There's only one problem on gin... When I'm on the gin I feel that everybody is looking at me and my head is in the cloud... I don't feel very secure.
I better get on the cool aid...

Even if it did work, I dunno that you'd be happy with it as a practical matter since the additional layers would add latency and make high speed audio more difficult. Going from ASIO to JACK to FFADO is not going to give the same results as going right to the soundcard. Plus I don't think your Saffire has any Linux drivers. Then of course there's all the plugins, which may not work or may have odd issues.
 
It would just be setting yourself up for a massive headache. Pro audio is the kind of thing you want to run native, not in any kind of translation environment or virtualization.

Sycraft
Even if it did work, I dunno that you'd be happy with it as a practical matter since the additional layers would add latency and make high speed audio more difficult. Going from ASIO to JACK to FFADO is not going to give the same results as going right to the soundcard. Plus I don't think your Saffire has any Linux drivers. Then of course there's all the plugins, which may not work or may have odd issues.
 
It would just be setting yourself up for a massive headache. Pro audio is the kind of thing you want to run native, not in any kind of translation environment or virtualization.

OK thrown away the gin bottle for the moment...
 
I am running other DAW's on Linux such as Ardour with Jack using a Saffire Pro 40. The drivers and the latency is much better than Windows, and I suspect better than Mac. Big gains here on an OS with a much smaller footprint. The environment is far more solid. Hence I am keen to get Sonar on it.
 
VST compatibility is an issue, there is one DAW that claims to run them under wine but I've forgotten the name, here are some VSTs running under Linux...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHd_Vl5EVAk
 
BTW Wine does not run under virtualization it's an emulator:
http://wiki.winehq.org/Debunking_Wine_Myths#head-7c9ecddfaff60d8891414b68d74277244e7109eb
 
Anyway cheers :)

Doesn't matter what you call Wine (and they'd argue it isn't an emulator, Wine is an acronym meaning WINE Is Not an Emulator), it's another layer of abstraction that'll slow things down. Particularly since you are talking translating dissimilar system calls, and it is an implementation done by reverse engineering. Not the kind of thing calculated to be fast.
 
You'll also have to forgive me if I call BS on the "more solid" thing. That reads like someone who has looked up talking points for Linux from a decade ago. Here at work we run a mix of Windows and Linux systems, but at the core of most of it is two Windows Server 2012R2 systems running Hyper-V on which most of the rest of the systems run as virtual machines. Know how many times they've crashed in three years? Zero. That number doesn't surprise me, rather I expect it. I expect modern systems to have problems nearly never.
 
If you have a Windows system that is unstable, the problem is with the setup, not with Windows, and you might wish to work on diagnosing and fixing it. Because Linux isn't magic, you can have a Linux system that is a rickety POS real easy. Don't get me started on some of the hacked together setups in labs that like to crash if you so much as look at them funny.
 
If you like Linux, that's fine, but trying to run an advanced, complex piece of Windows software that interacts with lots of other pieces on it is rather silly. To me it would be the same as trying to run a complex POSIX program setup on Windows using cygwin. Ya you could do it, but it is a bad idea. Just run the OS for which the software was designed.

I run ASIO on Jack quite regularly, very minimal problems, I do recommend the single barrel Jack, cuts latency down to zero. Good Tennesee Whiskey never did me wrong!

Sycraft
Doesn't matter what you call Wine (and they'd argue it isn't an emulator, Wine is an acronym meaning WINE Is Not an Emulator), it's another layer of abstraction that'll slow things down. Particularly since you are talking translating dissimilar system calls, and it is an implementation done by reverse engineering. Not the kind of thing calculated to be fast.
 
You'll also have to forgive me if I call BS on the "more solid" thing. That reads like someone who has looked up talking points for Linux from a decade ago. Here at work we run a mix of Windows and Linux systems, but at the core of most of it is two Windows Server 2012R2 systems running Hyper-V on which most of the rest of the systems run as virtual machines. Know how many times they've crashed in three years? Zero. That number doesn't surprise me, rather I expect it. I expect modern systems to have problems nearly never.
 
If you have a Windows system that is unstable, the problem is with the setup, not with Windows, and you might wish to work on diagnosing and fixing it. Because Linux isn't magic, you can have a Linux system that is a rickety POS real easy. Don't get me started on some of the hacked together setups in labs that like to crash if you so much as look at them funny.
 
If you like Linux, that's fine, but trying to run an advanced, complex piece of Windows software that interacts with lots of other pieces on it is rather silly. To me it would be the same as trying to run a complex POSIX program setup on Windows using cygwin. Ya you could do it, but it is a bad idea. Just run the OS for which the software was designed.

 
You read the link. It is not a CPU emulator, however it does emulate and it doesn't virtualize.
 
More solid does not mean unstable. If I was banging on about instability I would have mentioned it. It means it just works better and maintains itself better. There is no doubt you need to do far more maintenance on Windows machines. BTW Windows is perfectly stable for me and runs really fast... for Windows... and I like Windows. I run Windows server as well for IIS/SQL Server (in a virtualized environment mainly). Although you wouldn't have me running anything critical on Windows 10 for at least 6 months to a year.
 
You can't run anything low latency with Hyper-V that's why I dual boot.
I maintain an open mind on all operating systems, if you aren't convinced you clearly haven't tried a DAW under it away from Hyper-V, or a compatible app on Wine. You might just choke on your brew how well it works. Wine is fiddly though and a lot of things can't run on it, I do admit that. Ultimately it would be nice to have a native Sonar app on Linux for sure.
 
Get yourself dual boot and try it, and throw away your preconceptions..  I've been running Unix and Windows for most of my life now, I can finally see some sort of convergence finally starting to happen with operating systems on the client side. It might take another decade....

(Corrected for auto correct typo)

I don't need to try dual boot. As I implied, I'm a systems administrator professionally. We have a whole bunch of servers and clients (about 1000 computers in total) both Windows an Linux. I've used Linux plenty, plenty enough to not care for it at all as a desktop. Also plenty enough to laugh at the "far more maintenance" statement. Our Linux systems take a ton of time to maintain, particularly when you start talking about all the fiddling around with Puppet that needs to be done to roll things out across multiple systems.
 
If you are enthralled with Linux that's fine, but realize not everyone is and that lack of exposure isn't the reason. When I was a kid Linux held this kind of hacker mystique to me and I thought it was something amazing. Now after a decade and a half doing systems administration professionally it's just another OS, and one that annoys me with its lack of standards, and lack of good enterprise administration tools. I like it for running web servers, and it is fine as a core for embedded systems, but I am underwhelmed with it as a desktop OS.

Hello I have been Microsoft certified in the past (sysadmin) since NT days, and I develop on .NET on Windows (web, mainly ASP.NET). I have also been a DBA and QA tester in the past. My degree in business information systems. Most of my IT career has been spent with Microsft, I have nothing against any operating system,operating system wars bore me to be honest. Some OS's do things better than others and vice versa. They are tools.

Linux is extremely good at admin, so is windows. They just take different approaches it is clear which one you prefer. For me I see swings and roundabouts with both.

I suspect the last time you have used Linux as a desktop was when you were a kid, because a decade ago I might have agreed with you. Fact is it auto updates like windows (Ubuntu), and more or less is trouble free if you don't tinker with it. It's pretty user friendly as a client, they hardly need to get under the bonnet.

You will observe more and more DAWs are supporting or are running under Linux. Go figure.

I don't use puppet.

LOL, Alex (I am just giving you crap now), does SONAR on rum count? (SONAR can step up from the "mid-life crisis DAW" to the "inebriated mid-life crisis DAW" now ).