i mean, it does work pretty much fine when you run it through wine but native support is always better it'd be great if they could take advantage of pipewire/jack functionality
Yeah like you and incon said it works fine but VST's like vital dont support wine very well, i already have producer edition so switching to reaper would hurt but im willing to try@@musicalneptunian
I run all Linux as a serious audio person for one main reason: a quiet environment. No phone homes. No forced update. No AV. Quiet. Secure. I get the maximum juice from my computer. The 3 main choices for this are Ubuntu Studio which I use, AV Linux, or the Fedora spin designed for audio. I've been running Ubuntu Studio since 2019.
You didn't mention Reaper, Reaper runs flawlessly on Linux and the main dev actaully uses Debian on his personal recording laptop. It's also IMO one of the best DAWs out there period.
linux news be like: linux just got a whole lot better windows news be like: windows just got a whole lot more ads! seriously having ad embed to the os is anoying
That is crazy. I switched back to Linux 2 weeks ago after not using it for about 4 years. I thought about the problem of DAWs on Linux today and then on the same day you drop a video about Studio One, the DAW I already own from Windows, is now supporting Linux and I had no idea, it's pretty crazy. Thanks!
I can verify that the MOTU M4 that I daily drive works fantastically right out of the box in Linux. I use it currently on POP OS, but it was also working perfectly on Endeavour OS.
As a musician/music listening enthusiast, I feel like Linux is currently delivering a far superior result in terms of audio quality than Windows. Easy Effects (or Pulse Effects), for instance, is a must-have to get this crystal-clear audio result (even for voice recording/video calling, btw) and its developers are doing an amazing job. Thus, it is really exciting to see that major players in the audio industry are considering being also Linux friendly. It's all thanks to each one of the users out there and content creators like you, Michael! Thank you so much for the video!
This is crazy awesome to hear. I have always been happy with my very simple setup, so I never did anymore digging on it, but I've always heard that audio on Linux was a mess. The progress that's been made in all aspects of the Linux desktop is incredible.
Great news! And what a timing! I decided to try to record myself this week. I have zero experience with all this audio world, and the fact that I only use linux for everything is probably not helping. In fact, I dual booted into windows for my first experiments with an interface and DAW. I hope one day we can just 100% linux and not be crazy on the search for compatible hardware. 🙏
Oh thank god. I switched to Linux full time with an Elgato Wave XLR and my experience has been nothing short of horrific. I was just in the market for a new Linux compatible XLR interface.
Elgato provides no real help, which is unfortunate because Linux is more suitable for live production use anyway (since it is simpler to "set and forget" during the production).
@@microcolonel to be fair to elgato, the issues I was having seem to not be limited to Linux. It appears that the wave XLR is just a flawed product in general, and the custom Windows drivers do a semi okay job of covering it up most of the time. So my one experience with Elgato tells me never to buy from them again lol.
@@Daktyl198 I would say the problem is that the Wave XLR isn't USB class compliant but uses the custom drivers for even basic functions. That's why most other "professional" USB Audio interfaces are better in basic Linux function. (For example even the [somewhat] Wave XLR competitors of the Focusrite Vocaster lineup are class compliant USB devices, the more advanced features are already coded and should appear in Kernel 6.10 - the drivers are also available for download right now.)
These are actually big steps, it shows companies are finally considering Linux as a platform and this kind of software support is exactly what keeps many people from switching.
For video editing, Da Vinci Resolve and Lightworks already support the platform, and the cross platform open source standard fare software of KdenLive, Openshot, and Shotcut all originated on the platform. Wolf of Wall Street was edited in Lightworks on... I think it was either Suse or RHEL. We already have examples of professional usage of Linux in that space, especially if you consider all the Linux based render farms used by major 3D animation studios like Pixar and DreamWorks.
*High Five*! I'm so excited! If Univeral Control can work flawlessly in Linux, I can hook up all of my PreSonus Gear. Pro Audio and Gaming is really the only reason I have to keep Windows around.
@@VollkinSea Probably about half of my Steam library. And I’m sure it will be suggested that I try emulation/Proton. And trust me, I have. Nobara Linux, etc.
I have a long time client who has been doing video and audio stuff on Linux for over a decade. He's not a general computing hardware or network guy, that's where I come in but if you know your stuff this has been possible on Linux for a while. That said he started out in Hollywood using Resolve for color grading on Redhat so he's not the typical user by any stretch but it is good that it's easier for the more 'casual' user to get Linux compatible hardware.
While I don’t necessarily need the entire Studio One suite, I would like to see PreSonus’ Universal Control software come to Linux as well. Mostly because I use my Revelator io44 for Discord chats and other voice stuff without having to deal with software audio processing.
It's probably not as far away since Presonus has been mentioning ChromeOS in their manuals for quite some time now. Even though there is no app for it either, mentioning unsupported platforms is interesting and I think it will come to Linux eventually
my biggest issue with using Linux for audio is not the hardware interfaces, but the software. Getting vst to work is difficult and many third party plugins like kontakt and waves dont support Linux
It goes hand in hand. Once interfaces work, you need software to edit recordings. Once that's in place as well, Plugins will follow soon after. It's all about taking those first steps
Last year I tried Studio One using Lutris, worked nice Although I had slight issues. Im a Producer myself, using FL with Bottles but I would be glad if FL Officially come to Linux. However seeing something like this gives me hope and definitely trying it since it's native. Come from Windows to Linux 2 years ago, never regreted. 🥰
Been a music producer for 8 years. Having not many choices in DAWs and lack of alot of VSTs held me back but now I'm running Arch/Void on various machines and Bitwig has replaced Ableton for me completely. Yabridge also seems like a complete miracle to me since almost every VST I throw at it just works out of the box. Having more compatibility with hardware would be a dream come true, especially if Elektron will finally give linux support so I can 100% make the switch. It's crazy how much Linux has evolved over the years!
I've had a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 3rd Gen since 2021 and can honestly say it just works in Linux. Even the VST plugins work when converted to SO files. You can also configure the firmware.
I did think about installing Linux on some PC that was used to control music for a bar but then I saw potential issues with audio not working so it just got Windows on it. I do also wonder if the popularity of the Steam Deck has also pushed the needle a bit.
I believe it has. A growing minority of people are getting more used to using Linux as it slowly fits consumers more and more, and because of this, it slowly makes it a more appealing target for companies, and funnily enough, a larger userbase means a higher chance a software engineer may toy around with making a Linux version of the company software in their free time and/or push for linix compatibility
The huge problem with Linux right now is the pulse x jack thing. Really really hard to set that up. Pipewire seems great, but we really need to just replace all the audio backend we have, force apps to pass by pipewire (otherwise some program will require exclusive access to sound board like some daws) and call it a day. We need a solid sound api and not just driver support.
Pulseaudio and JACK aren't too bad to get working together. I think the main thing most people don't get is that for USB interfaces in particular, you will need to disable USB selective suspend to get predictable ultra low latency performance. You can do this by setting "usbcore.autosuspend=-1" in the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT= section of /etc/default/grub and then updating grub. I struggled with this issue for years, but then after running latencytop on a custom kernel, that is what I narrowed it down to. RT kernel didn't even make that much difference. It was that part specifically that was leading to problems. Also, if you have a new system like Fedora or Ubuntu, the audio performance can be all over the place. I use Mint for the stability. It still uses Pulseaudio, and it runs the JACK modules perfectly out of the box. As long as you blacklist the ALSA modules in Pulseaudio, it works just fine. Also, use the jack_in and jack_out interfaces to patch in additional sound cards as needed. Then, for latency testing, I use a SPDIF loop back combined with jack_iodelay to tune round trip latency. I think most of the issues (as long as you use something sane like USB interfaces that are class compliant or well-supported PCI cards such as the ice1712 envy24 devices) are down to configuration problems... You can also use the "threadedirqs" kernel setting as well, and it also helps. With everything I get around 9.35ms of round trip latency even with Pulseaudio running on top of JACK. I also use bleeding edge wine and with a few tweaks I have windows VST's such as Steven Slate drummer 5.5 with the DRM working just fine. It won't be easy for everything, but if you do your homework and look to understand how stuff works then you have a good chance of using Linux for audio, and it will be amazing. I honestly think that Linux is a growth mindset approach to computers in general. Linux isn't for people who don't have time to learn. If you are stretched thin mentally and just need something to work, then Linux isn't for you, and that is fine. All in all, I'm happy that developers are starting to see the potential Linux has in the audio space.
This is so exciting to hear! I've been getting by with a Behringer Uphoria UMC202HD as my audio interface, but now I might be able to upgrade to something people have actually heard of at some point down the line, lol. I've been actually pretty happy though with these smaller brands that just happen to work on Linux, for example my capture card is Cloneralliance Flint 4K Ultra, which has 1080p60 capture and 4K passthrough. It had some heat issues but I slapped a big ol' aluminum heat sink on with some thermal tape and now it works fine (didn't even need a fan, just a better way to passively dissipate heat).
This is exciting! I'm experimenting with a few older pcs I have to see if I can migrate to Linux & Reaper. Currently my main setup is Ableton in Win 10, with a Presonus AR8 interface. Pretty sure it's USB-audio class compliant and just works right out the box in Linux. Hardware has held me back from using Linux in the past, including audio drivers and specifically wanting to keep using my Ableton Push. But apparently Reaper CAN use Ableton Push as a midi controller with a few workarounds! We'll see if I can get it all working stable though, that's the real kicker. Thanks for this video!
Oh, cool! Would be nice if some more VST plugin developers also jumped on board, so we don't have to fuss around with VST bridges. Though... I doubt we'll get anything using iLok working on Linux for a long time.
@@_DRMR_ Well, including me. I'll certainly try running my synth on Linux once it's done (currently have to develop on Windows as this is where my VST hosts are). ...And installing Boost (dynamic_bitset is absolutely critical in my project) is going to be far less of a pain. Honestly, JUCE kinda reminds me of Qt. Dual licensed cross platform framework commonly used on Windows too, with barely anyone noticing it. Heck, even Ableton Live is build with Qt! It could probably be ported to Linux! EDIT: Oh, also, both have their own weird little tools dedicated to their framework.
In fairness to audio hardware manufacturers and their developer teams, you have to look at the history of Linux DE over the last 15 years to understand why in the past they took one look at it and ran away! In theory the same bombproof reliability that's made Linux in server space a no brainer for enterprise and data centers should apply to the desktop, making it the perfect environment to install a work station level application. By this, I mean that pretty much the sole purpose of the PC is to do one job - to run one or maybe two applications, and to store and make available the files they create. That might be DAW software or video/3D editing software just to take a couple of examples. The reason it hasn't happened basically boils down to the Linux DE community scrapping things that worked very well (KDE 3.5 and then Gnome 2) in favour of things that didn't (KDE 4 and Gnome 3). Now there are all kinds of good and bad reasons why such decisions were made, but the important thing is that at a time (2008 to 2011) when manufacturers of audio hardware would have been stupid not to at least consider the Linux platform to run DAWs, it was totally chaotic. Unlike what was happening in server space where people have always understood that time is money. 15 years later Valve have shown big business that there is money to be made out of essentially controlling the operating system you develop on, and companies like Presonus have been using Linux embedded for years anyway. Not having to pander to the whims of Apple and Microsoft is also very attractive in terms of saving money, or more accurately, not having to write off years of R&D investment because an OS update makes your drivers stop working.
More brands waking up to the potential of the platform is far from a bad thing. Cockos Reaper, Bitwig, Tracktion Waveform, and Harrison Mixbus all already support the platform, as far as big name DAW software goes. Now we just need more developers of plugins to support it, too. If I could get AnalogObsession, IgniteAmplification, STL, Slate, Melda Audio, and Audiority plugins on Linux, all of my free and paid plugins would work native, save for a few holdouts. Sean Pandy Drums for Linux, please?
This was inevitable, but a great thing either way. As mainstream operating systems become more limited and intrusive, and DAWS move closer to a subscription plans, open-source is a no-brainer.
That's one of the challenges of Linux as a lot of "creative" softwares can't be run smoothly here and you end up spending so much time figuring out the drivers and hardware and infrastructures than to make stuff... I really hope this will change soon!
I really hope within a few years Linux will be just as good for most professional uses as is macOS and Windows. Aside from programming and gaming, Linux is still lacking support for many things that are standard on the desktop
I am using probably the cheapest behringer audio interface and its just plug and play on linux mint... in windows not even the asio driver worked so well.
I have been one of those voices out there saying that pro audio needs to really investigate bringing their apps to Linux. Most live audio mixers are using Linux under the hood, and even some tools like Waves Soundgrid, LV1 and Waves servers are using Linux. Behringer/Midas mixers are just stripped down Linux systems, Tascam, Yamaha, Digit, and others are using a real-time kernel and a special built Linux environment for their mixers and server connections to the mobile apps for control. So it only makes sense that we would see companies move toward this. Specialized hardware for a single job will always be the most reliable since there are less points of failure. So this is good to hear. Cheers!!!
I have a lot of Audio Gear which runs Out of the Box perfectly like the Focucusrite Solo 3rd Gen, Fosi Audio BT20A or the Schiit Audio Magni & Modi 3. No Problems on Ubuntu oder KDE Manjaro.
This is definitely exciting I’m hoping to see more announcements soon! Especially cause games and audio is my main reason not to make the switch, especially since I got a goxlr and couldnt have them connect to my bluetooth headset like ok windows line in. But with more audio moving to Linux I hope to find a good alternative that suits my wants and needs.
I think Linux is already competitive in the Desktop space. I use Linux for now 2 years exclusively and after one month of getting used to ist i never regreted switching. And now with Companys starting to Support Linux(mostly Ubuntu) i See no reason why the big Players should stay windows exclusive in the future. For example fl studio has a snap package yes it's a snap but it works. I think more and more Software will follow. Maybe we will get a Standard where Mac and windows and Linux pacakges are the norm for software
That would be so cool if everything could be super silent like no fan noise at all and true zero latency monitoring. Also loads and loads of hard panned vocals all the way to the left and all the way to the right. For whatever reason logic pro doesn't take my panning as hard and I don't know why because I always make sure to pan hard left and hard right. The pan doesn't seem to go as hard when I bounce my projects
A class compliant interface along with Ardour, Calf Studio Gear, and Linux Studio Plugins you can get a fully featured studio right now. You don't have to wait.
imagine linux taking over market desktop market share... i feel like it not only affect windows, but other BSDs also, as most people are femilier with linux will use them for server also... and there will be no not much people to hate on linux as is FOSS anyway
I think that Linux is the perfect production system, since it is free and so customizable. Home use will increase once people get to know it, and that's usually work
It's exhausting to find solutions for some of the things I want to experiment with. I've been researching some ways to share audio across multiple systems/VM's, and this idea has been bouncing around in my head for weeks. Since companies won't support Linux officially, it would be cool to make use of something similar to Dante, where multiple OS's can share the same audio streams like audio consoles do in a live setting... I would be okay with spinning up a windows VM for the Dante control software, but I still need to find some way of patching a Linux system in.
Linux actually has kernel variants that specifically try to reduce latency. Mainly the real-time and low latency variants of the kernel. I've heard these variants are actually loved by the creative community, specifically the ones that work with audio.
There are some custom ones out there yes. I would rather not use them personally though, as it can mess with Anti-Cheat theoretically. For Proton games it should be fine theoretically, but I don't wanna risk it personally. I just don't see the need personally, since with Tearing support, lower Wayland latencies due to better threading and MESA or Proton coming with a bunch of improvements, the latency feels already lower than on Windows if the framerate drops as low as it needs for you to notice.
I wanted to switch to ubuntu but there aren't any drivers for my Steinberg UR22 Audio interface... I can record and listen but I can't choose sample rate and buffer size.
in some ways i'm sad that the software will only support wayland sessions, BUT I am a little bias against wayland at the moment, only because it is still very unfinished compared to Xorg. That said, personal bias aside, it is the right move for them, because Wayland will become the standard eventually and for good reasons, so its good future proofing on their part and i'm at least supportive of that. My Distro of choice (Mint) hasn't made the jump yet and still uses Xorg by default for the same reason i'm bias against it - but moving over to wayland is in the pipeline for the future once it becomes more mature and all the software is re-written to use it. Side note. For streaming i used a dedicated PC running Ubuntu Studio, because JackD is still the king of low latency, pluggable audio until pipewire surpasses it
I use ardour and mixbus for audio production. Yeah magewell and black magic have linux support they both are so much more expensive then elgato. I mainly have been able to use linux for my master in electrical since MATLAB runs on linux (except 2023b which doesn't run on the newest Debian or ubuntu WTF?)
Well you don't have to leave them enabled, and that's one of the many spokes of "nt bloat." I did have Tigger as my shutdown sound. It's also been since January 2009 that I've had sound events, having evicted windows2000. I'll accept the security trade-off. Only way to get an intrusion on Debian or Ubuntu is to force an .EXE file under Wine.
Linux is the desktop platform best suited to live production use, because it is distributed in forms that do not interrupt production work while you're relying on it not to go off "updating" or "maintaining" while you're streaming. Class compliant audio devices (or more generally those with solid upstream ALSA drivers), and video input devices with v4l support upstream or with DKMS make things dramatically easier... and manufacturers should be enthusiastic about the opportunity to actually extend a widely supported software interface like v4l or ALSA, rather than having to build their own from scratch every time.
Is there a Mic Audio Interface yet? My Mic works in OBS but in Davince Studio it's just noisy and very weak. I got the Behringer U-Phoria UMC202HD but it's going back to Amazon. It had USB written all over it but as you would already know my Blue Ice Snowball USB Mic will not plug into it and I just spent have a day looking for a simple adapter or even a combo of adapters. No bueno
As cool as this is (and trust me it's pretty cool) native vst support is still a big issue. Most plugins that professionals use are vsts, so if they can get over that hurdle, then audio production on Linux will be more of a reality.
Im looking for a solution for being able to repurpose my loupedeck that i use to help with input in daily editing along with other personal use. im looking at making the full time switch to linux but id like to make sure that i am able to find a way to bring along the ability to bring my macros to still help in my daily experience
Woah no way!! I use a Presonus as well and I noticed these issues too, plus I'd have to use a virtual machine running Windows to adjust presets. If Avermedia gets their crud together and gives the Live Gamer 4K Linux support, I am 100% switching for good! I've not found a capture card that's as good, and Magewell is prohibitively expensive. The LG4K handles weird resolutions and refresh rates very well plus HDR and XRGB color space for SDR at a reasonable price, so I highly prefer it. Also if you have Distrobox, the distro requirement is basically a non-issue. You could just make a container and it should in theory work if you are running on Wayland.
Actually linux has been supporting a lot of professional devices in the pcie and firewire department for years, most notable variours e-mu products and rme ones
That's kinda the issue though. Professional hardware works without much effort, however the cheaper options don't. Those are the ones that we notice the most though
I'm in the process of cutting out Microsoft from my life completely. I'm already using Linux but lots of my family still use Windows and rely on me for tech support. So I'm making an executive decision and switching them all to Linux. Problem being one or two of them like using pro audio gear with outboard dsp for gaming, streaming, making video, etc If presonus has ported studio one, I have high hopes they'll port universal control. Then I can just tell them to get io24's and let the outboard dsp take care of the dry effects
That would be a dream, since the Presonus devices are quite cheap to get. Not the best quality, but a very good alrounder that would fit Linux users quite well I think
What do you mean "Audio is coming to Linux"? I've had a home recording studio on Linux (No Windows anything whatsoever, so not even Wine...) for over a decade already, and others have much longer than that! I'd much rather see more and better FOSS software than big commercial/proprietary offerings for Linux. Audio interfaces can easily be within standards and not need any drivers at all, but all too many companies making all kinds of hardware, just have to be different and most often for not very good reasons: Most, if not all hardware audio interfaces have the very same DAC chips in them, and are controlled the very same way, that is until someone shoves an unnecessary circuit in between it and the PC to do the very same things in a roundabout way and making it software dependent. It's just a trick to make people think they are getting more or better based on a bunch of added software, but all they really get is an added layer of controls and settings on top of the ones they already have that do the very same things, and with it more problems waiting to happen.
I’m missing having software like Voicemeeter fro Windows on Linux. Windows Audio was pretty bad IMHO, but Linux is worse. This gives me hope for some improvement. I personally don’t use an XLR mic either, but a headset mic or a Blue Snowball.
While this is indeed good news, can't help but find the title funny. Enough that I made a joke about it Audio is coming to Linux! ALSA: Am I joke to you?
i have been gaming on linux for a bit over a year now. Ran into some issues (for some reason victoria 3 gets really laggy if i zoom in the map enough to see the houses) with a handful of games, but overall? compareable to windows (where you system configuration gets reset by windows update and things are "just like that" a lot of the time) for gaming linux is not better than windows yet, but its behind by orders of magnitude anymore, maybe by like 10% i hope for audio/streaming stuff it also reaches that point soon, as the worst aspects is that developers don't build for linux because the user share is so low
it would be rather convenient for nuc style pc's to have all the high end audio built in with a custom *nix preinstalled. my tascam 16x08 needed reverse engineering to make linux drivers, i was willing to shuffle some cash around to pay the 500cdn when i found out the drivers worked, till then i had a 4 channel art usb mixer that i used on my pi2. there has long been honest audio companies that were running on the edge of profitability, that would have sunk if they didn't adhere to standards, just gotta dig em up.
At least with elgato we have some third party tools to make those work in a lot of cases. Its just a few other places where its iffy. Tho im tempted to build a pideck eventually since that exists 😅
@MichaelNROH maybe but its comical that often the reverse engineered program half the time ends up having more features sometimes. Like solaar for mouses makes things so much better when adding and removing them from the adapter XD
Cheapest interfaces are usually Class. The Behringer interfaces are Class compliant. Actually even the little ESI Maya22 USB is as well, it just packs a bit of control for missing hardware controls into a HID stream. I think someone wrote an alternative application and even the Windows application might just work on WINE, would be curious to test. Sometimes an old interface that no longer works (well or at all) on Windows is fine as well. Example TASCAM US-122, from the Windows XP era with last driver update for Windows Vista. It needs a driver which can upload the firmware on device startup and reset it, and fortunately this driver is in Linux. But it's also a peak capacitor plague device, so they're all in desperate need of complete rebuilding.
If Presonus is making a move towards linux, then all we need now is a graphics software like Clip Studio or Photoshop to convert - then a lot of people could switch to Linux for professional use
Yeah they do. Those are not meant for regular consumers though and are targeted more towards professionals. A lot of interfaces in that price range are Linux compatible, since they run their software straight on the device and you just tweak it via a browser
I am not an expert in these topics, but I think it would be a nice start if we had something like Proton but for drivers. I'm pretty sure this has been thought by everyone else, but it would be neat if a company like Valve focus on achieving something like this.
as amazing as that would be, hardware firmware is alot nore nuanced than converting windows api and dx calls since atleast those are consistent throughout games, firmware on the other hand usually arent and have to be handled on a case by case basis
It's probably not worth the effort. Wine does support DirectSound (I think that's the name) to a certain extend, but the USB devices don't get fully exposed to the applications
Something like this was actually done in the past for network devices called ndiswrapper. Pretty cool tech, but making tools like it are extremely involved, and often times it would be much more worth the effort to custom-code your own Linux driver than try to fanagle windows drivers, which work under very specific low-leve assumptions as to how your windows pc will operate, to magically work with Linux.
ReactOS and Wine developers have been doing that for decades now. It's really difficult and/or time consuming. (side note, it always irks me that now Proton seems to get all the fanfare, when most of it it's Wine. And Wine itself also got help from the ReactOS developers which basically nobody knows about, and a good portion of those who know about them think ReactOS is stupid, because after more than 25 years is still in a very alpha state, without knowing that using Linux and Wine, they're benefiting from ReactOS effort too. Sigh)
What quality issues are you talking about exactly? Professional use or regular recordings or streaming. In terms of quality, coming from Windows, it's exactly the same by default, but if you want it for professional use with a DAW, then you need to set the sample rate way higher
Calm down! We don’t need another DAW for Linux! We need CLAP version plugins or bridge for VST (without WINE and yabridge or other moonshine wrapper) as it is on Mac and AU.
Instead of waiting for some random audio device to get better support, maybe just research the device's Linux compatibility before you buy it?? Focusrite products are usually 100% supported by linux and have been for years. The Scarlet 2I4, 8I6 and 18I8 have been all plug and play from my experience. My current Ubuntu Studio based Linux DAW has an 18I8 with an 8 channel ADAT expansion interface.
speaking as someone with a producer education and background, windows has always been atrocious for audio besides the driver support, the golden standard has been mac for ages, when pipewire really took off the audio interface side of things on linux just went past windows by a mile and this is just making it even better
unfortunately I can never get my scarlett 4i4 to work correctly in linux. I really wish I could as I feel linux is superior for everything else I do. Would love to see reaper and 4i4 work flawelessly
If its 4th gen, it might need a fairly recent kernel version. You can also try this and see if it even gets detected: github.com/geoffreybennett/alsa-scarlett-gui It's a plug and play device normally
"Linux is still a niche operating system" Well, not so much. It broke 4% desktop market share. That may not seem like much, but it is 25% of the Mac's average of 16% market share. And if you want to include ChromeOS, as that is based on linux with 7.5%, then you are looking at almost 12%. Mac is based on unix, Android on linux...most of the markets are somehow 'nix based now.
Roland is still snubbing us, MX-1 mixer and TR8s still no chance using them, only report 2 channels, don't think that'll ever come. Ableton, even though Push 3 actually runs on Linux...still no Linux release
To be honest. These devices should be plug and play. Reliance on drivers only shows that (as always) audio products have the worst firmwares ever to exist.