Anukari is available on Linux as a standalone app and as VST3 and LV2 plugins, with best-effort support.
Best-effort means: Anukari is developed by one person, and the Linux desktop is ridiculously diverse. Testing every distribution, desktop environment, and audio stack isn't feasible. Anukari is built and tested primarily on Ubuntu, and the binary runs on any mainstream distribution from 2022 or later. I will definitely try to fix clear, reproducible bugs in Anukari, and Linux bug reports are genuinely welcome. Issues specific to a particular distro or desktop may take longer, or may not get fixed at all.
If you have issues getting Anukari to work in your particular Linux configuration, please join our Discord server where there is a #linux channel for discussing this with other Linux users.
Several Linux DAWs have significant plugin-hosting bugs of their own. Where Anukari can work around a host bug, it does. Where it can't, it's listed under Known Issues below.
If you're choosing a DAW for Anukari on Linux, REAPER and Bitwig both host it well.
Recommended reading: the linuxaudio.org wiki is the best resource for setting up a Linux machine for audio work. Its system configuration guide covers everything below (real-time priority, CPU governor, and more) in depth.
If you're not sure whether Anukari will work with your Linux setup, try the free demo! It gives you full access to Anukari during the demo period, so you can test whether it works before you buy it.
Linux support is for people who enjoy pain, and spending more time tracking down and fixing obscure kernel configuration issues than using software. (I've used desktop Linux for 25 years so I am allowed to make fun of it) :P
But in all seriousness, while it can be a hassle to get things set up perfectly, Anukari's real-time audio performance under Linux is unparalleled once things are locked in. It is possible to get absolute rock-solid latency with zero CPU jitter. It's awesome.
Especially on lower-end hardware, it's often possible to get far more consistent real-time performance with Linux, because you can turn off system services you don't need, and not worry about Windows Update or Defender kicking in and stealing 80% of your CPU at an inopportune moment. I test each Anukari release on a stack of inexpensive old used laptops, and Linux really shines on them (whereas Windows 11 bloatware slows them down to almost unusable levels sometimes).
In addition to Anukari's machine requirements (AVX2 CPU and Vulkan 1.2 GPU), it requires:
Anukari writes a log file to ~/.config/Anukari/logs/. Each launch creates a new file named anukari-log-<date-time>.txt, and files older than two weeks are deleted automatically.
The logs contain diagnostic messages like: the Anukari version, audio device setup, GPU selection, warnings (like the real-time scheduling and powersave governor warnings above), and any errors. If you are having issues, this is the first place to look to get info about what's going wrong.
If you report a bug, please attach the log file from the session where the problem happened. Sorting the folder by date is the easiest way to find it.
In a DAW: the DAW owns the audio device. Nothing Anukari-specific to configure.
Standalone: Anukari supports JACK and ALSA, and defaults to 48 kHz. On a modern distribution, PipeWire provides both, and the defaults work out of the box. For the lowest latency, select your audio interface directly in the audio settings and reduce the buffer size until you hear glitches, then back off one step.
Anukari's physics simulation runs on real-time audio threads. It requests real-time scheduling automatically (directly, then through rtkit, the same broker PipeWire uses), so a stock desktop needs no configuration.
If that fails, audio still works but glitches more easily under load, and Anukari logs a warning (logs are in ~/.config/Anukari/logs/). The fix is the standard audio-group setup: add your user to the audio group and grant it a real-time priority limit, e.g. in /etc/security/limits.d/audio.conf:
@audio - rtprio 95
@audio - memlock unlimited
Then log out and back in.
This is the biggest performance factor in practice. The powersave governor pins your CPU near its minimum clock, and the real-time simulation suffers badly. Anukari logs a warning at startup if it detects it.
Switch to the performance governor:
echo performance | sudo tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_governor
This resets at reboot. Most desktops also expose it in power settings (e.g. GNOME's Power Mode > Performance), and cpupower or TLP can make it persistent. If you're not sure what mode your CPU is in, you can launch Anukari and check the logs in ~/.config/Anukari/logs/. They will include a warning when the CPU is not in performance mode.
Use VST3 when your DAW supports it. VST3 hosts deliver mouse events at full rate; some LV2 hosts (notably Ardour) deliver them slowly, which makes dragging in the 3D view feel less responsive. LV2 is there for hosts that prefer it.
NVIDIA's proprietary graphics driver has performance on par with the Windows version.
However the open-source MESA Intel and AMD drivers do not perform quite as well as their Windows counterparts (though they are perfectly usable). If you have issues with a low framerate or laggy 3D graphics, the first thing to try is to lower the graphics quality settings under Options > Preferences > 3D Quality. In particular, lowering or disabling the MSAA setting is often the biggest performance boost.
These are host or desktop bugs we've investigated. The root cause is outside Anukari, but workarounds are listed where they exist.
