Q Light Controller+

Hi,
Sorry if this has been asked before but I've noticed that a lot of people on here tend to run QLC+ off Linux. Are there any particular benefits of using Linux over Windows or vice versa? Would it be worth partitioning my hard drive to install Linux? I suppose this would keep personal files well clear.

It won't keep personal files well clear - modern Linux distributions are clever enough to automatically find your Windows partitions and make them available to you. Curiously, it doesn't happen in reverse - I wonder why?

One reason to use Linux is that you can run QLC+ on, say, an old laptop you have lying around without spending money bringing your operating system up to date and keeping it that way.

There is also the mindset - people who are aware of open-source software and willing to leave their comfort zone in order to benefit from it are quite likely also to be using open-source operating systems. This is less of an issue nowadays of course.

I'm not sure the performance under Linux will be any better. QLC+ isn't very demanding anyway (with the possible exception of audio analysis). It tends to be easier to develop under Linux though - witness Massimo's recent frustrated postings about debugging in Windows.

I'd say if you have a well-performing Windows machine and the only reason to put Linux on it is to run QLC+, then don't bother, but if you have any other reason to try out this exciting alternative then go for it!

This is a very interesting question !
I'll try to answer leaving my Linux preference aside

First of all QLC+ is cross platform. The promise is to have the same software with the same performances running on Linux, Windows and OSX.
Unfortunately some things had to be distinguished to run on those different platforms.
Here's a list:
- DMX USB: Linux and OSX use libFTDI while Windows uses ftd2xx
- Audio: Linux goes on ALSA, Windows goes on WAVEIN/WAVEOUT and OSX goes on PortAudio

Core libraries:
- Audio decoding is based on libmad, libsndfile, libFLAC, libogg, libvorbis, fftw. All those libraries are open source projects born in Linux
- OSC is based on liblo, born in Linux
- QLC+ is based on Qt, which is born on Linux. I guess they always had a priviledged eye for the performances on Linux. All the others platforms came after.

QLC+ on Windows is still a 32bit application, while on Linux and OSX you have 64bit flavours. Not that this affects performances so much, but still...

QLC+ Windows bundle includes the Qt libraries. This slows down QLC+ startup cause they're not native Windows DLLs. In Linux, for example, if you use KDE, QLC+ is much faster to open, cause Qt libraries are already loaded in the system memory.
In Linux all the above libraries belong to the system and not to QLC+. So if a new version of them is provided by your distribution creator, QLC+ can benefit of it right away.
For example if Qt gains 10% of rendering performances, QLC+ can benefit from it the same day.

The real problem of Windows is that everything that is not created with Microsoft tools doesn't run at its best.
Microsoft forces you to use their tools. Want to develop ? Use Visual Studio. Want to write a document ? Use Word. Want to do 3D graphics ? Use DirectX.
Linux has progressed A LOT in the last few years. I've seen a 6 years old laptop running Windows XP, destined to a trashcan, reborn with an Ubuntu 12.04. It seems like Windows suffocates your computer.

So, to answer you question, from a user perspective using QLC+ on Windows shouldn't make any difference.
From my perspective, QLC+ runs on Linux native libraries, so what it calls "home" is certainly Linux.

Oh, footer note, ALSA sound system works much better than the Windows one.
On Windows I had to stick to a very old audio system since there are still people running QLC+ on Windows XP.
I didn't want to add libraries or to maintain different code for XP and Vista / 7.
I won't even talk about Windows 8...

A good example to understand how much time Massimo spend in this Projekt and how much work is done.
Does it make sense to open a fourth forum for developing QLC+?
I don´t want to share all my beginner questions here.

Thanks Matthew and Massimo, I think QLC on Linux also looks a bit nicer I've got Ubuntu on a partition on my main machine and I think I'll stick it on my laptop when I reinstall windows