Yeah, channel 10...makes perfect sense. Back when polytimbral devices were starting to pop up, and even before when people were starting to create sizable piles of MIDI gear, there was this sort-of-a-rule that ch.10 was intended for drums and percussion. Interesting to see Arturia still holding true to that. But yeah...my TR-909, when I had that, it would both respond to and send on 10 out of the box as well.
As for Expert Sleepers...what they have with their Silent Way software is a way to use a DC-coupled audio interface to send and receive CVs, gates, and triggers (and sync, natch) to/from analog hardware. MOTU's Volta is similar to this, albeit Mac-only. Those interfaces that you see on here with the ADAT lightpipes, etc, are actually A-D/D-A converters, just like the ones on the conversion end of your DAW except that they're designed to be 100% DC-coupled and Silent Way compliant. In fact, you can even use the Expert Sleepers interface modules that have 'returns' to the DAW as a means of recording the synth's audio, instead of sending it to the dedicated A-D linked to the computer itself.
BTW, one of the worst drawbacks of using LINUX within music, IMHO, is the fact that the vast majority of development done for the instrument marketplace is going to either be for MacOS or Windows. That's simple economics at work...the installed base is simply larger, and if a music equipment company has limited resources dedicated to developing software, they're going to stick to the two OSs that the vast majority use. For example, right here in this thread, you're missing out on unlocking the Drumbrute's deeper control layers because you can't run the Arturia Control Center, and you can't explore computer control over analog with Silent Way or Volta. And that's among a lot of other things. While I certainly think LINUX has its uses, some in which it excels, using it in music is likely to handicap you in the long run by keeping a large array of tools out of reach.