Sensel App for Linux: will it work?

Hi,
Following up a couple of threads/questions here on the forum, I’m wondering if you plan to make the Linux app properly work one day. I could do without it by borrowing a computer to update the Morph from time to time, it’s not a deal breaker for me, but it would be nice to know what to expect.
Thanks for your input!

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I installed senselapp0.19.32.deb (though coverted to a .rpm for openSUSE 15.1 first) and it works fine for me. The only quirk is with firmware updates. The app installs the firmware but hangs afterward with a warning about not unplugging the Morph; just wait until the app says firmware updated then quit and restart the app.

Hey Jeremy. We have a download for the Linux App here, which should work! https://sensel.com/pages/support

Hi,

sorry for ruining the party, but unfortunately it does not; at least not for me. My piano layout with this version (0.19.32 on Linux Mint 19.3) looks like this:

The Buchla overlay you can see here. I have a Mac but unfortunately it is running under El Capitan (and can not be updated), which obviously can not run the Sensel App as you have told me by email.

So I am stuck since I bought the thing in summer 2018. (I resist buying a new Mac or to pay for a Windows license on Linux Laptop.) You probably can tell that I am not really happy with the Sensel without the App.

Hi Matt,
Thanks for your reply. I’m well aware of the app, I tried once again to download/install/use it before posting here but unfortunately it still doesn’t work for me :confused:
I’m running Ubuntu 20.10 with Gnome. Tried on 2 different computers with the same config, under 20.04 and 20.10.
Any improvement would be very welcome as it would allow me to update my Morph config on the fly without requiring another computer!
Thanks again.
Jeremy

Hi Vinh,
Could you please describe your computer’s configuration?
Maybe there’s something that doesn’t work with Gnome or something on my side.
Thanks!

Maybe you could paste the output of cat /proc/version, cat /etc/*release*?
Thanks!

Hi @Matt_from_Sensel,

any news or plans to release an updated Linux version?

Hey Martin,

There are no plans for this at the moment, as there are some other bugs we’re working to address more urgently.

I spoke with our software team, who confirmed your issue and said it is some weird bug on mint likely due to different display resolutions or densities. I’m sorry for the persistent problem.

Ok, thanks. That’s not really encouraging as I already tried on two different systems.

I am also under the impression that there are others who can not successfully use the currently released Linux version.

One more questions: When you say “there are no plans for this at the moment…” are there “plans for the future”?

My system is an older i7 assembled about 9-10 years ago. I’m running openSUSE Leap 15.1, which is actually considered out-of-date with 15.2 the main version now. I’m also using the KDE desktop.

cat /proc/version

Linux version 4.12.14-lp151.28.83-default (geeko@buildhost) (gcc version 7.5.0 (SUSE Linux) ) #1 SMP Sat Nov 21 07:05:39 UTC 2020 (85b988f)

cat /etc/*release

NAME=“openSUSE Leap”
VERSION=“15.1”
ID=“opensuse-leap”
ID_LIKE=“suse opensuse”
VERSION_ID=“15.1”
PRETTY_NAME=“openSUSE Leap 15.1”
ANSI_COLOR=“0;32”
CPE_NAME=“cpe:/o:opensuse:leap:15.1”
BUG_REPORT_URL=“https://bugs.opensuse.org
HOME_URL=“https://www.opensuse.org/

Hi,

again, I would really appreciate, if you as a company could put some additional effort into Linux support.

Does it help to tell, that I can work with the editor when editing layouts for the Innovator layout? So in other words: the editor is unusable while editing the Buchla Thunderbird and the Piano layout but works reasonably well while using the Innovator layout.

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Hi Martin. I sent your feedback directly to our director of software. Yes, it certainly helps to know that it works for the Innovator’s Overlay but not the others.

Appreciate your patience,
Matt

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Hello everyone. This is my 1st post and I thought I might chime in.
I had no success getting the app to work on the latest iteration of mint (20.1), but my macos11.1 setup Morph could play piano on mint.
The app works great on MX as you can see in the pics. But that doesn’t surprise me since MX is the king of the distrowatch hill. https://distrowatch.com/
I suspect that the app will work better on debian base rather than an ubuntu base. Mint users might give LMDE a try.
On macos everything works flawlessly with analoglab5 and logic.
I use Linux for everyday work but macos is my system of choice for creation.
Sensel providing an app for Linux is a brave thing and a daunting task because as you can see Linux and software support suffer from no high level, stable, sane (truly forward and backward compatible) and standardized API for developing GUI applications. Many Linux/open source developers are often not interested in fixing bugs if they cannot easily reproduce them (for instance when your environment substantially differs from the developer’s environment). This problem plagues virtually all Open Source projects and it’s more serious in regard to Linux because Linux has fewer users and fewer developers. Open Source developers (distro providers) often don’t get paid to solve bugs so there’s little incentive for them to try to replicate and squash difficult to reproduce bugs.




I was able to use the Sensel App using Debian Buster with no issue (KDE desktop). After upgrading to Bullseye the Sensel App would segfault. I use a total of 4 USB audio devices and have snd_usb_audio blacklisted at boot so that I load and unload the usb audio devices with modprobe manually.

I stumbled upon (not sure if it something new in Bullseye or a mishap due to the dist-upgrade) but the Sensel App can only work if the snd-usb-audio module is unloaded.

This (new behaviour?) is also something I noticed with QEMU virtual machine. That for the USB devices to be recognized in QEMU (Windows client) they have to disconnected from host OS (Linux).

Bottom line is the app works with my current configuration of Bullseye as long as I run

sudo modprobe -r snd-usb-audio

The reason why snd_usb_audio is blacklisted

using a file named
/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-usb-audio.conf

contents…

blacklist snd_usb_audio

is that

sudo modprobe -r snd-usb-audio

will only work if all usb devices are disconnected otherwise system will say in use, if usb audio is blacklisted at boot hot swapping is not needed