I will test this on the MK3 on Tuesday. I’ll let you know then 
At least it is possible to make custom modes and name everything on the device itself.
Alright, replying to myself. Indeed you can configure everything on the nice built-in screen itself on the Keylab MK3. It is gonna be perfect for my dawless setup. Out of curiosity, I tried to run Analog Lab Pro from Linux via Crossover (Wine). It works out of the box but obviously I have to investigate how to enable low latency audio.
I use a recent Linux distribution (KDE Neon based on Ubuntu 24.04) which uses Pipewire so it should be pretty capable without much tweaking, but I am definitely looking for pieces of advice and… a Linux build 
But as far as I am concerned, my objective is to keep from the computer as much as possible anyway
BTW, I played a little. It is indeed a very good keyboard, looks great & sturdy. You can play with expressivity. I think I slightly preferred the feel of my former Blofeld keyboard (Fatar TP/9S), which was more firm, but it was also kinda clacky / noisy and the velocity curve was unsatisfying on mine. (might be my unit ; I tested a STVC which was better, while supposedly exactly the same keybed) So. Yes. The Keylab MK3 is great. I hope it’s gonna be durable. I think so.
I plan to keep this very setup (Keylab + Roland Verselab) for years Maybe just add a single external synth (a Minifreak maybe) to spice things up with an extra layer. (as the Verselab has 7 synths / samples tracks + a vocal or external instrument track)
Salut Bidinou, 
The best way to decrease latency is by going native, using ALSA and native plugins like Surge XT. Wine, Yabridge, Pulseaudio, Pipewire all add a extra layer and extra latency.
« ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) est le système audio fondamental utilisé sur les systèmes Linux. Il gère directement les interactions avec le matériel audio, comme les cartes son, les microphones et les haut-parleurs, grâce à une couche de pilotes matériels»
CF. PipeWire, PulseAudio et ALSA : tout savoir et les différences, malekal.com.
“ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) is the fundamental audio system used on Linux systems. It directly manages interactions with audio hardware, such as sound cards, microphones and loudspeakers, through a layer of hardware pilots.”"
“ALSA (baked into the Linux kernel) provides necessary device drives to read and write from the sound card.” But ALSA takes control of the hardware, one app at a time, which is what you want for a low-latency DAW.
PulseAudio and PipeWire are global sound server allowing many apps to use ALSA.
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Hi ! Thanks for your reply !
Agree regarding ALSA. I kinda had the feeling Jack (which can used on top of alsa or oss, right ?) would maybe eventually be superseded by Pipewire or at least would lead to better latency than Pulse (on top of Alsa).
I already had great sub 1 ms latency with a good sound card and Jack (on top of Alsa) in the past but thought that kind of setup kinda turns away users who just want low latency audio to work out of the box on a regular distro without tinkering too much. I really barely followed the Pipewire subject. I thought it could answer to this issue.
Sorry for the quick kinda clueless reply. My former low latency Jack or pure Alsa with no pulse experiments were in… 2012
I’ve used Jack extensively. By default, Jack uses ALSA as driver.
Jack is more efficient than Pipewire or Pulseaudio but it’s not as transparent as ALSA when it comes to mapping in the Graph window. It uses generic tags like Capture and Playback while ALSA will use tags like hw: impact for Drumbrute or hw: A37 for Keystep37.
The drawback with using ALSA is that you have to stop Puseaudio or Pipewire from using ALSA because ALSA is a one only app (like Reaper, Ardour).
Simple: Principle.
I don’t use Windows or Apple for a plethora reasons, too many to list. I think OS X is amazing, but I don’t like Apple. I’ll never pay the Apple tax for their walled garden environment and the crazy prices they charge to upgrade ram and ssd’s. Their stance on right to repair is horrid. And don’t forget the Apple transitions from System 7 to OSX to PPC to x86 to Arm. I left the Mac platform over 15 years ago and better off for it. I tried doing the DAW thing on Windows because I was an Ableton user, but I just really couldn’t stand Windows.
I don’t mind paying for good software and Arutria makes great software and hardware, I own both. Many great music software companies support linux such as BitWig, Reaper, Studio One, U-He, TAL, Vital, Audio Damage, Audio Thing etc etc. There’s too many to list. I own bitwig and many if not all of the other software those other companies make. I’d like to see more companies support Linux and so I ask and encourage and just hope.
I have never had issue’s getting hardware to work on Linux. Software is the only issue, so I try to encourage companies to port over their great software. I don’t know if you remember the days when Apple had problems getting support for their platform, but they did.
Yes, I have made sacrifices moving to Linux over the years (Adobe) but I think it was worth it and more and more companies are supporting Linux. I love the freedom and flexibility and the community is amazing.
I never question someone as to why they use a platform. I like our freedom of choice and whatever works for you is fine with me. For me, Linux is freedom.
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I recently bought a MiniFreak and I can’t update its firmware because it requires the ASC which I can’t install on my Linux system.
We now are in 2025 and Linux is starting to be more and more popular, I think it’s about time for Arturia to reconsider supporting Linux systems natively.
They don’t need to create a version for every single distribution of Linux.
Using the Flatpak packaging system Introduction to Flatpak - Flatpak documentation they could build their app against a common runtime that is supported by a wide range of distributions.
Linux systems have also a great sound subsytem now called Pipewire (Bitwig is already using it for their native Linux app).
I really hope Arturia will find some resources to port their software on Linux.
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I just bought MiniFreak and i’m really sad that i can’t use it in full potential. I use Ubuntu 24.10 in my studio and i will never go back to Windows.
I really believe in Arturia, that someday they will support us, Linux users.
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I recently switched to Manjaro Linux (Arch based) with a recent Pipewire stack (3.4.x).
I get super latency results out of the box with Arturia plugins. (64 buffers)
I installed them very easily. (just had to install Wine & yabridge from the package manager first).
It’s great Linux finally has a beginner-friendly pro-audio capable default audio stack ! <3
Still would love native versions of Arturia plugins…
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I would even appreciate it as beta product with denial of responsibility/disclaimer and no support at all.
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First of all, I empathise, and trust me I really do. But the stubbornness some of you have is staggering. You’re all willing to own Arturia products that somehow you can’t utilise to their fullest due to lack of Linux-specific apps rather than spend, what, $/€/£100, on a really basic used Windows laptop that you need ONLY use for the things you can’t do in Linux, which commonly seems to be firmware-patching and config (happy to be corrected).
When / if Arturia do publicly release Linux versions of their apps, you could all get together on a Zoom chat and video yourselves publicly smashing your Windows laptops for mutual amusement. But in the meantime you’d all collectively rather sit there with hardware you can’t (and I quote) ‘use to its full potential’, rather than buy a cheap old battered Windows laptop for the price of four large pizzas and a bottle of coke in order to occasionally undertake literally just one or two config / maintenance tasks.
That doesn’t of course mean I wouldn’t like to see Arturia launch native Linux versions of their apps so we’re all happy. Of course I would. But really. You need to give your heads a wobble.
We have an idiom in England: cutting your nose off to spite your face.
Hmm, how running a cheap Windows laptop will help me to use my Minifreak with its VST version Minifreak V on my Linux system?
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Actually, that’s what I do. I have a non-registered Windows on a USB drive that I boot only to upgrade my Arturia instruments firmwares. That’s it. My Minifreak & Analog Lab software / plugins work wonderfully now on Linux, and it was actually pretty easy. But it could be easier with a little effort from Arturia
That’s no big deal. As a side note, considering I’ve been doing absolutely everything on Linux for 20+ years, I wouldn’t want to swap my commitment to free software for a little practicality.
What I lack is rather, time & focus on music, rather than enough software & hardware anyway !!!
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Thanks for your very detailed response about how you think people should produce their music.
I was struck by how it seemed to be so helpful as part of a thread advocating for Arturia to devote attention to supporting a non-windows operating system for you to comment about how we should just use what you use (ie windows) and more or less quit advocating for how we like to produce music.
So helpful.
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Yeah sure, buying a whole new machine just to be able to update my synth doesn’t sound silly at all… But it’s not our only issue, because the whole software stack from Arturia only works natively on Windows also means it’s painful to use with our other software running on Linux.
Frankly this kind of message doesn’t help at all.
Just for transparency, I don’t use Windows for music. I’d rather shove my willy through an electric pencil sharpener than revisit the hell I once lived in trying to get VSTs to work on Windows without latency issues. I’m sure they’ve improved this within the 14 years since I last owned a PC but I got burned so hard I’m never going there again.
Let’s be honest my message neither helps nor detracts: Arturia will launch Linux-native apps in their own sweet time and what I say will influence nothing. However thanks for the clarification. Reading through this thread it appeared to be that the only thing Linux users were really struggling with was the software to update / config their hardware and that you had all found sufficent workarounds for the rest.
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Have a good day !
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Finally figured how to key my KeyLab MK3 screen to work under Linux :
So, it’s almost a 100% perfect experience now !
BTW, I get sound glitches when enabling multicore in the settings. Do you have this issue too ? That’s a (good) 10 year-old i5, so it probably doesn’t help. But still, should work better in multicore ?
Good Job…
May be helpful or not . Latency Reduction at the Core: BIOS Tuning Guide
Arturia_Software_Center__2_10_0_2970
Error code …
Older one used to install and run great with WINE but, now auto update takes over and crashes it.
PS.
Arturia, Please consider changing the auto update option.
Do you want to Update? YES or NO
Same thing with Windows apparently