Installing plugins in flatpak (linux) - Ardour 9.8.2

Installation & Configuration Linux
#1

TLDR;
Install plugins to
/var/lib/flatpak/app/org.ardour.Ardour/x86_64/stable/active/files/extensions/Plugins/
(note that your architecture folder may be different, check your filesystem to find the exact path)

Working in this directory will require sudo privileges.

VST2 plugins go in a subfolder named vst and VST3 plugins go in a subfolder vst3. These subfolders probably need to be created.

In the plugin preferences I could see that the VST2 path is /app/extensions/Plugins/vst and the VST3 path is /app/extensions/Plugins/vst3. I just had to find where that was located within the Ardour flatpak installation.

Potential issue: flatpak may create a new folder structure when Ardour is upgraded. You may have to reinstall the plugins after Ardour upgrades.

What did NOT work: using flatpak override to provide access to the “standard” VST3 locations. I tried $HOME/.vst3 and /usr/local/lib/vst3. IMO this would have been a cleaner solution. Does Ardour look in these standard locations when running as flatpak?

The Ardour UI discourages modifications to the VST3 path (for reasons not explained), so I didn’t pursue that option. Maybe I could have used a different location and provided access via flatpak override.

#2

  1. Flatpak builds of Ardour are not officially supported here., You should talk to the people who packaged it that way.

  2. One of the reasons we discourage Flatpak builds is that the use of plugins is central to most people’s use of Ardour, and the whole concept of flatpak is antagonistic to the idea of loading arbitrary and random shared libraries during the program’s execution.

  3. We discourage modifying the VST3 path because it is defined (even for Linux) as part of the VST3 API/SDK by Steinberg, and we see no reason to mess with it.

1 Like
#3

Thanks Paul, perfectly rational on all points. I was unaware of the support status for Flatpak, very good to know! For what it’s worth, the plugins do appear to be working.

I’d call myself a more casual user, satisfied entirely by core features until now. My primary Ardour installation is in fact native. Flatpak is a secondary installation on my laptop. I’ll probably stick with it just to see where it breaks, if it does. So far the worakarounds have been minor and tolerable.

That said, the key takeaway is not to burden Ardour support with flatpak-related issues. I’ll be certain to verify any problems with my native installation before reaching out.