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Old 08-18-2018, 05:13 PM   #1
Dannii
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Default REAPER Performance on Linux vs Windows

I've been quietly following the development of REAPER for Linux now for a while and even experimented a little with a Linux install a while back. That was before the native Linux version was available though.

My primary question is about the performance differences of the current REAPER versions on Linux vs Windows. Has anyone done a direct comparison of CPU usage and latency on the same PC under both systems? REAPER runs extremely well on my Win10 rig (i7 7700K, 32GB RAM, Asus Z270 Prime, 3x Samsung 850 500GB SSD) and is rock solid. Same with the drivers for my hardware (RME Fireface UFX & MOTU MIDI Timepiece AV).

There are numerous things holding me back from running Linux at present, the main ones being compatibility with Windows plugins (I have thousands of dollars worth of third party Windows plugins and applications that I use pretty much constantly) and the whole learning curve thing of configuring and tweaking an OS I am not intimately familiar with. The latter is obviously just a matter of digging in and learning.
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Old 08-18-2018, 09:45 PM   #2
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Aside from compatibility issues, it would be difficult for Linux to *not* be faster/lighter than Windows. I don't mean that in the usual "haha Windows sucks" sense - Linux is much smaller and (by default) is doing way less in the background. As an example, I can fully reboot in about ten seconds right now compared to maybe a minute at best with Windows 8.

Re: plugins - I'm surprised at how many of mine work with LinVST as a wrapper. Depending on where/how they store things, you may have to mess around with copying or linking their settings from the Windows drive.

Re: apps - This was the biggest reason why, in the past, my forays into Linux were aborted. I need to do things and couldn't. This time that doesn't seem to be the case - between lots of software offering Linux versions, Linux equivalents for the ones that don't, and Wine for everything else, you might be surprised at how well it goes. Or maybe it will be terrible. Who knows?

If you have the time, a dual-boot setup is pretty painless these days and gives you the flexibility to work in Linux when you feel like it while having Windows a few keystrokes away. You can even create links from the Linux file system to My Documents and all that, minimizing the time spent going back and forth in the file manager.

You'll definitely have to get very, very intimate with the Terminal though. No real way around it for what we do.
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Old 08-19-2018, 04:06 AM   #3
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Originally Posted by Lokasenna View Post
Aside from compatibility issues, it would be difficult for Linux to *not* be faster/lighter than Windows. I don't mean that in the usual "haha Windows sucks" sense - Linux is much smaller and (by default) is doing way less in the background. As an example, I can fully reboot in about ten seconds right now compared to maybe a minute at best with Windows 8.
Yes, Windows has enabled a lot of excess services by default.
Rebooting on Win 10 takes 10 seconds or so here.

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If you have the time, a dual-boot setup is pretty painless these days and gives you the flexibility to work in Linux when you feel like it while having Windows a few keystrokes away. You can even create links from the Linux file system to My Documents and all that, minimizing the time spent going back and forth in the file manager.
The one weakness of this solution is a lack of access to other file system on both systems. I can be wrong, if so correct me please.
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Old 08-19-2018, 04:20 AM   #4
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The one weakness of this solution is a lack of access to other file system on both systems. I can be wrong, if so correct me please.
Linux can read NTFS but windows can't read linux file systems. You can set up a different drive or partition with NTFS and then both systems will be able to use it.
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Old 08-19-2018, 04:49 AM   #5
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Linux can read NTFS but windows can't read linux file systems. You can set up a different drive or partition with NTFS and then both systems will be able to use it.
Ok, thanks for the explanation. So I was half-right.
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Old 08-19-2018, 05:09 AM   #6
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It's possible to setup a linux system to read/write NTFS, but you need some user space software, it's not built into the kernel (the built in support is readonly). Though IIRC one had to disable fast suspend or something like that on windows, though this might have changed as I haven't done this for a long time.

AFAIK, there are a few solutions to mount linux file systems in windows too, most of them without a drive letter and just support in the file manager.

If it's just for exchanging data, maybe creating a fat32 partition would do, though it won't support linux file permissions, so not useful as a main storage system for linux.
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Old 08-19-2018, 05:15 AM   #7
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You could install Fuse to add read/write support for alien file systems.

http://linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/vie...tlfs/fuse.html

Or you could use a FAT disk as intermediary. FAT is accessible by all OS'es. NTFS isn(t ideal for this task, as there is no documentation available from MS, so it's kind of experimental on everything but Windows.
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Old 08-19-2018, 10:22 AM   #8
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Yes, Windows has enabled a lot of excess services by default.
Rebooting on Win 10 takes 10 seconds or so here.
Lucky you. My wife's Win 10 laptop will occasionally spike to 100% disk usage for about half an hour and we can't figure out why. She really, really loves that when she's trying to work.
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Old 08-19-2018, 10:39 AM   #9
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Lucky you. My wife's Win 10 laptop will occasionally spike to 100% disk usage for about half an hour and we can't figure out why. She really, really loves that when she's trying to work.
Perhaps she uses Windows Defender? Or maybe it sends a lot of telemetry?
Also I disabled automatic updates. Probably this is the reason.
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Old 08-19-2018, 10:45 AM   #10
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From what I can tell it's Windows indexing the drive - seems to be a known issue, but one of those issues with five or six different "this worked for me!" fixes that don't work for anyone else.
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Old 08-25-2018, 01:06 PM   #11
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Lucky you. My wife's Win 10 laptop will occasionally spike to 100% disk usage for about half an hour and we can't figure out why. She really, really loves that when she's trying to work.
Strip W10 to the bone. Get shot of all that background process rubbish. All the telemetry, the lot. It's a pain to have to do it, but it can really help.

Hey, do you really need some silly winking window telling you that it's raining outside or that Uncle Dan's just called? You have a real window to look out of and you've already spoken to Uncle Dan and assured him that he hasn't "broken the internet". And you don't even use a damn Xbox...

I'd like to meet and throttle the genius at Redmond who thought it would be a good idea to present you with an insulting frowny face blue screen of doom (FBSOD) when something goes wrong, then offer to try to fix the problem and always fail. It's usually that bloody Synaptics crap...

I do actually remain on W10 and it's fine, but I'll often go and live in a virtual Linux "room" for a while (I'm in Ubuntu as we speak - W10 is caretaker in the background). With zippy modern hardware it's a lot less hassle than setting up a dual boot and it's getting harder to notice the difference. Plus Linux's efficiencies often make up for any virtualisation lag.

Wouldn't yet use this approach for a DAW project though. When I'm working, I really need all guns blazing and for now that's in W10.
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Old 02-23-2021, 06:14 PM   #12
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I have been a long time on dual boot with Win 7 , then win10 , and i am happy that i do not use windows anymore , i still have it for MSFS2020 , that's all,and i do not know if i will keep it.As for ReaperLinux , i find it more performant on my linuxlite 4.8.My win vst's work fine with linvstconvert.
i hate microsoft , because its always "wait , we are doing something"
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Old 02-26-2021, 09:15 PM   #13
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Linux vs Win trace image... https://www.quora.com/q/linuxmusicre...eJIwP3dwADj-gQ
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