Debating between upgrading to Win11 or switching to Linux. Will RM11 work in Linux and if so which distro is recommended?
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I believe some users have reported successfully used an Windows Emulator - but that is NOT recommended or supported by RM.
I would still with having a Windows W10+ machine (or mac)
I looked at previous posts but did not find any related to RM11. Wondered if it played nicer than previous versions. Thanks.
Should be no difference with a Windows emulator - neither better or worse than previous versions.
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out of my area expertise but I would guess any recent ver of RM would operate the same on an emulator would be my guess
Emulation, like WINE or Bottles will not work for any recent version of RootsMagic, it works only for RootsMagic version 7 and some older.
The only way to run RootsMagic Version 8 or greater (8, 9, 10 and 11) on Linux is with a Virtual Machine. Setting up a virtual machine on Linux of a supported operating system.
Running a Virtual Machine of Windows 11 on Linux is possible even on a computer that can’t run Windows 11….because it can simulate the necessary hardware, like TPM 2.0.
A good VM install tutorial can be found by a web-search like:
sysguides install-windows-11-on-kvm
I hope RootsMagic can make a future version with Linux support.
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Thanks for the useful information. I also wish RootsMagic could be ported over to Linux.
I am not with RM but since they have the RM team/ developers have their hands full with Windows and Max and have limited resources I do not think it would be wise from them to take resources from those two platforms. I totally understand the wish - but the ask for this to become reality not so sure.
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Count me as a +1 for Linux.
Since Mac is basically Unix at this point it should not be hard to have a version that runs on Linux.
I’m still on Windows 10 (I paid for the year of extra support) and am migrating to Linux a little at a time.
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I still keep windows around for Rootsmagic and FTM. If you do not want to dual boot you could always run w11 in a VM. If you do go w11, get a w11 pro license and you can setup the system with a local account and only use it for RM. W11 keys can be had as low as $10.
I have been using Linux for more than 25 years and it irks me that you still have to keep windows around for one or two apps. Otherwise, I use Linux the rest of the time.
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RM11 definitely does not work on WINE. Every new version of RM since 7 I’ve tried and failed. Every time there’s a new WINE version, I test all over again, trying different combinations of Winetricks components looking for the magic solution. I no longer actually expect it to work, but I figure it’s worth some of my time to try.
It’s disappointing, because being able to run it in Linux was one of the main reason I chose RM when leaving Family Tree Maker back when that was supposedly going to be discontinued. That was the same time I was committing to ditching Windows.
RM is the last one thing that I still keep a Windows VM around for. I’m still running RM8 in a Windows 7 VM on Virtualbox. I plan soon to switch to a Win10 VM and buy the latest RM. I doubt that I’ll ever touch Win11.
I too wish the RootsMagic crew would write a native Linux version (or at least a Windows version that would work with WINE), but I know the Linux community is still too small to be worth the investment. Maybe someday. Linux has been growing lately with growing frustration with Microsoft and other countries concerned about digital sovereignty.
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I used Linux back in the early 90 to mid 90s - The main reason I switched to Windows was I need office products -at that time there were many distributions. I even met Linus Torvalds in person around the time when he spoke at a local college (wife was recent graduate)
I have been unable to get RM11 to run with WINE. I have not tries using bottles yet
I didn’t mention it in my post 4 days ago, but purely coincidentally I’d installed and tried Bottles for the first time earlier that day. I’d seen news that they added a new feature called “Eagle”, still in beta, that analyzes windows programs to give information about how they’re built and what dependencies you might need to install to make them work. At least that’s the idea. It seemed like something that might help figure out how to get RM working in Bottles, and probably in base WINE as well.
But I was disappointed in how helpful it really was. It did tell me some things about the graphics APIs it uses and DLLs it loads. And it suggested DXVK, which I’ve already tried numerous times in WINE with Winetricks. It gave me a few other options to toggle on or off. But after playing around with all that, I was sill left with the same outcome. I can change the nature of the failure, but it still fails to run correctly no matter what.
It’s a neat feature, and I like Bottles in general now that I’ve seen it. I’ll keep it around for any other WINE-related things I might want to try. And maybe when Eagle is further refined, it might actually help with RootsMagic. But my past few years of experience leaves me with no optimism. It was worth a try, though.
Not a Linux guy, but wondering if you folks are installing a component that RM version 8-11 uses, which is webview2? My search led me to this winetricks github issue where further down the page there’s mention of doing so and then running Edge browser. A couple weeks ago, there was a related patch added to the bottom, most recent post of that thread. Just throwing that out if it hasn’t been played with by any recent RM users who dabble. Good luck!
Thanks for the webview2 suggestion. That’s a brand new winetricks verb, so a good thing to try. Unfortunately, for me at least, it doesn’t make any difference. I just added that to my list of typical verb combinations and pretty much get the same kinds of errors as before. It was worth a try, anyway.