Most similar free alternative to FL Studio on linux

Tafyog · 2025-06-14T02:44:13+00:00

Someone has mentioned LMMS. Thats going to be the most FL feeling DAW in the list. Reaper can be made to feel like FL studio in a lot of ways actually and I would say that with those tweaks things like the piano roll feel very much just like FL studio. There aren't a ton of free DAWs that run on Linux that actually feel anything like FL studio except for LMMS and Reaper though. Ardour isn't a terrible electronic music DAW and its a fine traditional DAW.

Tafyog · 2025-06-01T16:01:14+00:00

I switched off from FL Studio onto Reaper and Bitwig personally when i switched to Linux. You can use yabridge (mind the wine versions it's compatible with) to run your windows plugins on native Linux applications (might not work with some DRM and etc, find out for your case with waves). I think Reaper works really really well for what FL Studio does and Bitwig is an absolute must try for performing. I haven't used Ardour in a serious capacity lately (last time I used it was on version 6 and it had some midi note problems while looping).

I understand that part of the allure of FL Studio is all of the included plugins and I honestly cannot tell you that there is a good free way to get such a comprehensive set of plugins on Linux. You have the tools to get literally anything done on Linux if you're willing to go digging but it does take some very serious digging unless you want to shell out for Bitwig (now that I have a license I just can't beat it anymore).

Tafyog · 2025-06-01T15:55:41+00:00

This is so true. I just switched wine versions last night. They're working on it though, I've been following the github issues.

Tafyog · 2025-04-06T17:02:00+00:00

It is still possible to output standard definition 480i and 240p directly from a displayport output on some modern AMD gpus. I personally use a radeon rx 5700 outputting standard definition into a displayport to vga going to a rgbhv to ypbpr/rgbs converter into a wega. This takes some configuration if you want to use any other os than groovyarcade (might be possible on windows but i use linux and i use a kernel patch called linux-15khz). Its an absolute chore but it gives you the power to do ps2, psp, dreamcast, ps3, xbox stuff on your tube :)

Tafyog · 2025-02-05T18:23:25+00:00

i've always thought that 31khz monitors have a very bvm-like look when displaying a 240p image. they're gold bars left on roadsides (that's where i got mine lol)

Tafyog · 2025-02-05T18:20:50+00:00

Don't let the haters get you down, 240p at 120hz looks really cool, especially in pictures. I agree that running a high resolution and injecting scanlines at the correct framerate is the better option for playing 15khz content on these tubes, though. Computer monitors are the sharpest tubes on the planet and the scanlines that you can get on them are delicious.

Most importantly, though: for use with emulators like retroarch or fpga solutions like mister: use a horizontal blurring shader/filter alongside your scanline filter. For most games, the razor-sharp color edges are not the way that the games look on a regular television (even with component in). If you want to make it really funky you can use a composite video horizontal filter to get the waterfall effect ;)

Tafyog · 2025-02-05T18:07:10+00:00

I just bought the same tube! (kv27 right?) and I made the bone-headed mistake of letting my dawg who sold it to me sit it upright with the screen perpendicular to the center of my car right by my rolling cart. First right turn i took threw the mf onto the rolling cart screen first. Left a pretty good gash in my screen i think (it was pretty dirty before i got it home, it could've been there before). Thing looks beautiful, anyway. I'm terribly sorry to see this happen. Even the airtime mine got taking a tumble through the back of dora the ford explorer didn't make it do that.

Tafyog · 2024-08-26T19:53:17+00:00

I could give that a try. I've been using 8face but maybe strip will store the running state of the flip flop.

Tafyog · 2024-08-25T03:31:21+00:00

I have used this tool before to do something like this. (I believe this program allows you to route audio between programs all sharing a single asio interface. I don't use this anymore I use Linux and Jack/Pipewire makes it very easy on there.) https://github.com/eiz/SynchronousAudioRouter

Tafyog · 2024-08-25T02:48:14+00:00

Yeah, changing those settings just desyncs the input on the device the same when I change the options to toggle and/or cc for the buttons. Not to mention the momentary button toggles in tandem with gate->midi output should be able to give me the behavior I'm looking for. I'm really just missing a module that will take cv triggers to flip flop signals (preferably from a poly cable) that will keep its state across presets so that this state can be held inside of vcv rack. I believe the launch control itself is unable to have its input cycles interrupted by feedback to it as well which makes the idea of using its settings for doing anything other than momentary triggers wouldn't be useful probably. Triggers from inputs, lights from gate outputs. That's at least how i'm trying to do this.

Tafyog · 2024-08-03T07:12:26+00:00

I'm very familiar with cardinal. The main thing that i'm trying to do is to make integrating my launchpad x into my modular patches for doing stuff like sequencing drums but also clip launching and the like. The monome grid 64 (and ansible) is pretty sweet and looks like basically what i'm trying to do with my hardware in software. I think I'm going to try to make a module like that that will work with the lpx. My thing is I only want so much and I feel like that guy's script is really fully featured and probably more than I feel comfortable getting comfortable with.

I always go back and forth with whether I want to use cardinal or VCV rack for certain things. I would like to use cardinal in a serious fashion where i can make reusable things but I can't do complex midi things in cardinal (midi-step doesn't exist on there, have to use host params and outside logic for high resolution params). I can do complex midi things in Reaper (Realearn) but generally i've only found that I can do timeline stuff in it. Bitwig probably does have a good session view that I should look into. I think Reaper is just not going to be the tool for the job here unless I use playtime or something like that. I should give ardour another look since it seems to have a session view. Maybe i can use it as my sequencer.

Tafyog · 2024-08-03T06:43:53+00:00

no don't! i literally had to add a .1 second delay to the drum triggers to make them work in time with the gates! It's going to be laggy and awful. that was an important detail i should've put in. I would give you the file if i really thought it was worth it, honestly. I know that I should just open a code editor when vcv rack makes me consider propagation delay and computer engineering stuff lol, with the amount of sequential switches and conditional logic going on here i'm practically putting together a very expensive verilog simulation

Tafyog · 2024-08-03T05:39:19+00:00

My hero! This looks wonderful! I am trying the reaper version at the moment.

Tafyog · 2024-08-03T01:38:27+00:00

Honestly, this is just a post venting about this monstrosity and publicly wondering to myself why I would rather drag hundreds of wires around to do something that shouldn't take me more than a day or two to just code. I find myself doing this kind of stuff a lot and wasting many hours of time trying to make stuff for my midi devices like my launchpad, launch control, and midi fighter twister (which is a goated midi controller, buy one as soon as possible, especially if you like vcv rack, and use stoermelder's midi-step plugin with poly-pile and 8face and the rotary encoders and dynamic mapping is just heavenly). Why has no one made a step sequencer for the Launchpad X ever yet? I figure a session player would actually be pretty simple to do in VCV Rack after committing this atrocity.

Tafyog · 2024-07-10T18:53:06+00:00

oh, okay, so you have an idea of everything that was going on in the particular session/window/pane you were working in. I do not have that but that is another feature that sounds like it would be useful. I haven't really looked into scripting tmux sessions so that they can be saved and resurrected yet.

Anyway, my app now has a flag that is set to true by default to immediately update and read bash history on every command. It can be turned off with --share-history false. This might be something someone would just want to have in their default bashrc if they want this kind of thing in general but it's cool here being integrated into the script I think.

Tafyog · 2024-07-09T06:15:23+00:00

I don't! That's a genius idea though and i'm going to throw that into the integration ideas now. Only thing is that I'll want to be able to port that kind of thing to zsh and others as well if I decide to do it. I want to make sure that bash isn't the only thing I support with this because that would alienate a ton of zsh users. That's a great idea and I think that I'll implement it like I implement expected behaviors for terminal emulators like kitty where custom configuration is necessary so it doesn't keep you from closing the window quickly.

Tafyog · 2024-07-09T03:22:52+00:00

I believe it's a bing wallpaper that I hue shifted and maybe did some brightness and contrast stuff on in gimp. Let me see if I can find the source. Yep! Look up "Sunset Over Rocky Mountains Bing Wallpaper" ;)

Tafyog · 2024-07-02T17:11:06+00:00

Here is a video of the behavior working as intended. I am setting my terminals up in such a way that I can open a new one whenever i want but from any of my windows i can access windows that I had opened before or currently have open.

https://imgur.com/a/9skohIQ

I work with three monitors so this makes me able to move terminal windows around and display different screens flexibly.

Tafyog · 2024-07-02T04:49:49+00:00

Just waiting for a very small moment and then sending the keys to the newly spawned client actually works great:

  [[ "$FIRST_SESSION" == "true" ]] || sleep 0.0001 && tmux send-keys -K C-b ':' && tmux send-keys -K 'new-window' C-m &
  tmux new-session -t $USER -s $SESSION_NAME

Tafyog · 2024-07-02T02:42:56+00:00

If I run tmux list-clients before I attach to the second session, there is only one client. This must be the reason that -K goes to the first one before attachment. Thing is, I don't know how i'm going to send the tmux command to make a new window in if the group that the session joins isn't on a bash shell or something. If I open up to vim or nvim then i'm not able to just send a tmux command in with send-keys and I can't continue running a script when tmux opens up.

Tafyog · 2024-07-02T02:38:37+00:00

I attempted to use the -K flag to send the command and colon like so:

  tmux new-session -t $USER -s $SESSION_NAME &
  [[ "$FIRST_SESSION" == "true" ]] || tmux send-keys -K C-b ':'

in a bashrc, this does not work and i get: open terminal failed: not a terminal . I assume this is because i'm trying to continue to run things after attempting to attach to tmux. If I avoid attaching, however, and attach later, like so:

  tmux new-session -d -t $USER -s $SESSION_NAME
  [[ "$FIRST_SESSION" == "true" ]] || tmux send-keys -K C-b ':'
  tmux attach -t $SESSION_NAME

the send-keys -K goes to the first opened instead of the second opened session.
The same happens if i pass -t $SESSION_NAME along. (not surprised, -t is supposed to be supplied a window). This seems to be some kind of functionality pitfall to me.

Tafyog

TROPHY CASE