Mixxx and Hercules DJ Console RMX on Linux
With Mixxx 2.3 and later there is no longer the necessity for a dedicated Linux Kernel for many DJ consoles, including the Hercules DJ Console RMX I'm using, because the DJ console behaves well as MIDI device on USB (HID). As stated in this manual, the first step to get your deck running again is to uninstall the previous hdj-mod Linux Kernel module – and restart.
However, a user needs proper permission to access the HID device to control the DJ console. By default a normal Linux user does not have the permission, so the controller will not show up in Mixxx. In the log file you find the according notice
Warning [Controller]: USB permissions problem (or device error.) Your account needs write access to USB HID controllers.
The “easy” solution would be starting Mixxx via sudo, but
- You are running a process with high privileges that should not be necessary.
- Mixxx has to re-read your music library and you end up with two configurations.
- Recordings are created by the user
rootand could not be changed by a normal user easily.
The better way is providing the user the proper permissions to access HID. (This step is currently untested because for the sake of the time the recording had to be done – as root. The article gets updated once there is some result.)
1 DJ Robb from Make Rave, not Hate wrote on 2025-11-24:
As of today the issue still persists – at least when using the latest Mixxx on Linux Mint (which is similar to Ubuntu). I even upgraded Mixxx by using the PPA but still have to run it with sudo. While it finds the original users music library and stores recordings there, too, it does not access the previously defined crates, but requires new ones that probably are owned by root.