FL Studio

What works

FL VST instruments and effects, sequencing, sequence recording, etc.

What does not

Minimizing (won't unminimize, might have to do with Emerald), registration (it said mine had expired, though it hasn't), some pop-up windows require alt+tabbing to get to. Help menu can't close.

Workarounds

What was not tested

External MIDI controllers, external plugins (others say works), audio input

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU:
• Driver:

Additional Comments

Graphic interface lags a lot and so does keyboard input, but it's still responsive to other things. Sound works for me without any special configuration

get the recent wineasio source from sourceforge: http://wineasio.sourceforge.net/

get the Steinberg ASIO SDK: http://www.steinberg.net/en/company/3rd_party_developer.html

unpack both.

Copy "asio.h" from the Asio SDK folder "common" into the wineasio folder.

You will need the wine source and the jack source for compiling: http://jackaudio.org/  (if not in one of your repos)

Compile wineasio (./configure make make install)

do: $ regsvr32 wineasio.dll

Now you have an ASIO driver running in wine that sends the audio signals to jack.  Best would be to install qjackctrl or something similar.

Before launching FL (or any other audio program using ASIO) make sure you have configured the jack server, and it is running.  Also make sure the only audio driver selected in winecfg is ALSA.

In FL you can then select in Options>Audio>Audiodevice>wineASIO

If it freezes when selecting wineasio, just kill FL and restart it, the wineasio driver should stay defaulted/selected.

this setup only works in 32bit oses, if youre running 64bit, you should search for wineasio-x-0.3 or something.  There are .debs and .rpms of a 64bit version of wineasio (called wineasio-x) somewhere in the web.  Google is your friend.   then you have to start jack, the jackbridge, then FL to get it running once installed.

If you'd like sound to work under PulseAudio (PA), you have to run programs with the "prefix" of [padsp], which launches programs under the PA server.

If it doesn't work with just the prefix, launch winecfg under PA

  padsp winecfg

Under the audio tab, you should have only checked the OSS drivers.

Performance issues are mainly with the GUI since it makes extensive use of GDI which is slow in Wine.

This can be worked around somewhat by decreasing the CPU usage to the GUI, making the sound more responsive , but on the flip side making the GUI less responsive.

To do this, open up the System Process List, then right-click on FL.exe and set priority to 19.

FL Studio can use the PC keyboard as a crude substitute MIDI keyboard.

check/uncheck under menu Options->Typing keyboard to piano

However in Gnome if you have keyboard repeating turned on

see menu System->Preferences->Keyboard->General->Repeat Keys

then these repeats are being sent and a typical sound generator/VST will "stutter" which is really just multiple MIDI keypresses/notes, so turning key repeats off in Gnome is a workaround for this problem.

Just tried Wine git 1.1.1-55 and for the first time I see the images rendered in the FL Help window.

Still no window minimize-restore-close buttons, but if I go to the Window Menu (upper left corner) and uncheck

"Always On Top"

I can make it go behind the main FL window. It stays open until FL is closed. In spite of the limitations I think the Help is now quite useable.

Bill