Linux Audio Development (LAD)

Audiojunkie (Sean Ercanbrack)

Linux Audio Artist Interview with Audiojunkie (Sean Ercanbrack)

Audiojunkie (Ercan Brack)

This interview was conducted by Amadeus Paulussen in 2025.

Dear Sean,

Thank you for doing this interview with me!

I am a die-hard Linux fan and love Open Source, but in a way I am also still a newb. đŸ«ŁđŸ˜œ Anyway, I discovered Mastodon around the same time I switched from macOS to Linux, I guess. And, I don't remember exactly when I first met you, but I do remember seeing your name repeatedly popping up in connection with Linux Audio early on (and that not only on Mastodon). Today, I know you as an authority and valued member of the Linux Audio Community on Mastodon, and am grateful for your help in promoting Linux Audio. Could you perhaps give us an overview of who you are, what you do, and how you got into Linux Audio?

Sure. I'm a hobbyist musician, and I work in I.T. I support Windows for a living, but I use/love/prefer Linux. I got into computers a long time ago. My uncle was building an Altair 8800 in his basement when I was a young kid, and it fascinated me. He later had a Commodore PET. I quickly learned and loved CP/M, which gave me access to all of my uncle's games he had on the computer. I was later given a Commodore VIC-20 for my 10th birthday. Video games were my life back then. I then moved to the Commodore 64. I wanted an Amiga, but by the time that I was ready to afford one, my parents had bought an IBM 286, and I began to be interested in DOS. Before the internet, I was deep into the BBS culture, and ran my own Bulletin Board System (BBS). By 1993, I was considering going into the Computer Science program at my local university. While studying my generals, I was hanging around the Computer Science department all the time and using their VAX system. It was around this point that I discovered Linux.

I was big into Usenet, Gopher, FTP, Email, etc, etc, and I began actively following the conversations that Linus Torvalds and others were having about his new kernel. He had started working on it in 1991, and it was 1993, so I missed out on the very beginnings, but it fascinated me! I was also big into following what was going on with Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation at that time. I was fascinated with the early MIT phone phreaking hacker culture, the history of Captain Crunch, and started reading everything I could get my hands on. I was fascinated with the original startup histories of Jack Tramiel, Nolan Bushnell, Jay Miner, Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Wozniak, and Steve Jobs, and many others from the early days. I followed all of the technology advancements. The group of friends I spent time with back then were also interested in this stuff.

What’s funny — and I didn’t realize it at the time — is that what started as an interest in video games and arcade games, and a love of technology, would eventually lead me to my career, Open Source Software, and Linux.

To make a long story short, I got interested in Linux early, and followed it and experimented with it for years, but it wasn't until around 2015 that I felt there was enough software for it to start trying to actually use the system in place of Windows. By 2017, I bought the first computer that I would dedicate solely to Linux. I had bought my first guitar in 1993, and had been playing it and buying more and more guitars and music and computer equipment, and by 1998, I was in a band and playing local gigs everywhere in our state. We all ended up breaking up as each one of us got married and went our separate ways. I had had a small home studio and had been learning the art of recording, during that time.

As married life took more and more of my time, I realized that I didn't have a desire to perform in public anymore, but also realized that I still liked music and technology. Linux just kept getting better and better. Everything moved from using just JACK to having actual supported host DAWs with Linux supported plugin formats LADSPA, LV2, etc. For 25 years, I had been following the out of main line real time patches and looking forward to the day they would get mainlined. PipeWire came. The VST SDK came. CLAP came. By this time, my two hobbies had blended into one. Linux was ready for the mainstream for Linux musicians. I started advocating for it and using it seriously, and trying to help others who were interested in it as well. That's my Linux story. :)

Sometimes I wish there was an easy way to reach all Linux audio users in one single place. In your experience, where is the Linux Audio Community most active, and where are you, yourself, most active?

I am involved all over the place with Linux Audio. I've been on KVR Audio since it started—over 23 years. I was a 20 year old when I joined, and now I'm 55, married, and I have 3 kids—one an adult himself. Haha! I am also a member of the LinuxMusicians forum, the Reaper forum, the Ardour forum, the Linux Audio Reddit. I'm active in the Fediverse on Mastodon, and I just barely started a Linux Audio group on the newly revived Digg forum. I would say that things are most active at KVR Audio, the LinuxMusicians forum, the Ardour forum, and Mastodon. There are other places where Linux users post, but they aren't as active as the ones I've just mentioned.

I recently posted a quote that read as follows: "Using Linux is like building an instrument, rather than just learning to play one. At first, it's only half good, but it gradually improves until you feel at one with it. And then, sometimes, you might even feel like you're not playing the instrument anymore, but rather, the instrument is now playing you." However, I also recognize that there are people who don't want to become one with their computer, but are perhaps more interested in simply getting stuff done without having to invest a lot of time or having to overcome hurdles. In the Linux context, these would be perhaps people who might prefer to use Debian or Fedora instead of maybe Arch Linux, Gentoo, LFS, nixOS, etc. How do you personally feel about the diversity in the Linux environment, and the often-touted “steep learning curve” when users are looking for an alternative to macOS or Windows?

There's truth to the learning curve. Linux is not for everyone, just like modular synthesis is not everyone's cup of tea. I liken the three major OSes to synthesizers. macOS is like a nice rompler or synthesizer with a hard wired path through each of the components. You get your normal components, such as oscillators, filters, LFOs, etc. You have a nice sounding selection of patches, and it is immediately accessible and you can pretty much do most of what you'd want to do. But that's all that you can do. You have the basics, but there's no advanced, creative or esoteric options. It serves the needs of most people, and it's very easy.

Windows is like a very nice hard wired synthesizer that may have a few patch cables for some different routing. You have a lot more freedom than macOS users have, and you can do so much more. The synth sounds great, and you have more oscillator options, more filters, etc., and you have a lot more modulation options. It's what the industry uses.

But then there's Linux. Linux can be as small and as light as you want it to be, or as big and powerful and loaded with tools as you want it to be. You can hand pick each component of the OS if you want. It's like a full-on modular synthesizer! It can have the absolute basics—a single oscillator, a single, basic filter, and no modulation, or it could be TONTO (The Original New Timbral Orchestra). Linux is the best operating system on earth! In fact, since it's used on super computers, rockets, the space station, and the Mars rover, it's the best OS on two planets!! Hehe!! But yes, with that power comes a much higher learning curve. Those who want to take advantage of that power will put the time and effort into learning Linux—and they will benefit from the freedom (both literal and ideological), and the flexibility, and the efficiency, and the power that comes from an OS that can do pretty much anything.

What exactly do you use Linux for? Do you make music yourself? If so, can you tell us about some of your work?

I'm more of a hobbyist than anything else. While I do have a room in my house that I consider my home studio, and while I do have a lot of equipment there, I mostly use my laptop and built-in on board audio card. I have a well built Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga 2-in-1 laptop that I also treat as a touch screen tablet. I use it for everything, and I love the mobility. I started out with a Windows DAW, it was fine, but I felt restricted. I moved to pure tablet music production on the iPad, and later iPhone, but felt like it was doing key-hole surgery trying to make music on the phone. By the time I had done this, I was ready to use Linux, and was also wanting to use my system as a tablet. I feel now that I have the best of both worlds, while also on the best OS. I have as much fun playing with Linux as I do making music. Two hobbies in one. :)

If I'm not mistaken, you mainly use FOSS. Do you also use proprietary software, and what are your thoughts on the two worlds?

Oh! I use everything that is available to me. While I do like and use FOSS, I also like and use commercial products as well. I try to use the best of what is available, and most Linux users these days feel the same. We are not all just looking for free stuff, and refusing to use anything else—WE ARE WILLING TO PAY FOR SOFTWARE THAT DEVELOPERS BRING TO LINUX. I stress that part, because there is a misunderstanding from many Windows and macOS users that Linux users refuse to use anything other than FOSS. There are a few that refuse to use anything other than FOSS, but I'm not one of them, and most of the users that I've met aren't one of them either. I DO know of a few that are hardcore and refuse to use anything but FOSS, but that is an ideological stance, rather than for any other reason. I'm not against FOSS at all—I love it! But I am just as willing to pay for software that I want to use.

Do you have any thoughts to share on PipeWire vs. JACK, PulseAudio, or Wayland vs. X, and do you think they should be top of mind for new Linux users?

Right now, for all but the very most out there edge cases, PipeWire is what everyone should be using, in my personal opinion. It is the standard. JACK has been deprecated. That's my personal stance. However, there are a few hold-outs that have refused to move on, and cling to JACK. I think that for new users, PipeWire is what they should be using. PipeWire solves so many problems from the past. It unifies the sound servers, and is completely compatible with ALSA, PulseAudio, and JACK, for all but the most rare cases. It is very actively developed, and the edge case problems are disappearing. PipeWire is awesome!

The X11 vs Wayland issue is a bit different. At this point in time, Wayland has been released and adopted as the replacement of X11. Constant development on it continually improves Wayland and makes it better. It is much more secure. It's great! However, it's still heavily developed, and there are some things that are problematic in the Linux Audio realm as of 2026. First, the entire industry, with the exception of Fender Studio Pro (formerly Presonus), is using X11. There isn't too much as far as development frameworks and tools available for Wayland. There is the extension that Presonus developed that got adopted into the VST SDK, and CLAP is in the process of working out a solution for Wayland, but by and far, Wayland is not in most frameworks and tools for Linux yet.

Also, Wayland knew that the move from X11 to Wayland would be a long road. They, as part of their plan, incorporated the entire X11 server into Wayland as a subservient component. Most X11 stuff runs without problem on Wayland. In my experience, if a user chooses the most popular desktop environments (ie Gnome or KDE), and chooses one of the most common family of distros (ie Debian, Ubuntu or its repository compatible derivatives, Fedora, Arch or openSUSE), that user will likely have very little problems running Wayland by default and using X11 programs. I personally use Fedora, and I haven't experienced any problems on it in years.

So, in my opinion, X11 isn't going away any time soon. XWayland is built into Wayland, and it isn't going away any time soon. I'd be willing to bet that XWayland will still be in Wayland 20 years from now. I'd be willing to bet that X11 apps will still be used 20 years from now—although maybe less so than nowadays. My point is, I think developers don't need to even debate the X11 vs Wayland problem right now. For now, X11 reigns, and X11 is what everyone is developing with, and X11 works fine with Wayland and X11 desktop environments. Developers should still be developing with X11, but keeping an eye to the future when someday Wayland may be the future.

Just as an anecdote—Presonus Studio One (now Fender Studio Pro), was developed with Wayland and future proofing in mind, and now almost no plugins will display their GUIs in it. This is because everything is developed in X11 right now. Someday in the future, Fender Studio may have an advantage with not having to rewrite their software, but right now, no one wants to buy their software, because no one wants to use GUI-less plugins. So is it really an advantage right now? That's for developers to decide, I guess. But I think if the Fender Studio Pro developers were smart, they'd find some way to code in a X11 plugin host to wrapperize the X11 plugins and allow them to display their GUIs—they could then discard it without having to do a major rewrite with Wayland, since it would already be there. But right now, No one wants to buy the program, so they are going to have to figure out what to do with that problem.

Nerd Alert: Would you like to tell us your distribution of choice, as well as let us in on your desktop environment/window manager and other technological tidbits of your setup?

I spent a lot of time distro hopping early on. Over time, I created a list of what I wanted in a distro:

I eventually narrowed things down to Debian, Fedora, and openSUSE. In the end, I chose Fedora because it best covers what I want in a distro. People wrongly believe that Fedora is corporately controlled, but that's not true. IBM may help fund Fedora to some extent, but Fedora is independently controlled.

I currently use the modern second generation Linux distro: Fedora Silverblue.

It is an atomic, immutable distro. I only install the absolute minimal with rpm-ostree—only drivers or codecs or base sandboxing/containerizing software. I then use Flatpak for everything I can. I run all of my software of any other type in containers. I have a Fedora container that comes with the base of my distro for any additional software that I may need, related to my base distro. I then run everything else through Distrobox. For example, an Ubuntu distro, containerized through Distrobox. It is there that I run all of my Linux Audio software. It is there that I use WINE/yabridge. These are all the technical details from the back end. From the view of my Fedora Silverblue, everything runs like a regular distro—all of the software is tightly integrated with my base distro, and when I want to use a program, I simply click on it. Yet, everything is safely compartmentalized and safe. There is no "dependency hell" that Linux users of the past had to worry about. If anything breaks, I can just delete the container and rebuild that part of the distro, without touching any of the immutable or atomic parts. immutability, cloud-native computing (containers/sandboxes), and atomic updates and immutability are the future of Linux, and it's available today.

How have you personally experienced Linux Audio over the last 3 years?

It just keeps getting better and better. Year after year, more and more people are moving to Linux, and more and more developers are choosing to support it. It's great!

Let's play a game of 5 Things. Can you tell us 5 of your favorite apps?

OK. I'll do music related things, since that is our main topic:

  1. Reaper
  2. TX16Wx Sampler
  3. Zebra 3
  4. Diva
  5. Sforzando

This changes frequently. I'll likely have different favorites in a week or so. :)

And 5 things you would like to see for the future of Linux Audio?

Hmmm
 This may be tough
 everything is developing very nicely and moving in the right direction already.

  1. I would like to see more people move to Linux
  2. I would like to see more developers support Linux
  3. I would like to see better and more detailed documentation over all throughout the Linux realm.
  4. I would like to see more and more GUI front ends to everything that is command line driven. We are already seeing this happening now, but many people fear the command line, and front ends allow users to use the command line less, which is good for Linux adoption.
  5. I would like to see Linux tuning for audio continue to be more and more streamlined. Many musicians say they would love to move to Linux for the benefits, but fear the tuning required and the command line.

And, as the last part of the game, 5 things that annoy you about Linux?

  1. One of the nice things about Linux is the freedom to do whatever you want to do with it. But that is also its Achilles heel—everything is so diverse—everyone wants to do things their own way. It would be nice to have a common Linux software base. We all know that this won't happen though, which is why the next generation of Linux systems is using the next best thing: sandboxing and containerization. Between Flatpak, AppImages, containerization tools like Toolbx and distrobox, and immutability and atomic updates, Linux is solving the problems of cross distro compatibility and dependency issues, while still allowing Linux to remain as diverse as it ever was.

  2. There is still a lot more set up required for tuning for latency and special setups. It would be nice to keep all of the benefits of Linux while making it more immediate out of the box. Granted there are some distros that are designed especially for this, such as AV Linux, or Ubuntu Studio, but it would be nice for standard distros to come with this configuration already—we can always dream. :)

I can't really think of much more. I guess 2 will have to suffice. :)

What do you think we, as a community, should do to make Linux Audio more popular, and do you think we're on the right track?

I definitely think we are on the right track. I think that there are a lot of people that are trying to help each other and any new users. There are a lot of people volunteering writing documentation or writing programs that make things easier and better. We need to continue doing that.

Do you think that getting started with music production on Linux should nowadays be mostly problem-free, or do you still see significant obstacles to overcome for newcomers? What tips would you give to interested musicians?

Maybe it's because I used Linux in the past that I feel that Linux is mostly problem-free these days—things are SO much better than they used to be! Music production on Linux is just like music production on Windows or macOS. The only real differences these days is a bit of a learning curve to understand how Linux works differently, and that there are less programs than the other OSes. That's not unusual, since Linux has only really come into its own music production-wise within the last 5 years or so.

Do you think the Linux Audio Development initiative should target hardware manufacturers as well? I mean, I do, and I have it planned accordingly, but I wanted to hear your take on it. You know, things like room correction hardware/software, software for audio interfaces, etc.

Of course! Why not? We've already seen successful independent development initiatives from independent developers, like the solo person that volunteered his development time to create drivers for the Focusrite Scarlett series (shout out to geoffery!), and of course several hardware developers who have recently patched their hardware's firmware to make a Class Compliant mode so that it can be used in Linux. Businesses are in business to make money. If we are willing to spend money on a product, and there are enough of us to make it worth a business's time to develop it, they will often be willing to do it if we ask for it
just like we do with asking developers to support Linux with plugins and software.

Do you have any advice on how I could improve the Linux Audio Development initiative? Also, do you see a potential conflict of interest between developers and users in the content that the initiative currently offers? Because, you know, initially, I didn't anticipate that users might be interested in the initiative apart from the fact that it should lead to more audio software diversity on Linux. But, today, for example, I'm thinking about providing blueprints with configurations that work really well. You know, audio interfaces, distribution, tweaks, etc.—an idea proposed by a community member, by the way—and a spotlight with Linux made records, among other things.

I think that's a great idea! Listing proven, recommended, compatible hardware, and proven, up-to-date, configuration recommendations are a great idea! I don't see how a conflict would come from that. I think one of the benefits of your initiative, is that aspiring Linux developers have a unified location where they can get information on what it takes to become a Linux developer. Gathering tips and tricks and helpful things to know from developers, through your interviews and elsewhere, would be very useful. This is what I believe may be even more useful than testimonials. Make sure you gather as much of this info as you can through your interviews (I know you do it well already—I'm just wanting to emphasize the importance of it. :)

Okay, one last question: Do you think we are heading towards a time when humans will create less music themselves and leave that to AIs like Suno? And, what is your personal stance on this, if I might ask?

Yes. Sadly I believe we will soon be inundated with mediocre AI music—we already are, to some extent. While I think that will remain the case, I also think that the creativity of the true artists will remain, and this will hopefully stand out enough to separate the artists from the AI. Personally, I am not against the use of AI in helping an artist transfer what is in his/her head to recorded format. AI can help us a lot. The ability to separate combined audio to stems or to allow a person to hum a tune and turn it into a guitar, complete with articulations and such is a great thing. The ability to automate a lot of what we do and to even possibly do it better is great. But my feeling is that it should always be an act of transferring the human's vision to recorded format, rather than the AI doing the actual creative part.

Thank you so much for your time, again! I'll gladly leave the last word to you.

Thank you for the opportunity!!

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