[SOLVED] Installing Bitwig Studio on Ubuntu Studio 24.04

[kecaptuyul]

Hi there

As the topic's title suggests, I have a problem installing Bitwig Studio's latest version on Ubuntu Studio 24.04
I tried to do it the .deb file "bitwig-studio-5.3.8.deb" in a classic way using command

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sudo apt install ./bitwig-studio-5.3.8.deb

It didn't work,because of dependency problem (?) stated this way :

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"f@f-Ubuntu-W10:~/Desktop/share/M/Bitwig$ sudo apt install ./bitwig-studio-5.3.8.deb
[sudo] Password for f:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Note: Selecting "bitwig-studio" instead of "./bitwig-studio-5.3.8.deb"
Some packages cannot be installed. This may mean
that you requested the impossible, or, if you are using
the unstable distribution, that some packages have not yet been
created or have not been released from Incoming.
The following information should help you resolve the situation:

The following packages contain unmet dependencies:
bitwig-studio: Depends: zlib1g:i386 butt is not installable
Depends: libx11-xcb1:i386 but it is not installable
Depends: libx11-6:i386 but it is not installable
Depends: libxau6:i386 but it is not installable
Depends: libxdmcp6:i386 but it is not installable
Depends: libxrender1:i386 but it is not installable
Depends: libfontconfig1:i386 but it is not installable
Depends: libxcb-icccm4:i386 but it is not installable
Depends: libxcb-util1:i386 but it is not installable
Depends: libxcb-shm0:i386 but it is not installable
Depends: libxcb-xinput0:i386 but it is not Installable
Depends: libxkbcommon0:i386 but it is not installable
Depends: libxkbcommon-x11-0:i386 but it is not installable
Depends: libpixman-1-0:i386 but it is not installable
Depends: libcairo2:i386 but it is not installable
E: Unable to fix problems, broken packages are in "keep as is" mode"

Being new to Ubuntu and a basic PC user, I asked help to Chat-GPT, and it interprets the situation as follows:

This means that Bitwig Studio ships an internal version of Java and its libraries, but some system dependencies, particularly 32-bit (:i386), are still required—probably to support certain 32-bit VST plugins, or for compatibility reasons.
However, your system (Ubuntu Studio 24.04) appears to not allow the installation of 32-bit packages by default, or multi-arch (i386) support is not yet enabled.

It recommended me to activate 32-bit architecture this way

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sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo apt update

I did this but the problem stays the same
Anybody has a clue about this?
I haven't tried with Flatpak yet, maybe i will letter but 1st I'd like to try the "normal" install.
More generally, I'd be curious to have feedback from other people using Bitwig Studio on Ubuntu Studio

Thanks in advance for your insights on this!

[sysrqer]

Not sure if anyone else can help but you should contact support if the solution isn't obvious, it is packaged to be used in Ubuntu so support should be able to help with this (and getting their help is part of what you pay for).

[talby]

As stated already, you need to ask the Bitwig support how to still deal with this i386 architecture issue, and maybe ask and report back to us, if they allow you to publish the answer, why they still place a dependency on such meanwhile outdated stuff. For users still requiring it, they could offer an alternative installer file, but for mainstream users they better could prepare a version targeting mainstream 64-bit Linux distributions.

By the way, I find it quite risky to follow "advice" from AI, here Chat GPT, which is merely as good as an assumption. Understand its "advice" like being derived from statistics on statements found wherever published, maybe published in a scammer forum. AI is good to remind you on details which you already studied and understood in the past, so that you by a refreshed memory became able to evaluate based on your former knowledge again if the suggestion of the AI makes sense or not.

[Axel-Erfurt]

Is --add-architecture i386 really necessary? 5 years ago I was able to test it in this way. Without i386 -> Bitwig Test
But I haven't tried it since then.

[Babarosa]

Do you really install a Debian package with

sudo apt install ./bitwig-studio-5.3.8.deb

Did you try also

sudo dpkg -i *.deb

with the Bitwig package in your home directory?

[kecaptuyul]

Thanks for your replies

People warning about Chat-GTP are absolutely right, it can gather some useful information, but for giving accurate solutions to a situated problem it's a bit random. Sometimes I'm lazy and give it a try, this wasn't my best choice yesterday night.

For those curious to know the trick and in case someone would encounter the same issue, I reached Bitwig's support today and they gave me the right code to install the missing stuff:

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sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo apt-get update

[kecaptuyul]

Hi Babarosa, thanks for your reply

Do you really install a Debian package with

sudo apt install ./bitwig-studio-5.3.8.deb

Yes it worked this way (after the installation of missing architecture i386 stuff)
I started the console from folder where I had the .deb file - not the home directory
Is it something to avoid usually?

The app has been installed in the /opt/ folder, and the user settings in home/myname/BitwigStudio

[kecaptuyul]

Is --add-architecture i386 really necessary? 5 years ago I was able to test it in this way. Without i386 -> Bitwig Test
But I haven't tried it since then.

Hi Axel,
I'm not able to answer, but the reply from Bitwig's staff seems to implicitly confirms it, at least for the version I installed.
I have no idea what it is used for but without it the installation didn't work...

[Axel-Erfurt]

I have just read that i386 is probably needed for some plugins.

[talby]

The following two commands achieve the exactly same, they install the *.deb package from the current working directory " ./ " , and they by the way also care to resolve dependencies:

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sudo apt install ./bitwig-studio-5.3.8.deb
sudo apt-get install ./bitwig-studio-5.3.8.deb

Command apt is a simplified shortcut to the most commonly used options of command apt-get. Because apt-get has so many options to offer, it sometimes makes it difficult, especially for beginners, to select the correct options. So, for simple, common, frequent tasks the command apt is often preferred over the full fledged apt-get.

It would be a different story if this command would be used:

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sudo dpkg -i ./bitwig-studio-5.3.8.deb

This dpkg command is in the end the one which becomes called by apt-get or apt for actually getting the installation work done, and dpkg would also notify about missing dependencies. But dpkg, other than apt or apt-get, would NOT try to resolve this situation of missing dependencies. It would leave it to the user to also trigger the installation of dependency packages, if wished.

If the Bitwig support would have given you the dpkg command, then they would have answered you to force the installation of the Bitwig package without further caring for the missing dependencies. But they gave you the command as you also got it suggested by Chat GPT, apt or apt-get being interchangeable. I do not understand why these now worked for you, and before did not work.

Understanding what happened would be interesting, but we might never find out and lose value time spendable on music making. So, good that you got the problem solved!

[kecaptuyul]

Hi Talby
Thanks for the explanations, it helps me to understand better what I'm doing - and not only copy codes from various sources!

[lilith]

It's not necessary to install Bitwig at all. Just unpack the deb and run the binary. I never installed it.