Hi,
porting a vst to linux is generally easy and sometimes absolutely trivial. What about creating a beta program for a linux vst version? U-he does that, there’s no support but most linux users pay their licenses nevertheless. Bitwig supports linux; 3.0 is upcoming and has modular fx with pitch input which sounds astonishing on guitar, so a truly multiplatform jamorigin VST would complement that quite well.
Allthough a VST port for linux might seem simple, the amount of work/support needed for it would be considerable, and if we were to release a standalone on linux it would be very hard to get the product as good as on win/mac/iOS, with all those flavours of Linux.
MG covers allready 3 platforms (iOS,macOS, and Windows) and the amount of work that comes with that is considerable: adding Linux and/or Android would be an overload now.
But we’ll keep an eye on it.
Yes, I heard this answer other times and also from other software companies. I’ll leave my arguments here anyway.
Look: I love your product; I tried it on windows and I found it unbelievably good; but I can’t use and will never buy it, it since my setup is linux. I understand you have no budget to get staff specifically working on linux, but on the other hand you would get some more traction if you embrace linux users.
U-he, bitwig and pianoteque did that and I guess it’s clear that they got some good advantage by that (look at the growth of bitwig, which is a competitor to nothing less than Ableton live!). I do believe linux users are a fraction of bitwig’s users that are significantly more vocal and more attached to the product than the rest. I simply can’t switch to live, for instance, so I became a supporter of bitwig.
Also, just to be very clear and direct: I do think support for linux should NOT be your concern; if you sell cross-platform licenses you can let people just be “beta testers” for the linux version until you have a large enough user base. I don’t think many linux-audio producers would complain.
eagerly awaiting for news (since a couple of years) on the topic.
You state to not expect support on such a product: this is your personal choice, but most users will expect full support if they buy it explicitly for their Linux computer… So that is the reason we’ll only do it well supported, if we’ll support it at all: we wouldn’t want to ask money from people for a product we’re not convinced of ourselves.
The amount of traction which is obtainable from a linux version is a black box to us: there has been little demand for it sofar. We occasionally are asked whether we have an android version (2 or 3 times a year) and Linux is even behind that.
If Bitwig and maybe a few other professional DAW’s start to attract more users on lInux, we would most likely receive more request for a linux version, sofar this effect hasnt been really noticeable.
Hi,
+1 from me for Linux version. There are not just Bitwig only commercial DAW, but Reaper, Tracktion, Mixbus. And of course many opensource DAW/Hosts.
Allthough a VST port for linux might seem simple
MG build in JUCE, so it seems, yes
I think it can be free (time limited) for beta testing period.
Hi @Paul. I’m going to buy a fishman tripleplay soon, although for my needs, a software vst would have sufficed. But I use Linux (as stated earlier). I never replied to the “traction which is obtainable from a linux version” thing, because I don’t work for the company and don’t know your internals.
But generally speaking: I’ve never met any musician who knows of jamorigin virtual midi guitar. Sometimes I mentioned it to other guitarists, but they were really skeptical of a software non-hexaphonic thing. I am too, to a certain extent, because I don’t know how much it occupies the CPU slot it gets, and so how risky it is for overruns with low-latency settings.
Bitwig was the same a few years ago: no one knew it, and no one would bet on its success. Now I am pretty sure that being one of the very few commercial supporters of the linux audio scene HAS been a driving factor of their success. Most linux-audio users say good things about it even if they don’t use it. Jamorigin virtual midi guitar also needs people to talk more about it.
Now the big question: in your opinion did bitwig get any request for a linux version prior to their 1.0 release?? I don’t think so. They just had the beta and then they ported it because of several users asking about it? Nah. They invested in being multiplatform and it paid off.
Your decision, nevertheless.
Hi Vicenzo,
Guitarsynthesis/pitch to midi in general is a niche product, that isn’t easy to target via a simple profile. For every interested guitarist there might be like 9 people just wanting to hear guitar and nothing else.
About forcing into Linux: The people of Bitwig have started out with a real big budget: They have the resources to also invest in a Linux version. Investing is good, if you have the assets… Bitwig had a flying start with former top Ableton employees:
from their wiki; "Bitwig was founded and developed in Berlin by Claes Johanson, Pablo Sara, Nicholas Allen and Volker Schumacher in 2009.
[6] Since 2010, Placidus Schelbert has been the CEO after he left his position as an International Sales Manager at Ableton, in the same year.[7]"
In the end, small companies like ours might benefit from bigger investments from companies like Bitwig, paving the way to more general use of LInux as an audio platform.
Bump.
Has there been any inquiry into getting funding to make a Linux version?
I have got MIDI Guitar running on ubuntu and AV Linux for about a year. Using WINE and both LinVST and Yabridge as a linux VST .so in Reaper. Never tried as stand alone. Overhead is low and does not effect the performance of tracking.
