

I find dockerization tends to make things waaaay easier to bring up/take down with simple yet consistent configuration schemes. I distribute all my self hosted stuff across a small cluster of machines- if I want to move a service from one to another it’s as easy as moving the config folder and the docker-compose. Don’t need to have startup scripts, or remembering installation steps after a fresh install, or worry about python/package versions. Plus it helps keep track of what services are set up, soni don’t have to worry about leaving anything unused but still installed and running. And updating is as easy as pulling the images and recreating the containers.
I understand that more conventional software is proprietary and not released natively for Linux, but it seems unfortunate yo me to let proprietary software stop you from making art. Ive got friends who produce music exclusively on Linux machines using qtractor, which is free and open source, so there’s no need to crack it. I can’t speak for the rest of the tools you mentioned but maybe it would just be worth exploring some of the Foss options to see what you can do with them? I haven’t bothered cracking software since I made the move over to Linux because I just haven’t found any piece of my workflows that actually depends on non-foss software. Turns out tools developed by the communities that use them rather than corporate entities typically turn out to be pretty good.