Scrivener/Scapple for Windows Activation under Wine

[MrBeardie]

It's supposed to be compatible with 7-10 x86 or x64 according to Microsoft.

That may well be the case on Windows but that doesn't mean it will on Wine.

Is there any way to clear the cached downloads and try it again with a freshly downloaded copy of the installer? I'm not familiar with Winetricks...

On my machine I found the cache at ~/.cache/winetricks, which I would expect to be pretty consistent across distros.

[devinganger]

It's supposed to be compatible with 7-10 x86 or x64 according to Microsoft.

That may well be the case on Windows but that doesn't mean it will on Wine.

Another dumb question -- does the Windows 7 prefix have SP1 installed or is it stock Win7? Apparently it is a known issue that 4.6.2 will not install without SP1.

[MrBeardie]

Another dumb question -- does the Windows 7 prefix have SP1 installed or is it stock Win7? Apparently it is a known issue that 4.6.2 will not install without SP1.

On the contrary, I'd call that an excellent question, for which I don't have an answer, nor can I think of a ready way to find out. If I do find out I'll post again.

[tpletcher]

Unfortunately, I'm getting the same result using a new [Windows 7] prefix.

64 or 32 bit? I don't think dotnet 4.6.2 will install in 32 bit.

I was out of ideas so I thought I'd redo this process a bunch of times to see if I could get it to fail and eventualy it did. On the failed run I noticed that switched the environment to Server 2003 for dotnet 4.5 but failed to switch it back. I also found that after the point of failure, by re-running "env WINEPREFIX=$HOME/wine_scrivener winetricks win7" and then rerunning "env WINEPREFIX=$HOME/wine_scrivener winetricks dotnet462" the install was successful.

Good luck.

Thanks for this—it seems very promising. However, when I ran the second env command above, I got the dreaded "dotnet462 conflicts with dotnet40,, which is already installed." Winecfg doesn't seem to be able to get rid of dotnet 40. I'm beginning to think I may need to remove Wine altogether and start from scratch.

[tpletcher]

Another dumb question -- does the Windows 7 prefix have SP1 installed or is it stock Win7? Apparently it is a known issue that 4.6.2 will not install without SP1.

On the contrary, I'd call that an excellent question, for which I don't have an answer, nor can I think of a ready way to find out. If I do find out I'll post again.

I believe iit's the stock win7—didn't see an option for SP1. Is there a way to add this with winecfg? Thanks for the clue, BTW.

[MrBeardie]

Another dumb question -- does the Windows 7 prefix have SP1 installed or is it stock Win7? Apparently it is a known issue that 4.6.2 will not install without SP1.

On the contrary, I'd call that an excellent question, for which I don't have an answer, nor can I think of a ready way to find out. If I do find out I'll post again.

I believe iit's the stock win7—didn't see an option for SP1. Is there a way to add this with winecfg? Thanks for the clue, BTW.

I'm a bit confused about this situation. If the Wine Win7 environment is stock, rather than SP1, why am I able to install dotnet 4.6.2, if that is supposed to require SP1? On Microsoft's page (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/framework/get-started/system-requirements) it doesn't list stock Win7, yet does that really mean dotnet 4.6.2 won't install on it? I no longer have an ISO for stock Win7, so I'm unable to confirm one way or the other. Perhaps someone else can try it.

[devinganger]

it doesn't list stock Win7, yet does that really mean dotnet 4.6.2 won't install on it?

I believe that is in fact the case, as stock Windows 7 fell out of support fairly quickly. SP1 was practically required.

[MrBeardie]

it doesn't list stock Win7, yet does that really mean dotnet 4.6.2 won't install on it?

I believe that is in fact the case, as stock Windows 7 fell out of support fairly quickly. SP1 was practically required.

And yet we can install it in a Win7 instance of Wine.

I've scrounged through my old CD/DVD collection of Windows versions and found one that I think might be a base Win7. It's about my bedtime, so I'll take it to work with me tomorrow and install it on a VM. If it really is a copy without SP1 I'll try and install dotnet 4.6.2 and let you know the result.

[MrBeardie]

If it really is a copy without SP1 I'll try and install dotnet 4.6.2 and let you know the result.

I can confirm that dotnet 4.6.x, and presumably anything after 4.6 as well, will not install on a base Win7 machine. That leaves us with two possibilities in regards to Wine's Win7 container:

1 - The dotnet installer is unable to detect it as non-SP1
2 - Win'es container is effectively SP1

[clombard]

Out of curiosity: why stick with Win 7 and not go to 10 for Scrivener? Is there a specific reason (other than preverring Win 7, which I do)?

Cecilia

[MrBeardie]

Out of curiosity: why stick with Win 7 and not go to 10 for Scrivener? Is there a specific reason (other than preverring Win 7, which I do)?

In my case I'll never use a Win10 Wine container unless I ever come across something which can't be run otherwise but which I really want to run. Why throw even more variables into the mix?

On workstations my view of Windows versions is based entirely on my rather long experience with it in corporate environments. Quite simply, Win7 is more stable and predictable than Win10, especially for "power users", who tend to crash machines more frequently then "regular users". It's also easier on the eye and more user-friendly, although I admit that's completely subjective and some, aspecially the young, will not agree. Two items I'm still constantly hearing from experienced staff members are "it used to work on Win7" and "where did they hide [insert anything here], it was obvious or easy to find on all previous versions". Starting from Win8, Microsoft (and others since that time) have clearly demonstrated that technology changes and progress can at times be mutually exclusive.

[theswede]

Wine containers do not have Windows versions per se. The version is just an entry in the registry and can be changed at will (even on the fly; you can use one version to start one program and another version to start another program and have the programs interact like if they were running on the same Windows machine).

Most applications do not even look at the Windows version, but look at available capability. That is the case of the dotnet installer, which pretty much ignores whatever you have set the version to. It may complain if the version is extremely wrong, but I doubt it will care even then. I haven't managed to get it to complain.

The main reason for the "dotnet462 conflicts with dotnet40, which is already installed" error is having mono installed. Make sure to remove mono from the Wine container.

[devinganger]

Wine containers do not have Windows versions per se.

Good to know, thank you!

[Zelator]

I had the activation problem with Manjaro KDE. I found the solution explored in depth at

Code: Select all

https://forum.winehq.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=32869

.

Here's the step-by-step process from RobK's post:

I went to Software Manager and installed Winetricks
I ignored the messages about 32-bit and 64-bit prefixes (did not understand them; I've got a 64-bit system)
In Winetricks, I selected the default wineprefix (without understanding what it meant)
I clicked Install a Windows dll or component
I scrolled down to find dotnet 4.6.1
and selected Install
What follows is a lengthy procedure - say, one hour - where successive versions of .NET are installed, with worrying popups which you can ignore and click OK on, and where for long stretches of time, nothing seems to be happening (apart from the frantically blinking harddisk LED)
Whenever an "accept this end user agreement" window pops up, click 'have read and accept'. This occurs for every successive version of .NET. It is apparently a cumulative process, ending with the installation of the .NET version (4.6.1) that you selected.
When that final version has been installed at last, and no more popups are forthcoming, close all apps or whatever they are called in Linux parlance (still learning) and restart your computer.
Fire up Scrivener, fill in your registration data, wait for that slooow connection to check everything, and hopefully, receive an affirmative message like the one I got.

Mine didn't take an hour, but it is a lengthy process, and often seems to have died. I ended up with .NET 4.8, I think.

[efi0ng]

[...] I therefore suggest each command is run separately once the preceding step has fully finished. Those steps are:

env WINEARCH=win64
env WINEPREFIX=$HOME/wine_scrivener wineboot --init
env WINEPREFIX=$HOME/wine_scrivener winetricks dotnet40 corefonts
env WINEPREFIX=$HOME/wine_scrivener winetricks win7
env WINEPREFIX=$HOME/wine_scrivener winetricks dotnet462
env WINEPREFIX=$HOME/wine_scrivener wine Scrivener-1.9.15.exe

The same process also worked for the latest V3 beta.

This appears to have worked for me with latest 3.0 beta (29042) on 64-bit Ubuntu 19.10.


I've run the program, adjusted the UI font and exported the interactive tutorial to Word format - checking the result in Office 365. So far so good.

The only changes I made were:

* I had to install winetricks
* I set WINEARCH and WINEPREFIX once at the beginning
* Installed Scrivener from a folder inside drive_c once that was available

I don't know that any of my variations make any difference. This install was on a VM but I also intend to install it on a "bare-metal" Ubuntu 20.04 machine soon.

There are a lot of errors while running the scripts but it seems we can ignore them.

Here are the commands I ran, based on Mr. Beardie's:

Code: Select all

sudo apt install winetricks

WINEPREFIX=~/.scrivener
export WINEPREFIX
WINEARCH=win64
export WINEARCH

wineboot --init
winetricks dotnet40 corefonts
winetricks win7
winetricks dotnet462
# copy Scrivener installer to somewhere on drive_c inside the wine prefix.
# change to directory where Scrivener installer is located
wine Scrivener-29042-installer_x64