Comment by timc3

Similar but not quite. One of the problems that you might face is a lot of tutorials are for Ableton, Logic, Cubase etc. It shouldn't actually matter, but you might find it confusing what you can and cant do if you are following what someone else is doing in another program. It’s like learning C# from a Java course. Once you understand the fundamentals it does not matter what you use within reason.

But I’ve used Ardour a long time ago and I don’t see why you couldn’t release music with it. Another alternative is Reaper.