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Running qtractor with Unity desktop
I am one of those strange people who likes the Unity desktop, and for preference I run versions of Ubuntu Unity (which is now again an official variant of Ubuntu).
Unfortunately I have never had very much success running qtractor in this environment. It seems to crash frequently, especially if I do anything as audacious as trying to change the colour of a track or other element.
For this reason, I now run Ubuntu Studio when I want to use qtractor, and Ubuntu Unity when I want to do virtually anything else. But Ubuntu Studio uses KDE Plasma, which I absolutely detest. It seems to have a mind of its own, tends to be rather slow, and presents information in ways which don't suit the way my brain works.
I think that the problem with qtractor in Unity might be something to do with the fact that qtractor is built using Qt and Unity isn't - but perhaps I'm wrong. I don't even pretend to understand the relationships between GUIs, desktop environments and display mangers etc.
Can anyone suggest either (a) how to get qtractor to run well with Unity desktop, or (b) what desktop environments etc. might suit qtractor better without being KDE Plasma?
re. Running qtractor with Unity desktop
have you tried to avoid using the desktop environment native dialogs?
seeya
re. Running qtractor with Unity desktop
Yes
re. Running qtractor with Unity desktop
and setting custom (widget) style to "Fusion" and never the "(default)" ?
ps. what qtractor version are you running on unity? just tried the latest from (my) ppa:rncbc/apps-jammy on a fresh Ubuntu Unity 22.04.1 LTS on a KVM and having none or near zero issues.
re. Running qtractor with Unity desktop
Having rather screwed up my Ubuntu Studio installation by adding the Unity desktop, I decided to completely reinstall. But before reverting to Ubuntu Unity itself, I thought I should try what you suggested.
So I installed Ubuntu Unity 22.04.1 LTS, added your repositories (including the Libraries and Qt6 libraries) and then installed qtractor, making sure that I was getting v. 0.9.39-82.1 from your repository, and not the default Ubuntu 22.04 version. I started qtractor and made sure that native dialogues were off and Style theme was set to Fusion, as suggested.
I still get the same behaviour as at every other attempt to run qtractor in Ubuntu Unity: if I click on one of the colour pallette icons anywhere in the program, the colour selector doesn't open and the program crashes.
Can you think of any reason it worked for you, but won't for me?!!
re. Running qtractor with Unity desktop
oops, did not try the color-chooser dialogs though, but now I can confirm the issue.
however, all remains generally usable, all but the color pickers...
sorry to tell
re. Running qtractor with Unity desktop
may I recommend you to run the AppImage on Unity? it seems to work fine here on my 22.04.1 LTS, including the color-pickers.
hth.
ps. most probably due to its reliance to qt6.6 static than system provided shared libraries, which we both suspect are the culprit.
re. Running qtractor with Unity desktop
On a Ubuntu Unity 22.04 machine (not the one I normally use for qtractor) the output I get from 'qtractor --version' is:
Gtk-Message: 12:14:16.086: Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module"
Qt: 5.15.3
Qtractor: 0.9.25
I still get the same problem when running qtractor on this machine as I reported for the other one, which is running an older version of qtractor and Ubuntu Unity 20.04.
Under Ubuntu Studio 23.10 I am running the latest development version of qtractor, but I haven't yet managed to get this to compile in the Unity versions.
I don't know whether the canberra reference is crucial. When I do 'aptitude search canberra' there is no mention of a possible canberra-gtk-module, but I tried installing libcanberra-gtk-module to see if it helps. It got rid of the Gtk-Message, but qtractor still crashes as previously reported.
re. Running qtractor with Unity desktop
the "canberra" warnings crap is of no interest here...
though ancient qtractor versions are sure at stake: get rid of them, now!
please try the "mantic" ppa while in the ubuntu unity 22.10; forget the 20.04 (focal) which will be dead in the water/EoL in a couple of months anyway.
hth.
re. Running qtractor with Unity desktop
I have now installed the Mantic version on the 22.04 machine, but the crashes happen just as before.
I also hit on the idea of installing ubuntu-unity-desktop in my Ubuntu Studio installation. But this didn't work well generally, and in any case I still got the same crashes in qtractor as I have already reported - with the latest development version of qtractor. Having removed Unity, I find that qtractor is now working OK, although I think I may end up having to do a complete re-install as the desktop is pretty screwed up.
Not sure to what extent it
Not sure to what extent it may be related but figured I'd mention I'm startled to see what a fresh install of ubuntu studio produces. I just reinstalled from scratch and found the following:
I'd suggest running https://codeberg.org/rtcqs/rtcqs and looking at the results. Again, probably somewhat off topic but wanted to mention this given my level of surprise as well as the fact you mentioned you are running ubuntu studio.
Not sure to what extent it
This is interesting, but I don't think it relates to my problem with Ubuntu Unity. Qtractor normally runs just fine on my Ubuntu Studio 23.10 installation, although I admit to being a bit vague about the status of pipewire.
It's very mysterious that Rui finds that qtractor runs OK in a new Ubuntu Unity installation. The problem I originally reported has been there in numerous releases over several years, including the latest 23.10.
And as already mentioned, when I tried installing and running the Unity Desktop in my Ubuntu Studio installation, qtractor was prone to these crashes when I ran Unity but not when I ran the default KDE Plasma.
Just to be clear, during the several years that Unity Desktop was not included by default in any Ubuntu release, I always installed it and used it as my default desktop. Whether I would have had the same crashes in qtractor if I had been running the default Gnome desktop, I don't know.
Running qtractor with Unity desktop
My existing installation of Ubuntu Studio got seriously messed up by my adding the Unity Desktop to it. The simplest way to sort it out seemed to be a complete reinstall.
But before doing that I installed, in turn, Ubuntu Unity, vanilla Ubuntu, xUbuntu (which I rather liked) and finally, reluctantly, Ubuntu Studio again. These were all the latest 22.04 versions. In each case I then installed qtractor, with it's libraries and the qt6 stuff from ppa:rncbc/apps-jammy. The colourpicker crash was present in every case, except under Ubuntu Studio.
I also tried to use the AppImage and the flatpak versions, but unfortunately I couldn't manage to get either of them to run.
There are lots of people who are far more concerned than I am with the visual interface of qtractor, judging from the 143 posts on the subject of Theming. Nonetheless, having a button which is not only useless but causes a crash if absent-mindedly clicked (as I have been known to do) is troublesome.
Obviously there must be some reason why this crash happens. If it could be fixed, that would be fantastic.
But if it really, really can't be fixed (and I have no way of knowing), could I suggest something else? The drop-down colour chooser works tolerably well, and the required colour can be entered in hexadecimal form. Unfortunately it doesn't remember previously chosen colours (apart from the last, which it seems to use as a background). Perhaps new colours selected could be added to the drop-down list, preferably at the top. In fact, it would probably be better if each new colour were added at the top, with the bottom one being removed.
It would also be helpful if the colourpicker button could be removed. It could perhaps be a choice in the display options under the View menu.
I know none of this is terribly important (except to me and possibly a few others). But there's no harm in flagging it up, is there!
I had the same problem, and I
I had the same problem, and I must say that it is not Qtractor's fault.
In my case in AVLinux (MX < Debian). The problem turned out to be a library although.
Unfortunately I don't remember the name.
In my case, only in compiled versions, when clicking on the colorpicker, Qtractor it was frozen. And yes, it was very irritating.
To test things, it is not necessary to install qt6.6-static to compile Qtractor, in fact it can cause problems.
(I don't know if that problematic library is related.)
This was Rui's response when said library prevented me from compiling Qtractor:
https://www.rncbc.org/drupal/comment/9925#comment-9925
Maybe not installing qt6.6-static fixes it. The problematic library was not directly related to qt6.6-static, but may be related to self-installed dependencies.
qtractor crashed while
qtractor crashed while choosing color picker.
Googled a lot.
Found multiple ways to solve it.
All of it seems to be complicated.
Solved by installing qt6ct .
And I opened qt6ct.
- Appearance Tab > Standard dialogs
- changed to Default (it is already set to default)
Now qtractor run without freezing while using color picker.
QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=qt6ct
Set it as environment variable. Don't forget to Logout and login back.
That problem didn't happen with Appimage version.
In Ubuntu Studio 23.10 I have
In Ubuntu Studio 23.10 I have qtractor built from one of the latest git updates. As an experiment, I tried 'sudo cmake --install build' in Ubuntu Unity 20.04, which I have on the same machine; (both OS versions share the same /home partition). I wanted to see what sort of error the newly installed qtractor would produce. What I got was 'qtractor: error while loading shared libraries: libQt6Widgets.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory'.
Unfortunately I can't find libQt6Widgets.so.6 anywhere, nor can I find qt6ct. So I'm still stuck. Can you point me in the right direction?
Further to the above
Further to the above, I have at last managed to download the AppImage, and it runs even on Ubuntu Unity 20.04, complete with colour-pickers!
The problem I had previously with AppImage is that every time I tried to download, it crashed Firefox. Eventually I tried in Chrome, which doesn't seem to be so touchy.
Thanks all for your help.
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