I’m having issues with Audacity 2.4.2 and Linux Mint MATE 20. I’m not certain which of the last several updates of Linux Mint MATE caused the problem. Everything was stable and working great and now it’s not. I just want to know if there is some easy way to check the Audacity requirements for its dependencies vs. what the current versions are on my computer. I’m trying to figure out when things changed, so I can go back to a pre-problem configuration that doesn’t have issues.
I’m not going to list all of my hardware or software, because I’ve been through this before and it’s not the hardware. The problem is that my external hardware, and my computer hardware, and various software bits aren’t “speaking” to each other properly, due to a change in one of the libraries / dependencies. A few years ago this issue cropped up because wxWidgets was updated and it wasn’t compatible with the version of Audacity that was out at the time of the wxWidgets update. So basically, the updated wxWidgets caused Audacity to stop working correctly once upon a time.
Unfortunately, Audacity has a lot of libraries and other dependencies that are common to many programs. So, an update to one of those dependencies can cause interesting, unintentional problems in software that is expecting some things to stay the same. If someone could explain how to get a list of proper Audacity dependencies and a way of comparing them to what I currently have on my computer, it would be greatly appreciated.
I think the problem may be that Audacity has been updated to a faulty flatpak version.
Look in your package manager / Software Center to see if “Audacity 2.3.3-1build1” is available. If it is, completely remove Audacity (and “audacity data” if installed) and install “Audacity 2.3.3-1build1” (which will automatically pull in “audacity data”).
There are two routes to installing Audacity 2.4.2 on Linux Mint 20 i.e. Flatpak and Panda Jim’s PPA.
For the Flatpak install the versions of libraries installed on your system are immaterial. The dependencies are provided by the Flatpak itself and additional runtimes (see flatpak list).
For Panda Jim’s PPA the versions of libraries on your system could be relevant. I would add that I am using Audacity 2.4.2 from Panda Jim’s PPA on a fully up-to-date Linux Mint 20 Cinnamon system and I experience no such problems. It is very well behaved.
Okay. However, 2.4.2 was working without any glitches. Now it is glitching…and I haven’t recently updated Audacity. So, I would prefer not to go back to 2.3.3 after using 2.4.2 for months without any issues. I’m trying to figure out which dependency caused this problem and when. Was it some update to ALSA that caused the problem? If so, changing Audacity versions might not solve the problem. Did the Ubuntu developers update “lib-controls-all-functions” and not tell anybody? I’m trying to solve the problem. I’m not going to buy a 1979 Yugo, because the tire went flat on my 2020 Honda Civic.
The Flatpak dependencies lie within the GNOME runtime mostly and it makes use of the installed ALSA and PulseAudio.
I wouldn’t spend too much time trying to investigate the Flatpak (it’s a bit of a black-box). You can install the version from Panda Jim’s PPA alongside the Flatpak (it uses the same .audacity-data settings folder) and see if that exhibits the same issues.
There will be two outcomes: if it doesn’t exhibit the same issue then the Flatpak is at fault. If it does exhibit the same issue then it’s environment specific. I prefer the PPA option because it uses dependencies from the repositories not arbitrary ones bundled into the Flatpak.