Looking for information on running the RM Shareable CD on a Linux Mint laptop. I would like to be able to view my RM 7 databases on a Linux OS.
I was hoping to find a method to view the RM Shareable CD on Linux Mint. I already have RM installed on 2 Windows computers.
For your purposes, think of RM as a Windows only program, even though it also will run on a Mac. Therefore, to run RM on Linux you will need to run a Windows emulator on your Linux machine. Running Wine on your Linux machine is one of several choices that might or might not work. You will just have to try them to see.
It might very well be possible, if you install Wine 6 or 7, not 8 or 9, and winetricks. Then, if you start the latter, you can choose to run a Windows explorer, and browse to the RootsMagic EXE file on that CD. And when you open that EXE, it will probably run.
And with Wine 7, you might not even need that extra step, because it may already have associated the EXE extension with the Wine Windows Program Loader. In that case, all yu have to do is browsing the CD with Nemo, and either right click on the EXE to start that program loader, or just open it with a double click. That works here, with Wine 7.
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I will give that a try. I had imported the Gedcom into Gramps, but had a problem getting all the media links changed over. If I cannot get Wine to work I will import the Gedcom without the media links. Looking at the data is the main thing on the Linux laptop.
Where do I find Wine 6 or 7? I followed 2 tutorials and in the end I found I had installed Wine 9. How do I remove the Wine 9 I installed? It does not show in the menu.
You will find very little help for linux here.
OK, that’s a bummer.
You can remove your current Wine with synaptic, or by using apt in terminal. Older versions are available in the standard repository too, but I always get them from the Wine HQ:
https://wiki.winehq.org/Ubuntu
Instructions for downloading specific older versions can be found in the last bullet of the Notes section.
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Thank you, I will look into that. Would be nice to run the RMShareable CD in Mint. Good someone on here is a Linux fan.
I’m also a Linux Mint user, switching from Ubuntu about a year ago. Prior to RM8, I was able to use it with Wine with only minor annoyances. But I’ve yet to get RM8 or RM9 to a usable state after much trying. I’ve tried various Wine versions on Ubuntu, Fedora, and now Mint. Tried as win10 and win7, both win32 and win64. Also tried many combinations of winetricks packages (mainly gdiplus, corefonts, windowscodecs, dxvk).
From my latest testing of RM9, the closest I’ve gotten to a usable program is to use the older 6.0.3 version of Wine that I get from apt, versus the newer 8.x version in Flatpak, without any winetricks packages added.
My solution: Run RM8 in a Windows 7 VM. I’ve retained my old Windows 7 and 10 license keys for that very reason. It’s definitely not my preferred solution, but it’s the best I’ve come up with in recent years. I’m holding off buying RM9 until I lose FamilySearch integration, at which point I’ll again have to decide whether this is my long-term home or I again switch to something else.
I too would love to see the RootsMagic team release a Linux native version. But I doubt there will ever be a financial motive to do so. There are just too few of us to be worth it. Such is the life of a Linux geek.
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