In music ...like most of the other arts...
Having the right tool to do what you need to...means everything.
If it is exactly what you need ..over what you currently have mscion...
Then get the guitar.
$2500 isn't much when compared to what use you will put it to...and the fact that an electric will last your lifetime.

Me...I have a couple I have built..play them now and then..
But I focus on my dulcimers and other instruments more...
Especially my metal strung harps...

Garage band is ok..
I'm geared on our maemo real time effects processor... GTKgep... for my n8x0's and n900's ...so I can take one and a harp with me to work and play all night...
Saves the weight of bringing a laptop...

At home ..the only real time I use on windows is Jesusonic ...it is old...but freakin great...make my own effects with it...even.

Past that...there are a couple of outdated music distros I still use that have big selections of progs that are excellent...

As far as standalone goes ...
Rakarrak is my linux fav I use all the time.

Now how can you be so sure about that?
There are certain clues that point to the direction that there actually is no real world out there at all, that we are indeed living inside a simulation.

If this is the case, how long has it been so? Did we begin like that, did the simulation start from "our" big bang or did someone swap us into this realm from the real world at some point? And if so, what happened to the real reality, is it still there or has it maybe ended?

Actually juice...
I thought it a plausible myself...
But the science is being disproven that we are in a simulation.

There is a research project to verify whether we are in a simulation.
It entails figuring out the maximum capacity of "space" ...of the "limit" or "ceiling" that the simulation can handle...and will determine with certainty whether we are in a simulation .

But so far...fad science has blown the possiblity of it out of proportion...

While the real experts are more and more speaking up on the scientific improbability of a simulation .

I like the idea of an evolving simulation. The ancients believed that stars were dots painted on the dome covering the earth because that is what they really were. They believed that the earth was a few thousand years old because that is how old it really was. Those were the boundaries of the simulation at the time. We sometimes wonder why advances in science come at the time they do. An evolving simulation gives an answer: the scientific understanding of the world reflects the state of the simulation at the time. As the simulation gets upgraded, so does our view of the world.

What the church allowed to be broadcast as the common and learned knowledge was in accordance with doctrine.
All else that was obviious was purged.
Wisdom which was hidden differs from that view pichlo.
Gnosticism , sacred sciences that used mathematics, and such studies used very complex formulas ..in fact.
And the gnostics in turn took their knowledge from the older civilizations ..the greeks, egyptians, babylonians, etruscans...
There were many diverse theories and beliefs including the universe being hidden behind a veil which concealed the clockwork mechanism of the divine.

It has always been the idea that current understanding is so much more accurate and or "real"..
And past civilization is quaint, simple, or at worst inferior.

But any modern civilizarion would be hard pressed to build the ancient monuments today with the pinpoint accuracy with which they were built using crude simple tools.

The ancient temples being observatory usage...as much for the advancement of science as prayer...

It was only the advent of the dark ages that saw our knowledge hamstrung and people forced to believe a controlled concept.

When the ancients ...including the greeks...for example...calculated with their observatories the landmass of the earth to within a few thousand hectares...
Then that says volumes concerning just how complex their concepts were of the world and universe around them.

Interesting thoughts about existence in a simulation. Although there appears to be a few bugs in the code. For example, because history repeats itself does that mean that there is an infinite loop? Also seems of the embarrassing parallel variety with very little communication... There appears to be some memory issues, if not memory leaks. . I suppose we could all be part of a genetic programing algorithm which implies many failed trials as the simulation evolves to find an optimal solution. Which one of those trials are we... I dunno,

A simulation is just the modern current vocabulary for what the ancients considered to be a maze, a trap, a façade, an illusion, a veil over the eyes of the untutored ...

Doubtless ...given a few 100 years or thousand more ....if we make it that far....
Our descendants will look back at our primitive concept of the simulation as the construct of the universe ...as quaint and naive.

Mscion....
History repeating itself is purely a human issue.
Mainly due to our short lifespans and future generations needing to learn the same lesson...having never dealt with it.

The biggest issue humanity has...according to the scientists ...is that since we were hardwired to cope with perceivable and immediate threats.
We cannot conceive of threats which are a distance in time from us.
Just as every species has built into it the seed of its own extinction ..
Due to evolutionary specialization ..
Such as the panda which can only eat bamboo
Or koala which can only eat eucalyptus leaves...
And so every other species...
They concede that that may be our brains which have enabled us to adapt to situations very well...may be our undoing ...

Everyone thinks the dinosaurs went extinct because of an asteroid impact...
When really....what happened was they went extinct due to this...

That is why I said "ancients", endso. The "painted ceiling" idea dates at least to ancient Greece. You may also notice that I deliberately avoided mentioning flat earth, since that the earth is round had been known already to ancient Egyptians.

To me, the word "simulation" implies a deliberate execution, for the purpose of research or entertainment. It is bound to be not perfect. Loops, leaks, deadlocks, crosstalk, crashes are expected. As whoever runs the simulations finds and fixes those bugs, the entities within the simulation may stop experiencing them until a higher level (or simply a newly introduced) bug is exposed.

I was thinking along the practical consequences, on possibilities of hacking the simulation from inside.

Think of the analogy of a rowhammer in this reality, what would it look like?

We would most certainly unravel the past present and future...
And most certainly end up negating ourselves and all of simulated history with it.

If indeed it becomes possible to muck with the machinery of creation here...
We will most certainly hit the big red button that has the signage in bold text stating "UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES PRESS THIS BUTTON"

100% ...bet we will...just to see what happens.