+1 for linux support...

please RME can you make something in the same way nvidia have closed source drivers/software for linux.

For me that would be Ubuntu and HDSPe AIO

Thanks

+1 for linux support. In my circles Linux has become even more popular than Windows and OSX, especially now as Microsoft has adopted some of the same disrispectful strategies as Apple.

Don't believe me - make a poll - or a kickstarter campaing! See how many will pledge. I bet you'll be surprised.

Furthermore - I hereby promise to purchase an UCX/UFX interface if there's support for Linux. You can hold me up on this, and please do. The lack of Linux compatibility has been the only thing holding me back. I also hate the fact I can't even use my Babyface pro fully. (CC mode just don't cut it)

Ramses, the scenario you suggest is just one of many.

It most certainly didn't take 750k to provide linux driver for hammerfall cards.

And you can still get a big portion of the sales boost without an "official" linux support - or rather leave it on the community.

Yes, you're probably right about totalmix being as big of an issue as the drivers. However, if totalmix runs on both OSX and windows, it may already be written on a multi-platform architecture. Furthermore, OSX is based on unix, so these worlds are not completely apart. Digicheck is useful, but not a requirement per se.

If VST's weren't well supported on linux, that would totally been a deal breaker for me too. Luckily the apps and tools I've used support both 32 and 64 bit, which is nice.

I used to work on Cubase too, but then moved over to Reaper, which runs natively on Linux, as well as on Windows and Mac. Another very popular one is Bitwig, which has nearly identical workflow to Ableton Live - and also runs natively on Linux, Windows and Mac.

I completely respect that everyone have different demands and criteria - linux is not the ideal choise for everyone. For my workflow, linux works much better - and this seems to be true for countless of other people, and the number seems to be growing. It would be so cool if RME would be there to support the movement.

Linux is very much like a moving target. Countless different distros with different kernel versions (some even making it hard to install proprietary drivers) and anyone trying to offer support will need to throw an unpredictable amount of manpower at it. That combined with a still small market... Regarding resources, RME is neither AMD, nor NVIDIA, I think.

Not a good idea as this doesn't make the situation any better.

It adds only to the fragmentation of the already fragmented Linux market and is not a real satisfactory solution for customers.

Customers put already a lot of time and efforts into their running Distribution and local installation and have no real interest to switch from their beloved Linux to another distribution.

Even worse, if this is being taken as a concept, then you will soon have dedicated Linux version for different commercial software. Surely not a good goal to go for ...

Linus should raise his voice and bring people together to put together a unified standard Linux distribution with one package management etc. But I think that nobody wants to pick up that ball.

So it will most likely stay as it is and this means stagnation and no better solutions..

If there's no will, there's no way - that's for sure. I think it's a bit nihilistic to argue that enabling people to use RME hardware on Linux would be unfathomably difficult: Nearly all hardware I have (and I have a LOT) has been plug & play in linux, even M-Audio (but not RME). All of my workstations and laptops have worked with linux right out of the box, much easier than with Windows. Some drivers are proprietary, some are not, some are done by a single developer without any help from the manufacturer. Having the CC mode is nice, but it's not enough for me. I'd like to see an ALSA-driver and Totalmix in some form or another. I don't expect RME to support all the distros, or even any single distro - RME may want to provide proprietary Alsa driver tested on one single distro (like Bitwig has done with Ubuntu), or merely provide the necessary documentation to the community and let nature take it's course. There's plethora of options for all the open-minded manufacturers. There's vast amounts of examples out there.

Microsoft no longer respects our privacy and freedom of choise, Apple never has. Thankfully we have Linux with it's diversity and multiple distros, and awesome communities around them.

For all devoted Gates and Jobs fans on the forum - We're not here to debate or guestimate how big the Linux market potential is among the potential RME buyers. You simply don't have this specific data or knowledge - none of us have. Only RME can evaluate it's position in the market, so lets let them do their own analysis, shall we.

Also remember you don't have to defend anyone: I'm writing this purely out of respect for RME - you guys make awesome products. And I get no joy out of writing this - In fact, if I didn't respect your work, I wouldn't bother using an hour of my time giving this feedback.

I'm here only to share my views on how to have my kind of customers buy more RME hardware (and I for one would buy UCX if I could make it work). Maybe you get some inspiration from my words and maybe you don't - if you decide to omit the Linux customer base and its potential, I respect you have realistically and open-mindedly considered the strategies and their cost vs reward.

I have a 2nd machine running Linux but until my DAW of choice Cubase which I am familiar (used since the Atari)  with is supported or one that offers the same power (I have reaper and although good it is nowhere near Cubase) then Linux is just not an option fir me. Also it’s not always as stable as you think. A few times now the version I have has updated and then the audio stopped working. I have Cubase running with my rme interface on a win 10 pc rock solid. I need that on Linux. By the way I see as many problems reported for Mac as I do pc. In some forums even more. Definitely on the SD3 forum.

Another issue is that there are so many versions/distributions of Linux and new ones pop up fairly often. If as a small firm like RME you start officially supporting Linux how many of these distributions do you have to commit to supporting and for how long? And supporting these may be even more challenging because some of these version are more/less optimized meaning they could use different versions of some underlying critical system libraries etc. By the way, I'm a huge fan of Linux over many years but it's only fair to point out these types of challenges.

Another vote for Linux here.

By another big RME fan.

I have 4 or 5 RME interfaces of different types and use them predominantly on Windows because of lack of proper Linux support.

But I really don't like the direction Microsoft is going in. With Windows I increasingly feel as if I'm fighting the OS to keep it vaguely suitable for serious audio work. You get to dread the next update. What are they going to do to us next? It just doesn't seem to be going in the direction of a serious engineering tool. Quite the reverse.

I appreciate that RME have many things to weigh up with this but I sincerely hope that the balance will tip in favour of Linux at some point. Linux seems to me to be going from strength to strength and so I'd have thought it's a matter of when, not if.

In which case, sooner the better. Best to be ahead of, not behind, the curve.

Ian.

An easy way to try is to make a bootable usb stick and study how it works.
Class compliant drivers should get started if you happen to have the right kind of RME device.
Personally, I still run on the studio side on a Windows machine, but AVlinux has been used at home for a year. Same software on both machines. Admittedly, RME's interface is in the studio. At home, Behringer's cheap box. Nothing here helps but hope hope and wait ... They do it if they want to. RME dudes would need a little Linux love.

https://www.bandshed.net/avlinux/

Interesting take on this topic by none other than Linus Torvalds. He confirms what has been talked about on this forum as well - it is very difficult and next to impossible to properly support Linux desktop apps because there are so many Linux distributions and they use all kinds of different libraries etc (so if vendor wants to properly support they must build/distribut/support many different binaries which will of course occasionally break when shared libraries get updated, etc).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pzl1B7nB9Kc

appimage could be some kind of solution for running Totalmix on Linux, for example, if RME could do that. But it will hardly help with driver integration. https://appimage.org/

Standardization would definitely be a good thing.

As I mentioned, it could be some sort of solution. Depends on so many things how it would work in practice.

But a good example of the functionality of Linux-side programs is Harrison Mixbus. Works on all three operating systems. The installer is good and everything works as it should. For some reason, they have succeeded. As well as an increasing number of plugin companies such as U-he, TAL plugins, Audio damage, Audio Assault ... and of course Reaper DAW

I’m not saying it would be easy, but it is possible. Admittedly, I'm not a coder.

[edit]
As a side note, Celemeony put ARA on GitHub. It is now opensource. An interesting thing. https://github.com/Celemony/ARA_SDK

Thank you and I am shocked what you can do with your super power.

Damn, people are uptight. Haha.

When you add up that RME statement that they don't have any time to even start it with statement from father of Linux (Linus Torvalds in that video I posted) that Linux is a nightmare to support on desktops it's really not surprising at all that RME does not want to go down the rabbit hole of supporting multiple Linux distributions and dealing with all the complexities of creating and supporting many different Linux binaries etc. It would actually be shocking if they decided to go down that road - probably would not be a great business decision even if it would be very popular with some of the RME user base. By the way, I am also a huge Linux fan and would love to see it but realistically it just does not seem this is where RME should spend their time given it's a small company with limited resources.

Those plugin companies that have started supporting Linux have generally done so for Ubuntu 18 and later

It cannot be everything for everyone. But it would be a much more enabling step. Another option in the future could be the music industry’s own Linux, which would be controlled by some community. e.g., linuxaudio.org. https://linuxaudio.org/

I would like this forum to have more respectful tone and avoid unnecessary provocation. There is room for everyone, both people and operating systems.

That may not be a bad idea at all. But how is that put into practice? I could immediately put, for example, € 100 for that purpose at first.

Being just a Hifi-user of ADI-2 DAC FS but also a Linux PC-user, I would already celebrate the nice touch if RME would release a Linux version of the firmware update program :-)

Of course, totally unnecessary. I admire the product perfectly without it. But certainly would be nice

I honestly don't see RME, or anyone else for that matter, officially supporting Linux any time soon. But the only thing RME really needs to do is to supply the Linux community with documentation and someone somewhere will make a good sure there is a good CC experience in linux. If someone was to port a full TotalMIX replacement RME would have to divulge a lot of secret sauce and that won't happen, but a good CC-implementation would be more then enough to make RME the goto for Linux users.
It does seem like RME is willing to help developers, so perhaps we just have to ask and RME will give the relevant information? It would be great if RME took the time to set up CC-based github projects for their cards with all the relevant documentation at least, perhaps some source files to get people up and running. Shouldn't be too much of a hassle? Hands off, really. Just put some files out there and let the Linux community take care of it themselves.

Bit outdated, it seems...

Djises, reverse-engineered audio interface driver written in assembly? Sounds like a nightmare of a project.
It takes a very dedicated programmer to see a project like that to completion, I think. Especially considering the maintenance involved after the initial driver has been released. It would be amazing if one, or a team of programmers, could get a project like this rolling. Perhaps issue some kind of financial incentive? The Amiga-cummunity has had bounties up for larger programming projects like this. Is that something to think about? Let everyone pitch in a little so that someone might want to claim the treasure by making a stable open source driver?

Many things have already been discussed here: https://forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.ph … 09&p=2

Basically, it would be great to have go for class-compliant mode for the USB interfaces plus having TotalMix for Linux. This would mean that the Interface would have to create a second device for the mixing communication, which might not work without a hardware change. It could be mapped to the standard usb-mixer, like e.g. for the old Focusrite Scarlett series, but the alsamixer will just burst into the user's face. So it might be the best idea to go via MIDI internally, and as it seems many commands of TotalMix are available to MIDI already: https://forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?id=24437

For my old Fireface 400, there is ffado-mixer als a TotalMix replacement and it is way behind the original I usually do my mobile recording on OS X these days, because of this. Usually you hear people saying OS X is king in media production, but this MacBook Pro 2017 that I have is by far the shittiest computer I ever owned. No connectors, and slow as hell. TotalMix slows it down because of its graphics (the meters, I assume), and so does the Blackmagic ATEM Software Control for video switchers. Plus, due to a current bug/change in OS X, one can run into having to load RME drivers manually on the command line.

Now loading drivers on the command line sounds much more like Linux than OS X.

I would like to friendly encourage the folks at RME to find a solution on how to TotalMix on Linux. Actually it might be quite a lot already if there was a documented way of communication with the hardware mixer – given the communication allows for using all features of the hardware.

TotalMix is a huge selling point to my opinion. If you have to bring your own monitor mixer for mobile recording, it's easier to buy some digital console with integrated USB or DANTE interface altogether, not needing RME products at all then. I put this old Fireface 400 in a 9,5" rack together with a QuadMic and a used MindPrind DI Port for two more inputs and one more headphone output. And of course I use TotalMix for the headphone mixes in recording. It's the coolest h.andbag one could own, this 9,5" rack. But without TotalMix, I wouldn't be half as useful.