Audio Engineer here.

You want Reaper. It’s a $60 program but you can keep it in trial mode for as long as you want till you’ve got the money. Reaper has lots of tutorials available on YouTube and can use industry-standard VST plugins, plus it has enough plugins bundled in to get you started.

You essentially have 3 options with open source audio apps (there are some good closed source options too, like the great Reaper, Tracktion Waveform, and BitWig Studio, but I will focus on foss solutions here):

• Ardour. This is the premier foss app. In fact, a fork of it is closed source used by a big audio manufacturer. So it’s the best tested foss audio software out there. It can do both midi and recording sessions, but it’s best for recording stuff. However, the new version, expected by end of this year, will have major midi updates that probably will put it on top of the king of midi in foss:

• LMMS. Best for Midi. If you’re doing electronic music through and through, this works great. The only downside it has it does not support vst3 plugins (soon enough, this can become an issue, even if you say that you don’t care about plugins). You can still get vst3 support by loading them via the Clara plugin (basically, it acts as a plugin for other plugins), but that can be unstable.

• QTractor. This one is an odd one out. It’s a bit hard to get it going (it requires external synths and some patchwork to connect audio devices), but it is very powerful and I’d say, a more sane UI when editing. It comes with no plugins at all, but it supports all plugin standards for linux. Basically, this one requires more setup, but once you set it up, it gets going easier.

Alternatively, if you’re actually interested only in rec. audio editing (basically cutting, pasting etc), simple stuff, there’s Audacity.

If you’re using Ubuntu or Linux Mint, Zorin, PopOS, install the ubuntustudio package for pipewire (can’t remember how it’s called you need to search for it). It sets up pipewire audio correctly, so more plugins/apps work out of the box (without it, for example, Bitwig studio doesn’t even make a peep…).

I’ve been very happy with Ardour. It’s a full digital audio workspace though. Like the other comment mentioned, audacity is a simpler alternative

I’m a voice actor and musician, and moved to Linux about a month and a half ago with Ubuntu Studio. I went from using Adobe Audition and Cubase to Reaper and Bitwig, and highly recommend both. Reaper is WAY more powerful than I realized. For FOSS you could try Ardour, I’ve heard good things. Personally I hated it haha, but that may just be because I tried Ardour first after switching to Linux and had the learning curve of both a new OS/audio setup and a new DAW at the same time with a project due day-of.

The biggest issues I had was just getting audio to work properly. I was stuck using ALSA for a few weeks, which worked but only allows one program to use audio at once. I very much recommend looking into using JACK and setting up pipewire.

You can absolutely start just recording via mic and editing from there. If you want to hook up instruments, check out midi controllers. Some plugins are extremely helpful for creating a more polished sound like eq, compressors, limiters, etc. If the space you’re recording in doesn’t have the best sound treatment, Reaper has a great noise reduction plugin called ReaFIR. It’s a little more aggressive than I like but works really well (feel free to ask me how to use it if you’re having problems).

My recommendation is to start with Reaper (it’s got a free trial that you can keep using beyond the end date) and get your hardware working. After that, record a few tracks, throw them together into your DAW of choice, and play around with them.

I agree with what others have said about using reaper. It really is a great DAW.

That said, a lot of good vst use stuff like ilok or other crap that makes it impossible or very difficult to use on Linux at least in my experience.

I made a windows box specifically for making music because its just way easier. Making music on Linux sucked for me due to crashing and the plugins I bought before I switched to Linux on my main machine.

Reaper should be fine for you, there are plenty of good Linux compatible VST but if you ever get “serious” about music production, Linux isnt quite there yet IMO. Windows would be my recommendation or if you can afford it, a Mac is good too from what ive heard.

Ardour is amazing.
https://ardour.org/

For a simpler program look into Tenacity (Audacity fork) and if you want something bigger I know many use Reaper nowadays (available for Linux, Windows and Mac)

I’ve wanted to try Reaper https://www.reaper.fm/ but haven’t had time. It’s not something simple though.

(There’s even a Flatpak for easy install/uninstall https://flathub.org/en/apps/fm.reaper.Reaper)

Checkout Bitwig. It is proprietary, but a professional audio workstation and available for Linux: https://www.bitwig.com/de/8-track/

I’d try some of the Multimedia / Audio Linux distributions. I believe there are some which have everything set up for you and you can just try and explore. Notably Ubuntu Studio, AV Linux

Other than that, LMMS and Ardour, Qtractor, ZRhythm, Rosegarden, MuSE, or Mixxx for DJing… There’s generally a lot. DAWs, trackers, sequencers, synthesizers… you can do professional multitrack recording or just mess with your guitar or sample some electronic music…

It’s a bit difficult as a beginner, since there are a lot of options and they all have different user interfaces and you might need to learn a few concepts first. And /or read the documentation or watch some Youtube tutorials.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_audio_software
• https://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Multimedia/
• https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/List_of_applications/Multimedia#Audio_editors

Software wise, ProTools is what nearly everyone in the industry uses. Its been around forever. It enjoys a massive monopoly share of the market. But I don’t think it works on Linux. Mac n PC only.

For a cheaper Linux friendly option, consider Fairlight (the audio component of Black magic Resolve).

The name “Fairlight” has also been around forever, but was defunct for a while, and a handful of years ago the fine folks at Blackmagic Design bought the brand and IP integrated into their Resolve software. While Resolve has a free tier that includes Fairlight, some might require the Studio version which is a one time fee of ~US$300 and includes all future updates. I’ve heard some Pros speak highly of the new Fairlight. Can’t vouch for it myself but the mantra of the Blackmagic CEO is “we build the tools we wanted when we were working creatives.”

For music recorded via microphone, Ardour+Hydrogen

For music created more synthetically LMMS

Jack is the way to go. Save yourself the frustration and use it from the start