GitHub - Torbuntu/fl-studio-linux-setup: Unofficial setup guide for running FL Studio on Linux using Bottles (wine)

FL Studio Linux Setup Guide

Unofficial setup guide for running FL Studio on Linux using Bottles (wine)

Flathub setup: https://flathub.org/setup

Bottles: https://usebottles.com/

Bottles on Flathub: https://flathub.org/apps/com.usebottles.bottles

Flatseal: https://flathub.org/apps/com.github.tchx84.Flatseal

Kron4ek wine releases: https://github.com/Kron4ek/Wine-Builds/releases

Notes / Updates:

(Jan, 2026) WARNING : FL Cloud Plugins appears to have a memory leak.
(Jan, 2026) kron4ek-wine-11.0-amd64 now fixes both the duplicated plugin windows (mobile, mobile rack, etc) and also now has functioning WebView2 rendering so Sounds, Help manual and Gopher are all working within FL Studio.

Installing Runners

In Bottles, wine distributions are called Runners. There are quite a few to choose from. Many users have had the best success with kron4ek-wine-11.0-amd64 or ge-proton (under Proton GE) in the Runners menu. You may need/want to enable Pre-Release versions under General -> Advanced in order to get newer/other versions of wine runners.

DLL Components

I use DXVK and VKD3D in my bottles. They can be found in the DLL Components menu tab to the right of Runners and Cache

First Bottle

After getting familiar with the Bottles program, create a new bottle. Choose a name for the bottle and select a runner (ideally one we installed in the previous step Installing Runners. The following screenshot shows the drop down for Runners with ge-proton10-25 selected. (Jan 2026) kron4ek-wine-11.0-amd64 is now what I am using personally again.

Dependencies

In the new bottle scroll down to Options to find Dependencies and once inside install the "allfonts" dependency. This will pull in many common fonts.

We will want to add the msgothic font file. This will allow rendering musical notation symbols such as sharps and flats. We can download that file from here https://github.com/FSKiller/Microsoft-Fonts/blob/main/msgothic.ttc

In the Bottle's main Details page, click the Browse button to open the bottle's C:/ drive. Then navigate to /windows/Fonts and place the file msgothic.ttc there.

Settings

Confirm the Runner, DXVK and VKD3D settings are as expected.

I set the Windows Version to Windows 11 down in Compatibility.

Install FL Studio

Download the windows exe installer from Image Line https://www.image-line.com/fl-studio-download/

In the bottle, Run Executable and find the exe and run it.

I do not install the FL plugin (64bit).

If you don't plan to test/use FL Cloud Plugins then don't worry about installing that either.

The installer for WebView2 can take some time. This is expected.

After the installer completes (you may need to go back to the main Bottles menu and back into the FL Studio bottle) you will see FL64 in the Programs list. Here is a bottle with FL Studio Beta and RC for testing installed:

Notes:

If the installer does not startup the first time after creating the bottle, restarting the bottles application and trying again "fixed" this for me.

First Run

The first time you open up FL Studio it will be in Trial mode. It may take a moment to load the first introduction project.

For me, there are some goofy "FAIL" messages regarding midi input.

I just disable these.

If everything seems good enough, we can register! I login with credentials. On GNOME we can set up a desktop file so the web redirect works for login, but this is easier.

Your computer may warn you that bottles is not responding when you enter the validation code on GNOME. I press wait and it does succeed for me. The usual popup to restart after validation will show up and I restart without saving.

Next Steps

It will be very beneficial to install Flatseal. It is a graphical tool for modifying permissions and settings for Flatpak installed applications (such as Bottles).

Some things I did with Flatseal:

Adding Filesystem entry xdg-music to be able to work more easily with content between different bottled versions of FL Studio.
Adding Filesystem entry xdg-data/applications so that I can "Add Desktop Entry" for FL Studio in GNOME.
Updating the .desktop entry to include MimeType=x-scheme-handler/flstudio will allow authenticating from a browser (that supports xdg-open). I have not been able to do this with Firefox in Flatpak, but Chromium in flatpak works.

Other

I hope this guide is helpful and can be expanded to assist folks in running FL Studio in linux based operating systems.

Please remember FL Studio is not officially supported on Linux and there may be many features that are unaccessible for various reasons. This guide is intended to explain how I personally use FL Studio in an unofficial and unsupported way.

If you have any corrections, tips, tricks, or expanded information for running FL Studio in wine I would very much appreciate issues/requests to enhance this guide. I will update as new information is available.