I’ve been using Natron for a while on Ubuntu with nothing to really complain about except the Snap version, which is the first version I tried, which was simply a little buggy (random crashes). Fast-forward a few months, I’ve been using the Flatpak version without any issues. Today I logged into the computer to work on an animation and Natron wouldn’t open. A terminal start simply states the version, help command, then nothing happens. I tried purging/installing it again which didn’t work, then grabbing the portable version and deb package from Natron’s website. Those all had the same effect. At this point I installed my graphics driver again, and also a new java JDK installation, and mesa dependencies, without any change. I tried downloading them through Tor, just in case it was my network, but it seems to be my computer having the issue and not the download or installation. As a last resort I downloaded the Snap, which is working but I have a feeling I’ll run into the same issues I encountered in the first place.
Is there anyway to troubleshoot why it’s not starting up? Through some internet searches I saw a possible bug surrounding either AMD graphics software or the ‘Check Updates Automatically’ setting in Natron’s config file causing bugs like this, but I’m receiving no information through the terminal at all.
That’s what I figured, I’m guessing it’s somehow a dependency issue, it’s just up to figuring out what that might be, as there is absolutely no debug or terminal information to gather about the software not starting, as far as I’m aware
It looks like my problem is showing up under other users, which means it’s likely not on my end. This problem started happening all of a sudden on a computer that I’d had for years, after no issues with Natron whatsoever. Because of other circumstances I ended up getting a new processor/motherboard the past week, then proceeded to install completely new operating systems, including the Ubuntu that was having this issue. I have to check my Windows to see if the same problem is occuring.
It’s an Intel Processor on a ASUS motherboard, my old hardware was a Intel Processor and a MSI motherboard
The exact same problem is happening on the new hardware, with a completely fresh operating system. I haven’t tried the snap, which I’m assuming will work for some magical reason, but the other three formats provided by Natron’s official website are not opening whatsoever.
The only information available out of the terminal when attempting to open these are either the Version information with a -help tag or just “Natron: 48: Bad substituion” when attempting to run the executable from the file folder (both the installer and portable versions are giving me this)
Ive been using Natron 2.5.0 on PopOS 22.04 (which is based on Ubuntu 22.04) with Intel and Nvidia hardware.
If you tried installing the same version of Ubuntu on new hardware, consider trying an older version of Ubuntu to see if the official Natron package works. If it works on an old Ubuntu version but not on the latest, you know what the problem is.
If I hadn’t just installed all my operating systems fresh, I’d try to roll it back. It’s possible an update to ubuntu or the linux kernel was the trigger for this, although I don’t think the versions had changed when it decided to stop working outside of the snap package.
Why would the Snap function but not the official distributions?
Like Rodlie mentioned, the snap packages aren’t built by Natron developers. So we have no idea why… The official packages should work, unless there’s a dependency issue or a bad driver (usually GPU) or conflict with an OS update… I’m traveling right now and I don’t have a linux device with me so I can’t test it but I have a ventoy stick with Ubuntu 24.04 (if you updated to 24.10, let me know so ill download that) at home so I could try it after I get back.
Meanwhile you could try downgrading Natron to a 2.4.x version to check if those official packages work.
Natron is working on Windows 11 using the same computer and bios settings.
My Ubuntu system however, is now outputting ‘Segmentation fault’ (core dumped) in the terminal after the help option when trying to start any version.
I appreciate your offering of trying out your build, I think the next thing I should try is building it from source, in case it’s somehow some missing dependency in the official build.
I simply meant with my operating system. If I’m missing a dependency for some reason, compiling it from source will at least provide me with more information. There’s no debug option for startup procedures as far as I can tell with the official builds, which is what I was originally looking for information on by posting here. If there was some way to figure out more easily what was wrong, the troubleshooting wouldn’t be necessary. The errors I’ve mentioned here are apparently too generalized to pinpoint on the user’s end.