Does anyone have any reference material like a video or guide that made sense to them for how to route live audio in linux?

Most guides I see for music software on Linux seem to focus on Midi keyboards and audio generation on linux, rather than capturing live sound and working with that signal.

Context:

I have played guitar for a long time, and worked with and loved GNU/Linux for ~5 years. But I have never really married the two hobbies.

I use digital/modelling rigs all the time. And I know all of those pieces of gear I love are just little specialized computers.

I don’t really have an interest in recording. But the idea of using my GNU/Linux computers as a modeling rig for home fun has always intrigued me.

I found something called a “plugin host” named “Element” by Kushview. It seems to be the perfect tool for what I am looking for.

https://kushview.net/element/

But I cannot figure out the basics of how to select just the input of my audio interface, get it to route through something like an EQ, and then exit out to my speakers.

I remember having this issue back when I tried Ubuntu Studio a few years back and read about Jack, but could never figure it out when I was trying to understand how to use Ardour. A DAW like that, Garageband, Cakewalk, and others always felt like overkill for what I was looking to do, and it was difficult to understand how to work with those. Which is also difficult because it means I don’t really have much of a frame of reference for how to use these “plugin hosts”.

Thank you for any help/thoughts.