Native Access 2 & Kontakt 8 on Linux

Native Access under Wine, set up with one command. Products install from Native Access as on Windows, Kontakt 8 included.

This repository does NOT contain, grant access to, or distribute any software from Native Instruments in any way. It only provides scripts and instructions for installing software you have legitimately obtained from Native Instruments and you need your own account to download and use plugins and instruments.

Install

Arch

yay -S ni-wine

NixOS

As a flake input, with home-manager:

inputs.ni-wine.url = "github:selimbucher/native-instruments";
# ...
home.packages = [ inputs.ni-wine.packages.${pkgs.system}.default ];

Or without: nix profile install github:selimbucher/native-instruments.

Fedora

sudo dnf copr enable selimbucher/ni-wine
sudo dnf install ni-wine

Ubuntu (24.04 / 26.04) and Mint 22

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386   # Ubuntu 24.04 only
wget -qO- https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/winehq.key | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/winehq-archive.key
source /etc/os-release
sudo wget -NP /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/dists/$UBUNTU_CODENAME/winehq-$UBUNTU_CODENAME.sources
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:selimbucher/ni-wine
sudo apt update   # Mint only
sudo apt install ni-wine

Usage

Start Native Access from your app launcher or run native-access. The first start sets up the Wine prefix at ~/.wine-ni and installs Native Access into it. Installed plugins land in that prefix.

Do not launch with something like wine "Native Access.exe".

More commands with ni --help. Environment:

• NI_WINE_PREFIX (prefix location, default ~/.wine-ni),
• WINE (wine binary override),
• NI_WINE_DEBUG (keep Wine debug output), NI_WINE_SCALE (Native Access UI scale, default GDK_SCALE; 1 turns it off).

Linux DAWs (yabridge)

You need to use yabridge's development build, which has the fixes for Wine 10 and newer. Its last release (5.1.1) would need Wine 9.21, which Native Access doesn't run on.

• Arch: yay -S yabridge-wine10-git yabridgectl-wine10-git
• Fedora: sudo dnf copr enable ycollet/audinux && sudo dnf install yabridge
• NixOS: the inputs.ni-wine.overlays.yabridge overlay builds it against ni-wine's Wine (also set inputs.ni-wine.inputs.nixpkgs.follows = "nixpkgs")
• Others: the nightly build

Then:

yabridgectl add "$HOME/.wine-ni/drive_c/Program Files/Common Files/VST3"
yabridgectl sync

Windows DAWs under Wine

To use the plugins in a DAW that runs in its own Wine prefix, close the DAW and link its prefix:

ni link /path/to/daw-prefix

Then rescan plugins in the DAW. The DAW may ask to be activated again. ni unlink undoes the link.

Troubleshooting

If something goes wrong, ni doctor --fix. Native Access logs to ~/.wine-ni/drive_c/users/Public/Documents/Native Instruments/Logs/, ni-wine to ~/.local/state/ni-wine/. If that doesn't fix it, open an issue with the ni doctor output.