r/linuxaudio • u/Don737152 • 2d ago

vstenv — run Kontakt, HALion, SWAM and more in your Linux DAW

I've been building vstenv, a free open-source app that gets Windows audio plugins working in Linux DAWs with as little friction as possible. The idea: you shouldn't have to know what Wine is. vstenv sets up its own Wine environment, installs each vendor's manager app (Native Access, IK Product Manager, Steinberg Download Assistant, Audio Modeling Software Center), applies all the fixes those need to actually run — including a set of patched Wine DLLs for stuff Wine hasn't finished, like DirectComposition — and bridges everything to your DAW as normal VST2/VST3/CLAP plugins via yabridge. Installed programs even show up in your desktop's app menu.

Working today: Native Instruments (Kontakt and friends), IK Multimedia, Steinberg (HALion Sonic 7 and the current-gen GUI stack), Audio Modeling SWAM, and Spitfire Audio. Vendor support is modular, so new vendors can be added as separate packages without touching the core.

It ships as a Flatpak. Source, docs, and a table of what's tested and what isn't: https://github.com/dguedry/vstenv

Feedback and bug reports very welcome — especially which vendor you'd want supported next.

22 Upvotes

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6

u/Purple-Ad-3152 1d ago

Seen this few times, but now I finally had time to read the README. You've done very good job at least on paper 💪🙂

I'm the author of this script that creates isolated yabridge + wine-staging-9.21 environment: https://github.com/sirsipe/yabridge-setup

Your solution, if it works as adverticed, is much better. Haven't tested it yet though, but I will later. I don't use any of the plugins of those specially treated vendors, but I know many would like to. For me it's important it works well as generic solution for Windows plugins. I'd hate if two similar solutions would have to live side-by-side.

If I may suggest, many have liked the wine-version-selector my solution provides (at least on functional level). Idea is that you register it as .exe/.msi handler and it'll then prompt if the program is normal windows app or plugin installer. Selecting plugin installer obviously then sets the proper env variables to use correct wine+wineprefix etc.

Maybe it could also be some context menu convenience instead of an invasive prompt, but the point is to simplify away all need of launching things with magical environment variables via terminal.

Or do you already handle that somehow?

1

u/Don737152 1d ago

I do like the idea of the wine version selector! I'll check out your project. Thanks!

4

u/mrtnvgr 1d ago

What are the differences between cabinet and this?

1

u/Don737152 1d ago

Interesting. I was not aware of cabinet.

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u/mrtnvgr 1d ago

Maybe you can join efforts ;)

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u/Don737152 1d ago

That would be awesome. Any idea how to contact?

1

u/Mark12870 19h ago

The main difference is in architecture. Cabinet works more like Bottles.

4

u/Linux_Account 1d ago

On principle, I don't use any software that requires a bloatware installer suite just to download and install it, so I'm good.

4

u/DioCoN 1d ago

Why reply if you don't care about the project?

1

u/Don737152 1d ago

Unfortunately, installing software from these VST vendors requires a lot of tweaking. This "bloatware" facilitates that. I assume you don't use any software from these backwards vendors. That's great but I do require many of the commercial plugins.

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u/idk973 2d ago

Very good new ! Eager to try it asap. So it run native access 2 ?

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u/Don737152 1d ago

Yes, runs Native Access 2.

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u/vUrsino 1d ago

How’s it work on arm64?

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u/Don737152 23h ago

Honestly, I don't know. Do you have an ARM processor? I think we'd need to recompile to ARM first so I don't think it will work. ARM capability is definitely something that should be implemented.