Studio One 6.5 and later, as well as Fender Studio Pro, are available as a public beta for Linux. Please note that the Linux version is intended primarily for plug-in developers and advanced Linux users.
As on Windows and macOS, Studio One and Studio Pro need to be activated with a MyFender account and a valid license to run on Linux. Please note that PreSonus/Fender does not provide any Linux-related support until further notice.
Linux-related topics can be discussed in the user forum on my.fender.com. To get access, please enroll in the Studio Pro Linux Beta program: https://my.fender.com/beta?section=availableprograms
Unavailable features
The following features are currently unavailable in the Linux version:
- CD burning
- DDP import/export
- REX file support
- Thunderbolt support for PreSonus/Fender hardware
- Advanced PreSonus/Fender hardware integration (preamp control, etc.)
- Melodyne integration
- Third-party plug-in GUIs without native Wayland support
- Linux-specific plug-in formats (LV2, DSSI, Vamp)
Known issues
- Opening the manual results in a "permission denied" error if the system's default web browser was installed as a Snap package. Please use the online manual instead.
- Graphics are distorted when using LLVMpipe.
Plug-in developers can find new APIs for making their plug-in GUIs work in Studio Pro on Linux on the PreSonus developer page.
Installation
Studio Pro 8 is available as a .deb package for Ubuntu 26.04 and as a Flatpak package for any Linux distribution that supports Flatpak.
We don't recommend installing the .deb and Flatpak versions side by side. If you want to switch to the Flatpak version, uninstall the .deb version first.
To install the .deb package, run:
sudo dpkg -i ./studiopro8-x86_64.deb
To uninstall the .deb package, run:
sudo apt remove studiopro8
To install the Flatpak package, run:
flatpak install ./studiopro8.flatpak
To uninstall the Flatpak package, run:
flatpak remove com.fender.studiopro8
Flatpak
Flatpak applications are sandboxed. By default, a Flatpak application cannot access files on the host system or use any host devices. The Studio Pro Flatpak package is set up so that Studio Pro can access files in your home directory and all audio and graphics devices. If you want to change these permissions, you can use Flatseal.
Flatpak applications cannot access any files in the host's /usr directory. This means that the standard search paths for third-party plug-ins (VST2, VST3, CLAP) are not available to Studio Pro. Third-party plug-ins installed to ~/.vst, ~/.vst3 or ~/.clap are available. However, the preferred method is to install the Flatpak versions of these plug-ins.
To list the available plug-ins, run:
flatpak search org.freedesktop.LinuxAudio.Plugins
Flatpak does not support JACK1 or JACK2. If you want to use JACK with Studio Pro, install pipewire-jack on your host system and run PipeWire as a JACK server.
Wayland
Studio Pro is a Wayland application and won't run in an X11 session. Wayland is a display server protocol and the successor to the X Window System. Ubuntu uses Wayland by default, but depending on the Ubuntu flavor you chose or your system configuration, you may be running an X11 session.
On the login screen, make sure to choose a Wayland session. If no Wayland session is available, install the required packages for the Wayland compositor of your choice, e.g. ubuntu-desktop or kde-plasma-desktop.
Debugging Wayland issues
Try running Studio Pro from a terminal with additional debug output:
WAYLAND_DEBUG=1 /opt/Fender/Studio\ Pro\ 8/Studio\ Pro 2>&1 | tee ~/studiopro8.txt
This creates a text file (~/studiopro8.txt) that may contain useful information.
Vulkan
Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics API and the successor to OpenGL. We recommend running Studio Pro with a Vulkan 1.1-compatible graphics driver. As a fallback, Studio Pro is also compatible with OpenGL ES 2.0.
For a list of Vulkan-capable graphics cards and information on working drivers, see vulkan.gpuinfo.org.
The easiest way to install a compatible driver for your hardware is to use ubuntu-drivers. In a terminal, run the following command to list the available driver packages:
sudo ubuntu-drivers list
Run the following command to install all recommended packages:
sudo ubuntu-drivers install
To get a list of the available GPUs, run:
lspci -nn | grep -E 'VGA|Display'
For more information on AMD GPU drivers, see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AMDGPU-Driver.
For more information on Nvidia GPU drivers, see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NvidiaDriversInstallation.
Note: At the time of writing, the open-source Nvidia driver nouveau does not support Vulkan. An open-source Vulkan driver, NVK, is in development. For now, we recommend using the proprietary Nvidia drivers.
Intel HD Graphics is fully supported from Kaby Lake (2016, e.g. Pentium G4560) onwards.
For additional troubleshooting, you can install the vulkan-tools package. It contains the sample application vkcube, which you can use to test whether a working Vulkan driver is installed, and vulkaninfo, which prints information about your GPUs and the Vulkan features they support.
Studio Pro requires the following Vulkan instance extensions:
VK_KHR_surfaceVK_KHR_wayland_surface
Studio Pro requires the following Vulkan device extension:
VK_KHR_swapchain
As a workaround for incompatible graphics cards, you can try LLVMpipe. In our tests, this caused some graphical glitches when resizing windows, but Studio Pro remained reasonably usable.
Low-latency audio
Studio Pro uses multithreading and runs all audio-processing threads at a higher priority. However, in a default Ubuntu installation, Studio Pro does not have the permissions required to change thread priorities. To grant these permissions, create the file
/etc/security/limits.d/audio.conf
with the following contents:
@audio - rtprio 95 @audio - memlock unlimited
Then run the following commands to add your user to the audio group (replace yourUserID with your actual user name), and reboot:
sudo groupadd audio sudo usermod -a -G audio yourUserID
If the audio group already exists, groupadd reports this and you can continue with the second command.