We NEED linux support!

[dopeT]

Windows 10, which is pretty much the only windows one will be able to use in a few months, is becoming more and more unusable as a production-system.
The automatic updates:
-arbitrary delete my drivers, because Windows knows better than you what you want. Almost every systemstart. If you disallow this behavior the updates will reset it for shure.
-shutdown the system at least once a month while working and won’t let me do sh#!* for at least an hour.

The privacy problem:
-Windows gathers information about everything you do and shares that information with thirds for their profit and allegedly for a better user experience which i think nobody using windows as a work/production-system has. It’s just horrible.

The continuity:
-Microsoft is trying to force out .NET /32bit etc. to enforce their “Universal Windows Platform” (UWP) which kind of makes sense but also forces developers to convert their software to the new platform.
Since there will be effort necessary to perform this conversion, why not use the opportunity and do the right thing? PORT LINUX!

I and probably many others don’t need an add-ridden, unstable OS. We don’t want Mac, we want linux.

Also, as a software-developer myself, i offer my freelance-service for porting 🙂

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Thanked by: Beek and Derek Frampton

Topic

[Michal Barhon]

Hello,
I absolutely agree. Windows 8 and now 10..uff…they are useless for ANY production. I using linux (Ubuntu) for many years with DAW from Harrison Consoles (MixBus and MixBus32c) without any problems. I really love toontrack plugins, I use them on my old mac book pro now, but it will be fine have those great plugins natively on linux. Is there some way guys? As a linux admin and long-term Ubuntu user I can offer my participation as a tester for free. Please let us know.

[Jostein]

I currently run the Ezdrummer demo (8 days left) in Kubuntu 16.04 trough Wine (the compatibility layer for Windows programs) without any problems. The OS is connected to the KXStudio repository and I use the wine-rt package in 64 bit.

According to Harrison Consoles, 15% of the customers are using Linux. That should be a considerable high user base for most mentionable vendors unless they are just bragging about the high sales of their products. A Linux version is probably difficult with the version 2 of the Toontrack product lines, so I guess that we are stuck with OSX and Windows programs for now.

I’m using and have licenses for Mixbus/Mixbus32c from Harrison Consoles, Diva, Repro-1, Presswerk and Uhbik from u-he), DiscoveryPro from DiscoDSP, Loomer synths and also Pianoteq – All running native under Linux. I realize that it’s hard for several programmers and companies to make programs that works in any Linux distribution, but they don’t have to; it should be enough to make sure it runs statically in the 2-3 main stream long term support distros and AV Llinux.

There are also a growing number of music related vendors that are making Linux programs, we can expect a drum modelling software (like Pianoteq does) from u-he within a year or two. DAWs like Bitwig are still going strong and at least 3 DAW’s and programs are using Ardour as the frame work (Mixbus, Waves Tracks Live, iZ Session) and not to mention Linux driving hard ware like mixers, and recorders and so on. Garritan do occasionally mention Linux when speaking about their ARIA Player engine. So with the future in mind, I’m really surprised that some vendors still choose not respond to postings like this or even mention Linux anywhere. The problem for some vendors is also that they have (quite stupidly) locked them self into using third party libraries and technology that only works in OSX or Windows – both because the technology and sometime licenses. But the number of even small companies that can make proprietary cross platform programs for all the three major operating systems are growing.

Since I don’t find a trial version of Superior Drummer but the EzDrummer demo work so well under Wine, I’m going to take the risk and buy a license for it next week and try to run it one under Wine as well. I hope that a native Linux version comes, Toontrack’s products are magnificent and I hope they do it before some of the other ones comes up with realistic alternatives.

[perh]

Most important of all, and in addition to OPs arguments, is the fact that neither Windows nor MacOS are proper realtime operating-systems and thus not fit for purpose as a DAW-platform. It is important to have complete control over what userspace-applications do, but guaranteed response-times for time-critical operations (drivers, sync etc) is essential for anything that has to do with audio or video editing.

On top of this it is a sad fact that many DAW-computers are not properly maintained. Both Windows and MacOS have their software-update facilities, but neither offer an open solution for third parties to use without exorbitant fees. 3rd-party developers end up building their own infrastructure for updates and users end up with as many mechanisms for software upgrades as there are 3rd-party software-packages on the computer. Updating that should be one single user-task becomes a process that takes half a day or more. Contrast that to for example the software packaging and distribution in Debian (+ubuntu and others) where any vendor can operate their own package-repository and have their products updated alongside everything else on the users computer.

[Jostein]

Status: I bought it and now it’s running as a charm under wine! 🙂

It’s a risky business to do it, but it works without glitches and latency but your mileage might vary. This is my system:

*A self assembled computer with an Intel I7-4790K CPU @ 4 gHz (not overclocked) and 32 GB RAM (using only a small fraction on it. Using the CPU’s GPU.

The OS is Kubuntu 16.04 with the KXStudio repo connected to it. The Toontrack programs runs under the Wine-rt windows compatibility layer, version 1.8.0. under Jack.
I usually use Carla as a a VST host, but the 64 bit version is not discovered (32 bit works), so I use Toontrack Solo a a VST host and everything works as it should. I tried the latency with the buffer size as low as 16 frames in 44.100 (0.726 sec latency) without problems, but will probably use 64 frames (2.9 msec latency) as standard during arranging , playing and tracking with my MIDI keyboard. Thanks to Jack, I can flawlessly connect anything from Superior to anything in the system and it works as it should. My DAW is Harrison Mixbus32C. It does not recognize Windows VST (it recognize Linux native VSTs) due to the previous VST licenses from Steinberg, but will probably change quite soon because Steinberg recently changed the VST license to the GPL V3.

So my conclusion is that everything works very well in a professional manner. I can easily track every ting as ordinary tracks for mixing, which is what I wanted. Anyway, it’s always nice to have the plugin embedded into the DAW in stead of running it in an external host, so I hope that Toontrack follows companies/products such as Pianoteq, DiscoDSP, Loomer, Bitwig, u-he, Reaper, Harrison and others and makes a native Linux version of Superior Drummer.

[ahellquist]

Hi !

We just had a discussion on IRC where we concluded that we have many great strictly commercial products for linuix,

The last year U-He has released all their software as linux VSTs in both 32 and 64 bit. I own most of them and their really nice products made my life musically a lot better. I use them constantly both live and in the studio. Pianoteq lv2 is also something I never leave home without. I know there are more similar products out there but these are the ones I have purchased lately.

Since U-he accomplished this with only one person doing the porting and an almost selfsusaing support at KVR forums it soesn’t seem to be a high mountin to climb íf Toontrack would consider including the ever expanding linux world. I have tested some of the Toontrack EZkeys products under wine and the work really good so I would imagine the code well written (but I am no developer) Have also tested another similar product from another Swedish company but that did not end well.

If Toontrack would get some help from some of the people who have ported Juce applications to linux they might consider it.

I can think of some devs that might be able to help.

I, myself could help testing things and I live in Umeå, Sweden where the Toontrack Head Quarter resides..

Please, pretty please
/Anders Hellquist

[dopeT]

Yeah, in the meantime i fought another battle with Reaper (Windows version via Wine), Jack, Wine-VST-Bridge via Cadence and my Toontrack products.
After 3 days of fiddling it worked; i was very happy it worked at all. But stable is definitely not a word that comes to mind.
The problem seems (still) to be Jack-audio with my UR-22. The connection breaks sometimes for no apparent reason and this disconnects the wine-bridge from Reaper which then takes up to 2 minutes until i can work again.
The only solution is to push the buffer size to high values which causes high latency.

For now i switched back to Windows 7, which was really fun to update since Microsoft dropped the support. After that, no more headaches.

When i have some time on my hands again i will try your approach Jostein, just hosting the VSTs via Wine. But again, for me the problem seems to start at Jack-Audio. To modify its variables all day and still ending up with 80ms delay for a stable connection is just so incredibly frustrating.

[travis]

Ezdrummer is a great product for musicians and songwriters, and I would love to see linux support for it. There are a growing number of us out here who are turned off by the current direction of windows, and linux is a good alternative for daw users. Yes, it has it’s issues, the same as any other os, but other than dropping alot of money on a mac (which isn’t a practical option for many musicians), linux is the only other option. And when discussing this around varous daw related forums, I get the impression that more users would be interested in using linux if there were more native linux commercial plugins available.

So Toontrack! What’s up with linux?

[Jostein]

I notice that it’s no Linux download for SD 3, so I will not upgrade right now. I will wait and see if a Linux package will come or if I hear reports that says it works with Wine, or maybe upgrade my current SD2 with a new extension.

[a.fantino_1]

Hello Everybody!

I use Bitwig as a DAW and have installed on my Ubuntu PC (I’ve been proudly using Ubuntu for 10 years on three PC at home + PC at school, as I am a teacher) and EZ works almosty fine… there are some visual glitches when drums plays, in other words parts of the window start blinking in correspondance of the parts of the drum which is graphically animated… does it hapen to you too? If yes, how did you solve it, if you did?

Thank you.

One more question… is there any plan of a Linux support in the future? I’d like to be able to use EZ Drummes ad a plugin of my DAW.
By the way, how do you use EZ in combination to you DAW then?

Thank you very much and good music everybody!

1

Thanked by: Beek

[Guillaume Schmid]

Hi everyone,

Count me in for the linux support. I use Ubuntu Studio + Bitwig with a few plugins (u-he synths).
I record mostly my own song and my band, and it is rock/pop and sometimes metal.

I would love to use natively EZMix and EZDrummer on my home studio. Please, consider a port!

Yours,
Guillaume.

1

Thanked by: Beek

[Thomas Marik]

Same here, sign me up!

I also have an Ubuntu Studio installation, but using Reaper in Wine with WineASIO. EZDrummer 2, EZKey & -Mix 2 actually work really well with Wine, installing & authorizing via the Product Manager works too, but I can’t install the EZDrummer 2 updates for some strange reason (it’s unable to find the Installation, no matter where I install it). So far, this is the only issue I’ve encountered, though. Performance is comparable or equal to my old Windows box.

You can try it out yourself pretty easily as well, simply grab any recent Ubuntu-distro, sudo apt install wine64 & install your DAW and the Toontrack executables and grab WineASIO from Sourceforge if you need it, done.

I guess a native Linux version might be a bit far-fetched, since VST support is pretty bad, but it would be really great, if the Windows installers worked in Wine as well. I can live with EZDrummer 2.0.2, but I’m worried that more quirky installers could follow in the future..

[Joseph Lofft]

I’d love to see Linux fully supported. I’ve been using Mac’s since 2008 when I purchased an iMac for myself. Still using it although it is not getting new updates anymore do to it’s age. My employer purchased a new MacBook Pro for me and I think it is a piece of junk. When the iMac dies I will definitely NOT being buying anything from Apple’s current lineup. Maybe if they release an updated Mac Mini but I’m not holding my breath.

I will most likely switch to Linux even if it means switing away from EZ Drummer. I don’t want to mess with Wine. I really want native support for Linux.

[Jostein]

This is a little off topic, but here are a treat for you REAPER/Linux fans: A native Linux version of Reaper will probably come very soon. Personally, I had it for a while now (still using Mixbus32C for Linux as my main DAW) . Cockos do official talk about the Linux version and the pre-releases can be found here:

https://www.landoleet.org

[Michal Barhon]

@Jostein said:
This is a little off topic, but here are a treat for you REAPER/Linux fans: A native Linux version of Reaper will probably come very soon. Personally, I had it for a while now (still using Mixbus32C for Linux as my main DAW) . Cockos do official talk about the Linux version and the pre-releases can be found here:

https://www.landoleet.org  

Hello, thank you for this off-topic information! It looks good, another good DAW natively on Linux…

BTW: I Using Mixbus 4/32C too.

1

Thanked by: Beek

[Michal Barhon]

Any news about native linux support?

Common guys, Windows 10 is such pain! You newer know after what “super-dooper” update this system will completely broke.
Personally I can’t imagine work on this system on professional basis. It’s unstable and slow in compare with, for example, Ubuntu.

Please, tell us where is the problem? Do you need Programmers or beta testers?

[Author]

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