LinuxVST support

[diizy]

Again, another thing I'm just putting on the issue tracker, since it's been discussed on the mailing lists.

LinuxVST support should be relatively easy to implement considering we already have the VST code, and it would be beneficial, seeing as there's lots of interesting developments happening on the LinuxVST front right now (many new plugins being made and such).

And it's also a feature that has been requested by many people.

[Sti2nd]

So I guess it will run on Windows, right?

[diizy]

On 03/29/2014 03:34 AM, Stian Jørgensrud wrote:

So I guess it will run on Windows, right?

LinuxVST's do not run on Windows... that would require the reverse
counterpart of Wine, which no one has bothered to develop. Probably
because you can get perfectly good Linux distros for free...

But I don't really see how that matters. Windows users already have more
than enough choice of native plugins to use.

[Sti2nd]

Does lv2 support Windows (through LMMS)?

[tobydox]

LV2 is just an interface standard, the question is whether the actual plugin can be built for Windows. For LADSPA plugins this is easy as they do not have separate dependencies like UI frameworks or similiar. Many LV2 plugins use Gtk which in turn would add a massive overhead to Win32 binaries.

[grejppi]

If an LV2 plugin chooses to use Gtk or any other huge GUI toolkit, it's their own dependency -- LMMS shouldn't care about that.

[diizy]

Reluctantly going to have to push this to 1.2...

[tresf]

Bumping out to 1.3 (likely after 2.0)

[hallogallo]

Are there any news regarding this topic? Google just brought me here 😆

[jasp00]

Are there any news regarding this topic?

A volunteer to code would be appreciated. Also, we should merge some fixes for Windows VST first.

[RichardJECooke]

I'm trying LMMS for the first time on Ubuntu and am unable to get VSTs to work - either Wine crashes trying to install them, or once installed LMMS' Vestige crashes trying to open them.

I hoped returning to Linux audio after seven years things would be much easier, but it still seems unusable. I really hope the team manages to get round to this 2014 issue some time.

[tresf]

This topic is about LinuxVST, so the Wine crashes seem to be misplaced. As for the state of Linux audio in general, this tracker isn't the place to discuss that despite many people sharing your feelings on the topic.

That said, although the frustrations you are having are real, we really don't tolerate people coming on this tracker pointing out the shortcomings of a few volunteers.

Please keep posts on-topic to the original bug report.

[vlad0337187]

Would be VST effects included into this issue ?
(I mean plugins, which are loaded after "add effect" button pressed)

[davidhedlund]

I added https://lmms.io/wiki/index.php?title=Tested_VSTs#Free_software and added a few VST's to it.

[davidhedlund]

http://linux-sound.org/linux-vst-plugins.html (Updated 13 February 2018.) is the most complete list of VST's for GNU/Linux that I've seen.

[tresf]

Why is this issue still open??

Because LinuxVST support has not yet been added.

[lukas-w]

@mrshroomy LinuxVST refers to support for native Linux VSTs as opposed to Windows VSTs, which we currently support using Wine on Linux.

[NoxWings]

I recently decided to use lmms to create the music for my next 64k intro. It fits the purpose of what I need quite well except this. Unfortunately I need to work with a synth that is compiled as a linux vst :(

[tresf]

@NoxWings as a stop-gap you can try the Carla Instrument Rack. It ships with 1.2.0 and supports many more plugin formats than we do.

[tresf]

Correction, 1.2.0 ships with support for it. It needs to be available on the system for LMMS to detect it.

[NoxWings]

So are you saying Linux vst are supported on LMMS as long as they are available on the system path?

[tresf]

Linux VSTs are not supported directly at all. The 3rd party plugin "Carla" can open plugins of various formats. Carla's a big app and it's actually bigger install than LMMS, so we don't bundle it, but direct Carla support is included in LMMS starting with version 1.2.0.

[NoxWings]

Oh I didn't know that, thanks for the clarification.

[probonopd]

Linux VSTs are not supported directly at all.

Is this planned to be added? Wouldn't it be a quite natural thing to do for an app that has "Linux" in its name?

[tresf]

Naturally. Furthermore Linux was dropped from the name a long time ago

[probonopd]

Ah, I thought the "L" in "L Multimedia Studio" stood for "Linux"... perhaps it's the "Libre Music Mastering Studio" now. Anyhow, looking forward to it.

[PhysSong]

FYI, #3975 is a good start point to support Linux VSTs(not to be confused with LV2) as well as macOS VSTs. I was playing with the code for a while and confirmed it's possible to modify it to support Linux VSTs. However, I need to get some time to organize and test the code.

[probonopd]

In the meantime, would you be interested in making an AppImage that would include WINE out of the box @tresf? A lot of progress has been made lately when it comes to bundling WINE as an AppImage.

[tresf]

Wine should be obtained from official sources. Some of the more complex VSTs require modifying the environment. Doing this on an AppImage is a nightmare. Furthermore, our current stance is to obtain gigantic plugins separately (such as Carla). Wine won't be bundled if i have anything to do with it.