Hellooo!
I like living life on the edge — so I uninstalled Windows, switched to Linux (Ubuntu, not Arch — I’m all for the edge, just not the free fall), and now I’m running TouchDesigner using Bottles.
Spoiler alert: it's 100% worth it.
What I’ve tested so far
I've only tested native nodes for now (in v. 2023.12480 and v. 2023.12370), and everything runs really well. The interface is mostly fine, keyboard and mouse shortcuts work as expected, and I’ve had no major issues so far.
(Also, if anyone knows what font is used in the panels shown in the figure below let me know! I couldn’t find it. Not a dealbreaker but I'm curious.)
Setup wasn’t as smooth as I’d hoped
Getting everything running took a lot more patience than I care to admit.
I'm using an Asus VivoBook with dual GPUs (integrated + NVIDIA), and Bottles kept crashing.
The culprit? A mix of the open kernel NVIDIA driver and the system running in balanced mode. After switching to the proprietary NVIDIA driver and forcing it to run on the NVIDIA GPU, Bottles and TD launched fine and have been stable ever since.
Is it worth it?
Absolutely.
If you don't mind a bit of troubleshooting, it’s really satisfying to get TouchDesigner running smoothly on Linux. Plus it actually feels smoother - it runs at 60fps even on low battery something I never got to experience on windows with this laptop.
I’d never used Linux or Bottles before this (massive) little experiment — but I do love a good challenge, and this was definitely one. It’s not plug-and-play but once it’s working it’s solid.
What’s next?
Next, I’m planning to explore MediaPipe. I’ve already downloaded and opened it… and let’s just say it looked funky AF. I’m both excited and slightly nervous to dive deeper.
Where you can find me
I’ll keep sharing updates, projects, and experiments here — and also on my social media (@vtln_x):
TikTok – more frequent posts, including beginner-friendly tutorials and project sneak peaks.
Instagram – less active, but I do share some visuals and project snapshots from time to time
If you’re planning to run or want to try TouchDesigner on Linux, feel free to reach out — happy to help however I can. If enough people are interested, I’d be down to put together a little guide or tutorial. And if you’re already running it, I’d love to hear about your experience and see your projects too :)
