Linux Audio Development (LAD)
Intech Studio
Linux Audio developer interview with Gergely Sövény from Intech Studio
This interview was conducted by Amadeus Paulussen in 2026.
Dear Gergely, I’m very happy to be able to chat with you about Linux Audio. 🤓 Thank you very much for taking the time to do this!
I still remember when I bought my EF44 and hoped back then that many musicians would discover and support your amazing controller platform. Today, it looks like your company is thriving, which makes me genuinely happy. Would you like to give us an overview of where you come from, who you are, and what exactly Intech Studio offers?
When we started developing Grid, we first intended to make controllers for our own music projects, but starting a company quickly consumed all of our waking hours. Instead of creating music ourselves, now we get to contribute to thousands of audio and visual arts projects via the Grid ecosystem. I think this is what keeps us inspired! Every couple of weeks I see some jaw-dropping use case or creative project in our community that uses our products in the most unexpected ways. Our intention with my co-founder Kristof was to create a truly Open Source controller ecosystem that allows users to create personalized workflows, starting from a modular control surface and extending into deep configuration and programming options. This was our mission 7 years ago and continues to be our guiding principle as we push the ecosystem forward.
I mostly speak with pure audio software developers, but from a Linux perspective, improving audio hardware support is, IMHO, just as important for the future of the platform. In your case, you cover both areas and have supported Linux uncompromisingly from the very beginning. How did that come about?
We never set out to explicitly support any operating system really. Our view was that we wanted to only use standard interfaces that are well supported on all platforms. USB-C and Class-Compliant MIDI were non-negotiables for us. The same thinking applied to the configurator software—we decided to lean on web standards as much as possible which turned out to be the winning bet for cross-platform experiences in general. (Note that WebMIDI, the WebSerial API and the Filesystem API were nowhere near adoption by the browser back when we started development)
You develop your Grid Editor openly under the GPL-3.0 license and even host all the blueprints for your Grid Controllers on GitHub. For me personally, this feels like a utopia come true. What motivated you to become an Open Source company, and how well does this approach work for you as a business model?
I think innovation in the MIDI controller space is very slow. Most companies release a new and updated version of their products every 18 months with minor improvements. This encourages their users to just buy the new version and throw away the old. This is the same toxic business model that we have seen in the smart phone market for a decade. For us, Open Source is the deliberate response to that cycle. Open Source Software is the backbone of most anything these days whether we allow the user to see it or not. I just happen to believe that more good things will happen in the World if more projects showcase how things work under the hood. I am dedicated to not only releasing source code and design files for finished products but to actively develop our new products in the open as well.
Do you receive valuable contributions from the community, or have other advantages emerged as a result of offering both the Grid Editor and Grid Controllers as Open Source?
I imagined that we would get most contributions to the editor software thinking that web technologies will be more approachable for our more technical users but surprisingly we get most contributions in the firmware repository! Many bug-fixes and quite a few features and improvements were contributed by community members. At this point I am confident that even if Intech Studio as a company would disappear the community would be more than capable of maintaining the project! And it goes beyond software—all of our products are fully compatible, fully Open Source and fully repairable. This provides transparency into what value we are putting into our products, extends the useful life of our controllers while reducing the negative environmental impact they have.
What do you think motivates people to choose Linux as their operating system?
Proprietary operating systems have been getting worse release by release. Users are fed up with not owning anything, and that is before every OS trying to become "Agentic". The freedom and the sense of choice far outweigh any downsides that the migration may introduce. I have not seen anyone who regretted switching to Linux.
If I'm not mistaken, you're a Linux fan yourself. What has your Linux journey been like so far?
I started using different Ubuntu-based distributions as a teenager because at home we had many older underpowered x86 laptops that were struggling to run the current Windows versions at the time. Those were fun times, but it took me another couple of years to fully quit using Windows, mostly due to the fact that I wanted to be able to run Ableton Live! :D
Can you tell us which Linux distribution, window manager, or desktop environment you personally use on your computer at the moment?
I am a retro guy; I like simple things so my distro of choice is Xubuntu. (Minimal Ubuntu installation with XFCE desktop environment and utilities). For the last six months I have been using i3 tiling window manager which works as a drop-in replacement for Xubuntu's xfce4-wm.
Is it just my impression, or would you agree that Linux music production is gaining momentum?
I think it does, and it is largely thanks to enthusiasts and educators like you, who promote the ecosystem not for financial gain but for the joy of sharing the experience! I think the momentum is strong and Linux desktop will be a more performant host choice for audio the same way it is becoming that for Gamers, and that aligns with our vision for Grid—to be used more widely in all creative fields, not just Audio. Any software today that incorporates sliders and knobs on its user interface could benefit from having a physical control surface.
Do you perhaps gather data on which operating systems your customers use?
For us, Linux users are only 2.5% of all users which is somewhat aligned with what research indicates on desktop operating system market share. It is interesting that Q4 2025 was the quarter where the number of Windows users declined for the first time. The fastest-growing OS was Linux which is nice!
Is there an operating system you support that causes particularly high—or low—support effort for your team?
Windows 7 was a pain for quite some time, but we eventually dropped support for it. We support anything that is supported by the current version of Chromium/Electron.
Do the two major technological transitions in the current Linux ecosystem—Wayland / Xwayland versus X11, and PipeWire versus PulseAudio / JACK—play any role in your software or hardware development? If so, what are your thoughts on PipeWire and Wayland?
I am lucky to only be a spectator in this space since our software does not natively integrate with any of these technologies.
What were your considerations in offering the Grid Editor for Linux as an AppImage rather than as a Flatpak, if I might ask?
It was not explicitly a decision, it was just the easiest to do at the time. I think as more casual (non-developer) Linux users start using Grid we need to make installation more seamless—and thanks for the nudge, it's already in our backlog: grid-editor#1431
While the number of native plugins for Linux continues to grow, many hardware manufacturers still seem to struggle with the idea of supporting Linux. What do you think are the reasons for this?
In most cases software is the bottleneck in my opinion. Many of the major hardware manufacturers carry codebases and know-how on platform-specific technologies and are not willing to move forward. And frankly, at the current (single-digit percentage) adoption rate of Linux, they are not really pressured by user demand anyway. This is, however, a great opportunity for small companies to innovate and get ahead of the curve!
What would you recommend to other hardware manufacturers who want to get ready to support Linux?
You don't need to support Linux in my opinion. You only need to support the standards that are implemented by major desktop operating systems. The strategy to support all operating systems in isolation is a losing battle in my experience.
Looking ahead, what do you hope for the future of Linux as a platform for making music?
I hope that big DAW brands will start treating Linux as a worthwhile platform for music production and start distributing their software for Linux. The most common reason why users stick to Windows is because it runs Microsoft Office & Photoshop and they say they can't live without those tools. The user base of Linux can only grow so much without the tools, or at least suitable alternatives, being available.
Do you have any tips for the Linux Audio Development initiative on how it could more effectively help advance the field of Linux music production?
Starting a LAD community Discord server would be my suggestion—it could help developers (and possibly end users) connect, get help and share ideas.