Hi JOM,

BiaB is not an ideal match to Linux, substantially because PGM use Windows Media Player to play the .wma files and WMP is not well supported on Linux. A couple of consequences of that are that BiaB won't play demo songs and all the RealTracks need to be .WAV files. One can expand the .wma files to .wav, but the UltraPAK then uses approaching 2TB of disc space. Expanding the .wma files does not, of course, make the .wav files audiophile quality. There seem also to be a few dialogs that won't open, though nothing that's caused too much frustration for me (YMMV). Pipeline was very helpful.

The Linux distribution I use for audio stuff is AVLinux, which is very well crafted for audio use, but it isn't small ... it's around 4GB. AV Linux MX Edition. There are some very lightweight Linuxes around, but most are not expressly built for AV use.

I quite often use ITX boards for small systems. They tend to be quite good and relatively low energy consumption.

I'm also aware of the LattePanda boards that are tiny physical footprint Win10 PCs. They'll run Ubuntu Linux, at least, probably most Linuxes. These days, Linux runs on nearly everything, where Windows increasingly does not.

Ardour is very well respected. I haven't personally used it per-se for anything much as I have both Harrison MixBus (which is Ardour based and Harrison contribute to Ardour development) and Reaper, both of which are now Linux native.

Jazz relative beginner, starting at a much older age than was helpful.
AVL:MXE Linux; Windows 11
BIAB2025 Audiophile, a bunch of other software.
Kawai MP6, Ui24R, Focusrite Saffire Pro40 and Scarletts
.