Will we ever see Reason ported to Linux - or would their CodeMeter Authentication software prevent this?

[ltbrunt00]

Reason and a few other DAW programs are the reason I still have Windows installed. I will never spend money on apple products.

I use Bitwig on Linux for doing some things but my main work horses are Reason, Studio one and learning Nuendo. If I could get all three with native Linux ports with all my plugins I would ditch windows. I work in a job supporting Linux systems (20 years) and have Linux as the primary OS on 3 of my 4 workstations at home.

[jam-s]

At least the RE part of Reason could be ported to linux without much efford, as it is intentionally built around LLVM to allow for easy porting. It has already been done as a proof of concept in cooperation with the ELK audio hardware.

So after the modernisation pains of the new software basis for Reason (which we are all painfully experiencing right now with R12) is done having a much better portability of the whole of Reason to new platforms/architectures/OS is back on the table. So (given the usual development speed) linux support by 2030 might be realistic.

[avasopht]

So after the modernisation pains of the new software basis for Reason (which we are all painfully experiencing right now with R12) is done having a much better portability of the whole of Reason to new platforms/architectures/OS is back on the table. So (given the usual development speed) linux support by 2030 might be realistic.

They already have it working in the browser and in a guitar fx pedal. That means even in the worst-case scenario, they can port to pretty much any platform via Web Assembly with minimal effort (depending on how complete the browser port was).

[o_flabby_o]

I logged a support ticket with Reason Studios. Frederik replied to confirm there are “no plans” to port to Linux any time soon. A shame, really. I wish I hadn’t invested in quite so much proprietary software because now it’s a lot to “give up”. My own fault at the end of the day, I just think we suffer from a lot of Duopolies at the moment and they need to be broken before there are no more choices.

[integerpoet]

I just think we suffer from a lot of Duopolies at the moment and they need to be broken before there are no more choices.

This is not an illegitimate view and many Linux fans have it, but…

One thing to keep in mind is that one reason Linux has struggled in this way is that it isn't really a platform. It's a meta-platform, a toolkit for building platforms. The Linux community calls these "distributions". And Linux is good enough at being a meta-platform that it's comparatively easy to build a platform ("distribution") with it. But that doesn't make Linux itself any more of a platform.

From the perspective of a for-profit app developer, a request to support "Linux" doesn't make sense because that isn't actually an identifiable thing they can support. You need to ask them to support Ubuntu or Red Hat or Fedora or CentOS or Debian or some combination of those or other distributions. And then from their perspective they think: Well, Linux in general is already on a minority of desktops, and they're asking us to support this or that subset of distributions, which makes the potential market even smaller? Huh uh. Not happening.

Muddying the waters, we have developers like Bitwig who do go the extra mile and support some distributions of Linux, so why can't all the rest of the app developers? That's the wrong question. The question you should be asking is why Bitwig is an outlier. I actually don't know the answer to that question, but I do know we would learn a lot more from the answer.

Personally, I kinda feel lucky to have as many active desktop (and laptop) app developers as we have. The hardware category is a shrinking market and app developers know this. "Computers" like tablets and smart phones and smart TVs and smart watches and smart speakers and game consoles are metastasizing everywhere, eating desktops and laptops for lunch. At this point, convincing those app developers to spread their attention across additional software platforms in a hardware market which is shrinking overall will be extremely difficult no matter which additional software platform one might advocate. The smart developers are pondering deeper issues and bigger moves than that.

[o_flabby_o]

I just think we suffer from a lot of Duopolies at the moment and they need to be broken before there are no more choices.

This is not an illegitimate view and many Linux fans have it, but…

One thing to keep in mind is that one reason Linux has struggled in this way is that it isn't really a platform. It's a meta-platform, a toolkit for building platforms. The Linux community calls these "distributions". And Linux is good enough at being a meta-platform that it's comparatively easy to build a platform ("distribution") with it. But that doesn't make Linux itself any more of a platform.

From the perspective of a for-profit app developer, a request to support "Linux" doesn't make sense because that isn't actually an identifiable thing they can support. You need to ask them to support Ubuntu or Red Hat or Fedora or CentOS or Debian or some combination of those or other distributions. And then from their perspective they think: Well, Linux in general is already on a minority of desktops, and they're asking us to support this or that subset of distributions, which makes the potential market even smaller? Huh uh. Not happening.

Muddying the waters, we have developers like Bitwig who do go the extra mile and support some distributions of Linux, so why can't all the rest of the app developers? That's the wrong question. The question you should be asking is why Bitwig is an outlier. I actually don't know the answer to that question, but I do know we would learn a lot more from the answer.

Personally, I kinda feel lucky to have as many active desktop (and laptop) app developers as we have. The hardware category is a shrinking market and app developers know this. "Computers" like tablets and smart phones and smart TVs and smart watches and smart speakers and game consoles are metastasizing everywhere, eating desktops and laptops for lunch. At this point, convincing those app developers to spread their attention across additional software platforms in a hardware market which is shrinking overall will be extremely difficult no matter which additional software platform one might advocate. The smart developers are pondering deeper issues and bigger moves than that.

Agreed. Like so many things in life, it is shades of grey and as much as I don’t always enjoy hearing arguments about “for profit” it is clear that this is driving a lot of RS’s decisions. Yes, companies need to make money I just wish that we had more viable options that were actual options instead of being a choice between the least smelly pile of poo from two options.

It’s the same story in mobile tech, buy a phone from Apple which is incredibly locked down meaning you own something you have very little effective control of or get an Android and feed the big G all of your info. We give these companies a lot of cash and can’t actually use their products how we might like. It is very frustrating to me.

Such is life.

[jam-s]

I logged a support ticket with Reason Studios. Frederik replied to confirm there are “no plans” to port to Linux any time soon. A shame, really. I wish I hadn’t invested in quite so much proprietary software because now it’s a lot to “give up”. My own fault at the end of the day, I just think we suffer from a lot of Duopolies at the moment and they need to be broken before there are no more choices.

According to the wine appdb reports running the Reason Rack Plugin seems to work quite well. So you would only have to find a VST3 capable DAW for your linux distribution (Reaper could be good choice if you like trackers), but be prepared for a bumpy ride:

http://linuxsynths.com/vstsynths.html

[kitekrazy]

With MS and Apple having their (d)evolving OS that takes up a lot of their time. Image Line got out of the plugin business because they didn't want to waste their time dealing with plugins instead of their DAW.

Linux is a dead end and few can't accept it. 2 retailers tried to sell a Linux PC and didn't work.

If one is so into Linux just use Bitwig. You probably won't find anything better. Logic was popular on PC but people had to either go Mac or find alternatives.

[avasopht]

With MS and Apple having their (d)evolving OS that takes up a lot of their time. Image Line got out of the plugin business because they didn't want to waste their time dealing with plugins instead of their DAW.

Linux is a dead end and few can't accept it. 2 retailers tried to sell a Linux PC and didn't work.

If one is so into Linux just use Bitwig. You probably won't find anything better. Logic was popular on PC but people had to either go Mac or find alternatives.

It's not just about being big on Linux.

Windows and OSX lack a fundamental feature for real-time audio processing that Akai MPC/Force Korg Oasis (or was it Karma) and Maschine+ utilize for stable ultra low latencies (despite running on a CPU that is comparable to a 1st Gen i3 CPU).

And that feature is real-time CPU scheduling.

Without it you're always having to bump up the buffer size to reduce dropouts that a real-time OS would not have.