Professional DAW ‘Studio One’ is Now on Linux (Public Beta): It’s not FOSS, but it’s Important

A digital audio workstation screen showing audio sliders and volume controls

Studio One is a (closed-source) all-in-one DAW you can use to create music from scratch using virtual instruments, loops, and composition tools; record music, instruments, and other types of audio from connected equipment; and mix, master, and export audio to prostandards.

It offers a fully-featured multi multitrack recording and editing environment, letting you record, arrange, and edit row after row of audio and MIDI tracks; advanced automation capabilities; full support for effects chains; and stacks of additional features software of this kind come with.

Studio One joins Bitwig, Tracktion Waveform, and REAPER, with FOSS faves Ardour and Audacity already well established. While everyone’s preferences towards proprietary software differs, seeing yet another big-name DAW add official support for Linux is, to my mind, a big deal.

Many only want to use open source software on Linux, and that is fine, and it is one’s choice, but for a very many people wanting to move to Linux, it’s often a showstopper for them when they can’t find excellent software to use. Again, there is a lot of excellent FOSS software, but this offers more choice and can make some users feel just that more at home. I rather lean towards having more choices for more people.

There is nothing wrong with Linux at all, but it certainly can benefit from more and more software being offered natively on the platform, instead of being run under WINE or in VMs.

Although Studio One is not free (as in speech) software it does offer a free (as in beer) tier called “Prime”. This is (surprisingly) liberal, with unlimited audio and MIDI tracks and access to a decent selection of effects.

See https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/10/pro-audio-app-studio-one-now-supports-linux