KarmaFX under Linux/Wine

General feedback, questions and feature requests.
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billstei
Posts: 18
Joined: 31 Jul 2006 20:52

KarmaFX under Linux/Wine

Post by billstei »

I was able to sucessfully run KarmaFX Synth 0.99 inside Linux/Wine using Fruity Loops 7 as a host (also running under Wine). I have no complaints really, but was wondering if it would make sense for the Karma installer to check for mfc42.dll and msvcp60.dll and if they are not present (or if they are too old) to install them, as these are the two dlls that I found were needed in order to make it work. No big deal really to "fix" it (I linked them in from another program that had them) but I was just curious as to what the legal and/or practical implications are to address this.

Bill
audiojunkie
Posts: 49
Joined: 25 Nov 2006 07:43

Post by audiojunkie »

Wow! I am REALLY interested in your experiences with this! I am trying to get things to work in Linux myself, and if I could get it to work with WINE in Linux, I wouldn't need ANY other synths!

Oooooh Kasper, PLEASE make it easy for those using Linux to use KarmaFX with WINE. :-)

PLEASE!!!!! :-)

--Sean
billstei
Posts: 18
Joined: 31 Jul 2006 20:52

Post by billstei »

When you say "get things to work" do you mean Karma synth specifically, or just Wine in general?

For Linux, I've been using Ubuntu for quite a while now, but just to make things extra painful I switched over to the 64 bit Ubuntu. I do not recommend 64 bit for newbies (technically there is no 64 bit Wine). Also I have reasonably big iron with an X2 4600 cpu, and even then, GUI redraws of Karma are slow. But Wine has improved a lot over the last year or so, including much needed work on sound handling just recently, and is on-going.

It was a much bigger problem to get Fruity Loops going than it was Karma, but I used the Wine AppDB cheat sheet, so I had help.

There are other ways to approach VSTs under Linux, one being LMMS/Vestige, which is a bit unstable, but there is at least a proof of concept in that it uses Wine to handle the VSTs but LMMS is Linux native itself. Another program to watch is Energy XT2, which is Linux native, and will plug in VSTs that use Linux GUI calls (so far anyway). For Karma synth to work that way it would need to be coded/compiled so as not to use MS-ish mfc42.dll, etc for graphics calls. Hopefully Kasper was using JUCE, or wxWidgets or something cross platform like that so this will be easy to "fix" ;)

Bill
billstei
Posts: 18
Joined: 31 Jul 2006 20:52

Post by billstei »

Just for kicks I (finally) got the latest LMMS compiled (SVN 493) and put KarmaFX Synth in it (using their Vestige wrapper) and it runs, although it did crash once when I was switching presets. No idea why, but it's probably just a Wine thing (seems to have tripped up somewhere in mfc42.dll). If the Wine virtual desktop is enabled, LMMS does some weird stuff with Karma's window if you try to move it, so turn that off (or set up seperate wine environments for programs-that-need-virtual-desktops and programs-that-don't -- if that does not make sense, wave your hand).

Also I discovered that msvcirt.dll is another dll needed for Karma to run under Wine, so you'll need to copy or link that in (for now) too.

Bill
billstei
Posts: 18
Joined: 31 Jul 2006 20:52

Post by billstei »

Above I noted that "GUI redraws are slow", but I discovered that using the proprietary nvidia driver instead of the standard nv driver improves this quite a bit. Not sure what life is like with ATI but maybe similar.
billstei
Posts: 18
Joined: 31 Jul 2006 20:52

Post by billstei »

Slightly off topic, but keep in mind that if your VST host is running under Wine (like it would be with, say, FruityLoops) you will have intolerable latencies, however there is (now) a driver wineasio which I have found to work (am using Ver 0.3). If you compile it yourself you will need the Steinberg ASIO SDK, and it uses Jack to do its thang, so be sure you're running that first.

Bill
plusch
Posts: 1
Joined: 29 Sep 2007 20:12

Post by plusch »

I'm trying to run KarmaFX Synth 0.99 using Reaper as the host, running under Wine in Linux. During the scan for VSTs, I get these message boxes: "Unable to load core dll!" and "Unable to read from core dll." (Other VSTs seem to work fine.) Any ideas to fix it?

Thanks,
Paul
karmafx
Site Admin
Posts: 1194
Joined: 07 Mar 2005 16:37

Post by karmafx »

bump! ...and sorry for the slow reply, guys. :roll:

I would love to help, but unfortunatly I don't have a linux machine to test on, so I really can't answer your questions.

The "unable to load core dll" message appears because the synth cannot find the "KarmaFX_Synth/KarmaFX Synth Core.dll" file. This file is used by the VSTi and the VST (fx). Please make sure the directory is there and contains the file.

If someone reading this has got it up and running, please write and let us know how you did it.
billstei
Posts: 18
Joined: 31 Jul 2006 20:52

Post by billstei »

This is the mfc42.dll dependency. The exact error message in a console is:

err:module:import_dll Library MFC42.DLL (which is needed by L"C:\\Program Files\\VstPlugins\\KarmaFX\\KarmaFX_Synth\\KarmaFX Synth Core.dll") not found

but over in GUI-land the message is "Unable to load core dll".

Also I noticed that when I hid msvcp60.dll and msvcirt.dll that Karma synth did not issue any complaints and seemed to run fine, so maybe those dependencies are satisfied natively by Wine now (I was using 0.9.46).

One problem you may discover is that clicking the logo to get the info/version window will result in not being able to dismiss the window and will probably make your host inaccessible. This "bug" does not happen in Win2000 with KarmaFX 1.00RC4 so I am reasonably sure this is a Wine problem only.

Bill
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