I've been trying to use it off and on from the very beginning of its development. And, I've been a subscribing contributor off and on for a long time, too. I say "trying to use it" not so much because Ardour is inferior to other DAWs; it isn't. It's pretty solid, pretty capable, and pretty fast, compared to all the big ones (and I've used many of them in a professional and hobbyist context). It is a great piece of software, honestly.
But, I keep ending up doing my actual work in Reaper; not because Ardour is inferior, but because audio on Linux is inferior. At least, it historically has been. It's always been a bastard step child. To run Ardour, say, five years ago required a custom kernel, a non-standard audio server that was incompatible with any of the Gnome/KDE audio servers (there were compatibility layers, but they never worked, so switching back and forth was the only way to do anything...meaning your normal desktop lost sound when Ardour was in use, I wrote a script to switch them), running VSTs was possible but challenging and limited to those that would run under WINE (often with very buggy results), the surrounding ecosystem was just a mess, in general.
If you had the ability to build a perfect system, and never touch it, it might have been OK, but I never could keep the whole stack working for more than a couple of weeks; a kernel update or something else would break it, and I'd be in for another day or two of fucking around with kernels and ALSA drivers and WINE and whatever else. It just wasn't a usable system, even though it has always been a very powerful DAW.
Many things have improved in the intervening years. Enough of the RT work has been integrated into the mainline kernel that you don't need to patch your kernel anymore (though I think there are still some folks who apply some additional low latency patches, that's probably not necessary; Linux is now, I think, competitive with macOS and Windows when it comes to audio latency). WINE has gotten better, though running VSTs with Ardour is still a rough afternoon of effort, in my most recent experience. It's been a couple of years since I last tried to use Ardour for recording; the last time I gave up (again) and went back to Reaper, so I could get some recording done without spending two days making my system work for audio.
The sad thing is that Linux has been my primary desktop for over 20 years now; I never need to reboot into Windows anymore for anything, except audio...even games are fine, for me, on Linux now that Steam offers so many great titles for Linux. I never thought I'd be saying "games are fine" before I was able to say "audio is fine", and I've been trying to use Linux for audio all those years...I was working in recording studios and attending college for audio recording when I first started using Linux, even, so it was a thing I spent a ton of time tinkering with.
So, in short: I don't know where it stands today. But, I've been disappointed pretty much every time I've tried to use Ardour for anything serious; it's not Paul's fault. Ardour is great. But, it's historically just really tough to do audio work on Linux. I'd be surprised if it's gotten as good as Windows or macOS in the past two years; it's surely gotten better. But, I'd give good odds that it's still an afternoon, or even multi-day, project rather than a "install it and press the record button" process.
The purely technical aspects of audio on Linux have always been better than Windows and OS X. Linux had lower latency than them more than a decade ago.
The user experience is a different story. That's the result of choices made by Linux distributions, most of which can be avoided by picking the right distribution or by doing some work. The biggest issue is the decision made some years (partly at my suggestion, ironically) to adopt PulseAudio as a desktop sound server (rather than JACK). This situation has been compounded by long-lived bugs in the versions of PulseAudio shipping with distributions that blocked the long-planned ways to tell PulseAudio to give up an audio device for "pro" use.
If you install the right Linux distribution (eg. AVLinux) then I would wager that its about 20 minutes from starting the install to "press the record button", with almost all of that being the distribution installation (it comes with Ardour already installed).
There's nothing to be done about the proliferation of Linux distributions that are not suitable for pro-audio or music creation workflows. It is a natural consequence of Linux' ecosystem that there are many, many distributions, each with different goals. A lot of people expect that "Linux is Linux is Linux", but for audio work, this isn't true. Installing Ubuntu and expecting that tools like Ardour will just work is incorrect and bound to lead to disappointment. It just isn't their target.
Note that Ardour no longer requires JACK on Linux. And this thread is actually about the release of Ardour 5.0, which runs on OS X, Linux and Windows. It seems a bit sad that people just want to talk about the situation on Linux as though that's the only place the program runs.
I am using the latest AVLinux with the latest Ardour on a machine dedicated to Linux-Audio. I get lots of dropouts/xruns, crashes in Ardour etc. MuSE not running properly at all (losing connection to jack).
The only things running reliable are Renoise, Tracktion, MuseScore and SuperCollider and only if I don't use jack, but just alsa exclusively.
Been very disappointed with Ardour. Always crashing with demanding plugins (e.g. drumgizmo), with "kind of" video support etc. Also disfunctional in some areas like Midi-Editing, CD-Cue-Export, layered Midi-recording. User interface too complicated and obscured. Hate to say it, but I considered dealing with Ardour to be a waste of time.
And this thread is actually about the release of Ardour 5.0, which runs on OS X, Linux and Windows.
Yeah, I noticed that, and that's awesome. But, I want to run it on Linux! That's one of the very big selling points of Ardour, for me, and one reason I would pick it over Reaper (on the day when I finally do pick it over Reaper).
I hope I was clear that I'm on your team. I want Ardour to be successful, and I want Linux to be a platform capable of media production. And, when I'm able, Ardour is one of the OSS projects I donate to.
But, maybe I'll try it on Windows sometime. That would certainly solve the VST problems, among several others.
But, I keep ending up doing my actual work in Reaper; not because Ardour is inferior, but because audio on Linux is inferior. At least, it historically has been. It's always been a bastard step child. To run Ardour, say, five years ago required a custom kernel, a non-standard audio server that was incompatible with any of the Gnome/KDE audio servers (there were compatibility layers, but they never worked, so switching back and forth was the only way to do anything...meaning your normal desktop lost sound when Ardour was in use, I wrote a script to switch them), running VSTs was possible but challenging and limited to those that would run under WINE (often with very buggy results), the surrounding ecosystem was just a mess, in general.
If you had the ability to build a perfect system, and never touch it, it might have been OK, but I never could keep the whole stack working for more than a couple of weeks; a kernel update or something else would break it, and I'd be in for another day or two of fucking around with kernels and ALSA drivers and WINE and whatever else. It just wasn't a usable system, even though it has always been a very powerful DAW.
Many things have improved in the intervening years. Enough of the RT work has been integrated into the mainline kernel that you don't need to patch your kernel anymore (though I think there are still some folks who apply some additional low latency patches, that's probably not necessary; Linux is now, I think, competitive with macOS and Windows when it comes to audio latency). WINE has gotten better, though running VSTs with Ardour is still a rough afternoon of effort, in my most recent experience. It's been a couple of years since I last tried to use Ardour for recording; the last time I gave up (again) and went back to Reaper, so I could get some recording done without spending two days making my system work for audio.
The sad thing is that Linux has been my primary desktop for over 20 years now; I never need to reboot into Windows anymore for anything, except audio...even games are fine, for me, on Linux now that Steam offers so many great titles for Linux. I never thought I'd be saying "games are fine" before I was able to say "audio is fine", and I've been trying to use Linux for audio all those years...I was working in recording studios and attending college for audio recording when I first started using Linux, even, so it was a thing I spent a ton of time tinkering with.
So, in short: I don't know where it stands today. But, I've been disappointed pretty much every time I've tried to use Ardour for anything serious; it's not Paul's fault. Ardour is great. But, it's historically just really tough to do audio work on Linux. I'd be surprised if it's gotten as good as Windows or macOS in the past two years; it's surely gotten better. But, I'd give good odds that it's still an afternoon, or even multi-day, project rather than a "install it and press the record button" process.