FL Studio

What works

Install works, although you are prompted with errors that do not affect the use of FL Studio. Collab functions for the most part. The most typically used functions of FL Studio work well (Step Sequencer, Piano Roll, Effects, VST's, Playlist, Saving, Audio Export).

What does not

The software runs slightly slower than it does on Windows.

Workarounds

What was not tested

Extra hardware (Midi Keyboards, etc.) and functions available only for Producer edition.

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU:
• Driver:

Additional Comments

Requires a small modification to Wine. The tutorial can be found for FL Studio users at http://forum.image-line.com/viewtopic.php?t=3075&highlight=ubuntu

This is a how-to for getting FL Studio to run in Wine. It won't run perfectly(not yet anyway), and there are some quirks and flaws but it is usable. :)

This how-to updated as wine progresses and changes.

 

Note
If you have FL Studio installed on your Windows partition it is recommend you keep it separate from the one you're about to install in Linux and just copy over your Project Files later.

Telling wine to access your windows install is not a good idea.

 

The How-To

1. make sure you have the latest Wine
2. You can get the latest Wine packages for the most common distros here: http://winehq.org/site/download
3. start your favorite terminal emulator(Konsole,GTerm)or press ALT+F2 and type in: winecfg
4. Download the latest version of FL Studio(7.0) and save it in your Home folder.
5. Open your favorite terminal program (Konsole,GTerm,etc) and type in:
   
6. wine flstudio7_RC6b.exe
7. The install will start (you'll get a few error popups, just click OK to them).
8. To make it easier to follow this how-to, chose the default install locations.
9. After you're done the installation you'll have to edit a text file to be able to play most of the sound files that come with FL Studio.
10. Copy and paste the following command into the terminal and press enter
11. sed -i 's/\[drivers32\]/\[drivers32\]\nMSACM.vorbis=vorbis.acm/' ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system.ini
12. Wasp and DrumSynth plugins(and others) need a dll called mfc42.dll to run.
13. To install this dll, at the console copy and paste the following
14. wget http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks && sh winetricks vcrun6

To import your FL Studio key to run FL Studio in Full Express/Fruity/Producer/whatever you paid for mode. (not needed to run in demo mode)
Download your FL Studio Registry key: FLStudioLogin
Save it in your Home folder. Now press ALT+F2(or start your terminal program) and type in: regedit
This'll start the wine registry editor. Click Registry->Import Registry File, and then select your reg file.

Put all that in a text file and save it in your Home directory. It doesn't matter what file name you give it.


REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings]
@=""
"ProxyEnable"=dword:00000000



Now import it the same way you imported the FL Studio Registry key. This will enable the news reader and FPC Drumkit and DirectWave downloads.


Ok, so that's all the tweaking that has to be done with Wine, the rest will be in FL Studio. :)

You should have an FL Studio icon on your desktop, but if you don't you'll start FL Studio from the terminal, and you can make a desktop icon yourself later.
Start FL Studio with the desktop icon or in a terminal program like this:

wine "c:\Program Files\Image-Line\FL Studio 7\FL.exe"

Experiment with buffer length in Options->Audio Settings.
Polling and Hardware Buffers options don't seem to have any effect on performance.
Enabling the 32-bit buffer will causes FL Studio to use up 100% cpu and not play at all.

FL Studio 7 has multithreaded support! Go to General and check "Multithreaded generator processing". I don't have a multi-core setup so I can't test this feature. If you do then leave a comment on how well it works when submitting test data. :)

When you start FL Studio, renice (lower the priority) of FL.exe to 19:
In KDE, Launch KSysGuard (or CTLR+ESC) and right click on FL.exe and renice it to 19.
In GNOME, launch the system process list, right click on FL.exe and set the priority to 19.
This'll lower the buffer underruns by a lot and make the whole experience much smoother (no underruns when doing other things).


That's it, just read through the Know Issues to avoid them if possible and enjoy FL Studio in Linux. :)

Known Issues

• Moving a window in FL Studio is extremely slow and will spike the cpu usage to 100%. This is because Wine is very inefficient with this part of the windows API at the moment.
• FL Studio playback will stutter and freeze for a second if you do anything anything else that uses the cpu. This is because Wine is unable to prioritize cpu usage to a section of the wine sound driver, and this causes stutters and buffer underruns(bug #1631).
• (This might not be as noticable on multi-core setups since the cpu load will be distributed on the extra cores.)
• Renice FL.exe to 19. This will prioritize core parts of Wine (like sound) over the really slow FL Studio GUI and this will greatly decrease buffer underruns.
• If you get a notice saying something like "Cannot open DSound device" when starting FL Studio then log out and in and the problem should be gone.
• Audio latiencies should not be a problem since realtime kernels can be used and JACK substitutes ASIO, but until Wine can prioritize cpu usage to avoid buffer underruns this problem can't be solved.
• EDIT: The sound thread is now reasonably prioritized with the renicing. I'll have a go at the realtime kernel and JACK.
• The ReWired plugin does not work.
• Using .rex files does not work.
• Any hardware synths or keyboards probably won't work with FL Studio, however MIDI hardware might work. A user mentioned their midi keyboard works. Thanks for the comment. :)
• Anything beyond stereo(5.1,7.1) will not work. This is a limitation of the current Wine sound driver.
• "Help" starts, but isn't very usable. Use a native CHM viewer(KchmViewer,GnoCHM) to view the help files.
• They're located in: FL Studio 7/Help
• "About" does not scroll through the credits.

 

wine notepad 'C:\windows\system.ini' or your favorite *nix text editor
(*nix path is '~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system.ini')

...And then add this in the drivers32 section:

MSACM.vorbis=vorbis.acm

 Good luck!!!

Reported fixed in wine 1.3.28 and later