energyXT on Linux

[moss]

With all that hype about energyXT 2.0 on Linux going on in this forum I wonder what it is really good for.

Is there a VST port to Linux?

What will you use it for without all those great Windows VST?

[Lump]

With all that hype about energyXT 2.0 on Linux going on in this forum I wonder what it is really good for.

OMG thats the 5th topic about eXT2/Linux. Why can't you answer to an existing one?

But OK, now this seperate thread exist. And as an "Linux evangelist" i will try the best to give answera to your questions.

Jorgen has decided to make a port of eXT2 for Linux. Thats really great and very courageous, because eXT2 will be the first commercial Midi/Audio sequencer for Linux.
Companys like Steinberg completely ignoring Linux because they see no big biz in there. But linux has a big potential, it is a free and open system.

Is there a VST port to Linux?

What will you use it for without all those great Windows VST?

There are two wrapper for windows VST-dll for Linux, FST and DSSI-VST. But they are problematic and not very stable.

Jorgen decided to make "native Linux VST" -but I don't know how, because the Steinberg VST-SDK (c headers for developing VST) are not made for Linux and NEVER will be. So only a very small amount of VST plugs will be available for eXT2 on Linux.

So I see two ways for using VST on Linux:
-Jorgen should write an own w32-vst.dll wrapper, so nearly every VST plugin will be available in eXT2.
-Jorgen should implent the JACK api into eXT2 for Linux: This will make "rewire" like connections to existing native Linux synths

Another method is to use the native Linux plugins:
-Jorgen should make LADSPA and DSSI plugin interfaces for eXT2 on Linux. So we have a big amount of nice FXs (LADSPA -i have 300 on my Linux) and a few DSSI Synths like Hexter or Whysynth.

[Radek]

With all that hype about energyXT 2.0 on Linux going on in this forum I wonder what it is really good for.

Is there a VST port to Linux?

VST is a multiplatform protocol. It used on Apple computers too and even such machines like the Receptor. It will eventually (as SDK) show in Linux too.

What will you use it for without all those great Windows VST?

Not everyone needs all Windows VST. And most them can be used under Linux via FST or VSTServer. The EXT2 will have some synths and effect built in too
(it has a very good sampler already) so it will be able to act as selfcontained DAW (some use the Reason and don't complain because it's not a VST host).
Some other people prefer to use hardware synths as well.

[Radek]

With all that hype about energyXT 2.0 on Linux
Jorgen decided to make "native Linux VST" -but I don't know how, because the Steinberg VST-SDK (c headers for developing VST) are not made for Linux and NEVER will be. So only a very small amount of VST plugs will be available for eXT2 on Linux.

VST as protocol is well known. Perhaps someone has written his own headers?
Anyway - aren't there VST plugins under MacOSX? It's not that far from Linux imho.

[Lump]

VSTServer.

VSTServer seemed to be dead -it's not updated since ages and the dependencies are needing very old libs, so it's very hard (maybe impossible) to compile this on an recent linux.

[moss]

OMG thats the 5th topic about eXT2/Linux. Why can't you answer to an existing one?

All those threads were about "which is the best Linux to run on" and not about the benefits of using energyXT on Linux.

Jorgen has decided to make a port of eXT2 for Linux. Thats really great and very courageous, because eXT2 will be the first commercial Midi/Audio sequencer for Linux.
Companys like Steinberg completely ignoring Linux because they see no big biz in there. But linux has a big potential, it is a free and open system.

Yes, I totally agree. Someone has to make the first step.

Jorgen decided to make "native Linux VST" -but I don't know how, because the Steinberg VST-SDK (c headers for developing VST) are not made for Linux and NEVER will be. So only a very small amount of VST plugs will be available for eXT2 on Linux.

That was the main point of my question. To integrate VSTs someone must have ported the VST-SDK (which is definively possible because it is simply a C++ API). I see no point in writing wrappers around existing windows plugins this is has to fail (as you said).
If the API gets ported (doesn't have to be done by Steinberg, or is this a copyright problem?) at least a lot of freeware developers will jump in.

[Lump]

VST as protocol is well known. Perhaps someone has written his own headers?

It's illegal to hack the copyrighted steinberg vst header - vst is not open or free.

Anyway - aren't there VST plugins under MacOSX? It's not that far from Linux imho.

Yes, not so far like evolutionary the fishes from the birds. If you want to use application from Linux on Mac you have to recompile this and make a lot of patches. Mac -> Linux the same. No way.

[Radek]

VST as protocol is well known. Perhaps someone has written his own headers?

It's illegal to hack the copyrighted steinberg vst header - vst is not open or free.

A clean room version perhaps? I doubt steinberg could do anything against it.

Then we have Jorgen's claim about native Linux VST. There must be an explanation...

[disturb]

If somehow jorgen manages to make windows vst works in ext2 linux, i won't wait a second to try it out. I know very little about unix based system, but my guess is they would do a much better job than xp at managing/optimizing ressources...

[plastique]

There won't be anything needed to be changed in the VST protocol. It's a C++ API with well-defined interface which should work on all platforms that support the C/C++ language.
So basically what is changing from Win/Mac is the binding to the OS (dll function, GUI, ...).

A wrapper for win32 plugin isn't easy to establish, especially since there can be a lot of platform specific stuff going on under the hood of plugins which have to be emulated under the other OS and chances are there are functions which are soleley available on the one or other platform.
Let's see how well it develops, there are efforts to use Wine for doing the wrapping part and once XT2 is ready I'm sure the research in this area will speed up greatly.
As for simple plugins, with almost no platform specific function use (e.g. gui-less), it should be pretty easy to get them over to linux.

I'm a noob myself when it comes to linux programming (and not using linux for anything serious) I'm very eager on the little example plugin that jorgen promised to make available, which then should give the right headstart

[jorgen]

There shouldnt be any problems compiling "gui-less" VST plugins with GCC on linux with the VST headers. However, you'll have to make your own gui framework, but Ill contribute some c++ classes for that...gui on linux is no prob.

jorgen

[plastique]

[Lump]

Yes sounds good (like a revolution!!!) -now we have to ask the vst developers for recompiling the plugins.
I know that there are 2 or 3 open source vst plugins, like rumpelrausch taips zr3 so there is some stuff to practising with gui.

http://zr-3.sourceforge.net/

http://www.kvraudio.com/get/308.html

http://juno6.gruftie.com/index2.html

[plastique]

Yeah, I agree (sounding good), the hardest part will be to get the GUI/main functions going (which is ironically also the most consuming part in general), but it's like a breeze of fresh air (at least to me) and a great challenge to be able to work in such a environment now on linux.

There surely will be a lot of possibilities to try out GUI coding and whatnot, just starting with the typical Again example will be probably the easiest way one can think of, and once you've got over the initial hurdle it will be fine from there on.

This won't be only an opportunity for people doing this for fun (like me and you), but also provide a great environment for commercial devs to port over their plugins to a widely available platform.

[berryalberts]

I love what I read here in this topic....