the other hand, is indeed a big ask… and a heavy lift as you say. But as a “big ask,” those of us who want it might as well start “asking” now!
Well, they would likely have to lean the product out first and do exactly that before even considering it.
Personally, I was hoping that C12 was signalling the start of them working their way back through the product and doing just that. i.e. change of licensing meant they were likely focusing into areas they wouldn’t normally, plus the new MIDI Remote replacing what was there previously, phasing out of VST3 and the paid update cycle moving to a 2 year cycle.
But i’m not so sure now as C13 showed very little attention to the products core, it’s back to the reskinning, bolting on approach.
There’s been no further phasing out of VST3, the successor(s) to MIDI remote are still all present with no further movement there either. And right off the bat we had a lot of CPU/GPU related issues, so the 2 year cycle had not even yielded a more stable product on release, even despite the additional time they had as the store was offline.
The truth is, If you’re using Cubase and wanting the bugs and performance issues squashed and yet were delivered a new side bar, reskinned mixer UI, compressors and a vocal plugin, you’re now in for another 2 year wait to see if that happens.
That’s kinda what concerns me most, is putting this hope into a company who tells you to endure C12 and the changes being put in place as it will yield a better future… And then they don’t pick it up the other end.
As I said before, I don’t have any direct need for Linux, but for those who are able to offer it as an alternative today are demonstrating their capability in supporting and growing core functionality, even for a small minority of users.
I think that’s quite an important aspect for people who are looking for a DAW to invest into. But it’s also making me consider what I invest my time and money into, also.
So maybe, with StudioOne there is now a “better” alternative for Linux… thinking about switching my DAW, if this performes good.
I think there is no hope for Cubase on Linux.
Hi there, guys! I’m just exiting to share that my loved one Pianoteq (Modartt) is runnig on my system (Ubuntu 23.10) natively! I just downloaded the demo, double clicked on “Pianoteq 8” file and it is just working without any installation or configuration. I hooked up my Audient ID 14 MKII through ALSA/Pipewire, plugged in my old Oxygen 49 keyboard and good to go!
I sit and thought over here, is this that big issue to move for example, macOS build to Debian based distros(ubuntu, mx, mint etc)? They both Unix systems, I think the kernels are similar as well. Just few tweeks here and there, and good to go, lol! I’m not system programmer though. =)
Mac OS or linux are not UNIX. They are UNIX compatible. Which means they use the same set of programs and commands that UNIX did and the same “everything is a file” philosophy. But they are two different beasts.
As far as i know, which isn’t much, the biggest problems to overcome would be a different graphical environment and to comply with ALSA / Jack. Instead of ASIO / whatever is used on Mac these days.
And remember, most soundcards might work as USB compliant devices, but there are not many published with dedicated drivers for Linux. So latency could be an issue.
As much as i would love to switch to linux and get rid of windows spyware, this is a full ecosystem that would have to migrate. If there’s a will, it will happen, but this could take some time.
That is one part of the problem. Linux is mostly using a display server named Wayland these days, but there are still some old X-Server distros around. This display server has nothing to do with what MacOS (where it is called Quartz, afair) is doing and requires the developer to change the complete UI code to make it work.
There are many other issues that might come up, especially in the area of device drivers and, of course, the audio system.
I also would like to see a Linux based system, but I know that this will not happen soon, due to the massive amount of changes required.
In my studio, I am using Linux more and more. While I have almost all the Steinberg licenses (and many other DAW licenses), and I’m happy to be a Steinberg customer right now, I know that eventually, over time, unless Steinberg decides to join the Linux party, Steinberg will be phased out from my studio as I do more and more productions on Linux. From my recent experiences on Linux, this is pretty much my direction in the next several years.
The timeframe for my transition to Linux will still take more time, hence why I’m still current on most (almost all) of my Steinberg licenses. But I can see the horizon in my own work, and now that I have some really solid experience and increasingly large projects under my belt with pro audio on Linux, I know what my own future looks like in my studio.
Between Bitwig, Reaper, Tracktion (v13 just came out and it’s very good IMO), Harrison, Renoise, and of course the beta of Studio One, among many other good commercial and open source tools, I have been using Linux more and more.
I’ve bought many (if not most) of the Linux commercial DAWs and plugins that I can get my hands on, and my Linux-native library of plugins is growing literally each month. Not to mention the open source tools, some of which are surprisingly good.
I’ve increasingly fallen in love with AudioThing, for example, and I own most of their plugins now. They work on several platforms, sound great, some are outright brilliant, very creative, and useful plugins. Knowing that I can fire up a session on Linux and use them is fantastic. There are several Linux-native developers like them that I am very impressed with, give me hope for Linux, and I’ll pay good money to support them.
Anyway, I do hope that Steinberg will see a market potential with Linux, because the ecosystem and community there are growing. It’s still very small of course, but… growing. With the inevitable and in some cases disheartening changes happening with Windows, for example, I think more and more people will be looking for alternatives. I think we’ll see a steady growth of Linux users as Windows 10 users are going to be forced to pay Microsoft for security updates after October 2025 on perfectly good hardware, or upgrade to Windows 11. You all know what’s going there. The primary obvious alternative is macOS of course, and I also own some Apple Silicon machines in the studio. But then there’s that great third option, Linux, which has a special place in my studio now, and I’m not the only person who thinks that.
ALL my old Windows DAWs have now been converted over to Linux. It took some time, and a big learning curve, but this was phase 1 for me. I run Steinberg on macOS now. But those perfectly capable, very powerful DAWs that used to run Windows 10 and 11 in my studio are still perfectly capable and very powerful… but they now run Linux, and TBH, they are running better than ever. (BTW yes I thoroughly tested Windows 11 for DAW work too, and once I did, I knew I wanted to master Linux even more.) Why get rid of those machines if they are still so useful? Plus it’s opened up a whole new realm of learning for me that’s been a lot of fun.
Linux pro audio users are still a small minority for now, of course, but I think if Steinberg were to take even a small step into Linux, such a gesture would bring a lot of attention to pro audio on Linux and help create a synergistic market shift and attract even more people. I think that is what Presonus is counting with their Linux beta, and hopefully more developers will consider a similar approach.
In any case, my own long-term plans for my productions and studio are still leaning heavily toward Linux (even as I’ve tried and failed and tried again in the past to fully migrate), and while the ecosystem is not quite where I need it right now to make the FULL 100% transition, I can say from my own experience that it’s a far better platform for music and pro audio production than a lot of people think, and I’m getting closer each year to making the full transition. Since I deleted Windows from my last Windows DAW recently, I feel more confident than ever in my own direction.
Cheers to the Linux DAW users. Here’s to hoping Steinberg is listening!
EDIT: spelling, clarity, I still probably missed some
Indeed, you’ve been asking for this for a long time! Kudos to you for your persistence over the years! I hope you get your feature request that is about 10 years old!
One of the many differences between then and now, as I see it, is that we have so many more alternatives on Linux these days, some of which are truly, objectively powerful DAWs. You COULD make the leap to Linux today if you were willing to give up Cubase. I’m not suggesting you do that, just pointing out that it’s technically possible to do an amazing amount of work on Linux DAWs.
I would prefer to have the option of Cubase on Linux too. Maybe one day… but until then, we have this thread and your old thread asking Steinberg to listen. Maybe they will.
As for the Windows 10 EOL issue in 2025, I think the primary difference between then (Win XP EOL) and now, is that for some people, Windows 11 and beyond represents an unacceptable future for a variety of reasons (no need to rehash any of that, it’s worthy of many threads), and also a big change of business model for Microsoft. This whole shift of the computer/software industry in general to different revenue models is highly unattractive to a certain group of people, and the Windows 10 Oct 2025 date will be a giant invitation for people to explore other alternatives, that have been maturing and advancing for many years. So I’m hoping that this will give a nice boost to the Linux community.
In my case, my recent positive experiences with Linux pro audio has inspired me to keep going, and I’m gaining confidence that I’ll be able to fully transition in the not-so-distant future. I don’t have a firm date, since there are so many variables with tools that I want/need and workflows I’m still experimenting with. But it’s happening, just a question of when for me. And since I feel so good about it lately, when the time comes to get rid of my last macOS machines that currently run Steinberg products (and like I said, I already converted ALL my Windows machines to Linux), I’ve prepared myself mentally to give up using Cubase if necessary. I hope it doesn’t come to that. I want Cubase as an option on Linux. But… I’m getting closer to being able to let it go if needed.
Like I mentioned, and as you already know, there are a number of really good options, depending on what you need in terms of workflow and specific tools. But for me, I’ve been reorienting my brain around different workflows slowly but surely. With Bitwig, Reaper, Harrison Mixbus32c, Tracktion Waveform, Renoise, and coming soon, even Studio One, there is a clear path ahead for me. I hope Cubase is eventually going to be on that path too.
I don’t think people realise the extent to which control will be given up in the new subscription-based world, where you own nothing; sure, you may “possess” a computer, but someone else, somewhere else, will have the power to render it useless unless you pay up. It’s the Al Capone business model.
Oddly enough, thanks to the wonderful work done on the MIDI Remote script for the Presonus FaderPort 2 by @WEM and @CKB I recently purchased one to replace my AlphaTrack, and it comes with a free license for Studio One Artist, which I will be exploring. One of the considerations when choosing the FaderPort 2 is that it is a class-compliant USB device and will therefore also work on Linux, and, should a Linux version of Cubase ever materialise, the MIDI Remote script will also work there.
Very true. This evolution of the new general revenue model, which includes more than just subscription-based licenses, is turning your computer into a massive telemetry and behavioral analysis tool, siphoning off everything you do and say and search for and consume into algorithms that will turn your computer into a giant advertising platform and worse… Not to get into the details of it, but for those interested, a good example of this is Microsoft’s own new Outlook app that shows precisely the kind of direction Microsoft is going. A good summary of what the new Outlook is doing with your personal information is found in the Proton blog:
This new Outlook – and the general theory and revenue model behind it – is really not something I am interested in using, but it serves as one example of what is going on with the transformation of business models we are seeing across so many IT-related industries. And there’s no way I want to continue to use the OS created by the company who came up with the concept behind the new Outlook, for example. This kind of thinking permeates all the decisions Microsoft is now making, and it’s seeping deeper into Windows 11 and beyond. Count me out of that.
And for Windows 10 users who hit EOL next year, they have to pay up to get security updates, or be forced into Windows 11. No thanks, not for me. I paid for that computer hardware, I want to use it how I want to use it… easy solution for me… reformat the boot drive, delete Windows, install Linux. Done.
And Apple is not that far behind in different ways. In order to answer to the mania surrounding the much hyped marketing blitz of AI tools and to “catch up” to Microsoft’s Copilot initiative that they are literally pushing into Windows now, Apple is apparently in talks to use Google Gemini AI and integrate that into iOS and perhaps macOS!
This pattern will continue and there’s no reversing it. All of this, and much more (I’ve spent countless hours researching this to understand how these revenue models are fundamentally changing the computer world), has combined to inspire me to try to take control back over my own computer hardware, and so far so good. Microsoft is now deleted and gone for good in my studio and in my life. Next up, Apple. That will take a little more time though, as I rely on certain pro audio tools for my studio. It’s not so simple to delete all those tools. But there is a way to significantly reduce reliance on those tools, and over time, make the transition.
In my case, I’m shooting for a 100% transition to Linux eventually, but again, I don’t have a precise date yet. I tried to force the 100% transition to Linux in my studio last year, and I didn’t make it, and almost gave up. I got pretty far, but I wanted to do it too quickly, and that was basically impossible given some of the tools that I use on a daily basis for my business. But with some more patience and developing new workflows, I’m more confident than ever that I can successfully do it in the not-so-distant future. There will be sacrifices along the way, and I’m really hoping by then, I won’t have to say goodbye to Steinberg.
I don’t ever see myself giving up on Cubase and WaveLab, but if the only way forward is on an OS like Windows 11, then these will remain on Windows 10 machines with no network connectivity other than the bare minimum required for license activation – possibly not even that, once I figure things out.
For balance, bear in mind that other proprietary software such as Bitwig and Studio One, even if running on Linux, can also implement pay-as-you-go models (implying “no-go-if-you-don’t-pay”), but that’s a whole different proposition to taking over the OS and thus your hardware (property).
If at some stage Steinberg products require a version of Windows which in turn requires me to hand over control of my privacy and property rights to a faceless multinational organisation, then that will be the end of the road.
Yep, I totally understand you. And yes, giving up Cubase and WaveLab, if it comes to that, will be very hard for me to do. I just hope it doesn’t come to that.
When Presonus announced the Linux beta, I was shocked… it seemed to come out of nowhere, but it’s clear that someone at Presonus made the calculation that it would be worth it. Or at least worth the gamble to try it. I’m hoping it pays off for them. And I hope the same for any company that chooses to make that kind of development commitment. That’s why I’m literally buying as much Linux-native software as I can, and yes, even donating to open source projects too. I’m in, man. Just not able to go 100% quite yet!
It’s all a calculated risk for any of these companies, of course. And the more companies that do it, the more of a catalyst that could become to make a larger sustainable ecosystem. Crossing fingers.
Indeed, and I’ve been watching this closely. Presonus nearly sabotaged their own good efforts recently with the botched announcement of their new optional “hybrid” subscription model with v6.6. I think they got a nice push-back on that, and have tripped over themselves assuring people that perpetual licenses will not be discontinued. I think it’s highly unlikely that Presonus will reverse course on perpetual licenses. There would be a Waves-level revolt.
BUT, for the sake of fun, let’s say Presonus caves in and goes downhill… and Bitwig caves in too… and so on and so forth. Let’s say even Reaper caves in… although that seems so unlikely there’s a better chance I’ll be struck by lightning. But let’s say ALL the commercial DAW developers cave in to this subscription model or worse, including ALL the ones that currently develop for Linux. AND including ALL the commercial plugin developers on Linux too.
Now all that will be highly, highly, highly unlikely, but for the sake of entertaining such an apocalyptic and miserable situation for a moment, and assuming the world itself hasn’t outright ended by then… there will STILL be one more final alternative, which is open source software.
In all my time spent on Linux, I haven’t neglected open source DAW software and plugins, and while the commercial options are much better for my own workflows and preferences, there are some very good open source projects – DAWs and plugins – that are powerful alternatives. So I think even that worst-case scenario will be okay.
Ardour 8, for example, is a surprisingly capable DAW today. It’s what Harrison uses as the core for their Mixbus32C DAW. Now if all my other options were to be eliminated and all I had left was just the open source Ardour DAW, I would, in fact, survive. And not only that, I’d be donating all the license money I normally spend every year on commercial licenses, to projects like Ardour… and I think with time, and the support of other like-minded people, it would continue to evolve into an even more and more powerful DAW… ultimately it would be survivable.
A lot of people just don’t seem to realize how powerful Ardour alone has become in recent years. Sure, it’s not Cubase, but I’d love to sit down with skeptics and show them what it can actually do, and I bet many of them would be surprised. Yes, I prefer Cubase by far. But… could I create professional content in Ardour? Absolutely.
So if all other commercial DAWs disappeared from Linux for some crazy reason or another, Ardour would still be carrying on and improving, and likely accelerating in its development due to more resources being onboarded, due to our apocalyptic worst-case scenario.
So in the end, I’m not worried about my transition to Linux. I’ve considered the worst case scenario, and barring an asteroid hitting the earth, I’ll still have options.
But again, wouldn’t it be great if Steinberg jumped on board. That’s why I’m bothering to write these long posts that only a few people will read! We just need ONE person with decision-making authority at Steinberg to agree with this!
it’s the complete opposite of this. You give them such a small amount of money that you can drop it and move to a competitor’s product (probably also on a subscription) anytime you like. If you own it, sure you could still drop it but you’d be less likely to because you’ve now invested in that product. Let’s say you’ve finally had a gut full of Steinberg’s crap one day and decide “Stuff this, I’m moving to bigwig”, how are you going to get any of your investment back? Can you sell cubase? not likely, you’ll get hardly anything back for it thats for sure.
There is a special kind of software in my industry that you must buy outright and have a dongle plugged in the whole time you’re using it. The base version of this program costs $17,000, it’s the only software of it’s kind, nothing else does what it does in the same way, i then pay 10% software maintenance costs for ‘support’ which basically means they will send you the installers for updates, if you don’t pay this, you won’t get updates - now that my friend is true extortion.
In terms of your voice being heard with regards to support requests it makes no difference how you own the software, you’ll get the same level of support.
Your post reveals a fundamental topic of a larger philosophical discussion, and you and I are probably on very different sides of the issue. Of course, that’s fine that we disagree, respectfully, we can have our own different perspectives and we can still be friends and colleagues. One of my best friends disagrees with me on this, and I’m perfectly fine with that.
But instead of trying to persuade or convince each other that one person is right or wrong about this, we can just look at some of the core facts of human nature and how marketing and business models are built around that human nature to maximize revenue. I’ll give a little background for what I view is going on in the industry right now and some of the reasons why I’m leaving Windows (and eventually macOS) behind in favor of 100% Linux.
1 - The more you use something, like a DAW or really anything in your life, and the more it is part of your workflow, your business, and/or your life in general, and the more familiar you are with it, then based on thousands of years of human behavior and psychology, you will become more attached to it, and thus more likely to stay with it, even if it gives you a certain level dissatisfaction. This is fundamental human psychology. Marketing experts understand these concepts. The familiarity factor alone is a high impact psychological bias component which keeps you in the same patterns in your life, even if you experience some degree of discomfort, stress, or dissatisfaction with it.
2 - If the discomfort, stress, or dissatisfaction with it exceeds a certain psychological threshold, which is different for every person based on many factors, then you will become motivated to find an alternative.
3 - In the past 20 years alone, the IT industry has invested billions of dollars of research into the psychology of attachment theory and these concepts of familiarity bias to generate and optimize revenue. Hence you have seen a massive analytics industry emerge, which has confirmed the above two concepts over and over again. The entire product lifecycle with large application levels (i.e. massive cloud applications, social media platforms, search platforms, operating systems, etc.) are literally built on acquiring metrics about you, analyzing your behaviors, optimizing information from your profile, disseminating your profile to “partner” companies, and then presenting you with information and products that are targeted specifically toward you to INCREASE engagement and attachment… and thus increase revenue. There is more to it than that, but that’s a basic description of what is now happening, even now at the OS level.
4 - Like it or not, all of these theories have trickled down to smaller development enterprises too, including the DAW market.
5 - The general theory in product lifecycles and revenue models today is that they want to address items 1 and 2 above, and at the most basic level, they do it by INCREASING attachment and familiarity, and REDUCING discomfort, stress, or dissatisfaction. The result is INCREASED revenue for the companies that follow the basic attachment psychological process.
All the above is fact, it’s the reality of what we are all dealing with today. Which leads to some obvious tactics by modern companies which understand these concepts, especially companies that are connected to venture capital and equity management companies, or have executive leadership trained in these concepts.
6 - The FIRST thing a software company like that does to increase the onboarding of new customers and increase attachment of existing customers is to REDUCE cost up front for them, and REDUCE ongoing friction and the perceived longer-term maintenance costs. This is a standard marketing practice that has been done since the invention of financing and credit card “pay over time” concepts, and it is now nearly perfected in the “subscription” model of revenue.
The subscription model facilitates RAPID onboarding of new customers who now have access to the entire suite of tools (in this case, the DAW, all plugins, tons of libraries, expansions, extra goodies, tutorials, etc.) and thus, it also rapidly increases familiarity bias and attachment bias.
In other words, the more someone uses all those features and “subscription only” goodies, the more attached they will become, the more engaged they will become. Attachment + engagement = money. And the more attached they will become, then the HARDER it will be for them to detach from that ecosystem and switch to another provider. And so forth.
That is the fact of the situation, and that is what is happening, and there’s no going back. Because it makes more money.
7 - That is why capital investment companies and equity firms value subscription customers at 2-3X the value of traditional customers. In other words, they know that over time, a subscription customer generates about 2-3X times the revenue of a traditional customer, sometimes even more! THAT is why you will see more and more subscription models from financially “sophisticated” developers over time, especially if they are being courted for acquisition by a larger company, or are seeking revenue or investment for expansion! The equity market knows it. The banks know it. The investors know it.
8 - This fundamental concept is at the core of the change of revenue models across the entire IT industry. They increase attachment “stickiness” and reduce perceived expenditure by amortizing it over time through a “generous” subscription model, and they make it difficult for you to migrate out of their platform via a number of related techniques… the first and most obvious technique is that they terminate your access to the ecosystem if you stop paying your subscription fee. So your content, your work, and your business must experience an increased friction (aka psychological and real-world cost) just to transition to a different platform. Again, refer to the principles mentioned at the beginning of my post. It’s Psychology 101 in modern marketing.
9 - Extrapolating out the above business model doesn’t take much imagination, and if someone cares to do the research, you will see that SaaS, subscription models, deep analytics and personal profile farming, targeted AI-generated ads based on your profile, pay-to-play paywalls, planned obsolescence, and so forth, are the fundamental operating principles being woven into your very operating systems now. Not only that, but one of the consequences of this fundamental shift is exactly what @MrSoundman said before:
This paradigm is so pervasive now, and so integrated into so many stacks, and even development frameworks and toolsets, that it’s impossible to avoid it entirely, BUT it is possible to minimize or substantially reduce it in your life, and thank goodness there are alternatives with growing communities, such as Linux.
I will stop here because the above in its simple essence, for me personally, is enough justification to jettison this entire business model concept and move to a different paradigm.
And in the practical context of this thread, that means on an elementary level, moving from Windows (and macOS) over to an open source platform, starting with the OS itself (in this case Linux) is the first big step in my own journey. The open source model is far from perfect, but it does not fundamentally operate on the principles outlined above.
And as for commercial DAWs on Linux, as long as those developers don’t engage in “attachment trap marketing tactics” (i.e. analytics/subscription model to put it simply), then I am happy to continue to use them and pay for them. But if needed, as I’ve stated before, I’ll go all the way to fully open source DAW if I have to.
And you, and everyone else, are perfectly entitled to a different opinion of course, and you are entitled to keep using software from companies that engage in the tactics that I outlined above. And those companies will continue to do it, because that is currently an effective revenue-generating model, and so the system will continue the way it is perhaps forever, more and more perfectly fine-tuned to your unique psychological profile. Which to me, is kind of sad. But that’s what it is, and people can make their own choices.
But I also believe there is a growing market for companies that cater to customers who don’t want to be part of that now-dominant business model. I, for one, am interested in supporting those companies that not only build for Linux, but understand what I’m talking about in a larger context.
And that’s why I’m posting all these long posts… because I’m still hoping of course that someone at Steinberg “gets” this concept and will green light Linux development. And then I can keep using it after I’ve finally transitioned my studio 100% to Linux… which is right on the horizon for me.
Kudos to you for your persistence over the years! I hope you get your feature request that is about 10 years old!
We just need ONE person with decision-making authority at Steinberg to agree with this!