I haven't purchased a license for the latest Bitwig - I'm not getting the most out of the features I've already paid for yet. There's no flatpak for my version but there is a .deb file. There were a load of dependency problems like this when trying to install this in the normal way. The discussion on that thread led me to try to avoid installing those dependencies to keep things clean.
I unpacked the .deb which gives me all the files, basically ready to use, and let GNOME know about it so I can easily launch it.
Unpack
Use this command with your .deb filename and preferred destination directory.
dpkg-deb -R bitwig-studio-4.1.6.deb destinationFix a different dependency
The file you need to run inside the deb archive is opt/bitwig-studio/bitwig-studio. Clicking on it didn't do anything. Running it from a terminal gave this error:
libx11-windowing-system.so: libxcb-ewmh.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directoryThat can be fixed by installing the library in question:
sudo apt install libxcb-ewmh2Bitwig will now run, but with a generic icon in the dock, and won't appear in the applications menu (when I press the meta (Windows) key).
Telling the OS about the application
We need a file at /usr/share/applications/bitwig.desktop. This is what I've got:
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Bitwig
Exec=/home/andy/Applications/bitwig/opt/bitwig-studio/bitwig-studio
Type=Application
Icon=/home/andy/Applications/bitwig/opt/bitwig-studio/resources/icons/application/bitwig.svgIt was immediately recognised. Hitting the meta key, I can search for Bitwig, and I can pin it to the dock by right clicking the icon while it's showing in the application menu
Bitwig runs well so far. Pipewire is the default on Ubuntu 24 and with tools like coppwr you can see it's there and doing something involving Bitwig. I've got Bitwig using JACK and while I haven't been taxing the system, it's working well, and other applications can simultaneously play audio (something that I've had problems with in the past). I had crashes and other hassles when I upgraded to Pipewire on my Ubuntu 20 system - I can test if it's safe to upgrade now. I'm only using the built-in audio on an old Thinkpad while I travel. I'll test with my USB audio interface when I'm home.
Sidenote
After seeing the error from libx11-windowing-system I started wondering about x11 and Wayland. The library is related to a core X library. I'm on Wayland, as it's the default on Ubuntu 24 and I haven't messed about with it. Maybe Bitwig doesn't support Wayland and XWayland is being run to bridge the two? Running xlsclients -l shows me that it's not, even though it's installed (apt search xwayland). That's a mystery for now.