Version 3 Windows 10

• Dec 31, 2018 - 17:14

Happy New Year to the Musescore developers and Thank You for version 3. It was a nice Christmas present indeed.

I currently run Musescore version 2.3.2 on a very small Windows based PC Stick computer (32 bit Windows 10 Home), displaying on a Benq monitor on my grand piano. It picks up my scores from Dropbox. It can display two pages at A4 size at a time. It is complemented by a 3 pedal switch unit which turns pages back and forth and changes between music pieces too! I now can run Musescore version 3 on a desktop PC (64 bit Windows 10 Pro) in my study upstairs. The latter is where I create the scores up until now on version 2.3.2) and send them to Dropbox for the piano mounted PC. I have both versions, 3 and 2.3.2, installed.

This all worked well when both computers were on version 2.3.2, even though the hardware is different, 64 bit and 32 bit Windows.

The problem for me is that you do not seem to be producing a 32 bit version of Musescore 3. So any scores produced by version 3 on the desktop computer cannot be displayed by the PC Stick computer. I have investigated if the 64 bit version of Windows can be installed on the stick. It has taken me two days of hardware and software experimentation to discover that although the processor is 64 bit, there is in-built hardware in the stick (that cannot be changed!) that is stuck at 32 bit. Windows 64 bit will not install whatever I try!

Is there any chance that you could get the developers to compile a 32 bit version, please? I suspect there are good reasons why you adopted 64 bit, but I would be forever grateful if you could do a 32 bit version. Otherwise I am sadly stuck on version 2.3.2 on both computers.

Thank you for a wonderful piece of software.

Derek

Comments

• Dec 31, 2018 - 17:28

MuseScore uses an interface called QT to allow for cross-platform development. the current version of QT does not allow for 32 bit windows program and earlier versions have compatibility issues. The developers are waiting for an update to QT in the next few months that will allow a 32 bit windows version to be compiled.

If you like, you can use Linux mint on the 32 bit computer, there is already a 32 bit version of this. You could install both versions 2.3.2 and 3.0 under mint and the scores can be shared as though they were made on windows. I'm on windows 10 and I download scores made with linux and mac all the time, there is no difference in the scores.

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• Dec 31, 2018 - 18:02

Thank you for your very quick reply. Some interesting suggestions.

Having "wasted" 2 days trying to install a 64 bit of Windows 10 on the 32 bit Stick PC, and then spent many more hours getting the 32 bit version of Windows re-installed, The processor is indeed 64 bit, so I had hope! Therefore I am very wary about trying a Linux based operating system as well. There are quite a few people elsewhere on the Net reporting about installing Linux Mint on an Intel PC Stick. Others have tried and got very mixed results, some successes, but many more issues and failures to get it fully working.

There is too much burned in hardware in the tiny stick that is geared to a Windows environment. It is not worth the effort, methinks. I like the stick because it is so small and unobtrusive on the piano, and because it has no fans, it is silent.

I am very pleased to know that there is a possibility in the next few months of a 32 bit Windows version, if the QT tool delivers. Perhaps in the meantime I will stick with version 2.3.2 on both PCs and simply be patient and wait?

Derek

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• Dec 31, 2018 - 18:15

I'm not familiar with the PC Stick, so don't think my question is stupid. If I understand you correctly, your PC Stick has a 64 bit processor. Are you running XP on it? From what I understand any Windows version starting with version 7 supports 64 bit programs.

I would say that waiting for the 32 bit program is what I would actually do if the PC Stick can't handle version 3. Version 2.3.2 is still a fine program.

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• Dec 31, 2018 - 18:47

Sorry, I did not mean to imply any stupidity on your part, just my own frustration with trying to put the 64 bit version of Windows on the stick. It may surprise you to hear that the stick was already running the very latest build 1809 of 32 bit Windows 10. Despite all the time consuming new installations and builds, the stick, with its limited 2Gb RAM and 32Gb of SSD memory, had still run Musescore very successfully. The stick is really a single application wonder for me! Although I can collect emails, play HD videos and MP3 music as well as its main use for Musescore and the simple PDF Sumatra reader for displaying PDF music scores.

So Mike, I will stick with the excellent Musescore 2.3.2 for the time being.

I used to run a very old version 4 of Sibelius software on the stick. But Musescore is far superior and wonderfully FREE.

Thank you again. Happy New Year!!!!

Derek

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• Dec 31, 2018 - 19:11

Another interesting idea, Shoichi. Perhaps I could try installing a folder on the extra 64Gb microSD plugged into the PC Stick. Can you run Linux Mint from a folder within the Windows environment? If so, that would be a brilliant way of doing it. I assume that Musescore 3 could be called from within Linux, sort of "embedded" in Windows ..... The stick has very limited resources. Perhaps I am getting carried away here?

Derek

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• Dec 31, 2018 - 19:24

I'm not a technician but previous versions existed as 'portable' and the Nightlies were implicitly so.
They could also be burned and played from a DVD (or CD) but the optical support slowed them down a bit. A USB flash drive is faster.
It can also contain Mint if made bootable (you'll find a lot of material on the net) and not mess up the pc it's running on. Removed the key the pc has no traces.
If Mint and MuseScore reside on the USB they should not cause problems with the stick (or so I hope).

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• Dec 31, 2018 - 19:44

Shoichi,

Though I'm not familiar with the device, a PC Stick is a small windows based computer not a USB Stick. Since you run mint on your system to run version 3, I thought you might be able to answer the OP's questions. the PC Stick is a 32 bit platform like your computer.

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• Jan 1, 2019 - 13:36

The Qt tools are available already in Qt 5.12, for Windows 7 and later. What we're currently waiting on is that these get deployed onto our build platform, AppVeyor.
In another thread here in the forums ABL announced a(n unsupported) 32bit version for Windows XP (and later), this might already help you for the time being.

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• Jan 1, 2019 - 17:30

Thank you JoJo-Schmitz! Brilliant news on both points you made. Firstly, good to hear that the QY tools just need to be integrated in the build platform. I hope it is soon?

Secondly, it took a bit of finding, but I managed to get ABL's unsupported 32 bit version downloaded. Lucky that many years ago, I was an IT developer (long since retired!) so I knew to look for the Musescore3.exe file in the bin folder to run it! Now I have Musescore 3 running successfully from a microSD card that is permanently plugged into the Windows 10 32 bit PC Stick. I have not had time to test it fully, but thank you so much. It is a simpler and working solution. Proof that it is working is in the attached photo. The PC Stick is at 30 degrees to the horizontal , to the left of the display, with a blue power LED alight. 20190101_170800.jpg

This was so much easier than trying out Linux, with no guarantee of my success. For the record I started out with a Raspberry Pi 2 running version 1.2 of Musescore, so I have had some exposure to Linux. I abandoned it when Windows 10 PC Sticks appeared, which allowed me to run the more up to date version of Musescore 2.

Thanks to ABL too!

Derek

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