(OLD) Ubuntu 22.04: pipewire, wayland and flatpak - A small guide

What other apps and distros do you use to round out your studio?

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scott.thomason
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Re: Ubuntu 22.04: pipewire, wayland and flatpak - A small guide

Post by scott.thomason »

Hi again @Senbee. I have another question for you...

Are all those flatpaks coming from flathub alone? Or do you connect to multiple flatpak repos? The reason I ask is that if you search for some of those packages at flathub.org, they aren't found. For example, most of the packages from org.freedesktop.LinuxAudio.Plugins. ???
---scott

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Re: Ubuntu 22.04: pipewire, wayland and flatpak - A small guide

Post by tavasti »

Linux veteran & Novice musician

Latest track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycVrgGtrBmM

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Re: Ubuntu 22.04: pipewire, wayland and flatpak - A small guide

Post by Senbee »

scott.thomason wrote: Sat May 14, 2022 1:43 am My next question is: how do you know what you have and manage it over the long term? With apt, you have a centralized source of information about 99% of what's installed.
Flatpak is really handful to manage.

Update all:

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flatpak update
(it's the same of sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade)

Remove an app

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flatpak uninstall <name>
Autoremove:

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flatpak uninstall --unused
Search in the repos:

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flatpak search <name>
Run an app from the terminal:

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flatpak run <complete name>
example: flatpak run org.gimp.GIMP
the complete name can be guessed by: flatpak search gimp

List of the installed app and runtimes:

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flatpak list
List only the installed apps:

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flatpak list --app
Correct conflicts (never happened but, who knows!):

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flatpak repair
You can also manage flatpak graphically, with Gnome Software:

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sudo apt install gnome-software gnome-software-plugin-flatpak
Some other flatpak commands:
https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/using-flatpak.html
Last edited by Senbee on Sat May 14, 2022 12:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'm a SUDO wrestler - Italy - Ubuntu 22.04 - Ardour 8.4
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Re: Ubuntu 22.04: pipewire, wayland and flatpak - A small guide

Post by Senbee »

scott.thomason wrote: Sat May 14, 2022 4:06 am Hi again @Senbee. I have another question for you...

Are all those flatpaks coming from flathub alone? Or do you connect to multiple flatpak repos? The reason I ask is that if you search for some of those packages at flathub.org, they aren't found. For example, most of the packages from org.freedesktop.LinuxAudio.Plugins. ???
I think they are all from flathub. maybe you didn't restart your PC after adding the repos?
If you follow the guide you find them all. Tested on many PCs on 22.04.

I'm a SUDO wrestler - Italy - Ubuntu 22.04 - Ardour 8.4
All my songs: www.soundcloud.com/stefano-droghetti/se ... -droghetti
My Youtube channel: www.youtube.com/@StefanoDroghetti/featured
My homepage (in Italian): www.stefanodroghetti.it

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Re: Ubuntu 22.04: pipewire, wayland and flatpak - A small guide

Post by Senbee »

tavasti wrote: Sat May 14, 2022 6:26 am Related:

https://ludocode.com/blog/flatpak-is-not-the-future
I think it can be true. But at the moment, in Ubuntu 22.04 on wayland, I think it's the quickest and easiest way to use music software.
Probably on Manjaro it's not. But if we talk about Ubuntu, I think it's better to use flatpak, at least until 20.04.1 (after 4th of August) or KXStudio big update.

I'm a SUDO wrestler - Italy - Ubuntu 22.04 - Ardour 8.4
All my songs: www.soundcloud.com/stefano-droghetti/se ... -droghetti
My Youtube channel: www.youtube.com/@StefanoDroghetti/featured
My homepage (in Italian): www.stefanodroghetti.it

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Re: Ubuntu 22.04: pipewire, wayland and flatpak - A small guide

Post by luciorgomes »

Ubuntu and 'up to date' software are not realy compatible.

falkTX made this consideration last month (about mantaining ppa repositories for Ubuntu):
The extreme alternative would be to move to ArchLinux and their new Unofficial Pro-Audio Package Repository, and while tempting, I think a lot of users would be disappointed and sad with that call.
I was with Ubuntu (Xubuntu, Kubuntu...) for years. Now i'm on Arch world (using EndeavourOS). No regrets at all. There's no need to compile every new Ardour version by myself anymore. Or any new software. If it is not available in binaries in Arch packages, probably it will be in AUR. And no stability issues (until now).

If you want a ultra stable and safe system, Ubuntu LTS is a better choice. But for an updated system, the Arch architeture is the way, I believe.
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Re: Ubuntu 22.04: pipewire, wayland and flatpak - A small guide

Post by oddy.o.lynx »

I am not a fan of Flatpak for Audio production. On one hand it really needs Pipewire to be successful. So for a Debian 11 computer not ideal. However on Mint 20.3 using the Pipewire PPA at Github it works great.

Moving beyond my hesitance with Flatpak for realtime audio production, I do use it for other audio related stuff... I've installed the Flatpak versions of Musescore, VLC, and Audacity because Flatpak offers the most recent build of each of these applications that are not native to Mint 20.3. I am testing Zrythm as it's a pain to build locally. This is a Flatpak advantage which is why am not anti-Flatpak. The issue is on a JACK only computer Flatpak is a non-starter. I also find that Flatpak apps tend to use way more RAM (I am also not completely sold on containerization). On the Debian 11 system Musescore 3 is available via backports, Audacity is built locally using docker and the latest version of VLC (for codecs) is not an issue, so there's no real impetus to install Flatpak or Snap.

Recently Bitwig decided to offer only a Flatpak version of their 4.3 beta. This kind of irks me because I would think it's a matter of running a script to package the deb. In order for me to use the Flatpak version requires installing a lot of plugins via Flatpak. This would create a lot of duplication if am also using KXStudio repos. The good news is I managed to unpack the Bitwig Flatpak (thanks Arch Audio Team) so can still run it outside the Flatpak container.

I am not completely closed minded. So am going to watch this discussion with great interest and offer some tips as there were some questions about installing, Flatpak apps. I prefer the simple route... from the command line to search audio plugins...

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flatpak search audio
will give a list of Audio apps in the repo

then if Bitwig is the intended installation

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flatpak install Bitwig
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Re: Ubuntu 22.04: pipewire, wayland and flatpak - A small guide

Post by sunrat »

tavasti wrote: Sat May 14, 2022 6:26 am Related:

https://ludocode.com/blog/flatpak-is-not-the-future
Most interesting. I never use containerised apps and this sums up the reasons perfectly.
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Re: Ubuntu 22.04: pipewire, wayland and flatpak - A small guide

Post by oddy.o.lynx »

if anyone would like to unpack the Bitwig Flatpack

Bitwig Studio 4.3 Beta 1.flatpak is available at https://www.bitwig.com/dl/?id=478&os=installer_linux
Bitwig Studio 4.3 Beta 2.flatpak is available at https://www.bitwig.com/dl/?id=479&os=installer_linux

I would recommend to create a folder and place the flatpak file in it

from there open a terminal and run the command

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ostree init --repo=repo --mode=bare-user-only
this will create a folder called repo

then either

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ostree --repo=repo static-delta apply-offline "Bitwig Studio 4.3 Beta 1.flatpak" -v
or

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ostree --repo=repo static-delta apply-offline "Bitwig Studio 4.3 Beta 2.flatpak" -v
depending on which version you downloaded

then this command

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ostree --repo=repo checkout -U $(find repo -name '*.commit' | head -n1 | sed 's,/[^/]*$,,' | sed 's,.*/,,') extracted
this creates a folder called extracted where the application resides... there are two elements
one for what would normally be in /opt/bitwig-studio and the other for what would go in /usr/share

==============================================

# This command will remove unnecessary flatpak related files

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rm -rf extracted/files/share
rm -f extracted/files/manifest.json
rm -rf extracted/files/extensions
==============================================

to run Bitwig

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extracted/files/bin/bitwig-studio
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Re: Ubuntu 22.04: pipewire, wayland and flatpak - A small guide

Post by Senbee »

If I had money to buy a computer only for music production, I'd probably use Manjaro. And follow everything Unfa does :-)

But I have a single PC, and I need a very stable distribution to work, this PC is not only used by me and so I also need something very documented. And, actually, nowadays you can find a deb for almost everything "real people working in real companies" :-) search for.
That's why I'm stuck with Ubuntu (or derivates). But I agree with you about the problems of flatpak and snap.

So please don't think my guide stands for "Hey guys Ubuntu with flatpak is the best way to run music on Linux!!!", my guide actually says: "if you have to use Ubuntu, the best [edit: not the best, let's say the easiest and fastest] way to make music - on 22.04, in this very moment - is with flatpak".

I'm a SUDO wrestler - Italy - Ubuntu 22.04 - Ardour 8.4
All my songs: www.soundcloud.com/stefano-droghetti/se ... -droghetti
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Re: Ubuntu 22.04: pipewire, wayland and flatpak - A small guide

Post by sysrqer »

oddy.o.lynx wrote: Sat May 14, 2022 3:11 pm
Recently Bitwig decided to offer only a Flatpak version of their 4.3 beta. This kind of irks me because I would think it's a matter of running a script to package the deb. In order for me to use the Flatpak version requires installing a lot of plugins via Flatpak. This would create a lot of duplication if am also using KXStudio repos. The good news is I managed to unpack the Bitwig Flatpak (thanks Arch Audio Team) so can still run it outside the Flatpak container.
Yes, I'm not very happy about this. I've written to them to request that they don't only provide flatpak because it's just a massive hassle. I don't really see what problem it solves. Not only can you not use system installed plugins but yabridge plugins don't work either.
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Re: Ubuntu 22.04: pipewire, wayland and flatpak - A small guide

Post by Kirtai »

scott.thomason wrote: Sat May 14, 2022 4:06 am Hi again @Senbee. I have another question for you...

Are all those flatpaks coming from flathub alone? Or do you connect to multiple flatpak repos? The reason I ask is that if you search for some of those packages at flathub.org, they aren't found. For example, most of the packages from org.freedesktop.LinuxAudio.Plugins. ???
Non GUI apps don't appear on the Flathub website/storefront yet.
You need to use the command line or another front end for them
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Re: Ubuntu 22.04: pipewire, wayland and flatpak - A small guide

Post by Senbee »

Senbee wrote: Fri May 13, 2022 7:42 pm Anyway you can always use an application (no matter how it's installed), launch it and connect it to flatpak Ardour.
For QmidiArp I just installed it as always:

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sudo apt install qmidiarp
then I launched it, and connected it to Ardour via qpwgraph (I guess I can do the same with Carla or QJackCtl), added an arpeggiator to the tab bar, chose a template, pressed Play and it works perfectly:
Well, in this way I noticed MIDI clock doesn't work, so I have to set manually tempo in QMidiArp...
If you guys find a way to sync an external arpeggiator, it would be great ^_-

P.S.: updated the guide

I'm a SUDO wrestler - Italy - Ubuntu 22.04 - Ardour 8.4
All my songs: www.soundcloud.com/stefano-droghetti/se ... -droghetti
My Youtube channel: www.youtube.com/@StefanoDroghetti/featured
My homepage (in Italian): www.stefanodroghetti.it

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