Ubuntu is my OS of choice, for more than one reason. With one of my hardware purchases (Korg Kaossilator 2s), I got a copy of Ableton Live 9 Lite. Running Qtractor, Sequencer64, and Harrison MixBus 5 on Ubuntu, I was wondering whether it was possible to run a beautiful product like Ableton Live 9 on Ubuntu. After some fiddling around I’ve found a way to get it working. In this article, I’ll explain how you can install Ableton Live on Ubuntu.
The first thing you have to do is install WineHQ on Ubuntu. Depending on your OS (or needs) you can choose between the 32 or 64 bits version of Wine. You can install your Wine of choice by entering the following command in a terminal window:
For 64 bits: $ sudo apt install wine64
For 32 bits: $ sudo apt install wine32
After installing Wine you need to create the necessary “Windows” folders before you can continue. You can do this by entering the following command in a terminal window:
$ winecfg
By doing so you can also configure Wine to run like a specific “Windows” version (“Windows 10” worked for me).
The next things to install are the vcrun2008 and corefonts components, you can do this by using winetricks. To do this enter the following commands in a terminal window:
$ sudo apt-get install winetricks
$ winetricks vcrun2008 corefonts
When your machine is ready installing the vcrun2008 and corefonts components, you are ready to install Ableton Live. Do this by the following command in the terminal window:
$ wine msiexec.exe /i <Path & Installation MSI>
After the installation you can start Ableton from the terminal window bij the following command:
$ wine <Path and Executable of Ableton Live>
If you don’t know the <Path and Executable of Ableton Live> you might want to search in the following direction (use your file-browser and enable the “show hidden files option” as .wine is a hidden folder in your home folder):
.wine/drive_c/ProgramData/Ableton/
After starting Ableton Live you need to register it, there are two ways:
- If you have an internet connection you can choose to license your Ableton Live software via the internet.
- If you are using a license-file for licensing, you need to copy it to the same folder as where you Ableton Live executable is placed. After starting Ableton you need to Drag & Drop the license file on running Ableton window.
Extra (question per mail from Ellis Grouse): You can connect the Korg nanoKontrol 2, and make it interact with Ableton Live by mapping the Korg nanoKontrol knobs to the Ableton Live functions.
Suggestions for improving this article are welcome, please let me know and drop me a line .