Linux support

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Tuxie
Ear training freshman
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Joined: May 31, 2018 4:38 am

Linux support

Post by Tuxie » May 31, 2018 5:29 am

Dear EarMaster developers.
I know that this has been addressed before by others but allow me to address it once again. From a topic of a few years old where a user complained about the lack of Linux support I got the strong impression that there are a few big misunderstandings about Linux and the typical Linux user amongst the developers of EarMaster.

Let's start with this. If the support for the Apple operating systems has already been worked out then porting it to Linux should be a piece of cake given that OSX uses a fork from an old FreeBSD version (poorly updated by Apple but that is irrelevant here). Both systems have a lot of similarities and use open source software at its foundation which makes it easy to port from one system to another. OSX is not FreeBSD but it has the same core in the system as an old version of FreeBSD, with an Apple sauce over it for the GUI and extra software. A lack of Linux support should probably be interpreted as a lack of interest from the developers. Probably because they are pessimistic with regard to profit vs. costs. That is fine and well within their right given that they are a profit-driven company, the question here which I adress is how realistic their estimation is. I admit, linux is only being used by 2-3% of the desktop users but Apple is not big either, they are under 10% too, worldwide. In the USA Apple is big, in the rest of the world (Europe for example) they are not, not for desktops and laptops anyway (and for phones Samsung on its own beats Apple in Europe).

In that old thread the responder (employee of EarMaster) pointed out that he had doubts whether or not Linux users would be willing to pay for software. This is a huge misunderstanding. In general Linux users are not freeloaders! As a matter of fact, many Linux users have a background in science and technology, they understand that there is a place for proprietary software and that it costs money for companies to make it. There also are examples where open source software works better than third party software because many experts can contribute and it only keeps getting better (Musescore2 is a good example, take a look at it if you don't know it yet, it also runs on Windows and you don't even need to install it, only download it) but not for every useful application you get a large enough open source communicty of programmers and other people (graphics designers...) to work it out. In that gap proprietary software has a valid place. I myself spent hundreds of € on games (GOG, Steam, even Origin), more than I care to admit. :oops:

Why do Linux users prefer Linux? Because they believe that operating systems and APIs should be open source. There are many technical reasons for that (compatibility, freedom, security, privacy, being in charge over your system, generally a better performance...) but I won't go into that in this context. The point is that Linux users are willing to pay for [b]good[/b] proprietary software. As a matter of fact, since that Valve pushed gaming on Linux -with its own games but also by encouraging other succesful developers to port their games to Linux - Linux users spend a lot of money on games via Steam. Most Linux users are pragmatic, they are not against using third party proprietary software and they uses proprietary drivers (even when the distro doesn't support it out of the box, then most users install these drivers themselves, if available), they just want a free operating system and free APIs.

There are many Linux-distros but most Linux users use only a few systems, if you look at the core and you ignore trivial details (which desktop they use...): Debian, Ubuntu (a fork of Debian), Mint (a fork of Ubuntu) and Fedora. Those are the big systems. There are systems like ArchLinux and Manjaro (which I use) but you don't have to worry about that, these communities will get it done for you. Support Debian and Ubuntu and it should work on other Linux distros soon.

Porting EarMaster Pro to Linux doesn't cost much development time. There are many musicians on Linux. Just as an illustration I refer to a popular forum for Linux musicians.
https://linuxmusicians.com
Linux is a good system for musicians. Why? Because you don't have to use a bloated operating system (Windows10, Windows7, OSX) which makes it possible to have a low latency which is desired for recording music. Also there is some great software for MIDI and recording, both free (libre) and proprietary. I myself use Rosegarden to record MIDI (a Yamaha Clavinova 'piano') and Audacity to record analog sound, it works great on the amateur level. Personally I don't bother with Wine for several reasons (time, bugs, not willing to run software less than perfectly), I am only willing to buy Windows-tied software for games, I start those up once upon a time and play those a few hours during some weekends, other free days and holidays. Booting to your Windows partition is doable when you game for a few hours, it is a pain in the butt to do that for running EarMaster Pro for 10-30 minutes.

Maybe it would interesting to partner up with Valve for running this software on Steam in Linux. They have a lot of expertise and they don't take a big cut (10%) while they do boost the sales. It could be a win/win/win (EarMaster/Valve/enduser). I tried out EarMaster Pro and I like it but I won't buy it as long as it doesn't run on Linux.

Kind regards.

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Quentin
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Re: Linux support

Post by Quentin » Jun 26, 2018 6:11 am

Hi Tuxie,

Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts on a Linux port of EarMaster. As much as we like the idea and would love to make EarMaster available to more users, the state of things doesn't make it easy:

- Ear training software is not a gold mine. It's very hard-earned money, even when we are one of the most used applications in that field. So we need to focus our limited resources on making good, working software for our existing Windows, Mac and iOS users before offering EarMaster on new platforms.

- The Linux user base is small indeed compared to other platforms, so when you keep in mind that our user base is even narrower than that (musicians interested in ear training or sight-singing...), then you realize that a Linux version of EarMaster is a very risky enterprise for such a small company as ours.

- Porting the software to Linux would be a big project, but certainly possible. However with software development, one of the biggest cost is maintenance, continuous support, compatibility with each update or hardware/software config, etc. Again, with such a small team as ours right now, this is not realistic.

I am not saying this is not going to happen when the time is right, but right now we need to prioritize our efforts to keep things running :)
- Because in Music, We're All Ears... -

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zzzoune
Ear training freshman
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Joined: Dec 16, 2019 2:45 pm

Re: Linux support

Post by zzzoune » Dec 16, 2019 3:11 pm

Hi Quentin, hi Tuxie,
I'm digging up this old topic: I'm presently trying to run EM (5 and 7) on Linux Mint with Wine and ... well ... No luck !! :roll:
Without thinking of porting EM on linux, maybe the developers team could fiddle something (like a guideline, or an entry in WineHQ database, for instance) in order to get the windows version of EM working properly under Wine.
For instance, when I try to run EM 7, I get the "tStaffTrueType.GetNoteHeadWidth: Result=0 (C:\Sourcecode\EarMasterD10.3\EMExtras\Truetype.pas line 884)" error - and obviously, I'm not the only one (there is another topic about this problem). Maybe someone in the dev team could find some way to tackle this problem (It seems that I shall install new fonts for Wine, but which ones ? I cannot but think that this kind of message is a lot more meaningful to the dev team than for the end user !).
Thanks for any help !
Regards

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Hans
EarMaster.com
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Joined: May 24, 2005 12:54 am
Location: Denmark

Re: Linux support

Post by Hans » Dec 17, 2019 3:14 am

This error ("GetNoteHeadWidth=0") can happen when the musical font that EarMaster uses has not been loaded.
EarMaster installs and uses the truetype fonts "Virtuoso" (Classical) and "EarMasterJazz" (Handwritten).

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