Traktor 2 for Ubuntu

DJ Life & Community General Discussion
1

Traktor 2 for Ubuntu

Who else thinks it would be great to port traktor over to linux, they allready compile it for OSX which is UNIX so shouldnt take to much to port it over.

audio 2, 4 and 8 drivers have allready been written. There are also drivers for pritty much every MIDI controller aswell

I think this is another thing that could sway people from getting Serato and going for there product (this is for their ppoint of view). Most people now use windows vista and 7 both are not exactly efficient operating systems for music.

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From a financial standpoint, it’s a terrible idea.
Here, here’s some opinions on it, including my own:
http://www.native-instruments.com/forum/showthread.php?t=125354

Just b/c it compiles all fine and dandy for OS X doesn’t mean it’ll go over to some flavor of Linux. I will go out on a limb and guess that the graphics engine will not be simple to port, while the underlying routines are probably something very generic (like C). I’m not sure what it’s written in but I would guess there’s more than a few unique libraries for the front end, and probably catered to each platform.

EDIT: The real reason:
http://www.native-instruments.com/forum/showthread.php?t=85251&highlight=linux

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OSX is based on Nextstep which uses a BSDI core. BSD is not Unix while it is based on it.

the biggest difference and why thats not possible is nextstep and osx use a mach64 microkernel at their core, whereas linux uses a macrokernel.

in laymans terms, while they may have similar terminals and use similar commands in the console, how they work under the hood is RADICALLY different when you are comparing osx to anything else.

for the most part, none of the core work would be portable. especially since traktor operates right down at the hardware, which means most of the work is going on in the kernel.

about the only thing they could port, would be their artwork. which probably only took 3 guys a week to make in the first place.

theres just no market for it dude. sorry

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I would of thought Traktor would be mainly written in C or C++ maybe a few libaries that work with both osx and windows. Also in a way it didnt have to be totally written again to work on a mac.

I understand the fiancial implication this would have to NI. Im sure it has been discussed and reviewed internally.

I would love it if Mixxx gavered more momentum. I would love to wite them a new layout manager that was vector based. Also A midi mapping section that could be like traktor or serato depending on what users wanted

lol also for the color scheme to change depending what deck you are focused on

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even if they did, theyd get slammed for it by the linux community in a gigantic way for having closed source material injected into the kernel.

nobody likes a tainted kernel. hell both amd and nvidia catch shit for it every time they release new graphics drivers.

and thats the other reason. for the money it would cost, no matter what you do. as a company when you release closed source software for linux, half of the community will go out of their way to generate bad press for your company.

linux needs to just focus on what it is. a FOSS environment. its built around it, designed for it, and for the most part, thats what it needs to stay as. FOSS.

companies just cant make any money in that environment.

for them, its just not worth it. for an army of reasons

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well traktor is running perfectly fine in my non-optimized, fully bloated stock 2010 macbook pro loaded with all sort of programs for school (protools , logic, ableton, melodyne - im studying audio engineering at SAE) so far i have never encountered any problem with traktor on osx , and the osx itself is a pretty awesome environment, i dont think that many people are so keen on switching OS if they are already comfortable with one

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NI already replied to the ‘Traktor on Linux’ question back in 2009.
http://www.native-instruments.com/forum/showthread.php?t=84796&highlight=Linux

empolo wrote:
For at least two years, numerous users have inquired as to if NI would consider releasing a version of Traktor (as well as other NI software) for the Linux platform. To date, there have been a number of opinions (unofficially) offered as to why this has not happened with the most popular explanation pointing to a ‘lack of a market’. However, and to use a popular idiom, a lot of us in the community would love to ‘hear it from the horse’s mouth’.

The popular explanation is correct. To offer a Linux version of Traktor, we would need to set up a complete “third branch” for Linux development, Linux QA and Linux tech support next to our Windows and Mac resources. This would be a huge investment that would never be even remotely compensated through the sales of a Linux version, because the number of “Linux-only” DJs is very low. And to reduce our resources for Mac and Windows to shift them to Linux is also not really an option.

There are quite a number of Linux friends working at NI and we were happy to support the platform by helping with the development of the ALSA drivers for all the NI audio interfaces, but any commitment beyond that is just not a practical priority for us.

Product Manager DJ Division
Native Instruments, Berlin

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Thats always the issue with Linux. You can’t compare something like Mac OS as its proprietary OS. You have a set of developers who are developing for ONE OS on very limited pieces of hardware. The same can’t be said for Windows and Linux. These are OSs that run on everything and anything and support for drivers is far greater. The cost of QAing and the headaches of users who will have issues is also far greater.

I’m a linux sys admin and I would clearly want a linux based alternative for traktor, but the truth is.. the support will only come from the community and it would be insanely limited.

Again, imagine trying to support every distro of linux for traktor… each distro updates its libs and such on its own and by the community. It would be very hard for NI to keep up with it, unless they said they would only support a certain distro (Ubuntu) or something.

I only have a MBP because of my GF. Its her laptop. I run windows strictly for gaming and my traktor. If it was left to me it would all be Linux.

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Plus…you have to add that Linux support for current laptops tends to lag a bit. Giving out something that is Pro-level software to what mostly amounts to a hobbyist system (except in specific applications) with nothing even remotely resembling a consistent software or hardware environment just wouldn’t work.

Plus…the default linux kernel still doesn’t schedule tasks in real time, meaning that it has something similar to the DPC system in place that would make the default install just as hardware/driver-dependant as Windows is…except that there isn’t as widespread support for anything but the most basic hardware.

There are patches to make linux a real-time kernel, but now you’re talking about making people configure and recompile their kernel instead of just installing an OS. It’s not that hard to do, but there are people on this board that still don’t understand the difference between MIDI and Audio……do you think they have any chance at all of getting a linux system up and running with a nonstandard kernel?

I guess someone could build a distro with the realtime kernel patches as default…but now you’re talking about putting all of the hardware/driver issues on one group of people who don’t get paid and are likely to see a hardware culture as diverse as Microsoft sees…with nothing resembling a revenue stream.

Add to that the fact that in my experience, Jack is significantly less stable and more buggy than CoreAudio and ASIO…and worse supported.

No…DJ software on Linux is a horrible idea. It’s not going to work well, and you just have to look at how long xwax and mixxx have been around and how many people are working on them to realize it. Seriously…give them a try. 10 minutes in, you’ll be thanking Apple or Microsoft for taking your money so that you can use real software.

Linux is a great OS that is perfect for a great many things. It’s amazing as a server OS, and it works perfectly well for general personal computing as long as you’re technically minded (or use Ubuntu); it’s a great development platform regardless of your target OS, and it makes an excellent virtualization host if you can’t afford VSphere. And, there are people out there who have a lot of custom in-house software for it to do really cool creative things…

But with NI’s business model, it just doesn’t make any sense to build a version for Linux.

If you want a unix-like OS that runs DJ/Production software, suck it up and buy a Mac. OS X is really close in most ways that matter to normal and power users.

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Well said. Exactly put, it takes plenty of experience and knowledge of a linux system to truly troubleshoot the issues you’ll come across. 80% of all audio users will not want to bother with these issues. Look at people complaining about their windows problems, now magnify that with having to troubleshoot it in linux and actually having to know what you’re doing. Rebuilding libraries and relinking them to, etc etc. People need to learn more about the OS then they do their audio software. Not worth the effort.

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This discussion also taking place in the Traktor forums:
http://www.native-instruments.com/forum/showthread.php?p=816891#post816891

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this already took place on the djtt forums in the past.

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I understand what you are saying the reward just isnt great enough. I think if more people got involved in writting mixxx. Just adding a couple more things it could easily be good enuf for most people on here.

MIXXX i think is the way to go for linux support.

just on a side note most people who want traktor for linux are generally pritty tech savvy ppl

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All that means is that there aren’t enough people who want Traktor for Linux to make it a viable business proposition.

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I dont know there are alot of tech savvy people around.

Im sure at some point NI have done some market research on this issue

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Last time I used Mixxx it was just terrible. The software would crash regularly and was just overall unusuable.

Xwax however was flawless. It’s less user friendly and lacks the looping features. But it’s really fast, has low latency and never crashes.

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yeah they did and even release something called FinalScratch as seen here [ame=“Final Scratch - Wikipedia”]Final Scratch - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

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Just because there’s a lot of tech savvy people around doesn’t mean that they all run linux laptops.. I bet in reality very few run linux laptops. Most tech savvy people I know just want to buy something that works out of the box.

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This topic has been discussed a million times over the years on the NI forum, it pops up every now and again and disappears as quickly as it came. It usually ends up in an argument between 2 or 3 ultra-nerds who cannot agree which came first or what Linux is actually based on (i know this is about Ubuntu).

Its pointless. It will never happen.

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agree that it’s pointless and unwise.

the audio frameworks in linux are still a big mess. OSS → ALSA → now it’s something else.

it would have been nice before Mac OS was FreeBSD based. Now, having OS X, which really works out of the box, Linux is pointless for workstation use.

And yeah, bucky is pretty much right - we, the professional tech savvys, prefer something which just works. That’s something which happens just few years after we finish our IT education :slight_smile:. Have very few colleagues and friends who prefer Linux over Mac. A lot of people are still fine running windows after a proper tuning.

Here is a nice pic (although it might be a photoshop)