You need to be running a Linux Kernel that contains the appropriate
driver for your interface. Use uname -r to check what kernel version
you are running.
Check the following table to see which driver your interface uses and the first kernel version that the driver was included in:
| Series | Models | Driver | Kernel Version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scarlett 1st Gen | Solo, 2i2, 2i4 | N/A* | Any |
| Scarlett 1st Gen | 6i6, 8i6, 18i6, 18i8, 18i20 | Scarlett 1st Gen Mixer Driver | 3.19+ |
| Scarlett 2nd Gen | Solo, 2i2, 2i4 | N/A* | Any |
| Scarlett 2nd Gen | 6i6, 18i8, 18i20 | Scarlett2 Mixer Driver | 6.7+ |
| Scarlett 3rd Gen | Solo, 2i2, 4i4, 8i6, 18i8, 18i20 | Scarlett2 Mixer Driver | 6.7+ |
| Scarlett 4th Gen | Solo, 2i2, 4i4 | Scarlett2 Mixer Driver | 6.8+ |
| Scarlett 4th Gen | 16i16, 18i16, 18i20 | FCP (Focusrite Control Protocol) Driver | 6.14+ |
| Clarett USB and Clarett+ | 2Pre, 4Pre, 8Pre | Scarlett2 Mixer Driver | 6.7+ |
| Vocaster | One, Two | Scarlett2 Mixer Driver | 6.10+ |
* The small 1st Gen and 2nd Gen models don’t have any proprietary software controls so they don’t need a driver beyond the standard ALSA USB Audio driver. This means that this application (alsa-scarlett-gui) is not needed, useful, or supported for these models.
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 if it’s not too old (the Scarlett2 and FCP drivers are both maintained in the same tree here): /~https://github.com/geoffreybennett/linux-fcp/releases
Kernel 6.7 and later have the Scarlett2 driver enabled by default. The Scarlett 1st Gen driver and the FCP drivers are always enabled.
Some kernels before 6.7 have an earlier version of the Scarlett2 driver which is disabled by default. If this is you, 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); ...
If you don’t see the “Mixer Driver” message or if it shows “disabled” then check the OLDKERNEL.md instructions (or, preferably, upgrade your distro/kernel!).
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 supported interfaces from the 2nd Gen onwards 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 but recommended 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.
Firmware updates for the big Scarlett 4th Gen interfaces is currently
only possible through the CLI fcp-tool utility available in the
fcp-support. You
need to install this package and update the firmware before
alsa-scarlett-gui will work.
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 -j$(nproc)
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