Author Topic: MusicBee for Linux (ubuntu)  (Read 115363 times)

thecountoftuscany

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MusicBee works in Linux, it's just not particularly intuitive to set up. Here's a very brief explanation of how I did it:
- Install wine and winetricks
- Run winecfg to create a default .wine folder and change the Windows version to XP.
- Use winetricks to install the requirements (not sure if all are required: dotnet40, mfc42, xmllite, d3dx9, gdiplus, vcrun2008, wmp10, windowscodecs)
- Download the portable version of MusicBee + all extras (like bass_aac.dll)
- Extract to the wine C:\ drive
- Create a shortcut that executes: wine "C:\\MusicBee\\MusicBee.exe"

What can I say, except that it works? To make it look pretty, choose a suitable font - things can look a bit weird otherwise.  I have Linux and Windows computers in my house and they all use the same version of portable MusicBee. The MB library is shared between them on a NAS, along with the music files. Furthermore, my NAS monitors the location that "Export as external playlist" uses. If it finds a new file, it runs a BASH script that parses the playlist, creates a folder structure and makes hard links to music files. (Hard links take up no additional space, are created in seconds and can be safely deleted). My Android phone does a scheduled rsync when it's connected to the home wifi. So in case you didn't catch that, to get music onto my phone:  right-click the playlist and "export as an external playlist". Ass-kickery, without the cables.
Thanks a lot. Now I have a working MusicBee on my Kubuntu 16.04. But I have only one problem. I could not use global hotkeys, which was one of the biggest reasons for me to turn to MusicBee when I was on Windows.
How did you make the global hotkeys work? This seems to be the only problem for using MusicBee on Ubuntu. I am using Kubuntu and it has built-in capacity to send some hotkeys to particular windows, but it is not able to recognise the MusicBee window perhaps because it is running in Wine.

theta_wave

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Now I have a working MusicBee on my Kubuntu 16.04. But I have only one problem. I could not use global hotkeys, which was one of the biggest reasons for me to turn to MusicBee when I was on Windows.
Heh, getting global hotkeys to work in linux is hard enough with native programs.  Usually, I have to bind key combinations to a program's native commands (i.e. mpc next) to manage audio playback.  Or worse, figure out the proper dbus incantation for a particular supported program that usually has little or no API documentation.

Here's one way to do it for WINE programs.  Unfortunately, you'll have to roll up your sleeves for this one: https://www.maketecheasier.com/bind-shortcut-keys-to-wine-programs-in-linux/

It doesn't look too difficult and if you know some basic bash scripting, and I do mean really basic, you shouldn't have too many issues with the above link.

WiR3D

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Gonna necro this just because it still gets traffic. @Steven if you ever hit the point where you want to make MusicBee cross Platform then Xamarin Forms is going to be of interest to you. especially now that the C# runtime works pretty much on everything, and Xamarin is a very successful C# based cross-platform platform.

I don't doubt that this will still be a lot of work, but it's definitely the best bet for cross-platform. MusicBee on Android anyone haha?

shepard

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I'm running MusicBee 3.3.6889 with dotnet461 and wine-staging 3.20 and so far it works pretty okay. Had to delete basswma.dll because it causes File Converter to crash (a tip from winehq). Winamp plugins and DSPs are working fine too.

A problem I'm having is when trying to use Auto-tag by Album

Quote
Saving file..

File exists [C:\users\shepard\Temp\01. filename something~0000003.mp3]

Retry - Cancel


I can see that every time I hit Retry a file gets added to C:\users\shepard\Temp and the tags are not getting applied.

Could be related with unix file paths and the usual https://docs.microsoft.com/windows/desktop/FileIO/naming-a-file#short-vs-long-names

Any idea how to fix this?

The main reason I want to keep using MusicBee is not only because it's awesome but the whole experience feels very "integrated" and you don't need several tools to make the same thing. And I need my Winamp plugins/DSPs to work (and the auto tagging) but I don't know any Linux player that has that.

Komagen

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MusicBee runs great on Linux with Wine, and is super easy to install

As this is the Top Hit when searching for "MusicBee + Linux" I was kind of disappointed that I didn't find an easy to follow guide on how to install it under wine(for someone with very little wine/winetricks knowledge). Particularly when I found out how easy it actually was. So I'l post how I did it in April 2019.

First, some specs;
 OS: Ubuntu 18.10
 Desktop Environment: KDE Plasma 5.15.3
 Kernel: 4.18.0-17-generic
 Wine: 4.5-staging
 Winetricks: 20180815
 MusicBee: 3.2-Update3 ('Setup', not 'Portable')

Note: Text following the '$' symbol is meant to be run in a terminal

Step 1: Download and extract the MusicBee installer

Step 2: Run the installer with wine. I recommend accepting to add a Desktop Icon so MusicBee becomes searchable from the launcher. You can delete the ~/Desktop/MusicBee.desktop file later anyway.
         $ wine  ~/Downloads/MusicBeeSetup_3_2_Update3.exe

Step 3: Install some DDL dependencies into the wineprefix
         $ winetricks -q dotnet45 mfc42 xmllite gdiplus d3dx9 vcrun2008 wmp10

If you try and launch MusicBee now you might get an error saying that "MusicBee does not run on WindowsVista/XP". If so, do step 4.

Step 4: Set the wineprefix's Windows version to Windows 7 or newer. Open the configuration tool by running;
         $ winecfg

That's it!
I'm no wine expert, but with the latest releases of wine it's become trivial to have MusicBee running in Linux, so I though I'd share for anyone else missing the best music player in the world in their new Linux home.

LR7

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Thank you very much! I tried several times during the years. Now it's working for me too on Linux Mint 19.1 Cinnamon (Ubuntu 18.04).

Code
wget -nc https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/winehq.key
sudo apt-key add winehq.key
sudo apt-add-repository 'deb https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/ bionic main'
sudo apt update

sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-stable
sudo apt install winetricks

rm -r ~/.wine
WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=~/.wine wine wineboot

wine  ~/Downloads/MusicBeeSetup_3_2_Update3.exe
(install mono, install gecko during setup)

Code
winetricks -q dotnet45 mfc42 xmllite gdiplus d3dx9 vcrun2008 wmp10

winecfg
(to win10)
In musicbee settings: Player Output - DirectSound, Soundcard - Pulseaudio
Last Edit: April 10, 2019, 02:10:33 PM by LR7

LR7

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To show your files in filemanager:

Musicbee settings->Tools:

Name: explorer.exe

Path: Z:\home\username\.wine\dosdevices\c:\windows\explorer.exe

Parameter: "<Path>"



Then use in musicbee "send to" explorer.exe

Better then nothing, I guess. Would like to know how to open the files in your native linux file manager...
Last Edit: April 11, 2019, 07:15:56 PM by LR7

moment

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@LR17 I have some problem.
When installing everything as described I was asked if I wanted to install gecko and mono. I clicked no, because of no internet connection at that time and I've also not installed Musicbee.
The next time I've tried to install it, he didn't asked about this gecko and mono.
Do you know how to make wine to ask me again about it so that I can download and install it?

shepard

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I've been running MusicBee inside a Flatpak with Wine. Everything works except two things:

1) https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=5338.msg152361#msg152361

2) The resized album art (Small / Medium Picture options) in the main view doesn't work. I get a blank square or a "-". I've tried recreating the bottle several times, I even made one with almost everything listed in Winetricks/deps. Still doesn't work. Tested with multiple Wine versions and also Wine Staging.

Any idea how I could fix these issues? With WINEDEBUG I get so many messages I have no idea if they are relevant since toggling album art doesn't add any error messages.

shepard

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Better then nothing, I guess. Would like to know how to open the files in your native linux file manager...
It seems the answer is no https://askubuntu.com/questions/246982/can-wine-and-its-programs-be-set-to-use-ubuntu-file-manager-instead-of-wine-expl because it would need to translate paths.

Maybe one day if MusicBee is open sourced you could make a Flatpak with xdg-desktop-portal proxy and use other features like filesystem abstraction, native notifications, dbus, to make a more seamless integration. Just like how Firefox can use both GTK and Qt filepickers.

moment

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btw. Have anyone this message on step 3 or any suggestion what to do?
Code
Step 3: Install some DDL dependencies into the wineprefix
         $ winetricks -q dotnet45 mfc42 xmllite gdiplus d3dx9 vcrun2008 wmp10
=
Code
------------------------------------------------------
You are using a 64-bit WINEPREFIX. Note that many verbs only install 32-bit versions of packages. If you encounter problems, please retest in a clean 32-bit WINEPREFIX before reporting a bug.
------------------------------------------------------
Using winetricks 20181203 - sha256sum: b4b29a961905bfed1db98f10e2f09a356b719861fc8602ffbf813a22579b2848 with wine-4.7 and WINEARCH=win64
Executing w_do_call dotnet45
------------------------------------------------------
error: dotnet45 conflicts with dotnet40, which is already installed. You can run `/usr/bin/winetricks --force dotnet45` to ignore this check and attempt installation.

LR7

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@moment

I suggest to start over with a new WINEPREFIX, it has to 32-bit.

@shepard

Do you see the cover artwork in other views? I would try to clean the cover cache, rebuild library, check settings about reading artwork, check the artwork itself... that stuff. Sorry, no real idea.

NetherKing1357

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I'm running MusicBee 3.3.6889 with dotnet461 and wine-staging 3.20 and so far it works pretty okay. Had to delete basswma.dll because it causes File Converter to crash (a tip from winehq). Winamp plugins and DSPs are working fine too.

A problem I'm having is when trying to use Auto-tag by Album

Quote
Saving file..

File exists [C:\users\shepard\Temp\01. filename something~0000003.mp3]

Retry - Cancel

I can see that every time I hit Retry a file gets added to C:\users\shepard\Temp and the tags are not getting applied.

Could be related with unix file paths and the usual https://docs.microsoft.com/windows/desktop/FileIO/naming-a-file#short-vs-long-names

Any idea how to fix this?

The main reason I want to keep using MusicBee is not only because it's awesome but the whole experience feels very "integrated" and you don't need several tools to make the same thing. And I need my Winamp plugins/DSPs to work (and the auto tagging) but I don't know any Linux player that has that.


Is anyone not getting this error? I'm also occasionally getting the error while updating album art and rarely with lyrics.

shepard

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Is anyone not getting this error? I'm also occasionally getting the error while updating album art and rarely with lyrics.
Several people are but you would need some reverse engineering skills to debug it I believe. There is no error in the wine logs for me.

LR7

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Still got no clue why it happens. Especially annoying while rating tracks. Workaround for general tagging problems:
Send to mp3tag
X:\.wine\drive_c\Program Files\Mp3tag\Mp3tag.exe

And do not forget to clean
/home/user/.wine/drive_c/users/besitzer/Temp

from time to time. Much garbage there