Need general advice on distributing app/plugins on Linux

Linux
1

Hi folks,

I got some request of audio plugins on Linux. I’ve only worked a bit on Ubuntu. But there are so many Linux distros. I definitely do not want to compile and build my project on each and every one of them. And the distribution for a wide range of Linux distros also seems very complex. My plugin is free BTW, so I don’t need to worry about commercialization on Linux.

What should I do?

Thanks.

2

I provide Linux builds of my plugins with a huge proviso: they are experimental builds, I cannot provide much in the way of support and it’s up to the user to try them out before purchase to confirm they are compatible with their flavour of distro.

I don’t even provide an installer for Linux, just the plugins and “put them where they need to go on your system” instructions.

The good thing though is Linux users in my experience:

a) know what they’re doing and don’t actually require any “basic” support
b) know what they’re doing and provide incredibly useful technical details when there is an issue

2 Likes
3

I am finding great value in getting all my official builds packed into VM’s. Its kind of a no-brainer and fun to bust out the target linux operating systems into a tight VM configuration, do the build, package it, include it in the release. Of course, some people don’t find this fun, but hey … once you do Windows, MacOS and iOS builds in their own VM, adding a few other Linux distros is actually kinda just a breeze …

4

Hi,
Is it opensource?

5

Just build your plugin in a reasonably old Linux distribution such as Ubuntu 20.04. I typically install ubuntu 20.04 in a modern Debian or Ubuntu distro using debootstrap and schroot. As long as the distribution you use to build your plugin is old enough, it will run everywhere.

6

Last time i searched a cross-distribution approach i gave up.
I had a quick look on OBS < https://openbuildservice.org/ > but i didn’t really tried.
Snap seems interesting < 3 Best Universal Package Managers for Linux in 2023 > and probably the approach i could test for release. Anybody have already used it?
Or (as i already do) a script to build from sources on every distributions?
But that’s lots of machines to owned (emulate) and test on. :grimacing:
In case of plugins i have no idea.