Trying to run Windows apps on Linux with Wine: Office, Photoshop, Affinity Designer, Autocad

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Head to squarespace.com/thelinuxexperiment to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code thelinuxexperiment

[@tutacat]

Actually, the flatpak for Bottles is discontinued. You should be using the system package of Bottles instead.

[@markomarkovic8493]

I had some success with some games in bottles by copying the install folder to bottles c drive and then start installation. I didn't try using regular softer but maybe you'll have a success

[@gamersunite9026]

CortVermin thats called making a video private before making it public

[@KarthiDreamr]

An interview with wine 🍷 Team would be cool 😎

[@univera1111]

Of all the videos you made on Linux this is the best and most practical. You see why i, we, all if us don't use Linux, heck i even prefer Android alternative if it works with raw high rez files or can run android version of what window stand alone software can do. Im telling you something. On God.

[@VirtualizerExtreme]

Reminder to cancel that Creative Cloud free trial saving you a few hundred dollars

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Hahaha thanks 😂

[@Dr_McKay]

@@TheLinuxEXPEnjoy that! Last time I took a free Adobe trial, the only way to cancel was to live chat with a customer service rep who spent 30 minutes offering me slightly better deals each time in order to stay, I must have told them “Please cancel my trial, I am not interested in staying no matter the deal” a dozen times.

[@shroomer3867]

Ironic, that it has the name free in it but leads to several hundred dolars out of the bank

[@genemontgomery6408]

@@shroomer3867 More reason to use virtual credit cards when signing up for free trials.

[@bobafett2598]

...and frustration about sloppy crashing and freezing programms

[@necuz]

The reason games works so well through wine is that game engines typically are made to be as separated from the OS as possible, since porting them to many different platforms is so common. Big professional Windows software is generally very deeply integrated into OS components with no thought given to making such porting easier.

[@bubba99009]

I think it's more all the effort valve puts in. Running windows games used to be a total nightmare. Now I can buy and run any windows game on steam pretty much and it works perfectly. And multi-platform games have been getting even less common over that time period.

[@gustavgurke9665]

I think a big part of it is games are just basically all the same in terms of what libraries they use. Which are generally just the default libraries for creating a window, doing graphics, sound, input and networking. Wine (+DXVK/vkd3d) has most of that pretty well figured out by now so games generally just work and only occasionally run into really esoteric bugs with Wine's implementation. Non-game applications are a lot more diverse in the libraries / Windows APIs they use, I think. Although I have no doubt that if some company was willing to invest as much money into app compatibility as Valve did for games, they could probably get at least specific types of applications like the Adobe Suite to work pretty well.

[@gerlosv]

Perhaps such separation from the OS is useful to make games last longer, so you can play them on Windows 7, 8, 10, 11 and even 12 with minimal effort from the devs, that can keep selling them for as much time as possible. Office, Photoshop and similar software need the opposite approach, they must change as much as possible, to force you to upgrade, and keep paying for as much time as possible.

[@gg-gn3re]

@@gustavgurke9665 This is more correct. what necuz said isn't correct at all. As we see with how fast companies compiled stuff for ARM which is more difficult than doing a linux build. Serif the company that makes affinity suite used to even have all their software for linux but now they don't. Microsoft is notorious for paying companies big money to NOT make stuff for linux, especially game studios.

[@ContraVsGigi]

​Compiling for ARM is not more dificult than having a Linux version. There are so many Linux variants with their own tweaks. The only one that could get us there is to switch to an universal packaging like snap / flatpack. No small company willingly wants to invest that much in keeping it compatible otherwise.

[@AcordHachi]

An interview with crossover would be interesting

[@draftofspasiba2]

+1 for that

[@Mortos592]

Would love to hear their side on this

[@j0nnys83]

An interview with crossover would be interesting

[@TheGleycon]

Please, do it!

[@rjhornsby]

Would love to see a discussion with Crossover, but it also makes me wonder what Valve is doing so that Windows-only games work well(?) on Linux. What are the big challenges both face, and what technical (maybe even copyright/legal) hurdles they have to deal with to make the software work?

[@ymi_yugy3133]

I think the reason why games work so much better isn't just Valve, but also that the API surface is so much smaller. All games need from the operating system is some basic windowing that has been more or less unchanged for decades, some input and directX. All these things have been around for a long time are very stable and have close linux equivalents, so API translation is pretty easy. Desktop applications are a whole different beast. They often use tons of obscure Windows APIs that often don't have good linux equivalents.

[@emko333]

its because most games use SDL and that's a library that exist on everything, then you only have to map dx to vulkan, windows apps use very specific win apis

[@Brahvim]

​@@emko333 "Most games use SDL"? *No way!* Games from bigger studios *don't* do that.

[@asandax6]

And if the game supports vulcan then you don't even need directX

[@resistan-y1h]

@@emko333 Many games use Unity or Unreal Engine.

[@starman7811]

Ironically I think Windows power users that are more technically advanced have a harder time switching to Linux because they use niche software. For normal users that use their OS as a bootstrapper for their browser, I doubt they'd notice a different if you riced KDE Plasma to look like Windows. Getting professional software supported on Linux is a must for mass adoption.

[@SofaEaterLovesYou]

As one of those users. I hate windows so much for making me switch to Linux. I never liked 10 but it wasn't bad enough to make me switch...then I tried windows 11 and now I'm done with Microsoft. now I have 2 laptops with Linux and they are both causing me problems when trying to wrap my head around how they do things. Luckily I've already been using Libra office on Windows and I love it cuz it's Windows 7 word. And a lot of the other programs I use I don't mind switching over to the Linux version of that type because I never paid for it anyway because we just hobby stuff. Like music making programs or photo editors or video editors. Only did really small project so it wasn't worth investing any money into it so I was using the Linux made for version pretty much anyway. But when it comes to me controlling the computer I don't understand how Linux does anything.

[@dank3k]

​@SofaEaterLovesYou Everything is a file. Install tldr and check man pages often. /usr/bin is typically where your pkg manager installs binaries. /usr/local/bin is where you can place your own binaries. Typically, external applications are installed in a subdirectory under /opt (just move the folder there) and symlinked to /usr/local/bin. There is an /etc/environment you can use to configure your own environment variables, and they will be accessible everywhere. Look up on systemd unit files & services; learn how to create a user local service w/ it and configure its lifecycle. this shoukd get your started.

[@Siltprogramation]

@@SofaEaterLovesYou Yeah, they follow different models, which some people don't get. It is true that for the average user this is not much of an issue, but if you are an advance user you pretty much have to learn how to do everything again.

[@TrueXiarno]

@@SofaEaterLovesYou Personally, one of the program I use the most literally every day is ShareX. I tried running it on Linux using various guide online but just never could get it to work correctly... and no flameshot is not an acceptable alternative.

[@TwistedMe13]

To make a Mythbusters analogy it's like "Swimming in Syrup". The pro-athelete had a much harder time than the neophyte.

[@llothar68]

As a programmer i can tell you that it is very easy to write programs that are not portable on wine. There are so many modern APIs that are not supported. And it is a non winnable race. Games are pretty easy compared to business apps because the first have almost all the complicated inside while business apps live on communication with the outside.

[@231pilot]

Running Windows in VirtualBox is much easier for office type applications than fighting with Wine/Bottles.

[@hiru92]

true

[@lob06780]

kvm ftw

[@karanjoshi2662]

exactly what I thought. dual booting is also possible but if you only want office then it is better to just go for VM.

[@potatoes5829]

I agree, in my experience spinning up a quick VM is much faster, more stable, and more reliable than wine for most software.

[@andrewwojtas8486]

Office does have browser versions as wll

[@mehdimido5270]

we need to push for more native linux apps especially for major professional apps

[@sharkuel]

I have the Affinity suite running on Linux, Photoshop CC 2021, Cakewalk Sonar, etc. There is a youtuber named Mattscreative that actually has tutorials to run these apps like they were native.

[@tonetraveler992]

Yeah was quite surprised by the difficulties here - I got affinity running just fine and I found Adobe software was actually even easier to get running than affinity v

[@PixlRainbow]

​@@tonetraveler992at some point in the past 4 years or so, Adobe added more DRM to CC (live subscription version) and also changed half of the interface to run on Chrome's web engine, both of which cause issues. Cracked versions of Photoshop actually have improved compatibility, but you will still run into the issue that the use of Chromium means that parts of the interface will just show up black.

[@3lH4ck3rC0mf0r7]

​​@@PixlRainbowI got the black windows issue when running Office 2016. Try installing libxcomposite and using the old WineD3D instead of DXVK. It's got something to do with the DirectComposition API, and apps not always rerendering their entire window surface, unlike games.

[@lancen6805]

I’ll have to look I can’t seem to get anything working

[@sharkuel]

@@einsteinorwell yup, like it was native to Linux. The only buggy thing is the startup, that pop-up window that should display the logo when loading the app only shows colour artifacts but once the app loads up, everything works. It is far more stable and snappy than PS on windows ever was

[@Butterscotch_96]

I remember having a totally legally obtained version of Photoshop 2021 with Wine. It’s funny how the official one doesn’t work but the cracked version does.

[@mohamedandislam4667]

Yes, I actually can not believe how much easier it is to install the cracked version over the legal one. I guess they do not want our money 😂

[@tablettablete186]

​@@mohamedandislam4667I suspect it has to do with the DRM service that Adobe installs...

[@briannormant3622]

You'd be surprised how cracked apps/games often runs much better than official ones. Remenber denuvo slowing games down to ups of 13%, to the point of the cracked game would run better than the official one. True story, I had Ghost recon breakpoint and wanted to play it ( On windows ). It didn't work, I tried everything, messing with files, registry, %appdata%, reinstalling everything, ect. At some point I gave up, Downloaded the cracked version of the game, Instantly run. It's honestly impressive, how cracked games and apps are just better and easier to use than the one you actually bought.

[@mohamedandislam4667]

@briannormant3622 Sadly, there is the risk of getting malware. I wish I could just buy the game and download the cracked version so that I do not need the internet to play it 😢 but it can't be always safe 😢

[@madbull4666]

​@mohamedandislam4667 there's quite a few sites that are perfectly safe to use a grab software from.

[@alexanderdelguidice4660]

Some windows programs require the registry changes their installers make to run. If you are installing a program inside of a virtual machine and then copying the files to wine, try using a tool like Regshot to see what the installer changes (it needs to be run before installing the program) and copy those changes to wine's registry.

[@MIGHTlEST]

If you’re worried about app compatibility when switching to Linux, there’s a simple and highly effective solution that most people overlook: run Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC in VMware Workstation on any Linux Distribution. Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC is official, lightweight, free of bloat, and avoids forced updates, making it perfect for a VM. Plus, with VMware’s 3D graphics acceleration, Full GPU passthrough, USB passthrough ( means virtual machine can use GPU and USB ports directly ) and full peripheral support, you’re not emulating, you are virtualizing and you’re running Windows with near-native performance , it’s as good as running native windows in every aspect. Use Linux for everything that runs well natively and with wine , proton etc -many apps and games do-but whenever you hit a roadblock with a Windows-only program, just fire up the VM. This way, Linux stays your main OS, and Windows is only there when you absolutely need it. No more dual-booting headaches or compatibility fears-just a seamless, efficient workflow where your day is never ruined by software limitations.

[@Kiaulen]

> Wine is not the answer You're my favorite Frenchman, how could you say that?!? 😂

[@louistournas120]

I think WINE is a very good answer even though I want Linux native games. The reality is that doing tech support for Linux is a nightmare. There are too many distros. Game companies want to support as few as possible. They want to release just one copy for Linux. That’s the beauty of Windows. Compile once. Make an install wizard thing. There is a lot of support from MS and various big hardware vendors. Linux doesn’t even have a standard API.

[@gianfrixmg]

That was a pretty subtle joke that non-europeans may not get lol

[@CaptainSunFlare]

​@@gianfrixmgEven in The U.S. we know of a Frenchman's love of wine! After all, where is champagne?? Lol

[@tabularasa0606]

@@CaptainSunFlare Champagne is overrated, get a nice Bordeau.

[@RoboBabeXD]

I just use wine for games, i will always look after linux packages

[@Xeno_Bardock]

Try converting windows app to portable version in virtualbox before running on Linux with wine, might have a higher chance of working that way. Also windows apps that work in wine should become available as flatpak package for convenience.

[@mgord9518]

@toolatefortowerfall Not necessarily. WINE could be used as a "runtime" that these apps rely on

[@lucascamelo3079]

​@toolatefortowerfallflatpaks can have some shared dependences

[@TheGuilha11]

Mattscreative has good guides on photoshop and affinity designer installation on linux.

[@AndRei-yc3ti]

Yeah Mattecreative has a whole video of him using Affinity desigmer 2 in gnome and it worked without hitches

[@bentory2002]

I got Photoshop and Lightroom running with his guide, had to use wine beta or whatever the non stable one is called

[@LaurieFloodTeacher]

I think a big key for people converting over to Linux is to first have quite a bit of exposure to FOSS. If you're using FOSS, you will want to keep using it. Before I made the switch to Linux, I had already been using Libre Office in its old Apache Office version throughout my entire graduate program. It is just so much easier, more intuitive, and a heck of a lot less clunky. I would just convert my research paper over as my final step to the .doc version. No big deal.

[@cgarzs]

😂 The world is crazy. No piracy: Forced to pay, make account, get spam - program doesn't work. Do piracy: Free, offline - program actually works. (I once, allegedly, in a dream, saw someone use Photoshop on Linux using wine and it was even portable on a pen drive. It seemed some program had been used to take a before and after snapshot of it's install and then capture that in a virtualization container that is executable on windows. Which they then just ran with wine. All dll's, registry entries, files and folders that Photoshop wanted were accounted for. Magically. Since, of course, this was all in a dream.)

[@aamram85]

Don't forget that usually piracy means better FPS as well (no DRM and other limiting bulls**t). Only downside is possible malware if you aren't sure of the source & online capabilities.

[@cgarzs]

@@aamram85 Exactly! spot on. 👍 ..... or so others allegedly tell me 😆 They also say the justified closed source trust issues can be slightly soothed by verifying against checksums of unmodified files and self applying bypasses like steam api emulation and drm removal yourself with open source tools.

[@mcp613]

That wasn't a dream. It was really and I've done it before (in minecraft ;) )

[@cgarzs]

​@@mcp613Minecraft already works on Linux without issue though. Since pre alpha even.

[@mcp613]

@@cgarzs I am trying to say that while I did something similar to what happened in your dream, but I will only admit to doing it inside of a video game (Minecraft is the common one used in the joke) which means I haven't broken any laws

[@ThatGamePerson]

There is a LONG convoluted guide for Affinity in their forum but it seems super annoying and I've not gone to the trouble yet to try it. Just been using it in VM for now.

[@CompuB1t]

I've tried multiple times unsuccessful. I just resign and I use Photo pea.

[@MauricioSzabo]

@@CompuB1t I tried multiple times. It works, the issue is that parts of their tutorial are "out of sync" with one and another - basically, you have to use "step 1" from the first post, then "step 2" from the latest version, etc. In the end, I was able to open Affinity Photos on Linux. Please notice the careful wording here: "open". It's SLOW. Like, very, very slow. The UI is kinda buggy, sometimes it doesn't refresh, sometimes it flickers, and it consumes a lot of CPU and is still very slow... so... didn't work for me.

[@marcusfleuti2672]

I use Krita with AI Plugin. It's great.

[@tonetraveler992]

I tried it and it works perfectly.

[@brethnew]

@@marcusfleuti2672whoa I haven’t heard of this, is the plugin free?

[@arahman56]

The thing about Linux gaming IMO is that games generally don't throw in as many OS hooks as Apps like Office/Photoshop, so there's less things to be adjusted.

[@mmethodd]

people on affinity's forum been doing god's work for years. It's a shame Serif never bothered to at least support the initiative. Now that Canva owns Affinity I hope things will change

[@rosyidharyadi7871]

I've wasted painful time in the past trying to run newest AutoCAD on linux without success. BricsCAD came to rescue as it was compatible with autocad file format.

[@lmarinho4614]

Have you ever tried nanoCAD? It's highly compatible and runs smoothly on wine.

[@fabricio4794]

Thats the True,and Open Source will kick this Prop slavery out of the corner....

[@louistournas120]

Do you use BricsCAD for personal use or at a company?

[@rosyidharyadi7871]

@@louistournas120 in a company

[@rosyidharyadi7871]

@@lmarinho4614 I never try it. Maybe someday, right now I don't work with CAD anymore.

[@TheDragShot]

At this point I can see I made the right choice by sticking to the old versions of the tools I got used to (mostly from early 2010s). Not only their modern counterparts require you to be always online and registered in their service, but most of their new features are merely AI promts that I could get out of my browser, or even my phone. Nothing I really need. I thank God everyday that I don't work in an industry where having the latest Microsoft, Adobe or Autodesk products is a must. This way I can run whatever OS I feel like without worrying so much about compatibility: it's either so old someone has already deployed it with WINE or it's able to run just fine in older versions of Windows, free from today's bloat.

[@zerokun2655]

It's not a matter of developer interest, it's just that games really just need a window, input, sound and sometimes file access. That's easy. Other than that games use graphics api which exist on all Oses and can be translated if needed (take DirectX ti vulkan with proton) All the most popular apps that aren't games are utility apps that probably use a ton of system dependencies like icons, components and other very specific features. Those are much harder to "emulate" (I know, wine is not an emulator, it's in the name! But you get the idea)

[@Thundzz]

I think you are completely right

[@SussyBaka-nx4ge]

Installers and Internet Explorer which a lot of apps still depend on are the biggest pain point right now in my experience. .NET is kind of in limbo because Wine can't really support installing .NET 1-4 sure to legal reasons and Mono just isn't there but .NET 5+ are easier since they're open source and no longer part of Windows proper.

[@sfoldy]

It's the ultimate Catch-22. Developers are not interested in putting apps on Linux because there is not enough audience. There is not enough audience on Linux because key software can't run on it. It's one of two major reasons why Linux can't gain more market share, and faster. The other reason is just awareness. Most customers that just need a computer will walk into a major electronics retailer or go to their website and look for a good deal. At best, they know they want Windows or Mac, and that's it. For the brick-and-mortar retailers, they don't get the experience of walking up to a display computer and saying "Oh, what's this? It's not Windows, but it looks easy enough to use.". Those are also the same customers that the support teams don't want to support, because they will require the most, and such support will raise the price significantly. I've been saying ever since the big Adobe mess a couple of months ago - Serif Affinity has a real chance here of being the first to move major software to the Linux ecosystem. That is a large customer base that WANT to move to Linux. If they would do this, it might encourage others to follow and final start stealing some market share.

[@basin397]

i think porting is the term youre looking for, but youre totally right. audio (both playback and production especially) is probably the weakest area for linux. the real reason windows has such great compatability is the multiple decade long stretch of marketshare superiority the NT kernel has had.

[@s_ziel]

Some thoughts: 1. Bottles is (are?) available as an rpm in Fedora 2. you can access the control panel in Wine, although it doesn't have everything 3. I have some experience with trying to install Autodesk Inventor on Fedora, it also failed due to missing DLL's, but I also learned that Inventor is dependent on MS Edge and will not work without it, even if another browser is present. Having to work on Inventor during my studies is the only reason I have a Win10 VM set up.

[@igorthelight]

Lutris is a very unusial but pretty insteresting way to install not only games but also some programs ;-)

[@thelakeman2538]

The only official way to install bottles is through the flatpak. All the distro packages are not supported by the devs and they only want you to install the flatpak version, I believe at some point even tried to get the fedora maintainer of the rpm to remove it. That's probably why Nick stuck to the flatpak instead of the rpm or aur.

[@lenOwOo]

Office 2013, 2016 and 2019 depends on how much you rely on MS are barely any different. And I'm doing financial stuff here.

[@-eggsy]

You managed to run any of these versions on Linux? Is there a guide somewhere?

[@whyand]

Absolutely agree, unless you do cutting edge things in office like some extensions or data analyzing addons. The office versions above 2010 seems didn't have much different imo

[@guss77]

Microsoft office 2016 is supported on Crossover Office. Code Weavers are the main people working on Wine support for Microsoft stuff. Unfortunately it looks like they have no plan to support later versions of MSOffice - according to comments by Code Weavers employees on the official forums, the licensing activation process of newer versions cannot be made to work due to legal reasons. So we'll just have to wait until Microsoft makes their own port to Linux...

[@mikespangler98]

It will be easier to port your spreadsheet to LibreOffice.

[@eng3d]

I am running 2024 LTSC and yes, there is not much difference. And the Option window in VBA is still broken.

[@gotamd]

Thanks for addressing this issue. I’m in the camp of people who rely on Mac/Windows-only applications that prevent me from switching to Linux. Linux works for many people, but there are also many of us who, unfortunately, are unable to switch. For now, I only run Linux on secondary PCs as a hobby and to check in on how things are progressing.

[@MangoPanic]

Same here, I've loved having a Steam Deck to tinker with as an extra Linux PC, and I'll probably be swapping the family desktop over when W10 goes EOL. I'd say at this point a good 90% of what I need is available or has viable alternatives on Linux, but it's that final 10% that keeps me from switching. Things really do just work in Windows, but on Linux even things that _should_ work sometimes don't or there's extra steps. Idm tinkering as much as the next tech enthusiast, but sometimes I just plain do not have the time or patience

[@kyledross]

I have two rather specialized pieces of hardware; a programmable keypad from Genovation, and a radio scanner from Uniden. To configure either of them requires software that's only available in Windows. Using Wine (a subscription to CodeWeaver CrossOver), I'm able to run them flawlessly on Ubuntu (and previously on plain ol' Debian). It's very nice to be able to be able to do all of this directly in Ubuntu without the muss and fuss of a virtual machine or dual-booting.

[@Kris-od3sj]

A couple Crossover interview questions: - How come they list support for software like Office, Adobe, etc. as bad? That didn't use to be the case. Are those products becoming exceptionally difficult to support, or was there a change in priorities within CodeWeavers? - Do they get any sort of external funding, like from Valve, but targeting other types of software (office, audio/video production, 3D work, something else)? - How significant is their focus on Linux in comparison to MacOS? - Did their ChromeOS support go away? If so, is that because of Crostini providing a way to run Linux binaries, or are there other reasons? - Do they take take ARM or Risc-V into consideration? - What are their expectations for the future: changes of OS marketshare, views of software vendors on Linux

[@HowToLinux]

I have actually managed to make MS Office 2021 and Photoshop 2024 run, using latest wine-tkg in a win64 prefix with many dependencies installed. To run Photoshop, I had to use the Standalone installer for it instead of the CC version. It's still a mess and I would not recommend anyone to do that for productive tasks.

[@shantilkhadatkar1195]

How did you 2021? We need to know

[@haze8346]

I was wondering if using latest wine would make a difference, as Nick is using 9.0 and the latest wine is 9.14. this could make a big difference. I would also be interested to know how did you do it, if you find helpful tutorials etc

[@AndRei-yc3ti]

​@haze8346 plus he needs to use custom wine builds rather than stock wine

[@HowToLinux]

@@shantilkhadatkar1195 I have made a fresh prefix with some dependencies installed like "vcrun2022 riched20 riched30 msxlm4 msxml6" set the system to Windows 7 and used the Office C2R installer. The installer did not pop up, but I saw the progress in the status bar. I also did not apply any regex changes. My current Wine version is 9.14.r1.g06d80381. But after installation, even the lutris wine version works. Something might be missing though, it's probably OpenGL since the bar is flickering and unresponsive sometimes. In Photoshop, i am also missing 3d acceleration

[@Afurai_]

@@shantilkhadatkar1195 A guy named "Mattscreative" has a good tutorial

[@BusinessWolf1]

The number one priority for wine devs should be office running, and the second should be photoshop. And not just running, but easily running. With a click. The way users expect it to.

[@praetorxyn]

Mattscreative was running Affinity through WINE on livestream last night, and he has multiple videos about running Photoshop through WINE (though I think versions newer than 2021 need files from a VM or something).

[@jrandiny3]

I think you should try office 365 with crossover. The one star you saw on the website is because you choose mac os, the linux compatibility rating is higher

[@pamelawhitfield4570]

good catch - I hadn't noticed they were all mac ratings. I also got office 365 running with crossover on linux so I was surprised to see that rating.

[@katrinabryce]

And Office 365 runs natively on Mac anyway, so nobody is really going to care. In fact, I was trying to print an envelope from Word. In Windows I could not get it to rotate the text so it would appear the right way up on the envelope. Tried it on my Mac, and it worked without any problems.

[@DavidZetaKrone]

I would *love* to have an interview with the Crossover team. The sheer amount that they could explain about why things do or don't work, or why Proton has developed into such an amazing source for Games only, is astounding.

[@jjyork01]

Thank you!! You have saved me and thousands of others dozens of hours of work and frustration!!

[@0hhStormy]

Thankfully I can make music on Linux with FL Studio, I have had little to know issues. The only issues I've had is with third-party plugins.

[@Skyverb]

Same here as a Bitwig user. There is a tutorial on KZbin for enabling Kontakt libraries/ installing them to run natively without Wine etc. Total life saver. But for now still on windows boot just for music and a few games, lol. Then Linux for everything else. Edit: typos

[@ojo2337]

​@@SkyverbBitwig is a treat

[@theaveragecactus]

whats the video?​@@Skyverb

[@jimmyadelaja]

This is the only reason why I have been able to stick to linux

[@alliso1240]

Reaper has linux support. Plugins are the issue as well.

[@MdMozammelHossain]

I think we should make a fund to contribute to a team to just make wine capable enough to run just 10 top used Windows app, and I'm sure the Linux market share will grow in double-digit.

[@pouet4608]

It is a moving target

[@plaintext7288]

I'm not deep into the oss funding stuff, but such initiatives must already be existing

[@231pilot]

Easier to install VirtualBox and download a Windows ISO of your liking than make a compatibility layer. Steam/Proton has gaming covered at this point.

[@myhandleiswhat]

This would be nice, but, people typically don't see the "Free" in Free and Open Source Software as "Freedom" rather as the amount of money they have to pay for the application. Which makes it really difficult for most open source initiatives to make money to begin with. If people are paid a salary development will be better, but, the unfortunate thing is people aren't willing to pay for software most of the time anymore and whatever software people are willing to pay for is either video games (which are easier to run through compatibility layers) or subscription services like Photoshop. It's incredibly difficult to live off of donations alone.

[@haariger_wookie5646]

I don’t think that would go anywhere. You would be better off with projects like winapps.

[@MarquisDeSang]

Now try to run them on a Risc-V Linux.

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Hahah ouch

[@MarquisDeSang]

@@TheLinuxEXP The only software that I would like to use on my Risc-V Linux is C-Lion. Sadly the company only provide linux ARM64 and X64 and they don't care about Risc-V. It is not too bad because EMACS and GDB are really good.

[@alexk4894]

Maybe this command will work😁 qemu-system-riscv64 qemu-system-x86_64 wine program.exe

[@Rikonardo]

@@MarquisDeSang considering clion, just like pretty much all other jetbrains software, runs on Java, porting it should be an easy task. There is already an open issue ticket on youtrack created by jetbrains employee for risc-v version of clion, so they clearly have interest in porting it, but current demand probably isn't high enough to give this task a priority. I think it's mostly a question of having more powerful and accessible risc-v dev boards on the market, so more developers can get their hands on one for tinkering, increasing demand for large development tools like clion

[@MarquisDeSang]

@@Rikonardo It is sad that a company refuse to be the first. Like you said it would probably just take 1 day to port that thing to Risc-V. When a company stop being first, they take the Risc of something else comming to fill the space.

[@modembuddy]

What a trip! Appreciate you giving it a full try instead of just dismissing the possibility immediately. I'm still dual-booting or maintaining a virtual machine for a handful of apps I still need but using them less and less.

[@Tall_Order]

If the goal is to get more people on linux, these programs need to work. I'm sure people have painstakingly tried over the years, and I know that with every new version there is a chance it all breaks again. But these are the softwares that businesses use. Employees are in some cases required to use them. We gotta do something. I like your idea for a cross platform steam-like interface for applications with a company behind it that cares about compatibility.

[@sebastianbauer4768]

Pretty sure Microsoft is leaning heavily on them to make sure that doesn’t happen. They keep shifting things around in the backend just enough, wine has been almost working for 20 years now. Given the progress with games which are indifferent to the efforts to run the on Linux I suspect active interference. Just keep changing things, wine is opensource so not hard to check how they try to make things work, then change things just enough they have to start over with a new version or dependency. Seriously, we are talking about installers failing because dependencies ain’t met. It’s copying files, showing a progress bar and maybe writing some stuff into the registry. You don’t fuck that up on accident over decades.

[@animatewithdermot]

100%; it just takes a dependency on ONE app to lock you in to M$.

[@pyepye-io4vu]

The goal isn't and shouldn't be to get more people on Linux.

[@Tall_Order]

@@pyepye-io4vu Why not? More users = more stuff getting done, market share rises, and focus. If you want something that's niche, use a niche distro.

[@djtommykeys]

For several months I tested Linux Mint for my daily needs. I went down every dead end street you mentioned in this video and many more. I also tested Windows 11. My conclusion was to ditch Windows 11 and dual boot Windows 10 with Linux Mint. When I hit end of service for Windows 10, I will continue to use it for apps I need for my studio. Cruising on the internet will almost entirely happen on Mint. I've been using Open Office and now Libre Office for over ten years. Thunderbird is a great email client. My VPN and cloud storage all perform well on Linux. I gave up on Davinci Resolve for Linux and I'm not alone with that conclusion.

[@EricchiYukia]

There's a guide for Affinity Designer. You need to use a customized build of Wine. I have it on my computer and it works just fine.

[@TheLinuxEXP]

That’s way too much work for most people though

[@RogueRen]

How did you get the custom wine installed? I've looked over that guide for days and am completely lost

[@2911Lucas]

@@RogueRen i am new to linux and tried to install affinity on mint using this guide. It was such a hard time and didn't work in the end... :D Nothing for a normal user

[@tdoggie7315]

​@@RogueRen The guide was originally written on the Affinity forums by a member called wanesty. Since my comment will get deleted if I post a link, just search "wanesty affinity" and find the website with the updated guide.

[@quantentoaster4759]

Have you also gotten your hands on the required Windows files? @RogueRen @2911Lucas

[@Kiyuja]

Wine and Proton are absolutely critical to have ANY chance of getting casuals into the Linux ecosystem, If they see things they wish to download and run, it should "just work"..just like they are used to. Even setting up these translation layers will be too much for many people but they have to work, period. Hopefully Wine will see further breakthroughs in the coming years.

[@phoenix-tt]

It's not about Wine, sadly. It's about the missing Windows-specific libraries (DLLs). And as Nick correctly mentioned, some of them simply can't be distributed due to legal reasons. I think a (not so) legal pre-built Bottle should be the way to go.

[@pyepye-io4vu]

I hope that doesn't happen. We don't want casuals in Linux. They will ruin everything, fill it with viruses and malware, and make it more closed & proprietary.

[@filipefera4097]

I think that it should have a software that watches for errors in the applications installed in Wine that you are trying to run and parse the errors with regular expressions to find out DLLs errors and similar, proceding to suggest a easy download of the dependencies out of the box

[@pixels_2124]

While setting up a Windows VM, or just having a spare Windows computer, is probably the easier solution, I suspect cracked/pirated versions of these programs work better under Wine since they won't come bundled with DRM. Same issues with anti-cheat in games not working under Wine or Proton. The anti-cheat, just like DRM, is far more intrusive and relies more heavily on the specific OS it was made for.

[@markcentral]

Sad that VMs are still the best way to go for Windows app compatibility. I suspect the reason there’s no proton-like effort to get it to run under wine natively is because most people’s pcs are sufficiently specced to run Windows VMs, brute forcing it. Conversely, there’s a good case for all the proton effort, because modern games require direct access access to hardware and the minimum amount of latency penalties for maximum performance

[@pyepye-io4vu]

That's probably not the reason, as others pointed out in comments above, the most likely reason is that games are fairly separate from the OS whereas non-game apps are much more deeply integrated and use more rare / specific Windows API calls that cannot be easily translated. That's why Proton (for games) can exist. Even mighty Valve couldn't make a "Proton for non-games" if they tried.

[@bar7381]

just had a thought that maybe a mac compatibility layer for these apps would work cos they're both unix like os'es, of course windows compatibility layers are more mature so it probably wouldn't work great in practice but i still think its an interesting idea

[@ettoreatalan8303]

That's what Darling is for. www.darlinghq.org/

[@nugrahaday]

Hey, I have a successfull method installing Office 365 on my Ubuntu computer. I cant give up Microsoft Excel because Power Query doesnt exist in Libre Office, WPS, Freeoffice, etc. It took me about 2 hours to get Office 365 installed and work properly on my Ubuntu computer. So, what I did first was to format my bootable disk, and install Windows 11. Then sign in with my Microsft account, and install Office 355 from the Microsoft store. It works like native apps.

[@Lampe2020]

I use Wine to run IrfanView and 7-zip (for which I'm right now writing a Linux-native GUI)

[@Kevin-jb2pv]

Irfanview works so easily in Wine that I can't really blame the dev for not bothering to write a native Linux version. I still wish he would, but at least it works. Not having that goofy little red splotch on my screen would physically hurt me.

[@Lampe2020]

@@igeljaeger But it's CLI-only. I'm writing a GUI (graphical program) to hook into that CLI version and provide the familiar user experience natively on Linux.

[@Lampe2020]

@@Kevin-jb2pv That red splotch is a dead cat - and the dev even likes cats (according to the "About" section of his website) but found that funny.

[@T_theodore]

​@@Lampe2020Peazip already does that. But regardless good luck with your application

[@Shmuklidooha]

One thing that's missing from my life is Linux 7-zip. Peazip works but it's very clunky and uncomfortable for me. Do you have an uodate page where I can follow development?

[@savagepro9060]

0:44 ' Is Wine just for video games . . .?' Uh Nick, Wine was created long BEFORE gaming was a focused distraction!

[@md_vandenberg]

That may be true but I've always heard WINE used for games, not applications. Doesn't matter what something started as, it's what it becomes.

[@savagepro9060]

@@md_vandenberg Judging from your avatar, you've been around and SHOULD know🤣

[@madelaki]

​@@md_vandenberg How have you never seen any forum threads by people trying to run Photoshop, AutoCAD, etc. with Wine? That used to be an extremely common discussion in any linux community. You're either very young or you didn't actually take part in any such communities and you're pretending that you did for some reason.

[@katrinabryce]

But games is the only thing you can reliabily run in Wine that doesn't have a viable native alternative - you can sort-of maybe run Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2000, but LibreOffice will run perfectly, and can certainly match what MS Office was doing 24 years ago; and in any case Windows 2000 running in a Virtual Machine will use less system resources than a browser window.

[@chinesepopsongs00]

@@katrinabrycei think the goal is to be able to run something that is less then 24 years old. So comparing what Libre Office can do compared with MS Office 2000 is a bit silly. If migrating to a Linux desktop means i have to settle with tech from 24 years ago then i understand it is not a mainstream desktop yet. I am a linux user, just not on my desktop machines servers only. Desktops will stay Windows and MacOS unless there will be a mayor breakthrue for desktop Linux.

[@zerokun2655]

The moment I get out of university and no longer need CAD software on my laptop I'm going full Linux, dual booting rn for this and games (League of Legends)

[@rocket2739]

Just install Windows Tiny10 on a thumb drive, lol

[@notreallyme425]

I really wish there was a browser based emulator to run windows apps. Then we could run them as web apps on any OS. Obviously not good for resource intensive apps like games, but it would solve a lot of problems.

[@StephanusTavilrond]

I'd give an arm and a leg for the ability to run Microsoft Visual Studio on Linux. Why? To develop multiplatform applications, where I can maintain separate code paths for Linux and Windows stuff.

[@dany08011]

I studied electronic engineering and students were asked to install proteus, dspic fd lite and some other windows electronics programs and all of them worked pretty well with stable wine so I never had any issues

[@nevinplove5097]

Besides games being easier to cross port, Valve also invested tons in Linux gaming through their Steam Deck & Proton. Just wish something similar to this happened with Multimedia Software since using something like Affinity for vector & raster graphics that works natively on Linux would be a dream come true. Blender, Inkscape, Bitwig, Zrythm, & Ableton with Wine are all amazing but 2d graphics & photo editing seems to be where Linux still lags even with Inkscape getting better alongside Gimp every year.

[@paradoxicalegg6112]

you can get the affinity suite to work with wine, you just have to compile a custom fork that implements the required features. Once you do that, it actually works pretty well from my limited testing.

[@Tubeytime]

Thank you for saving thousands of people from wasting their time

[@animatewithdermot]

Add me to that list. This saves me much grief. Strange though, as the last time I messed with Linux was with Ubuntu in 2010 or thereabouts. I did get Macromedia Flash and a version of PS to work on WINE back then, and they were usable if I recall. ZERO chance today.

[@gentuxable]

Games are made platform agnostic because they want to port it on consoles and to mobile as well. Normal windows software on the other hand rely heavily on frameworks and libraries also external ones and those all implement quirks that they needed after testing on windows and then they'll keep updating and introducing new problems. Those howtos certainly worked, back then!

[@piman13_71]

My big thing will be solidworks and mastercam most of industry seems to use them and them running on Linux would be cool but I haven’t tried it recently (they dislike VM’s though so it often doesn’t work)

[@vwagenjetta]

What I learned from this video is that you can drag a file into a terminal window to copy the path to the command line. Holy smokes, that'll make my life so much easier!

[@20quid]

Having to use the Affinity Suite for work is the only thing keeping me dual booting Windows. I just don't understand why they don't listen to the community demand for a native linux client.

[@MrvelvetviruS]

Only office is great. Presentation app is just what you'll need in a day to day basis and installing the windows font packages you should have very few compatibility issues. This is why I prefer it to libre office. Libre office is more solid and stable but compatibility is better on only office. In writer you should be also be covered. In my workflow the academic citing from zotero works just fine. The problem comes with Excel alternative. I do need macros and I perform data queries for data analysis, these two are highly missed...

[@BenMartinBox]

That's why I have 2 computers. One with Linux Mint for everyday common tasks (LibreOffice, Thunderbird, Firefox, Gimp, Blender, Krita) and the other for "Lightwave 3D 11.6.3" and music production that use libraries that require e-Licenser and ILok authentication /security systems that simply don't run in WINE. Life is a B.

[@XoaGray]

I used to have pretty good luck running Windows software in WINE years ago, but more recently its become less and less reliable for me. I’m not entirely sure what happened, but at this point I have basically given up on it and only use it when I have no choice at all. That said, I have been able to get one or two things working in Bottles via Soda, their implementation of Proton. Or by tricking Steam into installing it. Whatever secret sauce Valve is putting into Proton works great for Windows software that isn’t games too. I wish at some point they’d make Proton a standalone software we could use for anything.

[@animatewithdermot]

I posted the same above. Had success with it around 2010 or 2011, but when getting back into Linux the last year, it's unusable.

[@pyepye-io4vu]

This is due to Microsoft, and software devs changing the API calls in their software. Wine devs cannot keep up with all of that... Proton works well because it's games only. Even Valve couldn't make non-games work if they tried.

[@XoaGray]

@@pyepye-io4vu Actually one of the ways I've been able to get some of the Windows stuff I've had to use to work on Linux is specifically by tricking Steam into loading it like it's a game and then launching it with Proton. This works a surprising amount of the time. Though it's going to vary depending on what software you use. That said it's not ideal for sure, and something that just worked without having to trick Steam into doing it would be a LOT better.

[@bokocchop]

nick, go ahead have an interview with the developers.

[@CineparcPAT]

Great idea. Even if it's only to get some news from them. 👍

[@thetechguychannel]

Office 365 works just fine on Linux. If you must emulate it via WINE, you can run the registry editor via your WINE prefix through the terminal and modify anything that you'd normally be able to do in Windows' control panel. Troubleshooting Windows applications isn't easy, but it's entirely possible without having to use Windows native frontends. Other users here suggested running VM. I wouldn't go quite that far, but it's definitely an option. Installing Win11 in a VM by faking the TPM module is very easy in VirtualBox, and if you want a more customized experience that gets closer to bare metal, you can configure Windows to run in QEMU/KVM.

[@tappistrt]

It’s a shame about the Affinity suite. That seems to be one of the best competitors to the Adobe suite right now. Still holding out hope that being purchased by Canva might bring the necessary capital for them to consider making a native Linux version in the future.

[@crazywolf13]

This came just at the right time! Was just searching for this topic.

[@3120s]

13:44 Yes. That would be interesting if you could interview a CrossOver representative about this.

[@mykothy]

I enjoyed the video, thanks for that. Just a reminder that Linux users can still use the web versions of all Microsoft Office products. I do this on an almost daily occurrence, as my employer wants things like documents in specific versions and with specific clients only allowed to edit them. As far as everyone knows I am using Word, Excel, and PowerPoint but they are all on the web..

[@the-answer-is-42]

Yeah, it's just that in my case, my 200+ pages odt document bugs out in Word Online (the spell/grammar check gets confused and stop working properly, it takes an eternity to load, etc.). I wonder if it's because it's an odt document, which it is because I started working on it in Libre Office, so maybe I need to convert it to a Word document. Either way, Word Online has some issues and won't always work.

[@uroboloss]

PhotoShop is tricky but doable, @Mattscreative has a tutorial on it. But your point still stands, it's too much work for us to reasonably tell people that those applications work on Linux.

[@animatewithdermot]

Best fallback with PS is to use Photopea in a browser. A bit laggier on my system than PS, but still usable and will play nice with PS files.

[@gazik0mamedov]

I think the best way right now is to launch Windows VM and use GPU passthrough to enable hardware rendering (especially for Photoshop)

[@dirklangohr]

The main takeaway is that most Linux users don't want to use Windows apps because they force you to sign up and provide personal or payment details

[@231pilot]

Yep. Still use old software like Sketchup 2017 in Bottles because I refuse to use subscription software.

[@BeefIngot]

That's not the takeaway at all. That's a very selection bias based takeaway where not being able to is part of that selection

[@jayarmstrong]

th3re are many users here for the free beer but there are many more PC users on the planet that pay for good software. It would be great if Linux was an option for them too.

[@enchantededition6879]

I switched because I like my old laptop and windows 11 doesn’t like it! Now I could get windows 11 to run on it or buy a new one. Like I say I have everything as I want it So Linux is my only option of staying up to date without performance loss . Moreover I have windows 10 exactly how I want it and I’m not updating it other than security patches until they end. The windows apps I need aren’t internet dependent anyway. So I’m dualbooting with Ubuntu and happy .

[@javaman2883]

I use VirtualBox with a WIndows 10 VM. It allows me to use MS Office 365, OneDrive to sync files to their cloud, and a few other Windows only apps, including Fallout Shelter. For my older system (I bought in 2018), its not a big deal keeping the WIndows VM running all the time, I just pause it when I'm wanting to play games. Pausing and unpausing a VM is much faster than needing to open and close apps or even restart a VM.

[@Don_Day]

Office is one of the few softwares crossover worked better than classical wine Edit : dang I knew i should've waited for the end of the video

[@marcely1199]

They actually also announced in their last major release that Office is now apparently supported, although I myself had issues when trying to install it. At the end it's easier to just live with the quirks you already got used to in Windows than to spend countless hours whenever you reinstall Linux

[@dougjohnson4266]

WINE 9.0 works for older Windows programs for me, and I am so happy that Doom 2016 and Black Mesa work with Steam. I need to try my GOG games someday. VirtualBox and WmWare with a Windows client for everything else, but Linux software is good enough for me. Thanks for your time testing all of these.

[@MegaLokopo]

I wish steam would move away from being games only and support these programs as well. Steam makes using proton so much easier than any other version of wine or proton I have seen or used.

[@sippowho]

steam supports programs, not only games! Blender for example is on steam

[@MegaLokopo]

@@sippowho ok fine, but how many programs does steam have? If you really want ill add nearly to my original comment to make it more accurate.

[@sippowho]

@@MegaLokopo well i mean its not steams fault more programs arent using their platform🤷‍♂

[@Pumpkinwaffle]

Spot on! This really needs to be talked about more. I really hope productivity apps will eventually provide proper Linux support, it clearly is the next hurdle in widespread adoption of Linux. Open source tools awesome, and most of my toolkit is open source. But for me scribbus doesn't play nice in my workflow. So I'm reliant on Publisher and the windows nonsense for productivity's sake. Dual booting is its own can of worms and I don't want my files spread across separate OS.

[@gregthemadmonk]

3:23 it says that your Wine version is 6.0.3 which is pretty old now

[@lgrfbs]

Thanks, thanks and THANKS for this video I are a user of Alibre Design (a CAD program) so I are happy to see any CAD program been tested in this test.

[@BasedSqueaky]

I think application support is the biggest thing holding Linux back now. Game compatibility isn't much of an issue anymore. Affinity Photo 2, Rebelle 7 Pro, Camtasia Studio 2024...all of these are musts for me, but do not run.

[@AndRei-yc3ti]

Affinity photo and camtasia work. I have gotten them to run through portproton

[@Breznak]

Yes, exactly. I run, libreoffice, Thunderbird, gimp, and others on my windows machine. I would go Linux (and have on my personal computer in the past) but sadly a huge part of my work happens in AutoCAD (Civil3D specifically).

[@uxiii9537]

How is it possible that games work flawlessly but normal programs are broken

[@bobowon5450]

because when I'm at work and my boss tells me to open up something in a professional software that doesn't work well in linux, i try it once, if it fails i use windows because i'm at work, i don't have the time to frig with it, my boss won't accept that waste. Meanwhile pc gamers are some of the cheapest people in the world. You tell them they can save 150 bucks on their windows license? oh you bet they're getting linux to work. They're also disproportionately tech enthusiasts who will literally spend hours just modding a game, only to not play it. Jane smith at corporate office is probably there by obligation, not because she is passionate.

[@bubba99009]

Valve has put an amazing amount of work into getting everything running on linux so it'll work on their steam decks. Nobody really cares about getting Office to run on Linux... and Microsoft would probably actively try to break compatibility in future patches and releases if anyone ever did achieve that.

[@testtest8399]

@@bubba99009 Lol by Valve you mean open source community behind WINE that has existed for ages before Valve did shit. Valve improved/optimized it a bit, but crediting this to Valve only is deceptive.

[@bobowon5450]

@@testtest8399 legitimately if valve didn't put their foot into the game most people probably wouldn't know about wine at all. Linux has always had a bad time trying to get even into the hands of consumers at all. Valve drastically improved accessibility

[@MangoPanic]

Because games are designed to be ported to multiple platforms and don't use as many dependencies as regular programs, which are far less predictable and harder to translate

[@jesse7631]

For Office apps (when I need them), I simply run them in a VM - that way, there are zero issues with compatibility. I finally got Roblox up and running in Fedora with the new Sober package. It is flawless! And actually better that what I had back with Grapejuice and Vinegar.

[@Tancred423]

11:36 moving the cursor in an 8-shape is a universal thing when waiting for something to load, isn't it 😂

[@bertnijhof5413]

I use Windows Programs on a Linux PC, since 29th of March 2010, my last year at work. - Host: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Beta and Sun's VirtualBox; - VM: Windows XP Home and Microsoft Office 2003; Google Sketch-Up; Format Factory; 7-Zip and Rufus. I still have that VM and use it weekly to play the wma copies of my CDs and LPs with WoW and TrueBass effects.

[@EQuivalentTube2]

The problem is that, in order to fix a problem, everyone involved has to agree that there's a problem. Which in this case is the worst kind of problem because the people causing it have no reason to feel that it is a problem, therefore have no inclination to fix it whatsoever.

[@shailmurtaza9082]

I don't think it is going to happen. Because Many people think it is not even a problem, or problem with Linux at least. To solve this problem, we need to have native Linux applications instead of hacks like Wine and Proton.

[@jimmyscott5144]

If you can get the creative cloud hub/manager installed and launch the new manager you can select what version of photoshop you want. At work we have 2020 installed and the latest (it lets you have multiple versions too!)

[@sheethal_thomas]

The lack of application support is the only thing keeping me from using Linux. For a few Windows apps, there are good Linux counterparts, but others are extremely terrible.

[@231pilot]

Throw Windows in a VirtualBox VM....

[@pyepye-io4vu]

Please stay on Windows.

[@BaronCAD]

It's probably been about 10 years since I had to do this, but I remember having a full Windows install (ntfs partitions and all) dual-booted on my Linux box, and configuring Wine to point to the installed apps in that filesystem. It worked much better than trying to run the installers under Linux. When I needed to run updates, I'd boot briefly into Windows, perform the update, then happily go back to running most of the software I needed under Linux. I don't know if this approach still works in the 64 bit world.

[@M0rn1n6St4r]

Hey, Nick. The *CoreMessaging_dll* is in *Windows\System32* - while *WinRTSupport_dll* _appears to be_ in the Adobe PS directory. I don't have Adobe PS. I'm currently looking at my Windows 10 system partition, from KDE's Dolphin. To me, you sounded like you misunderstood which files are missing. In the errors, they come _before the text_ "(which is needed by...)"; e.g. import_dll Library . Those application/suites _all use_ system-level shared libraries. Y'know... the kind which are dynamically linked. What's the acronym for those? :-) In Windows, dll files are registered (and unregistered) using regsvr32_exe (/u). You may want to read about regsvr32 on Microsoft Learn. How did you imagine copying _only the application directory_ (and its subdirectories) would work? Who told you that? Either they made it up, or they left out _many, many_ steps. Even in Windows, you can't (simply) move an application's directory (and its subdirectories) to a new parent (directory) and expect it to work. First, you must unregister all of its dll. Then you can move it to a new parent, where you must register all of its dll and change all of its registry entries (to use the new paths). You might spend hours doing it manually. Unless you are moving it to a new partition with identical paths; i.e. the only thing you need to change is _the drive letter_ in each path-from C: to D: (or whatever). Then you might speed it up with a Find/Replace. But... don't mess that up. Put simply... it is so much simpler to uninstall the app/suite from Windows-then install it (again) to the new parent. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[@reminosouci]

Thanks for all the work you make for the community even when it fails!

[@Torviticus]

I mostly use my PC for gaming and Wine/Proton work well enough for me. Which is great because while I've considered running Windows through a VM I really don't want to, first because while I know how to do GPU pass through I don't want to install a second GPU, and two the idea of running windows outside my work laptop makes me feel utterly defeated and sad.

[@MrvelvetviruS]

Feel you from a defeated muxless laptop owner 😥😅

[@k.b.tidwell]

You definitely went above and beyond for this video. (Read: much further than I would have gone.) I'll offer a tiny point of information here. I use a commercial Windows writing program, Scrivener, which has Windows and MacOS versions, and USED to have a Linux version til they dropped support. I had always been able to get it to run by a convoluted routine similar to your first Office install attempt. That was until they migrated the code from Qt5 to Qt6 around June of 2023. Then it would load and run, but you could never register it because of one 32bit internal component that handled the registration link to the outside world that failed every time. When WINE 9.0 rolled out a little bit later with included support for 32bit within 64bit containers, the problem went away. It's now a much more streamlined install and I've done it successfully on Debian, Arch, and SUSE systems. It took some sleuthing on my part to figure out that a) the 32bit area was the problem and was very necessary, and b) the failure point was when things went from Qt5 to Qt6. I hope this might help someone in similar though not identical situations.

[@jcugnoni]

This is sad but true.. many of the major apps are just a no go with Wine. Only a VM can give a proper compatibility at the moment. VirtualBox is great for simple apps but is not very good for 3D apps (CAD for example). The best I have used is VirtManager / KVM with GPU passthrough but this is quite involved to setup. I remember that about 10 years ago I could run Office 2007 and Dassault Catia V5 in Wine and more recently Autodesk Fusion in 2019 could be patched (removing OS check in the Python code of the installer) to run on Wine too. But no more

[@pyepye-io4vu]

Why is it "sad"? Why not just use Windows? Why bother with all the VM stuff, performance penalty etc.?

[@paul1979uk2000]

The problem is, there is little incentive for developers to want to port their software to yet another OS, Valve started to realise that with gaming, hence the invention of Proton. The same will likely have to happen with apps across the board, at least until Linux actually gets some serious market share for developers to want to target it directly, but that isn't happening any time soon for most companies to want to target it. Also, as we've seen with Proton, there's another reason why developers like it, with Proton, you can have one software build that works on Windows and Linux, I suspect that's appealing to a lot of developers that don't want the clutter of supporting multiple builds for different OS's, hence why some publishers that did have a native port on Linux, have scrapped them in favour of the Windows version running through Linux, mainly because it has fewer bugs and performs better, one build is going to get more attention, optimisation and bug fixes then having to support two builds. So as much as I would love to see high quality ports to Linux, in the short term, I think the best solution is some hybrid approach of getting Windows apps to run well on Linux like Valve is doing with Proton, after all, most users don't care if an app is native or not, just as long as it runs and runs well, and the key for Linux to be successful in the desktop space is to get games and apps running as if they were native, Proton is working on the game side of things, but more work is needed on the app side of things.

[@CesarPeron]

I still don’t understand why LibreOffice hasn’t improved its UI to be more modern, user-friendly, and similar to MS Office, like OnlyOffice does. Let’s face it, MS Office has a user interface and user experience miles ahead of all the alternatives. Considering that LibreOffice does almost everything MS Office does, it’s surprising they haven’t updated their ugly interface, which feels like something out of MS Office 2003.

[@daapedrotti]

To me, the MS office interface is horrible and unusefull. LibreOffice allows to configure the ui like msoffice, it's not exactly but is likely

[@arnox4554]

You CAN change the UI to be very much like the Microsoft Office ribbon UI, but it's a bit buried in the View menu.

[@CesarPeron]

@@arnox4554 I know that, but it's just a superficial facelift without improving the experience. Among office suites, WPS Office does the best job of this. Like MS Office, it features dynamic tabs-such as the table tab, which only appears when working with tables-and many others that hide to enhance efficiency and usability.

[@arnox4554]

@@CesarPeron It may not be an absolute full implementation, sure, but it will get you 80% of the way there, if not 90%. In the end, I just don't see it as a big deal really.

[@Milosz_Ostrow]

I have Autocad R14 running with Wine, sort of. This version of Autocad was released in Windows 98 days and it installed on Linux with no issues. There are a few functions that don't work, although it's possible to create and edit drawings. I use it mostly to export DXF files for native Linux programs to ingest.

Conspiracy theory aside, maybe this is on purpose. The more complicated it is to run large applications on Linux, the more users remain prisoners of Windows.

[@rabbits2345]

Photoshop and office have always run like shit under wine desire every other program gradually getting better. I suspect they purposely use weird API calls to stop wine users, but maybe I'm overthinking things too

[@EdwardRLyons]

It's more fundamental than that, and not a conspiracy. The Linux user base is simply far too small for these big software companies to bother pouring resources into porting their products to it. There's no profit to be gained from it. There is no "conspiracy"; it's simply how capitalism works.

[@markh.6687]

@@EdwardRLyons "Capitalism is a conspiracy" - V.I. Lenin, maybe. I dunno; I never read "Das Kapital".

[@SeekingTheLoveThatGodMeans7648]

But application vendors might not be all that cheerful over this.

[@o_q]

@@EdwardRLyons Catch-22: There's no professional software on Linux because the user base is too small because there's no professional software on Linux because...

[@boscobothelo7164]

Yes please plan the interview, this will erupt a new wave of interest in opensource.

[@jttech44]

There are definitely legal issues involved with bringing over certain windows components into WINE, which is why none of this worked. The counter point to wine is, however, a stripped down windows VM running on linux, which works well for everything. What I would like to see is app developers getting in with microsoft and making VM's themselves, effectively a windows container system, and have those containers be agnostic. Not likely to happen, and, I'll continue doing this on my own.

[@tablettablete186]

Tbh, this is not a bad idea at all. The tricky part is being able to share hardware among VMs (in other words, share the GPU)

[@jttech44]

@@tablettablete186 Yes, basically requires an AMD gpu in order to be stable currently. You can do it with nvidia, but, it requires some hackery nonsense and you're always one update away from it breaking. Alternatively, you can just have more than one GPU, and pass that second GPU through to the VM's that need it, which tends to work better than trying to share a single GPU.

[@tablettablete186]

@@jttech44 My gripe with GPU passthrough is that you are essentially limited the number of GPUs on your system (I wanted a VM per app). But this is mostly me wanting isolation and performance. There are other approaches with hardware support or using paravirtualization.

[@jttech44]

@@tablettablete186 Yes, however, you only need the number to be the number of simultaneous VM's, so, can be pretty doable of you only need a couple.