Linux support for Toontrack products

[joabogers]

DAWs like Reaper and Ardour work on Linux just fine,...

DAWs like Reaper and Ardour work on Linux just fine, but the Toontrack stack not supporting it fully breaks the experience. Using Wine I can get quite a long way with using EZ Drummer on Linux, but it’s less than ideal. Even though VST should be OS agnostic, it’s clear Toontrack products weren’t developed with Linux in mind. And that’s a shame, because nobody I know who’s into audio engineering willingly chooses Windows.

Please support Linux.

DAWs like Reaper and Ardour work on Linux just fine, but the Toontrack stack not supporting it fully breaks the experience. Using Wine I can get quite a long way with using EZ Drummer on Linux, but it’s less than ideal. Even though VST should be OS agnostic, it’s clear Toontrack products weren’t developed with Linux in mind. And that’s a shame, because nobody I know who’s into audio engineering willingly chooses Windows.

Please support Linux.

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Thanked by: Gabbegrav, Glenn Andersson, exl99 and 3 others.

Topic

[Matthias Reichart]

I am also willing to ditch windows and Mac OS (due to recent orange psychotic reasons who pushed me to switch earlier) and that search brought me here. I love Toontracks products for years. I still use Drumkit from Hell from time to time for nostalgia but love SD3 and Keys, …. I love it. So if it would be available on linux, that would make me very happy. Thanks.

[Clement Caltot]

Hello there.
I’m a new Linux user, and would really appreciate if there was easier ways to run Toontrack products on Linux. I’ve been using Reaper regulary so that is pretty easy for me but still…

I’ve installed Superior 3 & EZ Bass, but I’m stuck at th loading page for Superior, and I wasn’t able to point at my library in EZBass.

Official  support would be really enjoyable.

[Clement Caltot]

Clement Caltot wrote:

Hello there.
I’m a new Linux user, and would really appreciate if there was easier ways to run Toontrack products on Linux. I’ve been using Reaper regulary so that is pretty easy for me but still…

I’ve installed Superior 3 & EZ Bass, but I’m stuck at th loading page for Superior, and I wasn’t able to point at my library in EZBass.

Official  support would be really enjoyable.

Yeah, as it turns out, I wasn’t stuck but the windows were not refreshig when clicking somewhere.
So… I kinda works but I can’t really check…

[heepster]

Switching to Linux myself due to the highway robbery of Windows.  If Toontrack doesn’t listen to Linux users they are going to lose a lot of customers.  Like others have said, there are other Linux-friendly options.

[KEITH]

I am not sure if there are any viable options to EZ Drummer in Linux. I also use a program called Lightburn to control a laser cutter. The company has recently announced that they are dropping Linux support due to the extra workload caused due to the number of Linux flavours and all needing special individual attention, and I would imagine that this problem is why Toontrack are reluctant to look at Linux support.

What I would request is that they choose one distro, be it Debian, Mint, Ubuntu or whatever and have a go at supporting just that one. That way if someone really wants to migrate away from Windows, at least they can say they have supplied an option and the end user cannot really gripe about it anymore.

I will not go to Windows 11, it`s that simple.

If that means throwing away all the money I have spent with Toontrack, then that is very painful and disappointing, but so be it. There is a Linux alternative for almost everything else I do.

I have EZ Keys, but I can manage without it, I have EZ Mix (Not yet upgraded for obvious reasons ) I can manage without it. I do not have EZ Bass yet and the way things are going it looks unlikely that I will.

I wonder, what the options for a substitute for EZ Drummer in Linux, any ideas?

[Jerryteacup]

You’re right, Keith. Choose one distro and optimize to it. Sure, that will suck to a lot of users but… what do we do?

I’m in the same boat. I’m looking at throwing away hundreds of euros by now for my EZ Drummer plugins if I leave Windows behind. Audio production is my only hurdle.

As for Linux options… Well, Mt-Power DrumKit 2 is an option although they need Wine and some VST bridge. So, it doesn’t work natively.

I just wish that these developers that do their stuff for  Windows or Mac would try and get rid of as much platform dependency as poissible. Hell, okay, maybe they ARE doing it. I’m just saying that,  it might make an easier time for trying to step out of the Microsoft or Apple sphere… and, yeah, since those corporates are slimy, it’s possible they have some sort of contracts with software developers. I don’t know.

Oh. Yeah. And proper drivers for Linux for the DAW’s.

Windows 11 is becoming less and less unappealing. I’m preparing an alternative solution as it is.

[guitarzan]

Count me in on wanting a Linux native version…. The last WIN machine I have is a holdout due to recording.  Spyware, hardware obsolescence, unwanted software…no thanks.

 

Typing this from my test Ubuntu Studio setup, I have EZ Drummer 3 running via yabridge but native Linux would be perfect!

 

 

[KEITH]

Thanks guitarzan

I don`t know what yabridge is, I will have to investigate. I am currently trying out Mint but would be willing to jump to any Linux version that supported EZ Drummer

I will also run a PC with Win 10 for a little while but keep it away from the internet

[MaxNotIan]

I would like to add to the requests for native Linux support, and I hope that anyone else who feels the same will contribute to this thread and make the mods and devs take notice!

 

I haven’t used Linux before but am hoping to make the move, as much for political reasons as anything else.

 

[OFF TOPIC ASIDE]:

@KEITH – “I will also run a PC with Win 10 for a little while but keep it away from the internet”

 

I used Xp up until 2018 and have been on Win7 since.  I use the internet all the time and have never had any issues.  I never kept XP updated, and don’t/haven’t kept 7 updated.  I really think the vast, vast majority of viruses etc come down to dodgy sites and user error…

 

[joabogers]

I’m reading reports with mixed results of people running Ubuntu Studio + wine + yabridge and not much else to get Toontrack Product Manager and various EZ* product VSTs working. The most common problem is that dragging MIDI fragments from the EZ Drummer UI into a DAW doesn’t work, and another is that installing updates via the Toontrack Product Manager in Wine is easy to mess up. Yet there are people who have gotten it up and running.

In their attempts to get it to work, people tend to go down rabbit holes that : install various audio and video libraries, try Carla, mess around with pipewire, pulseaudio and jack, install multiple versions of wine… If Toontrack isn’t committed to getting their products working on an OS that has a brighter future than Windows, they could at least put up an unofficial, no-guarantees, don’t-base-your-purchase-decision-on-this manual up at https://www.toontrack.com/manual/superior-drummer-3/?search=linux to save people having to roam around Reddit to find decade-old posts that will bollox up your OS if followed now.

[manvel]

I was using Superior Drummer on Linux just fine with Wine and yabridge, but it’s borken because of some random Wine update.

Superior Drummer on Linux would be awesome, please consider.

[joabogers]

Yeah there’s a problem with Wine and the switch that Ubuntu made to Wayland. People are reverting to x11 and older versions of Wine, but that’s not a long-term solution. Toontrack building a proper Ubuntu/Wayland-compatible version would save a lot of trouble.

[manvel]

I wanted to leave here for people looking for a fix for unresponsive UI.

I downgraded to Wine 9.0 and changed DPI to 192 using winecfg (because UI still was unresponsive with other DPIs).

[Joey Prevo]

We’re finished with Windows and have switched to Linux (Ubuntu 24). It’s really disappointing to see Toontrack still doesn’t have a Linux version available. Trying to run Ezmix 3 in any version of Wine has proved fruitless. Most of the time it won’t launch at all, and if it does, it has graphics issues and is unusable. So many people I know and work with have dumped Windows. What’s it gonna take to get a Linux version of this? Are we free to resell our license info to another Windows user if Toontrack isn’t gonna address this?

[Author]

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