Installing UTAU in Linux
2021-01-15

As a looooser with nothing to do, I wanted to install UTAU, a Windows only program, onto Linux. I'm just going to write simple steps on how to do it.

Prerequisites:

IMPORTANT!! : everything must be run in the ja_JP.sjis locale. set your terminal and all other future terminals to that locale before doing anything.

The steppes:

  1. Download UTAU from the website
  2. Extract it with the extractor in Wine, or even run it directly if you can.
  3. Install UTAU normally.
  4. UTAU should appear in your applications menu. Don't use that. [2]
  5. Make a script that changes the locale to Shift-JIS, and then runs UTAU directly. [3] A short and easy to type name is recommended.
  6. chmod +x your script.
  7. Move your script to "~/.local/bin/" or "/bin/".
  8. Create a .desktop file in your applications menu that points to your script.
  9. Delete the original script (most likely in "~/.local/share/applications/wine/Programs/U T A U/")
  10. Install "wavtool-pl" onto your system.
  11. You are done! You can run UTAU from the applications menu or type the name of your script into a terminal.

You can change the language like this (the menu layout is the same, just follow the layout):
Step 1
Step 2 (the very bottom, tick the box and change the language)

Note: add aliases to the sound files, as for some reason the Japanese IME does not work correctly.

Sidenote: the locale stuff might not be absolutely required, if you are fine with the mojibake. However there might be some filename errors if you leave it like that, so just to be safe, I added the locale stuff.

Notes:
[1] For some reason it is really painful or not even possible to extract ZIP files in other encodings in Linux-native archive extractors. Use an extractor in Wine instead, as that actually changes the encoding.
[2] When I tried to run it from the applications menu I got a "File Not Found" message.
[3] The .desktop file the installer generates points to the .lnk file. I imagine it's locale issues, but I think that's why there is a file not found error. Instead, point your script directly to the .exe file.