Linux support

[BigB]

Hey everyone here, newcomer to this forum and recent owner of a drumbrute. Mostly satisfied with it so far except for one major PITA: you can't configure the midi part without some proprietary software that only runs on Windows and MacOS - bad luck, I'm a Linux user and obviously Arturia don't give a sh... about Linux users. This really pisses me off, to the point I'm considering sending this thing back despite it's other qualities.

The first thing that pisses me off is of course having to use software to configure a piece of hardware - one of the reasons I'm going hardware is to not depend on having a PC up and running. But then I should have to buy Windows, install it along my Linux distro, and stop my session, launch Windows, quit Windows and relaunch my session just to change the midi channel or something ? I spent the same amount of good money as anyone else on this gear, I deserve to be treated the same. 

[I__A]

Hi,

I am confronted with the same problem, but I refuse to install Windows at all. So far I managed to install both, the Software Center and the MIDI Control Center, using wine. I use Debian stable, the steps are:

1.) run: $ sudo apt update && sudo apt install wine
2.) run: $ wine

Command 2.) informed me that multiarch support was missing and presented the command to change that. I ran that command as well.

3.) run: $ winecfg

In Debian stable, wine defaults to Win XP, command 3.) opens a window where wine can be set to Win 7, 8.x or 10, which are required for the Arturia software.

At this point one can download the .exe files of the Software Center and MIDI Control Center and install them by navigating to the Download directory and run the following command:

4.) run: $ wine *The.exeYouWantToInstall*.exe

So far, so good. Now here's the problem I'm stuck with: the Drumbrute isn't recognized by the MIDI Control Center. Since I run Debian stable, the wine version is outdated. The wine manual says that in older versions of wine USB ports are not automatically recognized (maybe anyone with a more up-to-date distro can give feedback if updating wine will solve the issue?).

My Drumbrute is directly connected to my laptop, so I went to ~/.wine/dosdevices and entered the USB ports myself (as the wine manual suggests). In my /dev directory I found /dev/ttyS0-3 (my poorish google skills found out that these are supposed to be the mainboard USB ports, is that right?), so I ran:

5.) run: $ ln -s /dev/ttyS0 com1 && ... && ln -s /dev/ttyS3 com4

This created the COM ports 1-4 and linked them to /dev/ttyS0-3. According to the internet, this should have done the trick, but it didn't. I also added my user to the groups "dialout' and 'tty', still the Drumbrute isn't recognized. Anyone have an idea, why the Drumbrute isn't recognized?

And also, isn't there a way to to update the Drumbrute via SYSEX and configure it via MIDI CC?

Cheers,
I__A

[ylecun]

I run Ubuntu (18.04) and I have a MatrixBrute and a BeatStep.
I run MIDI Control Center under Wine.
It recognizes the MatrixBrute and works fine.
But it doesn't recognize the BeatStep.
It would be probably a simple fix, if the folks at Arturia devoted a bit of time to it.

[MajorFubar]

I do feel your pain...but, of all the bugfixes and upgrades people are asking Arturia to address on this forum, ensuring software compatibility with a Windows emulator running on a minority-interest OS is going to be at the bottom of their list. You presumably already knew Arturia doesn't officially warrant their software to work in any desktop OS except Windows and MacOS when you bought it, so it was always a risk.

[DarSwanSwede]

Just wanted to Point out that I am running Ubuntu Studio. Fantastic Distro for audio and midi, comes prefilled with tons of synth modules to build your own rack, daws and so forth. I plugged in my Aurturia Beatstep with the latest firmware and it shows up just fine. without any WIndows Pure Linux, Jack and Alsa. its all preconfigured for Plugin Play with any MIDI compliant instrument. I have also plugged in at the same time a Novation LK49 MKII, Akai MPK mini v2, Korg NanoKey2 and a Roland JV-880 rack synths via a Roland UN-ONE USB adapter. worked flawlessly. Try a different distro!

[Linux_user]

Booting a different distro is almost as big a hassle as booting Windows. I've been running OpenSuse since not long after it first appeared about 13 years ago. I don't run Windows and haven't needed to look at it for years.
I have a KeyStep and a MicroBrute and I'm pretty cheesed off that I can't update the firmware on these devices from Linux.
I installed the MIDI Control Center with Wine but it crashes with no real clue as to what I might need to do to progress it.

[sqram]

With you on this one.
Just purchased a Keylab 49 in hopes it'll play well with Bigwig + Linux.

My friend has a Nektar Impact LX49 and it was really plug an play on his Arch + Bigwig setup.

Hoping it's the same with Arturia as Bitwig does show support for it.



Sidenote: these captcha questions on registration & forums forms are bit extreme for newcomers into the industry.

"Which two parameters are most commonly found in a filter ? XXXXXX and Resonance:"

I don't know. I'm new to this. Had to ask a friend

[KurtJ]

Well, I bought me a minilab, and I use linux, so googling around brought me here and puts me in the same boat as everyone else in this thread I guess..

@arturia  Please put more effort in developing software for linux, we're not a niche user group anymore..

As per setting up the control center under Wine there might be some good news around the corner:

linuxreviews.org/Wine_5.2_Is_Released_With_22_Bug-Fixes_And_New_Features

Wine 5.2 has application-specific fixes for ... Arturia MIDI Control Center, ...

I've never been a big fan of Wine, but it's been over a decade I tried it so I guess I'm going to try and install a non-repo staging branch version of Wine just to be able to configure my arturia hardware.. That's after I make a full backup of my system, don't want to break apt.

Kind regards,
Kurt

[MajorFubar]

we're not a niche user group anymore..

You really are. I can't name one person I actually physically know who uses Linux to create music.We can't even get Arturia to give us a half decent suite of iPad apps, and iPads are literally everywhere.

[KurtJ]

Ok, so we're more niche then ipads   I can live with that.. guess I'll have to

It's just that when you look at the number of views at this thread, it's been looked at many times.. but maybe that's just the same small number of people who keep on searching in vain 

EDIT  Not wanting to start a new reply for this, here are my findings:

I got the sofware running pretty fast, was crashing at first, but you can patch the executable so it does not try to detect wine. Check the bug here bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48122  patching the exe and it does not crash anymore.  There seem to be other midi devices from other brands with the same bug.

Getting my Minilab detected is another issue all together.. it all depends on how your end devices connect.  If it's serial over usb you're in luck. My guess is that's mostly older devices.  If your device shows up under /dev as a ttyUSB# you can map it in wine dosdevices with a symlink.  Mine does not..

When checking the wine roadmap, you can see that usb has never really been supported, just serial / parallel over usb

www.winehq.org/news/  in the latest development branch 5.7 (released yesterday, my timing is spot on here) you can see following line:

Beginnings of a USB device driver.

Guess I'll just try wine again later.. I'll run this in a VM for now.  Hope this info was of benefit for someone.

[marcel-x]

I’m using Linux as major OS too! But I prefer to use an iPad for music creation.

If Arturia just would release their MIDI implementation charts more often. Then the community could build editors themselves.

Here some excellent editor links:
https://coffeeshopped.com/patch-base
https://mididesigner.com/community

[kehlerk]

Hi there,

Just got my Arturia KeyStep and while I hadn't really planned on using computer software, with the knowledge that Linux support is limited/non-existent, but then stumbled on this topic: https://forum.arturia.com/index.php?topic=93137.0

So, how exactly does one use this WINE patch which KurtJ outlined?

If it's already been implemented into WINE, I'm not seeing it, because I got the Midi Control Center software up and running through WINE on my Ubuntu 16.04 system, but the only thing is I can't get the software to see my Keystep through the USB connection. I see the Arturia is connected to my Ubuntu system when I run "dmesg" but other than that, I can't find the actual port to make a link for WINE to recognize.

Any help would be much appreciated!

[lazzarello]

Hi ya,

tl;dr I'm developing some software that will allow a program to customize a Keylab 49 Essential without running MIDI Control Center in a Windows VM or Wine.

I run Ubuntu Studio and Ardour as a primary DAW. Got a Keystep 49 Essential second hand and was def surprised to see this "MIDI Control Center" app as the only way to change some of the hardware settings. Fortunately, the app has a "MIDI Debug" window that outputs all the sysex sent to the device.

Spent some hours today reverse engineering the sysex data, along with the data from the two "export" features ("Controller Map" and "Device Settings"). I figured out the patterns for all the programmable hardware controls, and now it's the tedious part of doing the data entry. I'll post a new topic when I get some results that work.

[mrz80]

Hi ya,

tl;dr I'm developing some software that will allow a program to customize a Keylab 49 Essential without running MIDI Control Center in a Windows VM or Wine.

I run Ubuntu Studio and Ardour as a primary DAW. Got a Keystep 49 Essential second hand and was def surprised to see this "MIDI Control Center" app as the only way to change some of the hardware settings. Fortunately, the app has a "MIDI Debug" window that outputs all the sysex sent to the device.

Spent some hours today reverse engineering the sysex data, along with the data from the two "export" features ("Controller Map" and "Device Settings"). I figured out the patterns for all the programmable hardware controls, and now it's the tedious part of doing the data entry. I'll post a new topic when I get some results that work.

Eagerly awaiting the fruits of your labors. Ought it to work with more than just the Keylab Essential?  I'm currently nursing along a decrepit OG Keylab49 which, of course, MIDI Control Center doesn't detect on my US20.04 system.

[Plop]

I'll be glad to help you if i can and if you need

I'm curently dumping all the sysex for the beatstep pro