You need to be running a Linux Kernel that has the ALSA Scarlett2
Protocol Driver. Use uname -r
to check what kernel version you are
running.
- For reasonable functionality of Scarlett 2nd and 3rd Gen and Clarett interfaces, you need at least Linux kernel version 6.7
- For Scarlett 4th Gen support and firmware updates from Linux, you need at least 6.8
- For Vocaster support, you’ll need to build an updated
snd-usb-audio
driver (or wait for 6.10)
If you’ve got a Vocaster, or if your distribution doesn’t include a recent-enough kernel for your interface, you can get the latest driver from here and build it for your current kernel:
https://github.com/geoffreybennett/scarlett-gen2/releases
As of Linux 6.7 the driver is enabled by default. Check the driver status (after plugging your interface in) with this command:
dmesg | grep -i -A 5 -B 5 focusrite
If all is good you’ll see messages like this:
New USB device found, idVendor=1235, idProduct=8215, bcdDevice= 6.0b
Product: Scarlett 18i20 USB
Focusrite Scarlett Gen 3 Mixer Driver enabled (pid=0x8215); report
any issues to https://github.com/geoffreybennett/scarlett-gen2/issues
If you don’t see the “Mixer Driver” message or if it shows “disabled” then check the OLDKERNEL.md instructions.
You need a Linux distribution with Gtk4 development libraries. If it doesn’t have them natively, try the Flatpak instructions below.
As of Linux 6.8, firmware updates of all the supported interfaces can be done through Linux. This is mandatory for Scarlett 4th Gen and Vocaster interfaces (unless you’ve already updated it using the manufacturer’s software), and optional for Scarlett 2nd and 3rd Gen, Clarett USB, and Clarett+ interfaces.
Download the firmware from
https://github.com/geoffreybennett/scarlett2-firmware and place it in
/usr/lib/firmware/scarlett2
or use the RPM/deb package.
On Fedora, these packages need to be installed:
sudo dnf -y install alsa-lib-devel gtk4-devel openssl-devel
On OpenSUSE:
sudo zypper in git alsa-devel gtk4-devel libopenssl-devel
On Ubuntu:
sudo apt -y install git make gcc libgtk-4-dev libasound2-dev libssl-dev
On Arch:
sudo pacman -S gtk4
To download from github:
git clone https://github.com/geoffreybennett/alsa-scarlett-gui
cd alsa-scarlett-gui
To build:
cd src
make -j4
To run:
./alsa-scarlett-gui
You can install it into /usr/local
(binary, desktop file, and icon)
with:
sudo make install
And uninstall with:
sudo make uninstall
Continue on to reading USAGE.md for how to use the GUI.
With Flatpak, in any distro:
flatpak-builder --user --install --force-clean flatpak-build \
vu.b4.alsa-scarlett-gui.yml
Be sure to use flatpak-build
as the directory where the flatpak is
built or hence you risk bundling the artifacts when committing!
If you get messages like these:
Failed to init: Unable to find sdk org.gnome.Sdk version 45
Failed to init: Unable to find runtime org.gnome.Platform version 45
Then install them:
flatpak install org.gnome.Sdk
flatpak install org.gnome.Platform
If you get:
Looking for matches…
error: No remote refs found for ‘org.gnome.Sdk’
Then:
flatpak remote-add --user --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo