In an effort to increase performance on Linux platforms, our engineers have been working on moving Roon from its current Mono runtime environment to Microsoft’s .NET runtime. These changes should result in performance improvements for anyone using a Linux server.
These improvements will require new dependencies on your system, so it’s important that you prepare your server before the update is released. You can also sign up below if you’d like to beta test these changes once you’ve ensured your system meets the new requirements.
Note: No action is needed for servers running on Roon OS devices, including Nucleus and ROCK. They already use Microsoft’s .NET runtime.
With this change comes some updated dependency requirements for Roon to work. The most common problem we’ve found is that libicu needs to be installed, so we recommend installing this ahead of the release.
For Ubuntu 20.x the command to do this is:
apt-get update && sudo apt-get install libicu66
For other systems, the name for libicu and the specific package manager might be different. To find the .NET dependencies you need, click on the version number of your Linux distribution in this Microsoft article and scroll down to Dependencies.
So far our QA team has tested these improvements successfully with the following Linux distributions:
Ubuntu 20.04
Debian 10
Fedora
ArchLinux
CentOS 7 and 8
LinuxMint
Other variants of Linux may require additional changes to ensure that all dependencies are met.
Synology No action required QNAP @crieke has already updated the Roon QNAP package and it should be available in the QNAP store soon. Once it’s available, all you need to do is take the update. Asustor Make sure you’re updated to ADM 4.0+
If you’re using a server device from one of our partners that runs on Linux, you may need to get in touch with the manufacturer to confirm these dependencies have been met. We’ve reached out to all of our partners to let them know so they have time to address these dependencies before the update is released.
If your device is from one of the manufacturers below, we have confirmed that the dependencies have been met and your device is ready to go for the update.
Partners who have confirmed dependencies are met:
Innuos
Exasound
Small Green Computer
If your server’s manufacturer is not on the list and Roon is failing to start after the update, we recommend contacting them directly.
We are expecting to release on November 3rd.
If you’d like to get access early and help with our testing efforts, please consider joining the beta!
Any devices running Roon OS (ROCK and Nucleus) have been using .NET runtime for some time, and so you won’t see any changes if you’re using these devices.