MIDI audio may not work out-of-the-box on Fedora. Most consumer-grade PCs and mobile devices do not have hardware capable of MIDI audio playback.
To address this issue, you can install FluidSynth, a modern MIDI software synthesizer.
Note 1:
If you intend to run Windows applications on Linux, you may be directed to install the wine package. Wine can also use a soft-synth for MIDI audio playback. If you do add the Fedora Wine package, it should pull fluidsynth in as a dependency and install it for you. Alternatively, you might prefer to add wine-core and fluidsynth separately for a leaner install.
Also, MAKE SURE to read the section Wine and MIDI.
Note 2:
If you are using traditional / mutable Fedora, you can add toolbox (if not already installed), and follow the “Atomic Fedora” instructions. This lets you experiment without heavily-modifying your current setup, and gives you an opportunity to learn some fundamentals about Fedora containers!
FluidSynth installation, inside & outside of a container
Fedora:
$ sudo dnf install fluidsynth
Atomic Fedora:
$ toolbox create
$ toolbox run sudo dnf upgrade
$ toolbox run sudo dnf install fluidsynth
Note 3:
If you prefer more isolation from you default container, for all the following examples, you can install FluidSynth into a separate, named container, such as toolbox create midi. You can then call (and script!) the container with the -c / --container flag, as in toolbox run -c midi ….
Now that FluidSynth is installed, spawn a MIDI server as a background daemon, and verify it’s up and running.
Fedora:
$ fluidsynth -is
Atomic Fedora:
$ toolbox run fluidsynth -is
You can safely kill the server by pressing Ctrl+C inside your terminal session, but don’t do so just yet.
In a separate terminal, verify your MIDI server using using pw-top.
$ pw-top
You should see output similar to the following:
S ID QUANT RATE WAIT BUSY W/Q B/Q ERR FORMAT NAME
S 29 0 0 --- --- --- --- 0 Dummy-Driver
S 30 0 0 --- --- --- --- 0 Freewheel-Driver
S 38 0 0 --- --- --- --- 0 Midi-Bridge
R 44 64 44100 98.6us 7.8us 0.07 0.01 15 S32LE 2 44100 alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.hdmi-stereo
R 42 64 44100 60.9us 16.0us 0.04 0.01 0 S16LE 2 44100 + alsa_playback.fluidsynth
The text alsa_playback.fluidsynth means FluidSynth is running and ready to generate MIDI music!
Now that you have a MIDI server, you might find it convienient to launch it every time you log-in to your desktop session…
Autostart
If you installed fluidsynth system-wide, there’s a handy systemd service unit:
$ systemctl enable --now --user fluidsynth.service
You can disable it again with:
$ systemctl disable --now --user fluidsynth.service
Atomic Autostart
Currently, systemctl does not work in podman containers, and thus, systemctl does not work in toolbx.
Instead, you can create a background daemon using a bash script and a freedesktop.org Autostart entry.
Create a text file ~/.local/bin/podman-autostart with the following:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
podman container start fedora-toolbox-$(rpm -E %fedora) &&
toolbox run fluidsynth -is
Your script MUST be made executable to work:
$ chmod +x ~/.local/bin/podman-autostart
Finally, create a text file ~/.config/autostart/podman-autostart.desktop with the following:
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=podman-autostart
Icon=application-x-executable-script
Exec=/home/<username>/.local/bin/podman-autostart
On a fresh login run:
$ toolbox list
Your podman container and MIDI server should be up and running:
a013c6db467a fedora-toolbox-39 33 hours ago running registry.fedoraproject.org/fedora-toolbox:39
Wine and MIDI
Wine relies on the Windows Registry to assign MIDI devices, and may require additional manual intervention. Assuming wine or wine-core are installed on the system or in a container.
Create a text file midi.reg with the following:
REGEDIT4
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\MIDIMap]
"CurrentInstrument"="#128"
Then, use the regedit command to run the config:
Fedora:
$ regedit ./midi.reg
Atomic Fedora:
$ toolbox run regedit ./midi.reg
Related links
ArchWiki - Wine - MIDI Support
License
This work is marked with CC0 1.0
