Playground Forums

Hello,

Has anyone tried running this under Linux (e.g. using WINE)?

Any advice would be very helpful. I've tried and for now I can get the login screen up, but when I enter my account details, it just hangs there.

Regards,

Arut

Hi Arut,

Any luck running it in Linux?

Hello All,

Taking a few minutes at lunch to share my findings on running PGS on top of WINE on Linux.

I was motivated to work on this because I am a full time Linux user, and every music tool I use (except for PGS) I use on Linux. Making things worse, for PGS I was using a 2007 era Dell Windows Vista desktop that I rescued from a dumpster. It had such a slow CPU that I had to disable the virus checker to make PGS usable.

The first thing I tried was a VM. I had no trouble getting PGS working in a Windows 10 virtual machine under KVM/QEMU, but I still had the 5 minute wait for Windows to start up or shut down every time I wanted to practice. Never mind the seemingly endless number of Windows patches.

So I tried WINE. Here are the details:
Hardware:
Dell Vostro 3558 laptop, 16 GB RAM
External 20" monitor
MIDI to USB converter cable
Yamaha P200 Electronic Piano (88 keys)

Software:
Operating System: Fedora 28 (Red Hat)
Kernel: 4.16.10-300.fc28.x86_64
Wine Version: 3.0.1
Wine Emulation: Windows 10
Playground Version: 2.5 Build 582

As with nearly all WINE/Windows interactions, PGS did not work straight out of the box.

PGS uses Windows WAV files for the splash (welcome) screen, as well as "One, two, set, go..." , the applause when you level up and a few other things. This sounds were playing about 3x speed by WINE, and were very crackly. This has been reported many times as an issue with pulseaudio and WINE. Google searching provides a number of suggested fixes, but unfortunately a few reboots and a systemctl suspend command later the problem self corrected for me, so I don't know the true cause.

Another problem I had was with MIDI configuration. My MIDI-USB cable did not show up as an option unless I had the cable plugged into both the USB port and the keyboard MIDI port before starting Playground Sessions.

Other than that the software works great. No network issues logging into my account. I tested the first video (where David talks about middle-C) and it played smooth and crisp. The lessons downloaded as I selected them. The lessons played fine with no issues regarding MIDI input or the speed of the background instruments (I believe WAV files as well).

One thing to remember is that installing PGS under WINE counts as a device install on your subscription. You are only allowed 2. If you are already at 2, when trying to run PGS under WINE results in a ugly red TOO MANY COMPUTERS error, or something like that. If that happens, log into your account on playgroundsessions.com, click My Account, then Download/Installs. Scroll down to the bottom and Deactivate one of your devices, this will make that error go away and allow you to "register" your new PGS install. That is what I did.

The external monitor I wrote about is optional. I am hoping some day the PGS includes some basic accessibility features - no anti-aliasing(crisper) and larger fonts, high contrast color schemes and of course larger notes for people with vision issues. For now though a 2nd monitor is an easy workaround.

Thanks for that information. I'm sure it will prove to be helpful to other users hoping to use Playground on Linux.

I just installed it on my Ubuntu and it works really nice. I've had one issue with the fonts, and it was solved with the following command:
Have you been able to solve the MIDI startup issue? I'm also missing auto-detection if the keyboard is connected AFTER the software is launched.

No, I never resolved that issue. Not spending any time on it. I am just glad that WINE works at all. No problem exiting PGS and restarting if I forget to connect the keyboard first.

Very cool. I want to move away from Windows. PGS has been a reason for me to stay. Hearing it's working with Fedora and Ubuntu in WINE inspires confidence.