I would like to bring my MIDI keyboard to a weekly jam in a crammed pub to play music live with people. The place is usually packed, the energy is high and there’s food and lots of liquids near the stage, so I would like to avoid bringing my main laptop.
I have a secondary laptop with an Intel N150, 16GB of RAM, 512GB of SSD. I have installed Ubuntu 25.10 with Liquorix kernel, as Linux is best suited for main use of the laptop. I would like to use the same laptop to play music with VSTs like the Arturia Collection ones, using a Focusrite 2i4 2nd gen as the audio interface and a M-Audio Oxygen 61 2nd gen as the MIDI controller. I would like to use a DAW to easily switch among VSTs. These VSTs have native support only for MacOS and Windows. Can I make them work on Linux? What DAW should I use and how to I setup come kind of emulation layer to run non-native VSTs on Linux? What suggestions do you have for making the setup stable, reliable and minimize round trip latency while playing (taking into account the clear hardware limitations and emulation overhead)?
A couple of comments with respect to the thread you shared (thanks @daemond ).
LinVST looks like cannot be currently installed via apt (maybe the software package name has changed or it has been removed from official repositories). You can install it by downloading files via GitHub
Google Gemini and Claude Opus 4.5 both suggested yabridge instead of the LinVST+Carla combination due to claimed smaller CPU overhead and latency and the better support for VST3 (which is very relevant for modern pulgins like Arturia)
I need to run Reaper via terminal with the command pw-jack to have PipeWire handling the audio, which apparently is the best modern option to also minimize system overhead. PipeWire fakes being JACK, which you need to install separately if you don’t want to use piperwire, but you need to explicitly run the application with the PipeWire “emulation” option activated.
You can also run Arturia VST standalone versione with Wine, but I’m getting a little bit too much of a input lag there. I’m hoping that in the DAW it will be better
The next issue I have to fix is that, while the standalone version has input lag, its UI functions perfectly. On the other hand not only I was not able to have audio out from the DAW version of the VSTs (hopefully this issue has been solved now, I’ll need to have time to make tests and play), the UI was also broken: wherever I positioned the pointer, within the UI of the VSTs it was actually rendered/considered like it was further right and down with respect to where I put it, meaning that I misclicked on the UI and that elements in the upper right region of the VST window were untouchable.
By executing pw-jack parent_folder/reaper I managed to remove the warning about Reaper not founding JACK devices, but I still couldn’t get an audio output from the VSTs within Reaper.
I actually tried again with the standalone VSTs… they work perfectly well and I was able to bring down the latency by bringing the buffer to 128 and the sampling frequency to 96000 Hz.
I was amused to see that, at least for most VSTs, the N150 was able to handle it even if it was on battery and in Balance mode.
Side note: I’m quite happy with this CPU! The whole laptop cost me 193€ new with 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD and it’s been a pleasure to operate, apart from the subpar FHD screen, which was expected.
Personally, I would use Waveform since they support Windows, mac, and Linux natively. Though only provide a package for debian based distros as their official version. That works out though since you are on Ubuntu. Waveform runs VST2, VST3, and au, and IMO has the most features and usability of any free DAW. The one unfortunate thing is that it does not natively support the original VST as it doesnt use 32-bit plugins anymore on the newer versions. You can use a program called JBridge to translate 32-bit VST into 64-bit and make them work in Waveform, but I have never done this. JBridge is available on the Snap store in Ubuntu as well.
I actually had a decent experiece with the audio, considering the relatively weak hardware of the Chuwi laptop I was trying to use, the snappiness of Liquorix kernel + lightness of the distro as a whole compared with Windows gave me lower background and IDLE hardware utilization and more responsive feeling, meaning that I was actually able to lower the audio buffer down to 128 samples for some VSTs and more than offset the added latency, if any.
Ableton Live emulated in Wine using ASIO drivers for the external audio interface was had a very noticeable latency penalty.
I have an expensive original license for Ableton Live 10 Suite, a couple of MIDI interfaces that pair very well with it and I’m familiar with the commands and feature set, so I was actually trying to stay on it.
Actually, I had issues with the UI of these VSTs.
I had a few hours left until a live jam session, so after trying to fix the VST emulation within Linux DAWs or audio latency within emulated Ableton Live, I decided to throw a larger SSD in the Chuwi laptop, install Windows 11, Ableton Live and the Arturia VSTs and use it in that jam. So now I have a setup that works decently and natively zero-fuss (apart from other problem I had with cables, but these are not software issues).
The day after the jam I decided to split the storage and assign a partition to CachyOS, as I was curious to try the performance optimizations and the “latest and greatest” vibe of its rolling release nature, so if I ever want to rebuild the setup on Linux, it will be on CachyOS. Unless something breaks again (very probable).
To be clear, I din’t start this journey in emulating VST just for the fun of it. I’m using Linux as a daily driver for my scientific programming needs and my everyday basic tasks needs, but as I find Windows more and more bloated, resource-heavy and frustrating in general, I wanted to see if I could ditch it entirely and not have dual boots on my machines.
But I don’t like tinkering per se, I want to learn the fewest new programs and instructions that allow me to complete my tasks as fast, effortlessly and efficiently as possible.
To me this kind of stuff is like a hammer… I don’t easily get excited by a hammer, I just need it to put a nail in the wall.
It’s not funny when my software hammer breaks and falls on my foot