I’ve been using Ubuntu based distros (Xubuntu and now Kubuntu) since around 2017-2018.
I’m more and more getting into professional work, with client expectations, which also creates new expectations to my system.
Because apt distro upgrades from one LTS to the next, hardly ever worked for me and ended up me backing up all my drives for a day, then wiping the system partition all together, installing the new LTS as a fresh install and then reconfiguring the system, putting all config files back in place for another day.
With the said client expectations I can not (and don’t want to) allow for 2 day drop outs anymore everytime I want to have my system upgraded.
Therefore I`m more and more considering switching to Arch as a rolling release, cause in my head I would rather tinker with my system for a couple of hours when a bleeding edge package introduces problems, as opposed to the 2 day process I described above.
What are your experiences with
Arch in general
Ardour on Arch
pipewire on Arch
Are there specific things to consider, specific compatability issues or something like that? Drivers, config files, etc
My current system is
Kubuntu 24.04
Kde Plasma 5
Ardour 8.12
In that context, switching to a rolling release seems pretty risky to me. I’d much rather have the multi-day backup/upgrade procedure, probably after waiting at least until the xxx.03 LTS release before even allowing the update to happen. The only thing that gives me pause in this case is the 26.04 update is scheduled to default to Wayland which I think is likely to cause added issues.
Not that I had any choice, but when my livelihood depended on Linux my employer required us to use Red Hat Enterprise, and updating the engineering community with major releases only happened very infrequently - maybe once every three or five years.
I switched to Manjaro Linux (an arch derivate) in 2017 and never had any problems with Ardrour. At first I used realtime kernels but later found that it was unnecessary because a generic kernel worked just fine with Ardour.
Like any other generic distribution Arch / Manjaro / CachyOS / Endevour needs initial configuration to allow Ardour to use system resources it needs. After that everything was smooth sailing until December 2025.
At this time several disturbances happened:
KDE announced it will only support Wayland in a couple of years and separated X11 support as a separate module. This created a breaking change when upgrading KDE.
nVidia released new “stable” drivers that are broken (windows disappearing / flickering etc)
Because of the rolling nature of the distro these problems hit me during a normal security update. The 8th of December update had security fixes and also latest nVidia and KDE - packages separating X11 and wayland support. The update messed up my system. Some programs (Chromium browser, Remmina RDP -client) started to crash after the update. After fixing things I began to experience nVidia - driver issues instead.
I have three machines which happily used Manjaro for the last 7 - 8 years now hanging waiting things to settle down before I dare to update them. This all was too much of a hassle so I decided to jump back onto Ubuntu 24.04 (namely Xubuntu for continued stable X11 support) and leave Manjaro for a while. I will check back in a couple of months to see if I can go back.
Ardour is one of my main apps that I use so I really need flawless X11 and nVidia support. I tested other Arch derivates (CachyOs, Endevour, Garuda) and all seems to be in trouble right now because of the latest broken nVidia driver release or the KDE wayland / X11 split.
Going forward I will probably have two partitons on my 2 TB Nvme, one for Xubuntu and one for some arch derivative. The stable Ubuntu LTS releases will cover my back if a big breaking change like this happens in the future.
I really liked to be on a rolling release. There were maybe 2 - 3 times a year an update broke something and I needed to look up the forums for a fix. But nothing major like what is happening right now.
Depending on your hardware I would advice you to wait and not to jump onto a arch - based distro right now but maybe use one as a secondary os to get to know it better.
Ubuntu 24.04 (and derivates) do use pipewire. I always use the ALSA - backend with Ardour and pipewire seems to just release sound card control automatically when I start Ardour. There really is no need to use pipirewire with Ardour, just use ALSA.
MX Linux a popular Distro which is based on Debian Stable (currently Debian 13 Trixie) has three incredible attributes that make it ideal for a scenario like yours…
MX-Snapshot… This is a built-in Remastering utility that allows you to take a Snapshot of your system exactly how you have it customized configured and create a bootable and installable ISO image so in the case of trouble you can reinstall your whole setup in like 10-15 minutes. MX is also the base of AV Linux and although I opt to use a more in-depth internal MX ISO building system for AV Linux I can vouch for MX-Snapshot as a great Distro building and rescue backup tool.
The MX User Installed Packages (UIP) Utility… This is an application that keeps track of the packages you’ve installed since your initial MX Linux install and in the event you update the next full MX version or Debian Platform you can use this utility to install all the Repository packages from one install to the next… So when a new version comes out you can backup your customized home configs and then run the User Installed Packages utility to install your former Package list into the new install, this is a major time saver!
Exhaustive Backport Packaging… Debian Stable gets a bad rap of getting out of date quickly and missing many Package updates during the lifetime of each Stable release… not on MX Linux… The packaging team there works very hard on backporting Packages from upstream Debian and other places as well, if there are ‘Debianized’ packaging sources and you request it they will usually try to package it for you. Regular core things like the low-latency Liquorix kernels and PipeWire see regular backported updates so instead of being stuck with old packages like pure Debian or Ubuntu LTS it is almost like running a rolling release on Debian while keeping a steady and stable core… As timely examples the latest PipeWire and LSP-Plugins were updated this week…
MX features XFCE4 as their flagship product but they also have KDE Plasma and Fluxbox supported products. Of course other DE’s are installable from the Debian Repos and MX has a very healthy Respinner community sharing other DE’s (as an example AV Linux using Enlightenment and Moksha) but there are well prepared Gnome, Mate, Cinnamon and LXQt ISO’s as well…
When MX is preparing Betas and RC’s of their next versions you can easily build an ISO for the next release in a Virtual Machine with MX Snapshot and once things are working how you like and your favorite packages are installed you simple install the next version with your tweaks and away you go!
Happy Manjaro user here. I had much less problems since I switched from Kubuntu to Manjaro. There were minor issues with wine for a while (the plugins worked, but not their GUI, just generic controls). The switch from X11 to Wayland did not cause any problems yet. I had problems using RDP, but I was able to solve this by manually installing some package (I can’t remember which one it was).
@mhartzel
With the X11/Wayland it is indeed not the best time for a drastic distro switch, but the switch fortunatelly doesn’t have to be tomorrow. With Kubuntu 24.04 I get support till 2028-2029 so I have a little bit of a buffer until I have to make the decision. Maybe till then some of the disturbances have settled.
Are you sure that the generic kernel is fine? I don’t know how Arch handles it but on Kubuntu with the low-latency kernel I get a little lower round trip latency, which is crucial for me tracking live instruments and vocals. Round trip latency is unfortunatelly very hardware dependend so it’s hard to tell how performance is going to turn out on a different system. What hardware are you using?
I don’t need Pipewire for Ardour specifically but for my system in general, where I have to route audio between applications like OBS for example.
Prior to seetling on Xubuntu back in 2017 I was actually fooling around with a couple of distros, one beeing Manjaro and actually installing Arch manually once. Back then I was to unexperienced to manage these systems on a long term but I already have a couple of months experience with Arch systems, pacman, AURs and so on, which is actually the reason why I was considering Arch in particular. It’s not entirely new land for me.
@GMaq
Thanks for that recommendation. I’ve never heard of MX before. I will look it up and have some research. I sounds promising but before I opt for something I have never heard before I have to make myself familiar with it, and look for other users experiences and so on. On paper Ubuntus dist-upgrade is also supposed to “just work fine” but in reality, as I said, it never worked for me. But I will give it the benefit of the doubt and look it up.
@werner.back
Nice to see that you have a good experience with the switch, also coming from a Kubuntu background, like I do. When did you make the switch, just recently or a while back? I’m not using wine, so there is no issue potential for me there.
So I understand that correctly? While Ubuntu will default to Wayland from 26.04 on, Arch already defaults to Wayland from now on? Is there a way to opt out of Wayland on Arch later use it when issues are resolved. On my Kubuntu system I think it allows to start the desktop session in either X11 or Wayland but I’ve never really checked. I’m still using X11 so I don’t know what possible problems the switch to Wayland can bring up.
I changed I think about two years ago. In Kubuntu problems started to pile up, mostly caused by snap. Out of couriosity I tried Manjaro and I was surprised how things worked right out of the box. I tried it on a spare computer but very soon installed it on all my systems.
It’s not Manjaro, its Plasma which switches to Wayland. I’m not sure if manually installing plasma-X11-session gives back the choice. I will try. It worked at least on a machine I only access via RDP.
Edit: Yes, when I install plasma-x11-session I can choose again. But as I said, had no problems with wayland so far. I didn’t even notice the switch at first.
For me the generic kernel works fine because my guitar effects are a physical device and my sound card UMC1820 has zero latency analog headphone output. In your case you probably need realtime kernels but those are supported and very easy to install on Manjaro. In fact you can install several kernel versions and select one at boot time.
Arch with Gnome here for a few years. Ardour with a U-Phoria, Sfizz and Virtual Private Orchestra to do some orchestral stuff (Stream Andreas Wendleder | Listen to Im Raum playlist online for free on SoundCloud); a few bugs in Ardour when i started, a few pipewire hickups when it was young, since then rock solid, maybe you have to look up something on the Arch homepage when something has to be manually changed, but that is about once a year.
To get a heads-up of changes before you update, you can subscribe to updates announcements on the Manjaro Forum. With the System Snapshot program Timeshift you can revert the update in case of problems.
Manjaro has Stable, Testing and Unstable branches, the Unstable being more-or-less equal to Arch.
I’m glad to see that generally the Arch experience seems positiv. I know it’s always hard to tell because setups can vary so much and personal preferences and habits can be so different. But I feel confident that Arch will definatelly be worth a try. I will take a couple of months to fully prepare myself and will probably do the switch in spring next year.
I let 2026 be my Arch test phase and if I struggle too much I can always go back.
Thanks for all your feedback
Off-Topic: @gonsolo
I like your orchestral music. What are you using? You wrote Virtual Private Orchestra but I couldn’t find anything about that. Did you mean Virtual Playing Orchestra or do you use a fork of that?
Ah ok, I’m also using Virtual Playing Orchestra but with liquidsfz. I heard it supports more articulations but still I struggle getting natural sounding ensebles out of it.