I wanted to use Arobas Music’s
Guitar Pro 6 on Debian Jessie 64-bit as they also provide a Linux version. However it can be rather difficult to install the software under certain circumstances for a number of reasons, so I decided to share my approach of the problem.
Download Guitar Pro files
Download Version 6 32-bit for Linux and standard sound banks. In my case I got two files:
gp6-full-linux-r11621.deb Banks-r370.gpbank
Prepare your system
- Since the software just comes 32-bit-only you have to enable multi-arch on your system:
sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
- Unfortunately Guitar Pro depends on two libraries which are not available for Debian Jessie, but are for Debian Wheezy (libportaudio0) and Debian Squeeze-LTS (libssl0.9.8). So you have to add those lines to the end of your
/etc/apt/sources.list file:# necessary for guitar pro 6 dependency libssl0.9.8 deb [arch=i386] http://ftp.debian.org/debian squeeze-lts main # necessary for guitar pro 6 dependency libportaudio0 deb [arch=i386] http://ftp.debian.org/debian wheezy main
(You should able to build those libraries for your current system but this is beyond the scope of this tutorial)
- Install the necessary dependencies (32-bit versions):
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install libasound2:i386 libc6:i386 libglu1-mesa:i386 libportaudio0:i386 libportaudio2:i386 libssl0.9.8:i386 libstdc++6:i386 libxml2:i386 libxslt1.1:i386 zlib1g:i386 libpulse0:i386 libxrender1:i386 libglib2.0-0:i386 libpng12-0:i386 libfreetype6:i386 libfontconfig1:i386 libasound2-plugins:i386
Remove unnecessary dependencies
The software also depends on
gksu which I didn’t manage to install, so I removed the dependency from the package because it also works without it.
- Extract data and control information:
dpkg-deb -x gp6-full-linux-r11621.deb gp6-full-linux-r11621 dpkg-deb --control gp6-full-linux-r11621.deb gp6-full-linux-r11621/DEBIAN
- Remove gksu dependency: Open the control file in an editor …
nano gp6-full-linux-r11621/DEBIAN/control
and change the line
Depends: gksu, libasound2, ...
to:
Depends: libasound2, ...
- Repack and clean up:
dpkg -b gp6-full-linux-r11621 gp6-full-linux-r11621-modified.deb rm gp6-full-linux-r11621.deb gp6-full-linux-r11621/ -rf
Install the software
- First Guitar Pro 6:
sudo dpkg -i --force-architecture gp6-full-linux-r11621-modified.deb
- Then the standard sound banks:
/opt/GuitarPro6/GPBankInstaller Banks-r370.gpbank /opt/GuitarPro6
- You should be able to run Guitar Pro 6 now. After first start you’ll probably see the activation-dialogue, where you have to enter your licensing information.
Let me know if this tutorial was able to help you or if you experienced difficulties on the way. Also if you can provide some insight why I could not install gksu in 32-bit version, feel free to leave a comment…
Thank you ! 🙂
Worked perfectly! You’re a legend!
Worked fine for me on Debian 8.2 GNOME, using the slightly newer 11686 version of Guitar Pro 6.
Thanks!
Very well done and worked well. Thank you.
Thank you for this perfect manual! GuitarPro installed successfully, but when I started it, I got error
I solved this problem by deleting file libz.so.1 from /opt/GuitarPro directory.
Thank you for sharing your experiences! Actually I might have done the same without mentioning it, accidentally. If I have the time soon, I plan on reproducing the whole setup from scratch.
Hi, thank you very much, nearly perfect with debian sid. The only library missing: libqtgui4:i386
Hi, thanks a lot for the manual, its definitely the best out there! 🙂
🙁
Hi Tony, sorry for answering late. I found out that debian squeeze has reached the end of it’s lifetime, so the repository has been moved to debian archives.
In order to get things working again you could modify the debian-lts specific line of your sources.list to
If you encounter an error like
please follow this guide dealing with outdated repositories.
Moe, thanks for the article. It helped me to remove the gksu dependency which I “thought” would help with the program crashing when you try to enter the license number. You get a dialog box that says:
and then closes down when you hit OK. If you have any thoughts on that, it’d be great. I’m able to run the program but even if I run it from the .sh in bash I get no error message.
FYI, I’m running Ubuntu 16.04 64 bit. It was quite a chore to find all the 32 bit libraries and get them installed but the programs seems to run; just can’t get to the point where I can pay for it…
Update 1 (2:33 am)
I will add that while I appreciate Arobas making a linux version available, I’m almost given up trying to get this 32 bit version to work. They would save a lot of people frustration and build good will by developing a 64 bit version.
Update 2 (3:10 am)
OK, problem solved. I had read that the updater does require gksu and it turns out to be true. I could not install gksu:i386 as it tried to remove sudo, however I ran a utility called gksu-properties and then installed gksu and it worked. What an ordeal!
Hi Vic, thank you for your insight, I’ll try this myself. The entire unpacking/repacking part may become obsolete with your suggestion. That would make the whole process a lot easier!
Hi, thanks a lot for the manual, but it doesn’t work. I got next error:
Hello, I don’t manage to do this command:
that’s answer:
Maybe 11621 just isn’t the version number of the file you’ve downloaded? I’d recommend checking this and modifying your command…
Thank you! Now I’ve got this problem with the installation of the banks:
How can I fix this problem ? Thanks by advance. I’m a noobie
Michael Kaufman reported a similar problem: it is possible that you are missing the corresponding library
Try installing it via
Hi There, Will this fix not being able to open the progam with at the applications menu? I can only get Guitar Pro to run with the sudo command… from the command prompt.
Hi Carl, you usually should be able to run the program from your applications menu. Do you have any kind of special setup? Does Guitar Pro appear in your applications menu and you are just not able to start it from there?
Yes it appears there. I can’t start it without using thesudo command in the shell first, example:
Then it loads, unfortunately it crashes soon after I do anything and I don’t know why. Would you be able to help me solve this problem? I can’t seem to attach an image anywhere here.
Update 1 (:20 am)sudo however.. :-S
You know what’s funny I rebooted my computer and it works with the sound now… must be a problem with cras (Chromium Audio Server) not interfacing properly 🙁 I still can’t figure out why it doesn’t work without
Update 2 (9:26 am)
Ah ha, this might help anyone with the same problem: in xfce you hold ALT + F3, then do a search for “Guitar Pro”, right click “Edit”. In command window change the path entry to
I’m guessing you need superuser privileges to do certain things. But the authentication window doesn’t necessarily come up by default you need to request it. So bizarre…
Hi Carl, it seems you have a slightly different setup than me and I am not sure whether this might interfere with your results. Did you try Vic’s solution regardinggksu problems, yet?
btw your comment installing the banks you might want to update your instructions at the end to read:
Instead of:
/opt/GuitarPro6/GPBankInstaller Banks-r370.gpbank /opt/GuitarPro6
Move the bank files from wherever you downloaded them to…into /opt/GuitarPro6/ folder by typing
sudo mv (directory where they are downloaded)/GPBankInstaller Banks-r370.gpbank /opt/GuitarPro6
Afterwards install by typing:
sudo /opt/GuitarPro6/GPBankInstaller Banks-r370.gpbank /opt/GuitarPro6
if you don’t type sudo it won’t work you get an obscure error message because you need root user privileges to install the bank files
Heroooo Broooo Tank’s so much
sorry scratch that typo
sudo mv Banks-r370.gpbank /opt/GuitarPro6/