Why no linux version?

why is there no linux version of engine prime? the hardware of many of your products runs with it.

is there a specific reason ? Selecting linux as the target in the compiler can’t be it.

greetings

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Have a search of the forum historic posts.

I’m sure it was brought up by someone a couple of years ago and it was a no.

The usual Atari vs Amiga , VHS vs Betamax , Mitsubishi vs Subaru , I don’t have a windows or mac device in my house or life etc sort of attitude closed the thread pretty quick as I recall. I also recall it ended up as a “no need for a 3rd platform as the two major desktop platforms are catered for already”

Makes sense as Engine is updated regularly with new features and fixes…. Effort enough to keep two platforms upto date, I can see why they wouldn’t want to have to split that effort 3-ways.

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You might have a case if there were Linux versions of Rekordbox, Serato, Traktor etc. but none of those exist either. They cater for the majority.

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The problem with audio software and Linux comes down to the varying amount of distros that are out in the wild. As a company, you have to decide if you are going to open up the floodgates for support for all distros, limited support for a couple distros (and deal with arch users complaining they can’t get support), or just focus on the most common personal computing desktop/laptop operating systems available.

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It would be great to have a Linux version available, the only reason I keep a proprietary OS in a separate partition is for using EngineDJ. However, given the fact that the development progress is so slow, I lost all my hope in this regard.

I’m pretty sure EDJ & EOS run from pretty much the same builds and EOS is running on Linux.

Development is so slow, coupled with the fact that only 20 people in the world care about Linux.

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Having worked in IT for over 25 years, and have come to DJing later I would say this…

Linux is a fairly niche product in the IT world, let alone the world of DJing.

As @PKtheDJ said the other platforms don’t support it. And more importantly almost no music making software supports it either so it just doesn’t have a huge reach or support in the music community to make it worthwhile.

Linux users are (generally) very capable users and very passionate about the platform but unfortunately there is unlikely to ever be a big enough user base for any manufacturer to consider making a Linux version.

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I am a linux fanatic from wayback (I was using MIXXX on Linux for years before I got my PRIME GO) and I can understand the economics of why maintaining an ENGINE OS port for a relative minority of users would not be on the menu.

It would be nice if they did, but I’m not holding my breath, and I can cope without it.

I keep a shitty old netbook with windows10 for running Engine to manage my tracks.

I would rather that Engine was just able to import m3u playlists or other more universal/open files direct (it can export them!! why cant it import them?) so I can manage my set lists and stuff more easily in Linux land (mixxx etc) and shuffle stuff over to/from DENON as needed.

I have worked in IT for more than 25 years I beg to differ. My “dayjob” is HPC/science and the field is all linux, prior to that it was Biomedical, also a lot of Linux. All the IT admin tools I run ship linux gui versions nowadays, even stuff put out by Microsoft

Almost every smartphone user in the world that isn’t an Apple is carrying a small Linux workstation in their pocket. The entire ecosystems of Google, Amazon, and Facebook run on Linux, plus most wifi routers, firewalls and network appliances. Even in Microsoft’s own Azure cloud, Linux is the majority operating system. There would be more running Linux kernels in the world right now than MS-windows kernels, I strongly suspect.

But it’s not a majority platform for users of DJ software I agree :slight_smile:

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What you should be asking yourself is ‘how many consumer level computers are sold with Linux as the operating system’… and the simple answer to that is exactly zero. I can buy computers at the supermarket, Amazon, electrical retailers, Apple and Microsoft’s websites and various other places, and every single one is running on either Windows or Mac OS.

DJs aren’t programmers or ‘IT’ people, and 99.9999% of them will be a consumer buying a consumer level laptop or PC to use with their DJ equipment.

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Sorry, to clarify. I have worked in SME sales, installation, support and training with some consumer stuff thrown in at times.

But yes, as you have rightly pointed out, at a level Linux does become a major player, just not where DJ’s are concerned. As I think we have all come to agree.

I will also agree about the playlists. Although I would guess this has something to do with track location. As I would like to use my cloud based collection backup to create playlists from on my phone whilst out and about and then import them to engine. With the discover broken links that was added recently (ish) we maybe getting towards that, who knows…I digress compltely from the original topic now :stuck_out_tongue:

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Hello everyone

first i had an old linux laptop with virtualbox, in it windoof with enginedj. now a used mac late 2015. what I don’t understand: mac os is unix (BSD), why can’t the developers click on linux as a target when compiling? there are no driver problems, because native and linux is increasingly being used on home computers! you really don’t have to be an it professional to install and operate linux… just read what’s on the screen and then click

greetings Mike

There are a few more differences to take into account with cross platform programming, such as system local libraries, driver handling, directory structures, and more.

It’s the reason why Citrix is so popular in corporate, mostly windows, environments where Mac and Linux (especially chromebooks) machines are used.

Did you really just say “maintaining an EngineOS port for a relative minority of users”???

You DO realize that EngineOS IS LITERALLY A LINUX-BASED OPERATING SYSTEM, right?

I genuinely don’t understand what the hell everyone here is talking about, with the “it’s hard to maintain software on 3 operating systems” when they LITERALLY already are. EngineOS is a Linux distro. All the software is open-source, according to them, so they can just make it available to non-EngineOS distributions. They use the same libraries and dependencies.

If you are using linux as your host OS, just run engine DJ in a windows vm. Engine DJ is able to export to usb while running on windows in VMware (I haven’t tested virtual box).

It will be a less time consuming process than waiting on a linux port.

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OK, to make it clear for those who my intent wasn’t obvious, I mean the desktop application, Engine DJ Desktop I’m well aware that Engine OS for the various bits of Denon&Numark hardware is Linux. Some kind of embedded appliance hardware using a quad core ARMv7 CPU with 2GB of RAM I think in the case of the PRIME GO e.g.

Linux primego 5.4.131-inmusic-2021-07-13-rt61 #1 SMP PREEMPT_RT Wed Feb 9 14:21:02 UTC 2022 armv7l GNU/Linux

that would have quite different GUI, hardware environment and OS base install to a “typical” Linux desktop (whatever that is, I run Xubuntu)… though I would guess anyone targeting a cross section of Linux desktop users would bundle the application as an appimage… or maybe a flatpak? or perhaps a deb and/or RPM file? or a snap?

Interestingly, Engine OS is pretty much the same code as Engine DJ for Win/Mac.

They explained it once before but the Desktop version is derived from the OS Linux version. They look different but have almost the same underlying source code in them.

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Being released on the only two major platforms is certainly enough. Adding and supporting a third platform is just mopping up minority interest with little return.

I guess those in desperate need of this feature should raise it as a feature request, that way it can get the 3 votes it’ll receive and then they are documented.

I see we have another new forum user posting too, landing here like a tonne of bricks.

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