Running Windows software on Linux

Always an interesting challenge. Which I keep wrestling with, mainly because of SimpleMind Pro. These are the options I've experimented with so far.

Using Wine with Docker

With my previous Linux installation, Wine would sometimes mess things up with updates and dependencies and such. So this time, I'll install it with Docker.

Install Docker

  • Follow Docker instructions.
  • Watch out that 'bullseye' is not yet an option in their deb repository.
  • Create docker user group, so you don't need to operate it as sudo.

https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/linux-postinstall/

Install docker-wine

  • Download the script.
  • Mount local folder as home:
/opt/docker-wine --force-owner --home-volume="/opt/wine"
  • Adjust Wine settings by running winecfg.
  • Disable the 'Allow window manager to decorate windows' setting. This keeps crashing the app in KDE.
  • Scale up screen resolution for HiDPI.

https://github.com/scottyhardy/docker-wine/issues/95

Launching apps

  • Make sure the installer is inside the mounted home volume.
  • Launch exe and follow instructions.
  • Launch application. For example:
cd '.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/SimpleMind/1.28.3'
wine SimpleMindPro.exe

To include additional volumes:

/opt/docker-wine \
    --force-owner \
    --home-volume="/opt/wine" \
    --volume="/home/hugo/Documents/Mindmaps:/home/hugo/Mindmaps"

The format for the volume flag is "/local/path:/path/inside/container".

Experiences

It works, but I've had many random crashes. And because you have to enter the container each time to launch the application, this became a bit cumbersome.

I also don't like the Docker ecosystem that much. At times, the containers would upgrade themselves first, before accessing the container. Super annoying, especially when internet is slow.

Using Bottles

Installation

Much more straight-forward:

flatpak install flathub com.usebottles.bottles

Experiences

It takes a little tweaking to set up an environment, but was able to smoothly run SimpleMind after that. It's not 100% crash free, and I encounter some panel / window glitches on occasion, but overall definitely better than the Docker experience.

Much easier to launch too from within the Bottles GUI.

Worth checking out!