Footswitch 2 for a friend

[whazzatt]

Hi. I've done several Linux installations for friends, with additional software almost always being available in the Package Installer repos. Here is an exception.

Latest request is from a friend who bought a new laptop (she used Ubuntu on the old one) and she is asking for me to install Linux for her, but she must have Footswitch 2 software for her Infinity footpedal. This software not in any of the repos.

I have recommended MX Linux (of course!) and I see that there is a .deb for Footswitch 2 at https://sourceforge.net/projects/footswitch2/

Having never used a footpedal, or installing software for one, I don't really want to get involved if I'm going to encounter issues when trying to get the footpedal working.

I would like to ask if anyone foresees issues with the install of footswitch 2 on MX Linux, and also if anyone can link me to more info about the installation process. Search results have been extremely sparse on info!

[chrispop99]

I downloaded the linked .deb for Footswitch2, and tried to install it on a test machine, but it throws up a dependency error - python-evdev. The same error occurred when I tried to install the later version, Footswitch3, from here:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/footsw ... t/download

python-evdev does not seem to be in any standard repositories. I could only find a .deb online that was for Buster (Debian testing). I tried installing that, and, not unexpectedly, ran into dependency hell!

Hopefully someone else with more skills may chip in, but for the moment I wouldn't try and install it.

Chris

[whazzatt]

Thanks Chris. Yes, with the software not being in any of the repos, and with almost no info coming from various searches, I was dubious, and you have kindly tested things and confirmed my doubts...

[timkb4cq]

Python-evdev is an easy backport, but that's not all footswitch2 needs. Once that is installed I found that it also needs wxpython which I haven't had time to investigate yet.

The git repository for footswitch2 is empty.
Since it's all written in Python, it's not compiled so the source code is in the deb, and it's appropriately licensed so it could be rebuilt.

[whazzatt]

It looks like Ubuntu is the way to go then. I considered Manjaro instead of MX, posted to their forum, and there someone replied to say his wife uses Footswitch2 on Ubuntu and it should work in Mint.

I thought it'd be a nice change for my friend to use MX or Manjaro, but she used Ubuntu on the old machine, so no harm sticking to what she knows...

[Stevo]

I sort of remember trying a port of python-wxgtk3.0, but I think it may have required an updated SIP, which broke a lot of existing python packages.

No, wait..it's in the standard repos. Does the port of python-evdev make it uninstallable?

No..now the hangup is that it requires libreoffice-gtk, which would require a downgrade of libreoffice back to the stock Stretch 5.2.7, since it's been dropped from the newer versions. The real dependency would be libreoffice-gtk2. A workaround would be to have a dummy libreoffice-gtk that depends on libreoffice-gtk2, which is what Ubuntu has done.

Debian has a tool to do this, called "equivs". http://shallowsky.com/blog/linux/instal ... ncies.html

[timkb4cq]

Footswitch2 requires python-wxgtk4.0 which is in Buster.

[Stevo]

Hmm--I was looking in the footswitch2_4.1.1_all.deb deb from Sourcefourge, and it has the 3.0 version. Let me look at the footswitch3 deb.

Edit--no, it still depends on python-wxgtk3.0. It's the libreoffice depends that are hanging up my installs.

[timkb4cq]

Oh, I had the 5.0 gtk3 version which wants 4.0.

You can unpack the deb with dpkg-deb -r , fix the dependency line, and repack with dpkg-deb -b