Libayatana

[jhugus]

Desktop MX Linux 25 OS, which is just released based on Debian 13 Trixie. Installed Linux client from spotify repository. Installed without problem. GUI shows briefly, then disappears. When started from CLI receive message "(spotify:10677): libayatana-appindicator-WARNING **: libayatana-appindicator is deprecated. Please use libayatana-appindicator-glib in newly written code. Illegal instruction. After that, I uninstalled the official client, and installed Spotify Client from Flatpak. Same result. Any help would be appreciated. 

[no4b · Accepted solution]

Most likely, you're using a very old CPU that doesn't support the instructions required by Spotify. If that's the case, an older version of the Spotify client might work.

[jhugus]

Thank you for pointing me in the right direction. Indeed, you are correct. I am trying to recycle a 2012 Core Duo to be a pure music server using MX and SysVInit. Using your suggestion I have tried installing an older version, but am running into insurmountable dependency problems, specifically several libqt4 dependencies. After failing this, I tried to find an old snap version, but am unable to use snap due to its requirement for systemd. At this point, I will just use the web browser instead of the dedicated linux client. Again, thank you for identifying the problem. 

[jhugus]

Just to expand on the problem for anyone researching this in the future. Spotify quietly started to require the CPU avx extension in October 2024 release of the desktop client 1.2.46. AVX started to be incorporated into Intel CPU's around 2012-2013. To tell whether a CPU would be able to run modern Spotify clients, you can check CPU flags in terminal with the 'lscpu' command. Under flags, it should show avx and avx2. 

Using no4b's suggestion, I switched to an arch based distribution, Artix, and installed an older version of Spotify from the AUR repository, 1.1.84. This worked, but the sign-in was much more frequent and clunky than the modern version. Ultimately, I used another computer with a 2016 cpu to run the modern desktop client.