Hi.
So what I’m going to tell you is just my opinion. I’m no professional, though one of my projects peaked at 9k monthly listeners. And I’m also using Linux exclusively.
If I were you, I would start with arranging samples and sound designing them together. Get free sample packs at cymatics.fm and either ardour (free open source), reaper (closed source nagware) or bitwig studio (the demo to try if you like it, it is somewhat expensive but a great daw very similar to ableton.
Get all the free native linux plugins you can get, especially the ones from the linux studio project, vital, helm, surge-xt, cardinal, rough rider 2, master_me, tis-lea 1294, chow tape, byod and maybe some others i forgot. Your fistro might have a package group or a metapackage, arch linux has one, i think proaudio is the name.
Try to match up the different samples, look for key (Amin, Cmaj and stuff like that, you will learn later what that means) and use samples in the same key. Examine drum loops and try to build them with undividual samples.try making your own drum loops. Try things you know from listening, like snare build ups, risers, etc.
Become familiar with effects and what they do. You should know what EQ, Compressor, Limiter, Reverb, Delay and Saturation are and how to use them on a rudimentary level.
Then you should learn the basics of music theory. I will add some links later on, but I already know, that there are great videos from underdog school for electronic music. Oscar explains this and other thing really well and has generally really high quality videos that will help you a lot. He focuses on techno and electronic music in general, but there is a lot to learn regardless of genre.
Then you can learn sound synthesis, if you want. But there are shittons of free samples and presets out there, just look at bedroomproducerblog for plugins (you can run yabridge to use windows vsts) and freesamplepacks (or else) for samples.
If you have any specific questions, feel free to contact me.
Edit: Links from Oscars youtube channel, these are important ones but imo every video on his channel is worthwhile:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcjT7zgs6cs
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLI3TZB9lpg
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eu0zpa7OiYA
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqtD1ufCYps
Edit2: Here is a Ardour Tutorial from unfa, he makes music on Linux and FOSS mainly on his channel, lots of tutorials, tips and tricks regarding that:
It would improve performane, but not noticably. nvme is already really fast and as long as you don’t have heavy disk I/O from another program, your OS and DAW will only occupy a minimal amount of the avainle disk I/O. And drum samples are really small in size.