Yes. Thanks for reading, please make sure to follow the blog. Just kidding. For musicians it often turns out to be a bit harder to switch to Linux, especially if you’re depending on software. My personal DAW of choice is FL Studio and my entire creative work is relying on it. Because of this, I wasn’t able to ever switch to Linux entirely. But nowadays I can use it on my Notebook on the go. And I will show you how I did it on Elementary OS 5.0 Juno (Ubuntu 18.04 based installs should work the same).

1. Install WINE

In order for this to work we need WINE. Wine Is Not an Emulator, is a compability layer between Linux and Windows apps. The installation process is rather easy.

Make sure to update your system before you install WINE. Either use your Update Manager or use the following command:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

After the system is up-to-date, let’s install WINE via terminal:

sudo apt install wine-stable

This will take a couple of seconds/minutes (depending on your internet connection).

2. Download the installer

Now we need the FL Studio 20 installer. Just visit the Image-Line website and download the .exe file for Windows, just like you would on the Update-Nightmare Windows 10.

3. Install through WINE

Now we need to locate the installer (probably /home/YOURNAME/downloads) and open this path within the terminal.

The “ls” command will list all available files within the directory. Make sure to check for the installer. If you are in the right directory, use:

wine flstudio_win_20.0.5.681.exe

(if the version changed, the numbers will have changed)

After this you will see the GUI installer you know and love from Windows. Just install it the way you want and wait for it to do its’ magic.

You can also install ASIO with FL Studio, but I haven’t tinkered with it yet. As far as I’m concerned, I use the FL Studio Asio driver which natively comes with the installer. It works just fine for me.

4. Fix the weird font issue

Now you’re good to go… almost. Because after you open up FL Studio 20, it will not show you some written elements of plug-ins like Sytrus.

In order to fix it, we need the Tahoma font. If you have a windows installation, you could just copy the file from there. Maybe your favorite search engine of choice offers a download link. But of course you know that it would be breaking the license agreement, which is why I need to inform you to not do that.  Tahoma should ideally be purchased.

After you have the font, be sure that it’s name is Tahoma.ttf and copy it to your WINE Windows Font directory.

The directory will be hidden in your home directory. In Elementary/Ubuntu just open your file manager and hit  CTRL + H to show hidden folders. The location should be:

/YOURHOMEFOLDER/.wine/drive_c/windows/Fonts

Copy it there and voila, you’re done!

Before you delete your Windows partition, please make sure to create back-ups of your entire music directory. I lost some great song ideas/project files because I was stupid enough to not make a proper one.

If this tutorial helped you out, feel free to follow this blog and tell your musician-friends about it. You can also check out my music within the Audio player on the top of the page. Have fun creating great music, fellow computer music lover!