Dorico on Linux?

I know this question has been asked before, but as it’s been at least a year-and-a-half, I’m asking it again.

Of course, Dorico does not currently run on Linux, but I hope greatly in future Steinberg will allow the Dorico crew to port to this OS, even with its many, many, many distros. I am becoming more dissatisfied with Apple’s products, and really don’t want to return to Windows.

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I imagine that it would depend most on whether Steinberg’s e-licensing software would run successfully on linux, as much as Dorico itself.

Dorico on Linux would be great, but I seriously doubt that it will be officially supported anytime soon. Supporting a third operating system would require additional development and maintenance resources for both the main application and the licensing software. I can’t imagine that there’s much to gain here for Steinberg since most of their customers work with highly professional audio software and hardware that does probably not work with Linux either.

Good points. Thanks, all!

For my next machine, I will most-likely stick with Apple. What they reveal to have been done with the Mac Pro this year (hopefully) will say a lot about how that company really feels about its niche ‘pro-users’, of which, on a very, very small scale, I am one.

The “serious” (and commercial) part of the Linux world is based around the internet (web hosting, cloud data servers, etc) and high performance scientific computing, neither of which are a market for Dorico.

The “home market” end of the Linux spectrum is a mess of slightly-incompatible versions of everything, and I suspect many of its users wouldn’t use closed-source (and non-free as in “it costs money”) software as a matter of principle. Even for well used open source software, The version in Linux distributions is often a year or two behind the latest release.

If Linux is such a good idea for personal computing, I wonder why so many of its users run Wine so they can use Windows apps on it …

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Does Qt support Linux? If not, the Team would have to create that interface from scratch, likely not a priority at this stage of development.

Yes it does. But the Qt website page on “deployment issues” makes the point that you most likely have to build your application separately for each “flavour” of Linux.

That doesn’t matter so much for open source software, since each individual user can compile and build the application on his/her own Linux system with whatever versions of the rest of the system software happen to be installed. But that’s not an option for closed-source software, of course.

Because most apps were and continue to be created for the most common operating system: Windows. It’s a workhorse and it’s everywhere. Doesn’t mean we like it, but it is the truth. This also doesn’t mean, however, that using Linux for personal computing is a bad idea. It just means that there are some limitations depending on the industry. I would gladly give up Windows if I could do my job without them, but some critics apps I use haven’t been ported to Linux. So, I accept the fact that’s Windows, especially, will be part of my career for a long while, but that doesn’t make Linux any less useful.

Oh, and have you heard? Microsoft just recently announced some major plans to incorporate Linux more into their OS. I think it’s a very smart move.

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Well, let’s hope MS do a better job than Apple, who still have 20 year old versions of some Unix utilities - still with the original 20 year old bugs.

But it’s a fairly irrelevant move IMO, since if you want a Unix-like toolchain on Windows, there are already at least two well established ways to get it.

Which ones do you have in mind?

I believe that’s because Apple can’t get on board with the GPL3 licence, for some reason. It will be interesting to see MS’s stance on this.
However, anyone capable of using shell commands can install updated bash utils with a couple of lines.

At different times (And different PCs) I’ve used Cygwin, and MinGW plus MSYS. No particular issues with either of them.

There are others listed here: Cygwin - Wikipedia

Yeah, GPL3 sometimes seems more like a religion than a software licence :slight_smile:

However, anyone capable of using shell commands can install updated bash utils with a couple of lines.

Which is exactly the mindset you don’t want your user base to have, if you are trying to support a commercial product!

I do hope to see Dorico on Linux one day, altough, I am pretty sure it won’t be tomorrow!
Here, all the family machines run on Linux since 1994… and I have a big family :smiley:
Some companies do support Linux (for instance Bitwig Studio, Mixbus and U-he)… it will be a long road, but it could be possible to see this in a few years as people are getting aware of privacy issues with Microsoft and Apple… on the other hands, some prefer not to bother and close their eyes, being lemmings…

My 2 cents…

I’m a happy lemming. I’m too stupid to use Linux, and I don’t really care that much about my personal info being logged by MS. To each his own!

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Just a side note that idea that lemmings commit mass suicide is a myth (one that I grew up with too). Lemmings can swim, and when they migrate, they’re headed off to find mates.

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Hackintosh is another option. I made one last month, and so far it’s running great: Dorico Pro 2, Pro Tools, Sibelius, Digital Performer, Messages, FaceTime iCloud services like Calendar, Safari, and Contacts sync, etc. I’m kind of surprised I did this; I’d never built a computer before and know nothing about the programming aspects of hackintoshing.

I got tired of waiting for the next Mac Pro, and assumed it will be very expensive to avoid poaching users of iMacs and iMac Pros.

You can increase the likelihood of success if use the vanilla method (which leaves the OS untouched) and find some good help - someone who’ll share their configuration (which will work if you use the same hardware).

I’m well aware of the risks of going this route. But at worst I can either switch the machine to Windows, or sell it and get a Mac.

Here we go…

I am seriously committed to changing to Linux after I had to realise MS is going to force you to use a MS account always. For me, this is completely out of question. Since Windows 10 and the ongoing breach of privacy by MS I thought a lot about changing to Linux - and I will go there. Oh, my phone runs on Lineageos without google and Apple is just to expensive - speaking of privacy not much better than MS. (Planning to switch back to a dumb phone). And there is the patriot act - America was another country 20 years ago. In my opinion, Bin Laden was extremely successful with destroying the free western civilization… And Edward Snowden is extremely right. (Read his new biography “Permanent Record”).

It’s horrendous that no one really is realising what’s happening in our time.

Of course, you will think “what’s going on here - this is just a forum of a great notation software”. For me, nowadays seems to be a time where nothing is not political - perhaps you can understand this a little bit. And the use of hard- and software becomes more and more so, as well. (I am german, so please forgive me when I can not express my deep concerns well in English…).

Hopefully, I can use Dorico with Linux, a virtual Windows machine and network switched off. Wine did not run on my first tries, but perhaps I will achieve something later on - I’ll let you know. If not, Dorico has to grow without my solicitousness. Perhaps serious software companies should realise that developing software for Windows or MacOS is going to help questionable leaders constructing a world much worse than George Orwell could imagine.

Please, Steinberg, make a move to Linux - probably Debian would be the most acceptable choice. More than 800 views on this topic - there seem to be quite a lot of people who want to make the switch!

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This isn’t intended to be dismissive of your comment, except to say that 800 views for a 4-year-old topic is not really all that much.

I doubt Linux is a viable-enough market option to compel Steinberg to spend money on.

Dan is, unfortunately, correct. There’s almost certainly not a way for Steinberg to feel like it could viably support Linux. Without being in the know, I couldn’t say exactly why, but likely the cost of supporting Linux is nowhere near worth the amount of new users it would bring in, and I can’t imagine Steinberg has any interest in trying to get its security/licensing system to run on Linux in the first place anyways. It’s entirely doubtful that it would be in the cards anytime in the foreseeable future, unless something big changes. Yes, Linux has doubled its home PC-user market share (2%, up from 1% a few years back, wowee!), it’s making heavy strides to capture more and more of the gaming market, and Microsoft is building a version of the Linux kernal into Windows to allow for natively running Linux software, but I just get the feeling it’ll take much bigger things to get Dorico over to Linux. Plague, famine, the death of all firstborn Egyptians, you know…

FWIW, I fought with several distros and Wine versions to try to get it working also; no dice for me either. It’s a shame, because I’d very much like to leave Windows myself, and while Lilypond can make scores just about as beautifully as Dorico, there’s no way I’m gonna sit there and spend all the requisite time to make it happen, even with a front-end. At some point, I’ll likely see if I can’t get Dorico to run nicely in a virtual machine. But for now, Windows for me it is…