[ubuntu-studio-devel] wineasio interesting app

[Thomas Pfundt]

On March 31, 2018 3:07 PM, Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf at alice-dsl.net> wrote: 
> Hi
>
> it's probably missing for hysterical raisins. [...] 
> I would recommend to test it and to do research how much wanted it 
> is by Linux, especially Ubuntu users first. 
> 
> The more packages you add, the harder it becomes to maintain/test all 
> packages. Since Ubuntu Studio suffers from missing manpower [1], 
> consider, if making Ubuntu Studio more bloated is a step into the right 
> direction. 
 
Hi all, 
 
I would suggest that WineASIO is a great way for a lot of people using Wine-compatible Windows DAWs and standalone VSTis to make them run on their Linux installation without much hassle in a semi-professional environment. I've used it myself for a long time after I switched, but from my understanding, there are only two ways to get a working WineASIO configuration on Ubuntu Studio: 
 
1.) Add the Kxstudio repositories and install their "wine-rt" and "wineasio" builds. (I believe that those only work in conjunction.) Problem: The Kxstudio wine-rt build is completely outdated at this point (it was on version 1.9.x the last time I installed it, the official release is at 3.x now) and FalkXT, the maintainer of Kxstudio mentioned in some forum post that the real-time patch became obsolete anyway with the Wine staging branch at some point. 
 
2.) Install wine from the official packages and build WineASIO from the official Sourceforge. I've never tried this myself, but I've read that there can be some issues involved with Ubuntu. I haven't bothered to find out what's the catch, since I switched to Reaper for Linux for my DAW, which is JACK-compatible and I can work with LinVst to run most of my plugins, but for someone who is dependent on a certain VST, this could be a problem, if they are unable to get WineASIO working or just switched and have no idea how to do so at all. 
 
IMHO, a way 3 would be desirable: To install a recent version of the regular Wine build either from the distro's repository or the official packages and separately "sudo apt install wineasio" and register it to that Wine installation. I think that's something that most newcomers would be comfortable doing and the best solution to stay updated. 
 
If I understand it correctly, Ubuntu Studio is completely dependent on the regular Xubuntu repository at this point? So, WineASIO would have to be added as a package to Xubuntu to be available to Ubuntu Studio users for installation? 
 
I would be willing to figure out what problems there are in building and installing WineASIO from the official source and how to use it with the most recent stable Wine version, however I'm not sure what else is involed in adding it to the repository (or at least offer some kind of PPA) and could use some guidance to make the right steps. 
 
 
Kind regards, 
Thomas