How is WINE support in 2021?

[drawn2shape]

It's usable... but it's not very quick or snappy. Better than no Alibre at all. I'll take what I can get.

Thanks for your work/diligence with this! I have a renewed interest in Linux and a newb as well having just dual booted Ubuntu and only needing Windows for 2 apps: Atom3D and an old CS2 paid for PS. I don't want/need AI in my Cheerios or anything else thank you so this seems my best path forward. Have just looked into Bottles and can see getting in way over my head very quickly/easily so patience as much as possible will be my refuge.

Following with keen interest...

 

[Weekdayweekend]

Progress has been made, and I feel like I am extremely close to getting this working. I decided to try Steam's Proton layer instead of just Wine. All of the issues I mentioned the other day are gone, and Alibre actually successfully installed! It tries to launch, but Alibre gives me an error which looked like registry issues to me: (see photo) Although I must admit I didn't understand any of it, and ChatGPT is the one who suggested a registry issue.

I exported the registry entries from the working Alibre Windows 11 VM and imported them to the Proton registry editor. My thinking was that due to some incompatibilities, the Alibre installer was unable to add its preferred registry entries to where they belong. Not sure if that was actually the case, but that's what I tried. No change.

Not sure what is missing here. I feel like we're really, really close to Alibre running on Linux here. If any Alibre devs recognize this error and have any suggestions, I am your humble servant.

EDIT:
I just simply Googled the error and was told to check alibre-executive.dll, and it is indeed present. Not sure why ChatGPT said it was a registry issue. Either way, the .dll is present as it should be, and the permissions are fine too.....
I copied alibre-executive.dll from a working install. No change.

EDIT 2:
I'm an idiot. Steam was trying to run the main Alibre exe from within its own prefix and not the one in which Alibre is installed.

 

[DavidJ]

Comparing those registry entries to the ones on my Win11 PC - I note that the file paths in your registry have forward slash separators, whereas mine have backwards slashes. Otherwise the values appear to match. Not sure if that is significant, or if it's solely Windows vs. Linux.

 

[Weekdayweekend]

Comparing those registry entries to the ones on my Win11 PC - I note that the file paths in your registry have forward slash separators, whereas mine have backwards slashes. Otherwise the values appear to match. Not sure if that is significant, or if it's solely Windows vs. Linux.

I tried switching the slashes to all be backslashes, but there's no change. As you said, I'm not sure if that's just a Linux thing.

 

[BobSchaefer]

So the slashes should be forward slashes on linux, on the command line, a backslash tells the command line something different than a forward slash (I couldn't figure out how to word it right without it sounding more complicated than it is). The error seems to be complaining that it can't find the registry section that is clearly there in your second screen shot. Although, looking again, and this is just a guess, as I don't know how steam handles drive letters and things like that. Are you sure that path is correct? There's no such thing as drive letters in linux.

 

[Weekdayweekend]

So the slashes should be forward slashes on linux, on the command line, a backslash tells the command line something different than a forward slash (I couldn't figure out how to word it right without it sounding more complicated than it is). The error seems to be complaining that it can't find the registry section that is clearly there in your second screen shot. Although, looking again, and this is just a guess, as I don't know how steam handles drive letters and things like that. Are you sure that path is correct? There's no such thing as drive letters in linux.

Wine/Proton simulate drive letters to the Windows program, and I know that path should be correct

 

[Weekdayweekend]

I've gotten up to the point I got to a few months ago on a different PC. I'm up to licensing, which fails. I'm not sure if I'm missing a dependency. I'm SO close. Alibre has full access to read and write to whatever it needs, I have a bunch of standard prerequisites installed (although I'm not sure if I'm missing any).

At this point, I really just need a detailed log of some kind just telling me what's going wrong so I can fix it. I need a log from Alibre (not wine).

EDIT:
Sorry to continue using ChatGPT, but I don't really have any friends who are knowledgeable about this sort of thing and I'm still a Linux noob. I've apparently enabled certain logging through .NET and created a folder for said logs to be placed, but they are not. I'm being told (although I don't know with what certainty) that this is a sign that .NET 4.8 is crashing silently, and early in the startup process of the application, which causes the licensing to fail. Apparently, although dotnet48 is installed by winetricks, it is not fully implemented yet.

 

[DarkHorseDynamo]

Hey everyone, I'm actively working on this as well and I'm at the exact same place you are @Weekdayweekend Though I am working on this through Bottles (a Wine frontend and manager) and MUCH easier to try numerous configurations and runners quickly, and I get live logging. I get different errors depending on the runner I use (the wine build) but the most frequent is this one everytime the license error box pops up with "Licensing library failed to initialize" : 0158:err:ole:CoGetContextToken apartment not initialised .NET 4.8 appears to be installed correctly along with the other relavant depedencies but I'm still investigating.

As an aside, I've also installed WinBoat and Alibre installed and runs! The major downside is there is NO gpu acceleration and WinBoat doesn't have passthrough for graphics hardware (yet). So, it works, but it is sloooow. The beauty of WinBoat is it can auto install a version of LTSC Windows 10 for you if you want and without ANY of the bloat. It just makes getting Windows going on Linux a breeze but I don't see this as an ultimate solution as we are missing the critical piece to running Alibre - gpu access. It is great for all kinds of other non-gpu reliant software though.

I'm not sure how much this might relate but, I DO have ReliefMaker running from Bottles PERFECTLY. I mean it is flawless and smooth. I know it's totally different software but I thought it might use the same (or similar) licensing scheme since Alibre owns it, hence, maybe related to our Alibre licensing error.

I've been using Linux for 30+ years but mostly on the server side... The desktop experience lately is REALLY top notch and I'm trying to completely move over from Windows. I'm sick and tired of the decisions M$ has made over the years and I want total control back over my hardware and software. For those interested, I'm running KDE Plasma on Rocky Linux 10 which is a port of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (rock solid and stable). I'd love to discuss more for those also wanting to take the leap. I'm dual booting Linux and Windows still as Alibre is my only holdout. I'm using native Linux applications or working Wine installs for everything else and it is wonderful and SO much faster than the equivalent on Windows.

Let's keep hammering on this! As it has been stated so many times before, the chances of Alibre releasing a native Linux version is slim to none and I get it, that would be hugely unprofitable in the near-term (long term if M$ keeps alienating power users, though, who knows?) BUT maybe there is a chance the Alibre team could help us get it working under Wine?! It's just getting a better understanding of the dependencies needed and hopefully finding an existing wine build that works OR we can build our own from source with the needed requirements - just like they have done for getting Steam and AAA games to work on Linux. Building wine from source is trivial these days.

Cheers!
Sean

 

[Weekdayweekend]

Hey everyone, I'm actively working on this as well and I'm at the exact same place you are @Weekdayweekend Though I am working on this through Bottles (a Wine frontend and manager) and MUCH easier to try numerous configurations and runners quickly, and I get live logging. I get different errors depending on the runner I use (the wine build) but the most frequent is this one everytime the license error box pops up with "Licensing library failed to initialize" : 0158:err:ole:CoGetContextToken apartment not initialised .NET 4.8 appears to be installed correctly along with the other relavant depedencies but I'm still investigating.

As an aside, I've also installed WinBoat and Alibre installed and runs! The major downside is there is NO gpu acceleration and WinBoat doesn't have passthrough for graphics hardware (yet). So, it works, but it is sloooow. The beauty of WinBoat is it can auto install a version of LTSC Windows 10 for you if you want and without ANY of the bloat. It just makes getting Windows going on Linux a breeze but I don't see this as an ultimate solution as we are missing the critical piece to running Alibre - gpu access. It is great for all kinds of other non-gpu reliant software though.

I'm not sure how much this might relate but, I DO have ReliefMaker running from Bottles PERFECTLY. I mean it is flawless and smooth. I know it's totally different software but I thought it might use the same (or similar) licensing scheme since Alibre owns it, hence, maybe related to our Alibre licensing error.

I've been using Linux for 30+ years but mostly on the server side... The desktop experience lately is REALLY top notch and I'm trying to completely move over from Windows. I'm sick and tired of the decisions M$ has made over the years and I want total control back over my hardware and software. For those interested, I'm running KDE Plasma on Rocky Linux 10 which is a port of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (rock solid and stable). I'd love to discuss more for those also wanting to take the leap. I'm dual booting Linux and Windows still as Alibre is my only holdout. I'm using native Linux applications or working Wine installs for everything else and it is wonderful and SO much faster than the equivalent on Windows.

Let's keep hammering on this! As it has been stated so many times before, the chances of Alibre releasing a native Linux version is slim to none and I get it, that would be hugely unprofitable in the near-term (long term if M$ keeps alienating power users, though, who knows?) BUT maybe there is a chance the Alibre team could help us get it working under Wine?! It's just getting a better understanding of the dependencies needed and hopefully finding an existing wine build that works OR we can build our own from source with the needed requirements - just like they have done for getting Steam and AAA games to work on Linux. Building wine from source is trivial these days.

Cheers!

Hey thanks for working on this too, I actually couldn't get it working in Bottles at all lol so I'm glad you did.

So far for me, the easiest way to get Alibre to at least try to launch is to add it to Steam and force Proton Experimental.

 

[Uncrushed6819]

Thank you guys for your efforts this way. I'd prefer a native wine solution over gpu passthrough to be honest.

I wanted to share that dockur/windows will download and auto install a qemu dockur image that runs rdp. you can usb passthrough but no idea on gpu. i'm back logged with too much to give it a go right now.

If you really want to experiment with ai trying to solve it for you, warp terminal is pretty solid for me and has agent mode which can apply the changes for you.

you can change models. $50 might be worth a try or if some one can tldr, i can let it have a crack at it for us. I have spare linux boxes.

 

[DarkHorseDynamo]

A native wine solution is the best solution imo and that's what I'm working on.

I ran the main Alibre executable through a dependency walker last night and got a list of DLL's that were accessed up to loading the main home window. There were several that were missing in my existing Bottles configuration so I'm currently working through that list. My only goal right now is attempting to at least get the licensing window to load properly.

I would not waste money on AI helping with this. Unless it's been trained on the Alibre code base (which obviously is proprietary) and wine's ability to support it's requirements, it will most likely not help.

One question for the Alibre team - are there ANY 32bit libraries that are required still or is everything fully 64bit?

 

[drawn2shape]

So far I have not fiddled with Alibre in Linux but... have tried Ubuntu, Mint, and Zorin OS so far. On the Windows side, I have removed Win11 and decided to stay on Win10. Thank goodness for Macrium backup, made going back super easy/reliable.

All that to say: for me at least, think I'll wait this "getting Alibre running in Linux" business out and simply continue running in native Win10. Problem I see is at one point Win10 will not be allowed online once I can comfortably rely on Linux for all online activities. This will cause issues with Alibre needing to get online to check to see if my license is valid right? This will keep me stranded on last current version too right? ...not a perfect solution, but for as long as Alibre can continue running, will keep Win10 running.

Things used to be so much more simple... progress huh.

 

[Weekdayweekend]

A native wine solution is the best solution imo and that's what I'm working on.

I ran the main Alibre executable through a dependency walker last night and got a list of DLL's that were accessed up to loading the main home window. There were several that were missing in my existing Bottles configuration so I'm currently working through that list. My only goal right now is attempting to at least get the licensing window to load properly.

I would not waste money on AI helping with this. Unless it's been trained on the Alibre code base (which obviously is proprietary) and wine's ability to support it's requirements, it will most likely not help.

One question for the Alibre team - are there ANY 32bit libraries that are required still or is everything fully 64bit?

At least once this is figured out, most of the process of getting it to work can be automated.

 

[IMK]

I tried old version of Alibre Cubify Design on https://winuxos.org/ and it worked mostly, had bit of issues with graphics.
I have since upgraded to Alibre 28 but not tried it on winuxos I would be interesed to know if it works
all best IMK

 

[sihawken]

Honestly I think the problem here is that Zentitle relies on WMI, which I believe isn't fully implemented on 64 bit wine prefixes. WMI is used to get system details to link a license to a specific machine.

Both wbemprox and wmiutils are called by Alibre and they both have "not implemented" messages. So zentitle probably crashes when it gets unexpected behaviour.

It would be nice to get a WMI spoofer, there appear to be some for Windows but I don't know if they will work for wine.

 

[Weekdayweekend]

A native wine solution is the best solution imo and that's what I'm working on.

I ran the main Alibre executable through a dependency walker last night and got a list of DLL's that were accessed up to loading the main home window. There were several that were missing in my existing Bottles configuration so I'm currently working through that list. My only goal right now is attempting to at least get the licensing window to load properly.

I would not waste money on AI helping with this. Unless it's been trained on the Alibre code base (which obviously is proprietary) and wine's ability to support it's requirements, it will most likely not help.

One question for the Alibre team - are there ANY 32bit libraries that are required still or is everything fully 64bit?

Have you had any luck at all?

 

[Philip]

I'm in the same boat, would like to leave Windows behind but can't because of Alibre.
I tried installing it via Wine and ended up with the exact same error, that's how I found this post.

I would also be very interested in a solution!

Cheers

 

[EPowIPi]

Fingers crossed they use the opportunity for the new UI overhaul to also improve compatibility with other OSes. (Besides Linux I haven‘t given up hope for a macOS version one day…) And hopefully they also do some internal tests without that copy protection. And if this turns out to be the main stumbling block to work with the manufacturer of that on a solution. Or reconsider other options.)

 

[Weekdayweekend]

For right now, I'm dual-booting. Linux Mint for daily use, Windows 10 LTSC for using Alibre.

 

[wjrii]

For right now, I'm dual-booting. Linux Mint for daily use, Windows 10 LTSC for using Alibre.

I can't speak for everyone, but as soon as I hear about Alibre successfully launching in Proton, I'll be re-upping my support long enough to get whatever version it is.