This is the typical answer, "Linux can do that, just need a special customised build and change a couple of config files and /proc settings on boot".
This is not the same as what a standard kernel for consumer OS is supposed to be out of factory.
Regular people aren't compiling kernels.
If OS X also had tailor made kernel just for lower real time latency it could do even better.
But out of box, it's already better.
That said, the point is moot. 99% of pro audio/MIDI apps/VSTs don't run on Linux, so only experimental nerdy musicians and FOSS zealots would use it for real studio work. You do get the occasional profile on music tech websites e.g. "Techno musician X uses Linux", and somebody always jumps in a forum to say they use some Linux DAW (and usually add a list of ugly hacks, workarounds, and things that don't work), but it's clearly a total outlier situation...
Nobody said Linux can't for some law of nature run music software.
But it's empirically true that it both lacks 99% of music software people want to run, and that it's not used by 99% of musicians...
I haven't done it in a few years but a quick google search says that it's as simple as: apt-get install linux-image-rt-amd64 on Debian.
Hell it's probably easier to load a real-time kernel in Debian than it is to install video card drivers on any other operating system. T
> Regarding performance, on the other hand Linux/BSD still don't match macOS real time audio capabilities.
It's better to say that you were wrong at this point then to try to shift yr statement to a popularity contest instead of the soft-realtime latency contest you, YOU, started with.
The macOS kernel doesn't require any of this, it just works.
No audio professional using Apple hardware needs to learn these workarounds to actually do their work.
You keep repeating this. But no one said this is not the case.
Only change allowed is installing drivers during user friendly tooling that any random user that just got their first laptop today is able to do.
Failure to understand this, is why we are getting Year of Desktop Linux any day soon.
Naturally there are other areas that BSD/Linux do better out-of-the-box, without requiring customized kernels.
(Not at a debian box to look up the start menu item name, and I don’t use the GUI these days...)
At least this is how it has been every single time that I've installed an Nvidia driver on windows.
I stand by my position, it is easier, and trivial to install a real-time kernel in Debian than it is to install an Nvidia driver in Windows.
And if an audio professional can't be bothered to figure this out to make money while a teenaged gamer can figure out an Nvidia driver just to play games then they should maybe consider changing professions because this trivial roadblock will be the least of their technical worries in the audio world.