FL Studio here.

Edit:  The reason I use FL Studio is because I find it intuitive.  Also, it's music composition software first -- most other DAWs seem to focus a lot more on editing and mixing, which is great if that's what you need, but I do most of my composition directly in software.

There's still this perception that FL Studio is a "toy", but IMO that's mostly left over from back in the days when it was just a drum loop program ("Fruity Loops").  Lately, every time I've ever heard someone say that FL Studio can't do a particular thing that some other DAW can do, they've been wrong.

hi,

  if you don't have a lot of money, I think one of the best free DAWs out there is LMMS, which I use. I'd love to try Cubase, but I don't have the money or hardware (still running XP on an old Dell lol). There's also plenty of awesome, realistic-sounding soundfonts out there on the web for free, which can be used with LMMS. You can check out my music on my profile to see if the quality can be comparable to sounds supplied with FL Studio or Cubase. I think it is a cool idea to pay someone with software!

I use Cockos Reaper, it is an extremely cheap DAW and you can customise it with its own built in language JS Script (NOT javascript). You can also make your own plugins with JS if commercial ones aren't cutting it. Aside from that, development is extremely active and it seems to work with anything I throw at it. It's like the equivalent of VLC but for musicians. I highly recommend it, or atleast for you to check it out

edit: Reaper now has an API for Python 2.7 and upwards. It now has 3 languages all together (C++ API, Python API, JS) Hopefully this'll speed up the mundane parts of creating a session.

another edit: Just thought I'd mention that I used to use Cubase but I have moved for a few reasons:

Always requires a dongle to use it (unless of course you are using a 'trial' version)

Plugin support is downright horrible - several highly praised plugins would cause cubase to crash frequently.

MIDI editing is unintuitive, to process MIDI as if it were audio, you have to bounce it down to a .WAV. In reaper, everything is treated the same, you can use an audio plug-in on MIDI or audio

Lastly, Steinberg/Cubase are not nearly as community driven as Reaper. So many third-party tools are created for Reaper to get rid of the boring details of file-management so you can do what you set out to do in the first place, make music.

I've never tried it myself, but 

 https://www.bitwig.com/en/bitwig-studio/overview.html 

 this looks like very promising DAW. They even have a Linux version.

I use FL Studio on my Windows computer and GarageBand on my MacBook Pro.

I mainly use the MacBook Pro simply because the specs are maxed-out, but I'd most definitely say that FL Studio is the Better DAW between the two -- it's easier to get around in; it's easier to use; the piano roll is extremely easy and understandable.

It's a shame that Image Line hasn't released an official Mac version of FL Studio; the beta version is a bit quirky to work with such as strange latency issues with incoming MIDI data.

I do all my composing using free software on Linux. There's some great stuff out there (see my profile for the things I personally use), but if you go down this route, be prepared for a big learning curve and a lot of pitfalls in comparison to commercial software: as you say, the workflow will be much easier when using commercial software. That said, with free software, you get the chance to learn an awful lot and to contribute to making the software better.

The DAW I use is Qtractor. Its author (Rui Nuno Capela) is an extremely talented Linux audio developer, who is also very friendly and open to suggestions. Before this, I was using a combination of Rosegarden for MIDI and Ardour for audio. Both of these are excellent and more mature than Qtractor, but I wanted to have one program for everything and, at the time, Rosegarden's audio capabilities were a bit behind its MIDI capabilities and Ardour didn't support MIDI at all (though it now does). The support for Ardour can also be a problem, unless you make a donation.

The main reasons I use Qtractor are:

- nice interface; easy to work in
- handles both MIDI and audio to a decent degree. MIDI isn't as full-featured as Rosegarden, audio isn't as full-featured as Ardour, but it does a good enough job
- great support and advice from the author
- still "relatively" early in development (though easily stable enough for daily use - don't let this put you off), so ample opportunity to contribute

By far the biggest drawback I've found through all this is that the quality of free samples is nowhere near that of commercial ones, so it's difficult to make something which sounds really convincing (at least for me :-)).

In terms of payment, I can't speak for others but I'd imagine that people who are composing would likely already have what they need. However, quality samples are expensive so perhaps that's an area they'd welcome some help with. Personally, I write my stuff for free just as a hobby (and, due to work commitments, I'd never have the availability to hit delivery dates, even if I wanted to accept payment).

I am a big fan of Fruity Loops (FL Studio) but mostly because the built-in synths are so good at sounding so nasty!

BTW

Free lifetime updates applies only for the MAJOR version you buy.  So I own FL 5 and get all updates for FL 5 but must pay for FL 6 or later.

I'm interested in finding/making music for a game that's been slowly coming together for almost a year.

I've begun work on a 16-bit style double album (for a commercial project.) If you don't mind that it won't be unique to your game, then you might be squared away. I had planned to finish it late in development, but I'm willing to reschedule.

As far as the particulars, I'm rearranging and/or remixing existing OGA content from four composers: myself, Yubatake, Jan125 and Metaruka. So imagine this and this at a higher fidelity, with a unified sound. I can't promise it will blow your mind, but it will be free, and Creative Commons.

I used LMMS in the beginning and loved it, but when I started trying to use more than a handful of VSTs it would always freeze up and crash. So I switched to FL Studio. I'm relatively new to the music scene, so I'm not even sure what all the features of a program like FL Studio are--I've likely only scratched the surface. However, for my purposes it is fantastic (I have a licensed Producer Edition).

Just yesterday I saw a friend using Cubase for the first time and the stuff you can do in there is also fantastic. But yeah, having the shackles of the dongle seems to be kind of a pain in the ass.

After listening to Yubatake and Syncopika's music, though, I can see that it really isn't the software that matters, ultimately. The creativity of the user seems to be the deciding factor.

I used to have ProTools (8 I think), then it broke with OS update. If you can live with the money it costs and their bad company practices, ProTools is the best DAW I have ever used. After that, went from Ableton to Logic and now back to Ableton. Though the new Bitwig Studio looks temping (it is also corss platform including Linux).

BTW, the DAW doesn't matter, it's all about your instruments and plugins. Find something you can work with, and build up a nice library of sounds/devices you like. The only downside of Linux is the lack of VST and pro instruments support :(