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Native Equator VST plugin for Linux

It would be amazing to have Linux as a supported platform for the VST plugin. It seems that I currently have to run the Windows VST through Wine for it to work with Ardour.


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Flatpaks and snap packages are also viable options.


https://flatpak.org/


https://snapcraft.io/

Neat idea, John! Agreed that fragmentation and support likely play a big part in ROLI’s (perceived) reticence. Wonder how Tracktion and Bitwig solve it. Naïve question about Docker (only used it for FOSS): is it likely to work well for DRMed software?

Hi Roli,

I can understand the reluctance to do this even if it is trivial to get it running in linux for you.  I might speculate that it is the wide range of linux installations and packages that you would be getting support questions on.  


How about a docker container that you can easily get this running in and it will then work for everyone within that container for all time?


That may be a solution that does not end up being extra man hours.   We use them in teaching computer science and for our research and they are actually real easy to deal with.  So this is a former problem that has now been solved.


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So, dear ROLI product managers,


given the amount of response Filipe is getting and the feedback in this thread, there clearly is a demand for Equator on Linux. Please don't ignore this!


BitWig with BitWig Studio and Behringer with their digital mixers are only two great examples that it's worth opening yourself to the Linux Audio community. And with JUCE, you've already taken the right step. I think, you'll get quite a lot of love and support back from the community. Especially from those, who are fed up with proprietary OS treating them and their data with disrespect and more like a resource than a customer.


Cheers

Bollie

Hi Red Does it mean that ROLI don't mind if Filipe will share his findings with community? I thought he joined the ROLI and doesn't share anything about Eauator on Linux because of NDA ?

Pretty amazing that Felipe has more than 1000 subscribers, when his only video is showing that he got Roli hardware and software run under Linux.


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Hi airpil,


Thanks for adding your voice to the conversation. I presume that you're referring to this video?

If so, the author worked on this functionality independently and isn't currently with the company.


Nevertheless, we're happy to take creator feature requests into consideration as we make our plans, so please feel free to vote for this idea.


Thanks,

Red

I really love my seaboard BLOCK and 2 month ago i bought the lightpad as well. But now i am selling them.

 

I would like to have something bigger like Roil 49 for example. And the main reason for giving up with ROLI - Linux support. This is literally unbelivable - JUCE is complitely cross platform. One of the devs (now works for ROLI) has made a greate job to integrate MIDI over BLE into Bluez. And he had Equator working just fine under ArchLinux on his video. So basically ROLI HAS it. Sorry but this is absolutely stupid behaivior. What will be the next ? Paid firmware upgrades ? Roli simply not a customer oriented company.

there are only two operation system which works fine when it comes to realtime sound processing OSX and Linux. Me and all my friends are using linux for audio. I boot into OSX just for Roli - for what i need to experiance such an inconvinience when i can simply get rid of this "Blocking" equipment. 


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+1 I do most of my audio in Linux these days, since IMO MacOS has been more bloated and cumbersome. Considering that nearly all Linux VSTs are ported with JUCE, it seems quite odd that the people who own JUCE have no desire or intention to make their own software cross-platform. It would be a great example of "eating your own dogfood", as marketers so colorfully put it.  


I agree with @Thomas Ebeling - no doubt some rudimentary port exists, and making it available even as an indefinite unsupported beta would go a long way to demonstrating some goodwill. After all, these are people trying to establish your product on a growing platform. There are quite a few open source users as well as Bitwig and Waveform customers who would buy a license to use on Linux.


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@Red, thank you for the clarification about the audio quality on mobile devices. While I would personally prefer the freedom to choose whether or not to accept risk of diminished audio quality, I can see where this would not be the mindset of the majority customer base and can understand the rationale behind the decision from a business perspective. 

With mobiles aside, it's good to know that these threads are actually being read, and I do hope that Roli will see the value in supporting the linux community as we are not only interested in purchasing and using your products in the linux ecosystem, but some of us are willing to help bring it to fruition - as evidenced by previous posts in this thread.


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Hi Virgil, I just wanted to clear up any confusion regarding audio quality on mobile devices. The audio quality refers not (or not only) to the sound quality from headphone jacks or speakers, but to the performance of audio applications and amount of latency introduced on difference devices, for example. This article includes the results of JUCE's Mobile Audio Quality (MAQ) tests: https://juce.com/maq


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If I had to place my bets I would guess there's a licensing agreement preventing expansion into the Linux market. There aren't any obvious technical compatibility limitations, just as there aren't with allowing Noise to exist on high end devices other than Google Pixel and iPhone/iPad. While the company line is "sound quality," neither phone has a headphone jack, other devices have similar or higher rated speaker quality (and a headphone jack), and if it's based on Juce then it should be portable almost straight out of the box. This leaves contracts as a highly likely culprit. But in the end Roli is a for-profit company. There's only so much honesty or openness of communication we can expect.

@Virgil Breeden


Thanks! :) I'm very glad that you're willing to work on this. I'm a complete ALSA and GLADE Noob, so please excuse any design flaws. ;)


@Johan Smolinski


I totally lack the understanding for that. I mean, other hardware companies have their CC- and sysex maps printed in their manual. Perhaps, someone from ROLI can tell us why exactly they can't share that information.

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Oh, isn’t that typical... The hardware company cries out they would be so happy to provide support for GNU/Linux if only they had time and resources, and when the community asks for documentation in order to do their job, they simply refuse. I was considering buying a RISE until I read this post, but now I’ll wait to hear the motivation from ROLI. Prove to us that you care about the community! Great job by the way, Thomas Ebeling! Reverse engineering is a tricky and time consuming thing.

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I'll pull the code and, assuming I can slice out some time, I'll see what I can contribute to it. Thanks for getting this started.

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