Goodbye Apple, Hello Music Production On Ubuntu 513
Adam Wrzeski notes a piece up at Create Digital Music by musician Kim Cascone (artist's bio) on switching from Apple to Linux for audio production: "The [Apple] computer functioned as both sound design studio and stage instrument. I worked this way for ten years, faithfully following the upgrade path set forth by Apple and the various developers of the software I used. Continually upgrading required a substantial financial commitment on my part. ... I loaded up my Dell with a selection of Linux audio applications and brought it with me on tour as an emergency backup to my tottering PowerBook. The Mini 9 could play back four tracks of 24-bit/96 kHz audio with effects — not bad for a netbook. The solution to my financial constraint became clear, and I bought a refurbished Dell Studio 15, installed Ubuntu on it, and set it up for sound production and business administration. The total cost was around $600 for the laptop plus a donation to a software developer — a far cry from the $3000 price tag and weeks of my time it would have cost me to stay locked-in to Apple. After a couple of months of solid use, I have had no problems with my laptop or Ubuntu. Both have performed flawlessly, remaining stable and reliable."
Usable hardware? (Score:2, Interesting)
I love using linux for as much as I possibly can, but I have noticed a distinct difference in the audio quality between my old power book Ti and a 'business' grade dell. The audio out my mac mini is MUCH better than what I get out of Dell desktops I've used, too. My eeePC 901 does seem to sound pretty good, though.
Waitaminute... (Score:3, Interesting)
Did the author manage to get anything other than a DAW and sound editor running under Ubuntu ? Max/MSP for instance ? Reason ? Ableton Live ?
I've given up trying to do anything musical with Ubuntu. Windows and OSX are still miles ahead in terms of compatible hardware and software that 'just works'.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
Audio support is fine. Music making support OTOH is abysmal. The article correctly points out that sound recording, editing and mixing is fine on Linux. The heavyweight music creation tools just don't exist and many of the top-end hardware interfaces simply don't have Linux drivers.
I agree, but this article didn't really inform me (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree with the premise of this article: Linux is a perfectly good platform for digital audio creation and editing. It might even be better than a Mac, depending on how you weigh different pros and cons. But I unfortunately don't really feel I learned much from this article about why Linux is a good choice. All the apps he mentioned (Audacity, Ardour, etc.) are available for both platforms. And his reasons for switching, like the lack of a tree view in the OS X finder, strike me as weirdly trivial and not music related.
As someone who's done some published research on audio latency/jitter issues in a former life, I'm also somewhat annoyed by how much these sorts of articles focus on tech like JACK and low-latency kernel patches. This used to be a huge issue, but I suspect it shouldn't be nearly as high up anyone's priority list as it used to be--- back in the 2.4.x. series kernels, when the default kernel's clock tick used 10ms granularity and scheduling was flaky, it made a much bigger difference. Today, I suspect this sort of behind-the-scenes performance is only infrequently the bottleneck in anyone's audio performance; when I see actual glitches in performances, they can often be fixed by much more boring scheduling tweaks like "nice -19" on the processes that are bottlenecks in the audio path, or finding bugs in how you're setting up your callbacks.
In any case, these days I see JACK as useful mainly for being a reasonably well supported audio-app-interconnection bus; as he says, the Core Audio of the Linux world. But that doesn't make it hugely unique either.
So I guess I'm in the weird position where I agree with the article's conclusions, and some of its specific points, but overall if I didn't already agree with it, this article wouldn't have sold me on why Linux is great for audio editing. Sorry. :/
Ubuntu studio?? (Score:4, Interesting)
Similar story (Score:3, Interesting)
I used to produce with Cubase VST/32 on OS9, which was an environment I enjoyed working in. When OS9 was abandoned and my mac died I continued with VST/32 on Windows2000, but it wasn't the same. Neither were the new versions of Cubase on OSX.
My biggest problem with this situation was my old projects were stuck in this archaic format with nowhere to go. Since then I've moved to Ardour on Ubuntu, I find the environment is even better than before and tools like Hydrogen are great. Best of all is Jack, there's nothing like it.
Linux audio is good and it's only going to get better, the price of the software isn't relevant in this assessment, only quality.
Re:Good on him (Score:5, Interesting)
Having spent the last 6 hours writing music using a softsynth on linux (we're doing a 64k entry for the demoscene, on linux, so we have no choice), I have to say, in spite of the pre-emptive kernel, there need to be some serious kernel changes before it can stand up to the low latency requirements of music production.
My synth will happily plod away in interactive mode using about 30% cpu on windows (there's reasons why I can't just boot into windows and run it), and yet it munches about 40% whilst idle in its VST host on linux, and regularly spazzes out at 100% of the interrupt time given to it, requiring me to hit the panic button. That's with the pre-emptive kernel and realtime-everything switched on. All of this whilst "top" is showing that it's actually only using 30% of the total cpu time. It won't just ramp up to use the entire cpu. On the standard kernel, it's, erm.. well.
The problem appears to be the way in which the different applications are talking to eachother through processes which depend on eachother's data streams, but don't get called NOW when you need it. The previous version of my synth was a basic jack midi device, and that was even worse. Timing bugs all over the place. Occasionally it would miss entire notes.
Then again, if ubuntu are taking this seriously, hopefully we can see linux improve in this respect soon.
Either that, or I'm off to buy a quad-core xeon.
Re:Good on him (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh man I'd love to see Windows guys try to use that same argument ...
They don't need to. Most software that works on Vista works just as fine on XP or Windows 2000. With OS X, on the other hand, you can't even get a modern browser running on 10.3,
sounds like a bundling opportunity (Score:5, Interesting)
Seems like some enterprising individual could start putting together cheaper-than-dirt Ubuntu-based music machines by buying Dell Studio laptops (with Microsoft license rebate, naturally) and preloading everything necessary.
The complaint from non-geeks about Linux is you have to do it yourself. If you didn't have to do it yourself, and it really was that cheap, it becomes a lot more interesting.
But with Disappointing Authoring Software? (Score:4, Interesting)
Kim mentions the use of free audio production software, such as Audacity, as substitutes for commercial offerings. While an Audacity user is more than welcome to dive into the code base and make needed improvements, not every user has the time and/or ability to do such. In my estimation, neither Audacity 1.3.7 nor Audacity 1.2.6 are stable enough to be considered "professional-quality" software. I am not trying to insult the developers and their abilities -- they have a complex project on their hands. But Audacity's graphical interface has serious and repeatable bugs; Audacity's sound export facilities reliably adds spurious noise to sound. I admire Kim's decision to use Ubuntu as an audio workstation, but I don't think Kim has been forthcoming about sacrifices in software quality that a user must make to do so. Kim can easily translate most audio programming done in Max/MSP (the commercial environment he has worked with extensively) to the public domain environment "pd" -- but as an experienced user of both systems there are more functionality loses than gains moving from the commercial Max/MSP/Jitter environment to pd (Pure Data).
If the cost of an Apple system and the higher cost of outfitting it with professional quality audio production and performance software are bankrupting a musician, then I can see the logic of using an Ubuntu system at this time. Otherwise, I still believe the adage "you get what you pay for" applies. However, I believe with effort from open source audio developers an Ubuntu audio workstation with both cost and quality advantages is more than possible. The bugs I am seeing in Audacity today remind me of the bugs I saw in the comparable commercial application "Peak" ten years ago.
Re:BFD (Score:1, Interesting)
I stopped caring at this point.
cool story bro, im glad we all now know you dislike electronic music
feel free to remind us in the future!
As a musician (Score:4, Interesting)
Once this hurdle has been reached, I am all for whatever open source audio stuff comes my way. I use currently Audacity for editing samples and quick n' dirty recording. Audacity WORKS but it's interface is mediocre at best and if you want ASIO support you have to download an unsupported patch to get it.
Re:Good on him (Score:5, Interesting)
...it's actually only using 30% of the total cpu time. It won't just ramp up to use the entire cpu.
It may actually be using the entire CPU, but not reporting it via "top".
Unless I'm mistaken, CPU used by the back-end IO processing - the act of the CPU coordinating traffic between the computer's bus and the devices that are being written to and from, are not actually charged to the process or thread.
That is, the details of how much CPU are used by the IO system aren't written to the process header, because the process header isn't in the computable scope (an area defined by a set of active register values). Ergo, "top" doesn't report that CPU because it isn't there. (Old VMS systems had a parameter that simulated this, called "Iota" (measured in microfortnights, oddly enough) that was added in back when charging for CPU usage was in vogue.)
What that seems to indicate is that the problem may not be in the operating system per se, but in the driver and/or the device. The culture of one IO per byte may still exist in some buried (or should be buried) hardware devices. The IO needs to be blocked up a bit I think to get the performance you need for seamless music delivery.
Re:Nothing beats Reaper! (Score:1, Interesting)
Runs more or less flawlessy under Wine however, I might add.
Re:I agree, but this article didn't really inform (Score:2, Interesting)
But I unfortunately don't really feel I learned much from this article about why Linux is a good choice. All the apps he mentioned (Audacity, Ardour, etc.) are available for both platforms. And his reasons for switching, like the lack of a tree view in the OS X finder, strike me as weirdly trivial and not music related.
Yes, that's all he mentions. Never once does he mention price. Nope. Well, perhaps vaguely here:
A quick back-of-a-napkin estimate came to approximately $3,000, not including the time it would take tweaking and testing to make it work for the tour. If the netbook revolution hadn't come along and spawn a price-wars on laptops, I might have proceeded to increase my credit card debt.
But he certainly doesn't mention it here:
The solution to my financial constraint became clear, and I bought a refurbished Dell Studio 15, installed Ubuntu on it, and set it up for sound production and business administration. The total cost was around $600 for the laptop plus a donation to a software developer -- a far cry from the $3000.00 price tag and weeks of my time it would have cost me to stay locked-in to Apple.
Or here:
Not only was the expense of owning and maintaining Apple hardware a key factor in my switch, but the operating system had become a frustration to me.
Re:I agree, but this article didn't really inform (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, that's fair. I suppose what I really wanted to read was an argument about why Linux is particularly well-suited to audio, which I think it is. But an argument that it's "good enough, and cheap" is, as you point out, also legit.
Re:Linux Sound Support (Score:5, Interesting)
Half the time it's the chipset manufacturer's fault, too. For example, Realtek pretends to support Linux and even has public datasheets (to some extent), but some of their chips only half-work or don't work at all if you stick to the published specifications. Turns out you need to perform some magical undocumented actions to get them to behave correctly. Don't bother asking their "linux guy" (he's even listed at the top of the driver in the Linux kernel), he'll just waste your time.
I had an issue with their ALC889 chipset, which I described to him in technical detail (such and such portions of the chip don't work, even when there's no way this could happen going by the spec, which I can prove because I've tested this and this). He wasted two weeks of my time throwing random revisions of the driver .c file at me that just added pin-configuration support for other motherboards and laptops (none of which were my laptop, and which is totally irrelevant to the issue as I described it, as I know how to test and determine the platform-specific pinouts and had already nailed mine). Eventually I gave up and manually brute-forced every single bit of their proprietary registers until I came up with the magic ones to make the chip behave.
Problems getting *any* sound to come out are quite often the result of proprietary platforms and chipsets with poor support. Software issues with mixing and incompatibilities with applications are an entirely different issue - those can indeed be attributed to the rather crazy state of linux audio.
Re:Good on him (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting point.
In the early days of Windows audio, people found that their gaming graphics card was grabbing the PCI bus for incredibly long stretches at a time, as a side effect of the graphics card driver trying to max out performance and show great benchmark results. This would totally mess up any audio latency.
I wonder if the linux graphics drivers are doing similar games, causing all sorts of latency hiccups?
(As I'm typing this on a windows box the hard drive is causing seconds long delays as I try to type this!)
Linux audio is definitely not yet what it should be..
Re:I agree, but this article didn't really inform (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh, I dunno...I think there are several professional musicians using linux...they just don't know it!
http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/2005/11/09/inside-the-korg-oasys.html [oreilly.com]
Re:Ubuntu studio?? (Score:2, Interesting)
I have, and I love it! The Ubuntu Studio guys do a great job of putting together their distro, and I hope they continue to support it for a long time.
Re:Eh... (Score:4, Interesting)
Never mind a plan, some sort of agreed specification would be wonderful! (And, no, a bunch of vendors locked away with OSDL or some other tiny group isn't any way to come up with a specification.)
I'd argue that JACK is probably the most Unix-like in passing data from A to B, where all components are special-purpose. I'd also argue that it's the closest to a true audio plugin system of any system out there for Linux. Thus, any specification would logically be derived from the JACK experience.
Why only the experience? Because JACK is linear, but audio processing may want more complex flows. There's a very nice package that lets you build up a synthesizer by running leads from modules to other modules, allowing you to split and merge the signal as you like. That would obviously be superior to single pipe in, single pipe out.
Another problem is that you want audio to be hard real-time, and only the kernel is currently capable of being hard real-time. The user space can only do soft real-time. But flipping between user space and kernel space adds enormous latency for each switch-over. It wouldn't take a long pipe to kill the audio entirely.
Thus, either real-time needs to make it to user space, OR there needs to be an ambivalent layer that is neither strictly kernel nor user, where you can have hard real-time without the horrible overheads.
At this time, neither option seems likely to happen, but until it does true HQ studio audio won't be possible in Linux. It'll come damn close, but it'll never reach the point hardcore professionals would take it on.
Re:I know this guy... (Score:5, Interesting)
I wish the article's server hadn't been slashdotted, because I would love to know which professional digital audio adapter he's using, where he got the drivers, and whether he uses jack or not.
Every time a new Ubuntu studio comes out, I install it on a PC workstation in my studio to see if finally I can use Linux for digital music production, and every time I am disappointed by the way Linux talks to my audio gear. In Windows, I can use ASIO or WDM drivers and get professional-quality results, low latency, etc in Reaper. Apple uses SoundDriver for Logic. But Linux? All I've been able to find is jack, and for a professional, it doesn't do jack. There always seems to be problems with my MIDI gear, too, but that's gotten better in the past year.
Still, Reaper, using its ReMote technology allows me to offload certain things on to a Linux box via ethernet, such as rendering and effects processing, and that's a huge help, allowing me to use more real-time effects on more tracks. And, of course, my Linux box is absolutely key for streaming samples and other stored data to my digital audio workstation.
But using Linux as a main machine for music production? Not yet as of February. I plan on reading this article, though, as soon as you slashdotters give the server a breather, to find out what this guy's doing. Maybe it's finally time. I may not yet be ready to give up my Mac Pro and custom-built windows workstation for music production yet, but I look forward to being able to use Linux on a music project, start-to-finish.
Re:Come on, let's be honest here... (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly, linux or not, the build in sound card on almost all PC's is utter crap, filled with buzzing squeaks from the internal PC switching power supplies.
This guy wouldn't notice. Try recording a nice acoustic guitar sound with a good mic..
This alone means you need some decent quiet soundcard, and it then has to talk with linux audio drivers..
Anonymous Coward (Score:1, Interesting)
JACK is great for getting audio applications to talk to each other, but in my experience it is in no way ready for "professional" production. When you actually connect a couple of apps together, you can get drop outs all the time. I ran Pure Data in OSS mode because it didn't give me any gaps.
Granted, I don't know how to set up a low-latency kernel. But, I'm willing to pay to be able to ignore all that crap now.
As for software being cross-platform- just because it can run on both systems does not necessarily mean it runs equally well. I recently experienced this first hand with Inkscape, which is unusable on my 2.5ghz Core 2 Duo with 4GB of RAM.
There are also some awesome applications that are Mac only, take SuperCollider 3. I tried playing around with it on Linux with Emacs and it's terrible. And I'm a programmer (VIM guy though) ! However, on the Mac it runs flawlessly with a nice launch GUI, simple to use editor, easy to navigate help system, and SC GUI extensions.
One fantastic piece of software which works equally well is Mixxx...I'm glad it has perfect ports! Although on the Mac I can segway from iTunes into Mixxx seamlessly....Best of luck to Linux though....I love it but it's too young.
I wonder. (Score:2, Interesting)
Me, I'd feel a lot better about that, because paying money for proprietary software.. it seems like it's just going into some black hole. For code that will be Free some day? That strikes me as more palatable. Like it's an investment in something bigger than just 1's and 0's on my own machine. Makes it seem more worth it, to me.
Re:Linux Sound Support (Score:5, Interesting)
Many people have problems with sound in Linux. The situation is certainly less than ideal. However, on most computers, sound in Linux works flawlessly. If you have problem with sound in Linux, you are part of the exception, rather than the rule.
That depends on how you define "works." I agree that most people who install something like Ubuntu will get sound working without fuss. My main beefs with audio on Linux are with some terrible design decisions along the entire sound stack. For example, ALSA (ditching OSS completely) was a bad idea. PulseAudio is a good idea for some (very few) specific situations, but it doesn't belong as the fixture it has been made by several of the common distributions. It solves problems nobody knew they had only to introduce other important problems (i.e. latency).
I'm not discouraged at all by the audio situation on Linux. Like you said, it mostly works (setting aside audio production concerns). There are a lot of problems, though, and the best solutions may require some hurt egos. That's always a tough thing.
Re:I am a musician, and... (Score:3, Interesting)
...you must be kiddin'!
First of all, Linux is not the guilty one for not providing software for musicians. It is the developers of the software, like Apple, Steinberg, Propellerheads and Native Instruments, to name a few big ones.
Software is only half of the problem. Imagine Cubase ported to Linux -- all well and good, but the support for multi-channel professional-quality interfaces doesn't exist. And without the I/O, you have nothing.
Re:I know this guy... (Score:2, Interesting)
There is a job on Ars [arstechnica.com] posted where Canonical is wiling to hire someone to help change that situation.
Re:Linux Sound Support (Score:1, Interesting)
I'm not an audio professional, nor do I know what you consider low latency, but I was able to get 3ms latency from jack on ubuntu.
The main problem seems to be that if you install jack out-of-the-box on ubuntu, it runs ON TOP of pulseaudio, thus guaranteeing you > 20ms latencies - and it can be much, much worse.
So the first step to installing jack has to be to totally strip that pulseaudio crap out.
Yes, it's a friggin' mess. Pulseaudio is the biggest piece of sh*t and pain in the *ss.
rho
Re:Nothing beats Reaper! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Good on him (Score:3, Interesting)
I just want to be able to plug my rock band drums into my linux box and use with as a 0 latency "synth drum" box. I just don't have the time space or money for a full set of drums but it's been reported that rock band drums support velocity and something like 6 pads total (double up the pads to get a full set of drums including cowbell). The main drawback is that there's still a noticable delay even to the untrained ear, filtered through crappy youtube videos. I've been looking, but I haven't seen a drop in latency patch yet for linux audio. Fingers crossed...
Jack, Ardour, jamin and jazz (Score:5, Interesting)
I just finished recording and producing a jazz album using Project CCRMA hosted on Fedora. The recording through to the final mastering were all done using linux. Having read his article I was surprised to find he hadn't mastered his production using Jamin which, when used in combination with Ardour and Jack, gives the type of control over the production process I've not seen duplicated using a Mac (Windows is not capable at all in this regard). I suppose though that is the workflow he is used to.
The innovation is what it means to the production process. There is no mixdown to a 24bit 44.1Khz stereo track prior to mastering and you can render your tracks through the mastering software into the final tracks and tweak automation artifacts instead of compromising by using equalisation. Sure you still equalise but you end up doing less as you can refer back to the master if there is a problem and fix it there. Plus you have better control over (audio gain) compression to reduce transients and maintain dynamic range in the final product.
The bands that listen to my recording are amazed at the results (well my recording techniques *ahem* do play some part :-) and some asked me if it was done on analogue equipment - which is quite a compliment. The thing is sure, it's not perfect and sometimes frustrating because the your hardware is often pushed to it's limit, you find bugs you have to adjust your work flow around but simply put I don't think the capability *exists* anywhere else.
I've been using it since 2003 and have seen the foundation laid down by Alsa and Jack projects continually refined. Often the criticism is made that 'linux copies this or that' but after comparing it to existing processes it seems to me that audio production under Linux is on the leading edge of technology as the framework for innovation in music production.
Re:But with Disappointing Authoring Software? (Score:3, Interesting)
However, since I moved my own production setup to Linux, I've found that I rely even less on software than I did under Win/Mac, and more on hardware and open standards. The hardware I buy is more expensive, but it's Linux compatible. The Linux audio software I do use is ready to work with my hardware because I have a well-defined set of basic needs. Beyond that, I am aware that I'll need to compile or tinker around sometimes, but it's under those circumstances that I end up learning a lot more about audio.
I used to teach Photoshop and other Adobe products, and I thought it was amazing how many people looked at software as their savior, and went way cheap on hardware. I say, if anything, the opposite is the way to go as long as you're working with open standards.
Re:I know this guy... (Score:4, Interesting)
ReNoise is clever, and fun, but not a pro tracker. If I'm going to have to use Wine, why wouldn't I just use the operating system that those apps work in natively?
I'm not sure how you can compare ALSA with ASIO. I don't know all the under the hood stuff, but I have never had a problem with ASIO. I've never had to fiddle to get it working, and the performance is terrific. I go back to the days when I'd have to shift entire tracks to the left after recording just to line up the beats. I don't have to do that any more, thanks to technologies like ASIO, WDM, etc.
I use RME hardware since the Hammerfall v1.0, and whenever I've tried Ubuntu, it's always been with RME hardware. Mostly because there just aren't any drivers for most of my other audio hardware. I've got an old MOTU box around here somewhere, adn I've heard that they've released Linux drivers, too. I know there's no drivers for my Apogee gear.
Finally, as you know, when you're using a digital audio workstation, the main app is key. Programs like Logic, Digital Performer, Pro Tools, Sonar, and the others are much more than just "trackers". They're multi-track digital recorders, mixing matrices, virtual instrument platforms, digital audio editors, mastering suites and more, besides being "trackers". I am encouraged by Cockos' Reaper and their very decent port to Linux, but beyond that, there simply isn't a professional-quality application available that runs natively in Linux. Did I mention effects? I've got a palette of effects, virtual instruments and more that use Steinberg's VST or DirectX or Apple's AudioUnits. Without those, I'm hamstrung. I bet there's a way to use wine for VST or maybe even DirectX, and someday when I have lots of free time, I might decide that taking the time to learn to use those effects and VIs in Wine instead of the OS for which they were written is time well spent. I have to balance the desire to see Linux become a useful platform for soup to nuts music production with the desire to be productive right now. Life is short, unfortunately, and inspiration is fleeting, by its nature.
I am constantly writing letters of encouragement to both audio hardware and software manufacturers trying to get them to port their products to Linux. I guess enough time has passed since my last attempt with Ubuntu Studio that I ought to give it another go. I want it to work. I'll make sure to read the article on your server before I get started. Thanks for working hard to get it back up after what must have been a deluge of Slashdot readers.
Re:What he fails to mention in his article... (Score:3, Interesting)
Thank you. That's what I noticed as well. Yes, anything can do that, because all you're really doing is the same crap that you used to do on rackmount samplers back in the 80s. If a modern computer--even a netbook--can't handle that, we have problems.
Re:This is a joke (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Linux Sound Support (Score:4, Interesting)
OSS has been dead for over a decade. It can't cope with multi-channel sound cards properly because it tries to treat *everything* as a stereo pair. It's got a fairly awful API, too - how did they manage to make it overcomplicated *and* too simple to be useful at the same time?
I think you might be referring to the deprecated OSS version that had been included in the Linux kernel. There is a much newer version which is argued by some to be better than ALSA in both its API and performance.
Re:Jack, Ardour, jamin and jazz (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not familiar with Jamin. I've looked over their site, but I'm still not entirely clear what functionality this gives you that Windows can't accomplish (I've never used a Mac for music, so I can't comment with regard to that platform).
As far as I can see, it's a mastering suite, and you particularly like the fact that you don't have to mix down to a stereo file before mastering. This is the same workflow that I follow by adding Waves plugins to the master bus in a Sonar project in Windows.
I'm not dissing your software - if you've got something comparable to my setup running on Linux using free software (in both senses of the word) I'm very impressed. All I'm questioning is your odd assertion that "Windows is not capable at all in this regard". If I've got the wrong end of the stick about how you work, and what you do really isn't possible in Windows, please do correct my misconceptions.
Mac or iPod is still a better choice (Score:3, Interesting)
I know Linux has its appeal, but this is frankly ridiculous. At best it is a stunt. At worst it is a complete waste of time.
It's like recommending Windows for a Web server. Yes, you can get a Web server up and running on Windows. But why? You can get a free modern Linux or BSD for the same hardware and it is not only 98% set up for you already, but when you deploy it to the Web it will do the job much better. Thousands or perhaps millions of people were there in Linux or BSD land before you, optimizing those systems in innumerable ways to be a better Web server. When you set up a Web server on Linux, you stand on the shoulders of giants from the first moment. It's that way also when you set up a music and audio workstation using a Mac. It's not just that the hardware and software is optimized for the task over years and decades, it's that the relevant community is there now and has been there for many years. There are a million benefits to that. Enough music and audio -related technical problems have been solved already on the Mac that you can work on your musical problems and audio problems without having to stop to do technical or I-T work.
If you buy any stock Mac and add no 3rd party hardware and software, you already have a better music and audio system than anything you can build with Linux. You will get all these for free with the Mac, already setup and working: GarageBand (music and audio workstation based on Logic), CoreAudio (multichannel pro audio subsystem that supports simultaneous use of multiple 32-bit/192kHz audio hardware as well as multiple pro audio software apps), CoreMIDI (ultra low-latency MIDI subsystem with compatibility with all MIDI devices), QuickTime (backbone of digital media production for 20 years now and the basis of the MPEG-4 standard that replaced the CD and DVD), and iTunes (which is scriptable on the Mac, so you can, for example, create a script that stamps arbitrary tracks with all of your own artist info). The software you get with the Mac is worth the price of the Mac; the hardware is free. If you try and replicate this functionality on another system, you will spend the price of the Mac just attempting to do it. Further, every Mac except MacBook Air has built-in 24-bit optical digital audio in and out, as well as analog audio in and out. So you don't even have to buy audio hardware to make a decent 24-bit recording. A Mac mini is $599 and it has all of this already setup and working to very high specifications and can share the Linux system's display if you already have a Linux system. It's small enough to travel. It has a FireWire 800 port to hook onto an audio interface or fast hard disk. It backs up all your work automatically, including versioning, if you just give it access to a second disk. It can play 24-bit audio in any context, even within 3rd party apps such as MS Word that are not audio-related.
If you do want to add hardware or software to the Mac, there are about 10 digital audio workstations for the Mac, some of which go back to the 1980's (e.g. Logic Pro used to be called Notator back then) and you can run 2 or more simultaneously and share hardware also. You can not only plug in pretty much any pro audio interface, you can plug in 10 of them at once if you want and they will all work simultaneously. You can plug in any MIDI instrument. There are dozens of highly creative Mac-only music and audio apps like MetaSynth which simply don't exist on other platforms. And if you are doing any soundtrack work, the fact that the Mac is the best video editing platform will benefit you in many small and large ways.
Even the iPod can do better than this Linux system when it comes to music. You can buy an iPod touch for $229, and an app called "FourTrack" for $9.99 more and you have a 4-track recorder and player with multitouch transport controls, pan pots, and faders. A key thing is that with multitouch, you are essentially working with a little hardware mixer. You can drag 2 sliders down at once, for example, so you can do an awful lot on stage with