I’ve seen this topic pop up every so often and feel it’s time to reiterate the request. Waves is pretty much the only reason I ever boot up Windows now and it would be incredible to use the plugins I love in the OS that best serves my needs.
From past threads, the best suggestion I’ve seen is to hire a WINE maintainer to ensure access for our community (shoutout to matthewgmcgovern in the “Waves Central, Native Linux support” thread — sorry, my account is new enough I can’t post links yet). To me, it seems this would strike a great balance between Waves minimizing costs of expansion and more than sufficiently serving a market that’s already statistically significant and growing (see research by Statcounter)!
Windows 10 support ends next year, 11 is a bloated OS that’s sub-optimal for music production, and I don’t have high hopes for 12. Window’s popularity isn’t helping it run my DAW any faster, and side by side benchmarking has shown me plain as day that Linux is a substantially better solution for my music production (sans my favorite plugins).
From my exposure on forums, numerous Linux users (myself included) are truly willing to pay for quality software that meets their needs for a reasonable price. Yeah, the community certainly likes FOSS, but I personally just love having a system that sings. Having to choose between some of my favorite plugins and buttery smooth production is just, well, rough…
I dearly hope this request, which is echoed by many, is taken into consideration
I’ll add a +1 to this. I wasn’t a frequent Linux user before last year, but all the stuff with Windows 11 & Recall, ads in the OS, and with Apple locking down macOS, I’ve suddenly turned into a daily Linux user. I’m still using Windows & macOS, but only when necessary.
At the moment AudioThing, Modartt, AudioDamage & Venomode are getting most of my plugin money, because their plugins have native Linux support. My DAWs Reaper & Renoise are both already Linux native. I tried getting all my Waves plugins to work with WINE, but it was frustrating enough that I gave up. Better WINE support would be good, but native support - like AudioThing has - would be even better, because it all just works.
I’d happily WUP my plugins for Linux support. Having plugins that work on all 3 platforms is now a major part of my purchasing decisions. There’s nothing in V15 that compels me to upgrade, but Linux support would.
I just got in touch with Waves Customer Service. They mentioned that they aren’t planning a release for Linux. In my humble opinion, they should start considering it since more and more users are switching to Linux, especially now that Reaper works like a charm on this platform.
And they should consider native support, not Wine compatibility
Thats unfortunate to hear but linux users are probably a very small percentage of the user base and I’m sure its hard to justify the cost of maintaining linux native versions of the plugins. I do wish they would at least consider releasing a soundgrid driver for linux. Presumably there already is one considering the servers have been running linux since their inception.
Same here, I just made the jump to Linux and was about to buy some waves plugins for Black Friday sale , but it looks like they aren’t on board yet. Willing to buy at regular price if they add support
Another request for Linux support, native would be great, but Wine would work. I’m sure it makes sense when learning the work it requires vs. the amount of extra users (and respect) you’d get.
I think they should reconsider this, Windows is making itself unusable for music production and many people who currently use Windows will be migrating over to Linux in some form, Wine, Mint, etc. and then there goes their window’s consumer base who will no longer be able to use Waves Plug ins, and therefore, will stop buying Waves products. From my experience, once a consumer stops using a product line and finds an alternative which works for them, getting that consumer back becomes a lot harder, and in most cases impossible. I don’t know how large of a chunk Windows users are in their annual profits, but whatever size chunk that is, most of that chunk will stop using Windows, and if they’re anything like myself, won’t go to Apple regardless of how “nice” it might be. I like building PCs, and I can build my PC for the tasks I need it to perform for lot less money than a prebuilt Mac.
^^^This^^^ is exactly right. I just switched to Linux, and Waves are the only plugins from my Windows collection I can’t use anymore. One plugin publisher isn’t enough to dissuade me from my disgust with Microsoft. I’ll find an alternative if Waves won’t help us out.
Linux support, in so.e way or another, has been a request for many years. With the advent of no longer being able to update Win10, and how bad Win 11 is, I have fully gone Linux Ubuntu Studio. All my audio hardware and software runs blisteringly fast and significantly lower latency on the exact same hardware my Win10 used to run on.
More and more people are switching to Linux. Yes, it is not as mainstream as MacOS, but the user base has jumped significantly, and tha is likely to rise. I can see not making a full native Linux line, that’s expensive and I get it, although many competitors are doing so. But hiring a one or two developers to maintain support via Wine and Yabridge should be pretty inexpensive and allow Waves to access 98% of the user base, as opposed to less than 80%.
