Sort of. On Windows or macOS (especially in the latter case), you can expect most software to somewhat align with the design philosophy. You’ll see some software looking out of place when it’s older software or stuff that is particularly designed to be obnoxious (eg. antivirus software 
). Or very specialised stuff like audio software, which has its own look and feel (often garish, skeoumorphic crap that only musicians can love). And most software will use the system UI. On Linux, there is no such thing as a system UI, since you have at least two major DEs with completely different libraries. There is no such thing as a curated design philosophy, because while MS and Apple pour quite a few resources into this aspect of software design, on Linux there is no single body doing this or even having the resources to do so. The GNOME and KDE devs come closest, but the former is a running experiment, very much work in progress (still today), KDE for some reason is no longer as popular as it used to be and anyway the look and feel and UX are not as polished as they could be. There are all sorts of inconsistencies within the bundled software. Added to this, individual distros might tinker with the UI as well, but their efforts might stop at the base software, so once you go out into the community repos (or out-of-repo software) anything goes.
This is almost irrelevant for audio/music software, which as you note has its own look & feel. There are very few DAWs (Logic is one) that are not written to be at list cross-platform between Windows and macOS, which limits how “platform native” they could ever be, but in addition, almost all DAWs and related tools are written using something other than the “native” GUI toolkit (whatever that may be).
So whatever is happening with DE’s on Linux is of little consequence to DAWs etc. on Linux. Mostly.
I’ve tried pretty much every Linux distribution. There’s not really any difference…
…except for beginners or those who don’t deal much with code. Over time, I’ve gone back to a Debian-based distribution (Debian Ubuntu). Because there’s a lot of software available in .deb format, which is easy to install.
However, I remain a fan of the KDE desktop environment for professional audio work with multiple monitors.
KDE’s window manager is what works best for me.
So I started with Ardour, using Manjaro KDE thanks to UNFA’s videos, and then I loved Debian 12 KDE, but with Debian 13, I had some difficulties with Nvidia. Today I have a Kubuntu computer (without snaps) and a KDE Neon computer…
I admit that I still use Jack2 and that I systematically remove PipeWire from my system (yes, I know: apparently PipeWire works very well, but I don’t care).
Well, the assumption is that you use your computer to do all sorts of stuff. If you’re dedicating a computer just to studio work, then these considerations matter very little, but if you aren’t, then maybe? It depends on how much you care about this stuff.
I think it depends on the specific thing you’re doing as well as system specs. I’m on a pretty powerful desktop with stock Debian (AMD Ryzen 9 5900X, 32GiB RAM, etc) and have never run into issues. Same setup but on the laptop can run into delays and other things because it’s just not powerful enough (or, in other words, I would need to tweak it much more in order to make it reliable). My solution was to invest in a good desktop so that the software setup does not matter much anymore and for my purposes (mainly recording covers of songs), it works really well.
Could I invest more time in making it workable on my laptop? Probably. Is it worth it considering I use my laptop for other things as well? Not really. It would have made sense when my laptop was my only computer, but now my wife and I basically only record on the desktop so it’s a moot point.
In other words, the appeal of a dedicated A/V OS is highest with a dedicated A/V computer. But at that point, it makes sense to invest in good hardware for that dedicated computer to the point where software becomes slightly moot. At least in my experience, anyway.
“Good enough never is…” | “If you’re not first you’re last…” 
Hence a desktop which is upgradeable 
I have been using Debian/unstable for decades as my base distribution, not only for music.
I can have the latest version of each software, not waiting for years to have the bugs to be fixed.
What changed completely with AI and latest frontier models from last February is that with a tool like Claude Code you can delegate most of the IT work of the system itself. Quite impressive, to tweak all the gory details without spending your life on it!
Got a Macbook Pro M2 from work. As I’m a GNOME long-term user, I just needed a no brainer distro so I’ve installed Fedora Asahi as dualboot on it. Not much issues so far. Just my MOTU M6 soundcard that gets disconnected after I put the laptop on sleep and sometimes it doesn’t connect automatically properly at boot but otherwise no complaints. Might be related to Fedora Asahi itself.
I’d just say Fedora might be a good option if you’re coming from the macOS world or you just want something easy to use/maintain. Linus himself uses it because of the latter reason.
As my best man said a decade ago, while we were at the bar:
“Look man, if you ain’t gonna bitch about how your wife is constantly pissing you off, i don’t know why we even went out? You’re no fun with telling me how everything is working out for you two. That simply sucks from an entertainment point of view.”
Oh, i appreciate this clarification too.
Backend situations always turns out okay eventualy, but now i can see what are the differences with all this different Jack implementation options i stumble upon.
Haha, here I am now, entertain me! Isn’t it funny. In a twisted way it correlates to the lines in PIL’s “Disappointment”:
Disappointed a few people
When friendship reared its ugly head
Disappointed a few people
Well, isn’t that…
What friends are for?
Like I always say, John Lydon for PM!
I’ll stick to my trusted and beloved Debian, for a number of reasons:
I’m comfortable with it; it is rugged, I haven’t managed to shoot it completely down yet;
it is one of the few distros which propagates the term GNU/Linux and contains only free software per default; on the other hand, proprietary software is optional and Nvidia and HP support (the only ones I know about since they’re all I ever needed) has always been good since it was implemented;
by the time Debian 11 was released, the Nouveau video driver had become so potent that there was no longer the need for installing the proprietary Nvidia driver in order to step on it in TORCS; the latter being only one of very cool software packages of all proveniences in the repositories;
the choice of a name is utterly romantic, which certainly appeals to an irreformable romantic like me and makes Ian Murdock, R.I.P., a sympathetic figure beyond the achievement of founding Debian;
it is, if I’m not quite mistaken, the second-oldest distro and the original which spawned Ubuntu, Linux Mint and what have you, and I’m a sucker for Originals - for instance, back in the day I preferred a Series 3 Land-Rover over a Defender;
I like the idea of naming the releases after Toy Story characters, which links it to the immortal Randy Newman;
Ardour runs 150% reliable on my Debian 11 (the support of which will end this summer, and then it’s time for Debian 13) machine as long as I don’t do anything stupid, which I often do not even notice until the ERROR messages start to appear.
I can certainly think of a few more reasons. Wait until morning…
That being said, I’m no coder, no developer, just a user who wants to live. Thus, I can’t say whether Debian is the BEST choice generally.
From 2009 to 2012 I was a dedicated follower of Ubuntu after I had removed the hard drive with XP on it and buried it in a cigar box, but when they made Ubuntu look and feel more like the Unspeakable to facilitate the switch for its worshippers, I felt it was time to go. Debian has been a safe haven ever since, and to quote Forrest Gump: That is all I have to say about that.
Good Night!
Finewetaher
A few reasons were listed here, really long ago, and still interesting (and valid, i assume):
The text version/summary:
https://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2011/01/who_the_bloody_hell_cares_about_Debian/
“Debian kicks some serious ass.”
That’s what a friend of mine, who was an IT expert, told me at the end of nineties/start of 2000s, so i remembered that and finaly listened .
It was right next to the line “Did you now that you can now play .mp3’s directly from terminal?”
I didn’t know what he was even talking about, but he was on a role, so i didn’t want to interrupt him.
Now, 13(Trixie) is on my laptop which i carry around all the time. Runs realy well (for now, as far as i can see).
I’ve chosen to pair it with xfce (which has it’s own im-too-oldschool quirks for sure), simply as a reminder that computers used to be fun, not only flashy looking. It’s not for everyone, but it isn’t only for computer scientist also, for sure. From time to time, it comes right down to - fire up some terminal or foget about it - situation. I’m no coder either, but i once was as a kid, back when c64s and basic were a thing, and i have some distant memories of recording/loading data bases for self-made address book program on/from a cassette tape … i mean, wtf, why ?
And these things that pop up as “problems” for Everyday Joes are mostly xfce’s stuff. Like - i remember i had to search online for an answer and modify some restricted access text files just to set the system time correctly . You know you’re in linux world when right-clicking on a clock icon isn’t an option .
I’m also using it couse it propagades GNU/Linux narrative (feels important in todays world), it’s mature, well maintained, and one of the first distros. Whenever i talk to IT-ers and linux gets brought up, they’re all aware, or have at some point, used Debian.
Arch is too techy for my taste, Fedora is too rolling-release centric, so Debian feels about right.
You might be very disappointed to hear that all our machines in our household are on plain Linux Mint. (Yes, I even migrated the machine of my wife from Windows …)
Some kernel parameters in the grub config file, works fine for my use cases. Ardour directly from the developers …
Amen to that. Trixie is what I’ll install when the long time support for Bullseye has ended. Hopefully, the Aston Martin DB5 Zagato will be included in the 64bit Torcs package then. I only had the pleasure to let it drift through the curves in the 32bit version a few years ago. FAB!
What I have to say inspite of my praise for Debian though is that they either effed up the Firefox package a few times in the past or the source from mozilla was buggy. Nothing life-threatening, in one case the desktop icon was in black-and-white until next update, and on a few other occasions, Firefox behaved slightly erratic. But really no big deal, so this is actually no critique.
By the way, you just inspired me to include a little treat in the outro of the upcoming single. Just you wait and see…!
Cheers
Why should anyone be disappointed, Linux is the revolution and using it means participating. Mint is essentially Debian in green, not the worst choice… you seem to be a lucky man with a brave wife, cheers!
Well, revolution is kind of a stong word which sound a little too militant to my taste…But, a liberation of some kind, it is. And if you look deeper at the volountary aspects of it, and what is already accomplished, it’s realy impressive, i have no doubt about that.
For me it is like this constant reminder that if you lean toward wisdom, willpower, kindness and generaly more positive way looking at things, lots of different outcomes are still possible, even in this day and age.
Funny things is - it’s weakneses (when it comes to desktop computing) are generaly making you more proactive and positive. In my case, it’s very often making me think of what realy matters, as in, way of life, legacy, balance between ambition and soul and other grand scheme of things .
Distro choice don’t realy matter that much.
Is anyone using Void Linux and Ardour for music production?
I’ve only been using Linux for a few years and I ended up on Void because the runit init system is easy for me to understand, and so far it does everything I need it to do (I don’t use a desktop env - I’m using jwm window manager).
I installed Ardour a few weeks ago and so far so good