Roon GUI on Linux? [Answered]

Puleeze. If anything, the Roon desktop users are less likely to use Linux. Just read the forum and the questions they ask.

The fact that Roon doesn’t support Linux might have a bit to do with that.

Also, FYI, the chart you posted previously is garbage. There’s no known mechanism that could plausibly explain the Nov-Dec 2023 seismic shift, which means the data is not reliable. No one makes a sufficient number of computers to cause a 5% swing in the ~3.5 billion unit market, in one month – and during that time period, PC sales were way down from normal as well. The entire global production is only about 19M units per month.

Linux is nice to play around with. But from my own experience with several distributions it can be a real hassle getting things to work. Most people just want things to work. So they turn to either Windows or MacOS.

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Nobody is interested in miniscule movements. It‘s obvious that this is just an estimate. Maybe post data that shows that Linux on the desktop is reaching even half of the users of macOS, then you might begin to have a case.

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And to be clear, I’d love a Linux remote. I just don’t know that it’s effort well spent, considering the obvious dev time shortages that Roon has, I disagree that it’s simple, and I am easily riled up by “you are morons if you don’t do it” kind of “arguments”.

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Is that why the market for commercial software on Windows dwarves every other OS, because nobody buys it?

Distro’s work differently as well. Installing Jriver on a debian based system is easy. But to get it to install and work on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed actually required the help of the Jriver Linux dev. Lot of terminal stuff and not user friendly at all.

I really don’t see Linux gaining the same amount of desktop users as Windows or MacOS. No real streamlined system. Each distro or DE doing things their own way.

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Nowadays one would create a flatpack and it would help, but of course Ubuntu needed to default to Snap :man_facepalming: :joy:

I love Linux, especially Debian, but I agree it’s almost impossible for a supplier of commercial closed source software to support all distributions, even just the popular ones.
To effectively work on Linux, Roon would need to release the source code and I can’t see that happening.

The real answer is, expose an actual API, let someone else in the community make a proper web ui. That’s definitely not happening though. If that was at all looking like a possibility, I wouldn’t have written my own music ecosystem :stuck_out_tongue: I’d love to be proved wrong but, Roon will never do it.

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Let’s keep this thread active. It would be interesting to know what percentage of Roon users are running Linux on their home PC. Since there is not a Linux GUI, I’m guessing Roon does not have that info.

I’m also surprised more people are not running Linux. Ubuntu has worked flawlessly for me for the last 14 years. Secure, easy to install and use, and free (apart from a small voluntary donation). When I think of all the time and money I wasted on different versions of Microsoft operating systems… Ubuntu is a lifesaver.

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As a 30-year Linux veteran, I’m finding the trend to immutable Linux desktop distros that require apps to run containerized or otherwise sandboxed in flatpak, distrobox, or podman (or equivalent) to be game-changing. OpenSUSE Kalpa is the most robust Linux distro I’ve ever used. I fiddle less with it, and when I do something stupid and break it, I just roll back a release, reapply the previous upgrade and carry on. More robust than Arch, Debian Testing and OpenSUSE Tumbleweed and as bleeding edge as any of them.

Roon remote is still not as easy as it is on Windows or Mac, but it’s only half a dozen cmdline steps, a short script and a desktop launcher, all of which is documented on this forum. For the average Linux user, these are not big steps, and there are plenty of people solving the issues that arise.

A native, feature-equivalent app would be nice, but Roon on Wine is not that hard, and Community Remote has great potential.

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I’ll be back on the Roon train if they ever release a native Linux app. Agree a flatpak version would solve it for a lot of people. Wine is OK, but the user experience varies with distros.

Another long term Linux user here (I guess starting on Slackware a lifetime ago counts as ‘long term’ :grinning:).

I don’t run Wine - not for any real reason than it would be too easy to accept Windows solutions rather than freeware. I have the Community Remote and Roon Bridge installed and that suffices, augmented by my Android phone if need be.

Yeah, I’d really like a native Roon client. I do wonder if Roon really would need to give away open source though. Just a fully comprehensive API might allow the community to build their own client. I’ve tinkered with the current API and it has too many restrictions to do anything better than either Community Remote or the terminal based Roon Tui (kudos to the developers of both)

I can muddle by without it but it does get frustrating on times.

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I would like to take this comment as an opportunity to reiterate my opinion on the Native Linux Remote matter.

It is OBVIOUS what is the share of Linux desktop users out there in the world. It is hard to argue when the request is dismissed on the basis of market share. So I won’t! :smiley:

To me, it should come from a place of doing what is right. Roon, as many companies do, derive great benefits from the existence of Linux. In the past if you wanted to develop a device, you had to pick a commercial OS and pay license to use it and distribute it with your device.

Linux freed the world from all that. Servers, endpoints running efficiently and cheaply on that wonderful platform benefits Roon. And many companies too. You would not believe how many devices out there are Linux devices.

Imagine having to license an OS for the Nuclei. Or ROCK for that matter. With Linux all of the $4K big Nucleus sale goes to Roon!

And that goes for all those devices that connect to Roon too. Many of them are, again, Linux devices. Roon benefits, those companies benefit. It it were not for Linux all those companies would have had to license QNX or similar and pass the cost to the customer. Everybody wins.

So PLEASE, do the Linux client to do WHAT IS RIGHT. To give back to the community from which the company has derived so much benefit.

And Roon doesn’t have to do a lot, really. Seriously. Luckily (and again, thanks to the open source community, as I understand the framework used is based on the Mono open source project) it runs well under Wine. You can dedicate one person’s time to make sure it always runs under Wine. Support it officially.

Give back and build on the goodwill.

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Separation of concerns! Of course, a bunch of the frontend runs on Windows. The only thing I can say is that maybe they shouldn’t! :smiley: Remember the Crowdstrike situation. Those that were not running Windows were unaffected.

But have to remind people of those little companies like Meta, Amazon, Alphabet/Google and many others that rely on Linux for the backbone of their operations.

Again, as per my previous post. Is not about market share or user share. It the RIGHT thing to do.

Well, Roon doesn’t manufacture hardware.

I’ve been using Windows for most of my lifetime and I’m not very familiar with Linux, so I always choose Windows for non IoT devices. I guess I’m just a bad person.

The Roon Client is a cross-platform software project. It is not native to anything be it Windows, MacOS, iOS or Android in the sense of following (best practice) guidelines for creating native applications for those platforms. So if Roon Labs ever makes a Linux version available, it is unlikely to be native Linux. Heck, they may even provide a Linux app container with the Windows client preinstalled in a Wine bottle and Wine. And then, would this discussion end with such a client distribution for Linux finaly available?

The „right“ part is not about what you use, but about the fact that the whole ecosystem Roon lives in wouldn’t exist without GNU/Linux (or other free software Unixes).

Though there is no requirement by the licenses, the moral obligation to give back is one of the better arguments for a Linux client, IMHO.

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I think it’s a bit ridicuouls to feel morally obligated to participate in everything other people do voluntarily. I will say though that, as a company, we interact with a lot of Linux users and significantly contribute to the open source community in general and Linux in particular. I guess everyone has their own ways to give back.

Also, for end users, Windows has been virtrually free for quite some time now - since at least the Windows 8 time frame if I’m not mistaken.