Spotify 0.9.17 for GNU/Linux (and the upcoming 1.x beta!)

[nikreiman]

On 24 March 2015, we rolled out an update to the desktop client for GNU/Linux. For installation instructions, see:

https://www.spotify.com/download/previews/

The version of the client is 0.9.17, and it will be the final 0.9.x client released for this platform. It has been a long time since the previous release (with the prior version being 0.9.11), and for those interested in the release notes, they will be identical to those for other desktop platforms for the versions 0.9.12-17, with the addition of the following platform-specific fixes:

- The machine's hostname is shown to other devices from Spotify Connect

- A 512px icon is used for the taskbar and menubar (unity integration)

We have decided to make a final release of 0.9.x desktop so that our users can pin this package if desired. Also we will make a separate package for the 0.9.17 release so that it is easier to find in the apt repository in case users need to revert to the prior version.

*EDIT*: The 0.9.17 package is now available, it is called spotify-client-0.9.17. If you don't want to receive the 1.x version, you can install this package instead (note that it both provides and conflicts with the spotify-client package).

Going forward, the official Linux beta will be released very soon! There are already some unofficial beta links floating around the forum, but so far we have not published a deb package to our official apt servers yet. We have been very busy getting 1.x out the door and sadly have not had as much time to devote to the GNU/Linux releases as we would like. Also, it has been unfortunate that we have not been better at keeping up with releases for this platform in general, but we have taken some steps to improve this for future releases.

Specifically, this means:

- We will be releasing a regular tarball file alongside our debian package for the benefit of non-debian users

- Spotify client releases will be made available for GNU/Linux users at the same time as users on other platforms

- We will also make a public `testing` apt repository to house unstable beta builds for testing

- However, we do not have a 32-bit version of the client available now. This is difficult for us to do for a number of reasons, but we will consider doing this if there is enough demand from the userbase.

[joontje · Accepted solution]

Right an update regarding this.
.asoundrc works a little differently when your pc has more than one audio device.
if aplay -l returns one than one device it will list them as card 0-1-2-3 etc and device 0-1 etc.
Card and device number have to represent the numbers set below, this is what you put in .asoundrc

pcm.!default {
type hw
card 0
device 0
}

ctl.!default {
type hw
card 0
device 0
}

For more info see: http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Asoundrc

[olejon]

---

@turophobe wrote:

Local mp3 playback has stopped working for me since upgrading to Ubuntu 15.04.  I have libavutil51, libavcodec53, and libavformat53 installed.  Playback fails on both 1.0.1.1062 and 0.9.17.1.g9b85d43.7-1.  I tried clearing ~/.config/spotify and ~/.cache/spotify, and am running out of ideas.

---

@turophobe I made it work by following my previous instructions from when it didn't work on Ubuntu 14.04.

Do this: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Help-Desktop-Linux-Mac-and/Linux-Local-files-do-not-play-on-Ubuntu-...

Close Spotify first, then run all the commands. Worked with an .m4a file I just tried.

[noamlin]

hi all.

most of the software developers around the world are -

1. listening to a LOT of music!

2. using linux

I used CentOS for a long time and installing spotify there was a hassle.

this is my +1 for spotify for all linux distributions - as a tar.gz (or at least .rpm in addition to the .deb)

[nikreiman]

---

@noamlin wrote:

hi all.

most of the software developers around the world are -

1. listening to a LOT of music!

2. using linux

I used CentOS for a long time and installing spotify there was a hassle.

this is my +1 for spotify for all linux distributions - as a tar.gz (or at least .rpm in addition to the .deb)

---

I must respectfully disagree here, at least with point #2. Most developers, like most end users, are on Windows or Mac. At Spotify, the vast majority of developers (I would estimate upwards of 90%) are developing on Mac OS X. At least in my experience, this has also been true at every other startup that I have worked at, but the dominance of Mac OS X for developers really accelerated in the last 5-6 years. Presumably this is because Apple makes good and desirable high-end laptops which have a unix environment underneath. With most leaner startups deploying backends to Heroku and AWS, you basically just need ssh and not necessarily to develop on a Linux system. For developing the desktop application, the VS debugger is hard to beat, so a number of our desktop devs are using that platform.

That said, Spotify also thinks the Linux client is important, but for different reasons than you might think. That's why we will not kill the native Linux client (at least not in the near future), but realistically we don't have as much resources to devote to it as the Mac/Windows clients. This is why releases are harder to push out on that platform, but we are still working to improve this process to make more frequent releases for our Linux users. Anyways, our reasons for developing the Linux client aren't so much about developer dogfooding, but rather:

- Building C++ code on a wide range of different compilers makes for more robust code, since each platform/compiler can warn about different things.

- Profiling tools are 

- Linux has great testing tools, such as ASaN and valgrind. We use both of these for unit tests on our build servers.

- We also use Linux to test different network conditions; such as tc to simulate performance on slow networks, and squid (among others) for testing proxy server connectivity.

- Our backend is all Linux, so we can leverage tools and deployment scripts written by our backend developers.

So we love Linux! But sadly we're not really dogfooding an it much (I am, though!). And at some point we will also release a .tar.bz2 file for non-debian users, but we want to nail the debian distribution problems first. Also it's worth mentioning that of the Linux users at Spotify, all of them are on a debian-based distro (maybe I met one Arch user before, but anyways debian is the most common flavor here). So we have a lot more tooling written for deb and apt than for other distros.

[user-removed]

---

@nikreiman wrote:

The difficulty we have in supporting 32-bit machines is making a build for them. Internally, we only have 64-bit build machines, and so we would need to use a cross-compile toolchain to make a 32-bit build. Some of the tools that are involved in the build toolchain don't work in such an environment... I can't really go into greater detail, but it's at least worth mentioning that it was awhile since we tried making the 32-bit toolchain, and we will try it again now with newer versions of these tools and hopefully have a bit more luck. So as I said, a 32-bit client is not totally out of the question, but it might take us a bit of time to get it sorted out.

---

You're probably already looked into this but on the off chance you're not aware of it, check out pbuilder. If you use the debian packaging tools to build the current .deb package you can use pbuilder to generate a 64bit or 32bit builds via a chroot as well as builds that target stable/testing or unstable libraries all from a single installation.

[kazoni]

I looked through the thread and it looked like there isn't much 32 bit love going around.

Is the 1.x series going to have a 32 bit linux version?  (Mint 17/Ubuntu 14.04.02 LTS)  I use my trusty old laptop to listen at work and was hoping I wouldn't be stuck at 0.9.4.

[Bloodycape]

I did a once over and maybe I didn't see it, but anyone upgrade to 15.04 and not have the app open up for them, even after a clean install?

[ryanpcmcquen]

Please don't spread this syntax, it is incorrect and will effectively break the ALSA config for your system:

pcm.!default {
type hw
card 0
device 0
}

ctl.!default {
type hw
card 0
device 0
}

 When you use this syntax you wipe out the system ALSA config. The proper way to write an /etc/asound.conf or ~/.asoundrc is as follows:

defaults.pcm.card 0
ctl.pcm.card 0

 or, if card 1 is the primary output (common on laptops with an HDMI port):

defaults.pcm.card 1
ctl.pcm.card 1

[ryanpcmcquen]

DEBs are essentially tarballs, the file you are looking for is data.tar.xz inside of the .deb.

Example of install:

http://slackbuilds.org/apps/spotify64/

[rubyji]

Thank you for the update! I have kind of a n00b question (although I am notreally a n00b, go figure).

I completely removed Spotify (purge) and re-installed with apt-get (Ubuntu 14.4) and I still got version 0.9.4, which I had before. How do I force it to install the latest version?

[ryanpcmcquen]

What is the output of:

uname -a

(in the terminal)?

[rubyji]

Linux ruby-acer-ubuntu 3.13.0-49-generic #83-Ubuntu SMP Fri Apr 10 20:14:51 UTC 2015 i686 i686 i686 GNU/Linux

[olejon]

---

@Bloodycape wrote:

I did a once over and maybe I didn't see it, but anyone upgrade to 15.04 and not have the app open up for them, even after a clean install?

---

@Bloodycape I posted a solution to this a few pages back:

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Help-Desktop-Linux-Mac-and/Spotify-0-9-17-for-GNU-Linux-and-the-upc...

[olejon]

---

@rubyji wrote:

Linux ruby-acer-ubuntu 3.13.0-49-generic #83-Ubuntu SMP Fri Apr 10 20:14:51 UTC 2015 i686 i686 i686 GNU/Linux

---

@rubyji You're running 32-bit. The Linux client for 32-bit has not been updated since version 0.9.4. That's the reason, and the Spotify devs say they have problems building for 32-bit. I'm hoping for 32-bit support in v 1.0, because it is more cross-platform. It requires some extra work, but as I have said before Spotify is now available in many developing countries where Linux is actually quite widespread and many are using old HW supporting only 32-bit.

[rubyji]

A ha! I knew I had a 32-bit system but thought it would run somehow anyway. I'm grateful to even have a Spotify client for my desktop, even if it only works 80% of the time. 

Thanks for the troubleshooting and please consider my voice added to the chorus calling for 32-bit bupport on Linux!

[Bloodycape]

@olejon it's not that playback isn't working it's the app that's not opening up. I did a clean install of 15.04 just to see what happens and the same thing. 😕 Thank you.

[olejon]

---

@Bloodycape wrote:
@olejon it's not that playback isn't working it's the app that's not opening up. I did a clean install of 15.04 just to see what happens and the same thing. 😕 Thank you.

---

@Bloodycape And that's exactly what my post fixes. Spotify won't open unless you install libgcrypt11. You can see this if you try to run the command "spotify" in a terminal.

Notice the bold text:

So for those who want Spotify up and running on Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid Vervet, you'll need libgcrypt11 which is not included in the repositories, but you can use the version from Ubuntu 14.10 successfully.

Download the deb package from here (choose between 32-bit and 64-bit):

http://packages.ubuntu.com/utopic/libgcrypt11

I guess you run 64-bit so click the amd64 package link. You should be able to install it just by double-clicking it, and Ubuntu Software Center will open (wait a bit until it's ready to install) and then click Install.

[noamlin]

Hi nikreiman. 

Sorry I wasn't clear, but I meant web developers, server sysadmins, dba's and basically anything server related since the majority of servers is the world are linux. (Most of them are redhat). 

Btw I disagree about what u said, that 90% are developing on mac. Microsoft's .net alone is at least 10% of the market. 

Anyway. I didn't say that most of spotify listeners are using linux. Just some of those that are programmers lol. 

In my work place we r 80% linux users. 50% of them use mint (which is debian based) and the other 50% use centos - and 100% of them listen to spotify 😄 

[user-removed]

As Linux users we have to face that we won't get the same priority Windows and Mac users receive. In some cases, develop a software for Linux is simple not profitable. At Opera Software they already said that their Linux version is made for other reasons than money because the Linux market is simply too small compared to Windows and Mac. I believe it's the same case with the Spotify client. Even when you (like me) pay for Premium.

[olejon]

---

@user-removed wrote:

As Linux users we have to face that we won't get the same priority Windows and Mac users receive. In some cases, develop a software for Linux is simple not profitable. At Opera Software they already said that their Linux version is made for other reasons than money because the Linux market is simply too small compared to Windows and Mac. I believe it's the same case with the Spotify client. Even when you (like me) pay for Premium.

---

@Rômulo Read the first post. Linux versions will be released at the same time as Windows and OS X versions, and with this change to cross-platform technology, from QT + Chromium Embedded to only Chromium Embedded, it shouldn't be more difficult than maintaining the small differences between Windows and OS X that are still native (maybe even easier), like audio playback, local files, sync and Spotify Connect. Not to mention Linux with its repository approach makes it very easy to make sure all users use the same version.

I seriously hope "Preview" will be removed when the final v 1.0 hits.

@nikreiman The page title of this page should seriously be changed. Remove Wine from it! There is no longer any mention of it on the page. And while you're on it, It shouldn't say "Debian" above the installation instructions. You Linux devs have many times said that Ubuntu is the only really supported flavor, and there are many more Debian users with problems here. Many noobs don't know that Debian basically equals Ubuntu (most used distro) when it comes to package system, and may be confused when Ubuntu is not mentioned.

And make it easier. Just like Windows users downloading an .exe and double-click it to install Spotify, instead of providing commands that are not noob-friendly, link directly to the latest .deb package. Users will only then have to double-click it to install it, and then in the .deb package you add the repository in the "postinst" script. It'll be even easier to install Spotify on Linux than on Windows and OS X, because no click Next > Next > Next etc., or drag and drop into Applications on OS X.

Sure, you can provide command line instructions for experienced users who want full control.