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Loopysue
ProFantasy 🖼️ 40 images Cartographer
Some time ago I started a thread about how to use CC3 in Linux, and whether it really worked or not.
That thread was very specific to my own personal situation at the time, which has since changed dramatically now that I have a brand new PC, but I am asking simply because I want to know - so that I can tell others about it when I see such questions coming up over on the FB page.
How do you set up a Linux only machine to run CC3+, and does it run properly with full functionality? What Linux distribution is best to use?
That thread was very specific to my own personal situation at the time, which has since changed dramatically now that I have a brand new PC, but I am asking simply because I want to know - so that I can tell others about it when I see such questions coming up over on the FB page.
How do you set up a Linux only machine to run CC3+, and does it run properly with full functionality? What Linux distribution is best to use?
Comments
CC3+ should run just fine on any distro (as long as it is recently new/up to date), most of them contain Wine for installing through their package manager (if you manage to find one without easy access to wine, then it would be unsuitable). Personally, I recommend users just use the distributions they are familiar with (and if they aren't familiar with any, I wouldn't recommend they go ahead. Using CC3+ on linux is a good enough option if you already use linux, but if they don't already have a desire for using linux, taking on the effort of learning a new OS for no good reason isn't sensible, and there are some quirks with CC3+ on linux as well)
Generally, CC3+ works just fine on linux, the main issue I've had is that fonts doesn't render the same size as under Windows. This isn't a huge problem when mapping, but it is a problem if you plan to share .fcw files with Windows users (for example if you wish to download an .fcw from the atlas, or contribute one). See the Wine AppDB
This is a general question for future reference. I will bookmark it so that I can recall it quickly when certain circumstances arise.
There seems to be a myth going around that CC3 fails to perform adequately in Linux, and I wish to dispel that myth.
As a matter of fact CC3+ (and various add-ons) was one of the huge topics I had when considering switching from Windows to Linux since I had not much experience with the Linux operating system and wasn't sure I could get CC3+ running. As it turned out, CC3+ works better (not joking!) than it did under Windows 7.
I started with Linux Mint 19.1 and am now at Linux Mint 19.3. Because I didn't know how to configure wine properly I used "Play on Linux" which I installed using the package manager. It's simply a GUI for wine and makes managing various wine installations easier. Using "Play on Linux" I did a normal CC3+ installation and used it to install all add-ons and updates into the same wine prefix (wine "workspace").
Everything is running smoothly and I noticed just two issues compared to the Windows 7 installation I had:
1. The scaling of the fonts of old maps was all wrong. But this could be easily adjusted by selecting all text (e.g. selecting by layer) and deactivating the "use new font metrics" option. Voila! Every label was again in the correct position and size.
2. When printing using the print wizard, the console which displayed the rendering progress does not show up properly. But that's all. The rendering and also the printing is done just fine.
When using Windows 7 I seldomnly had crashes when drawing maps with a huge number of nodes. But since using Linux CC3+ never crashed again (that's the reason why I say it runs better using Linux ;) ).
After I heard several people, I gave it a try, and it worked fine. It is a bit annoying to install the files (for some reasons, I cannot doubleclick the installer files to run them, I need to go to the command line and run "wine ", but this also has its advantages - I just installed a whole annual by using a "for" loop...), but CC3+ i in my menu and hotbar.
The only thing that does not work for some reasons is printing, but as I usually export my maps as images anyway, this is not a problem (normal Linux programs print just fine).
I did a test install right now with a brand new install of linux mint 19.3 (the latest), installed Wine 4.0.5 via the software manager in mint, and then installed CC3+, ran it once, and then ran the update, and it installed without any issues at all, and no touching any Wine configuration
I know this might not help you or be what you want to hear, but in my experience, installing CC3+, addons and updates under linux mint is a 100% straightforward experience, no tweaking or anything needed, it just works out of the box.
As for the update, if you installed the latest available CC3 version from your registration page, you would already be at 3.94, no need to install the update unless you also install an add-on. Of course, that isn't a lasting solution, because sooner or later a new update that you want will arrive.
Firstly, I notice several people seem to be using Mint, a distribution based on Ubuntu but with quite a few modifications. While Mint advertises in an appealing way, I have to note that as a distribution it's maintainers have a poor reputation for breaking things. YMMV, of course. I recommend inexperienced Linux users stick with either Ubuntu or Fedora, for both support and out of the box functionality. Any amenity advertised with other distributions can be installed on either of them.
That said, I'll attempt to tie together and maybe address some common issues with Wine:
Fonts: Wine is missing some default and all proprietary Windows fonts, causing odd issues in a number of applications. If those fonts are one of: Andale, Arial, Comic Sans, Courier New, Georgia, Impact, Times New Roman, Trebuchet, Verdana or Webdings, installing the `ttf-mscorefonts-installer` package may fix some rendering issues. I don't know if it solves @CSANecromancer's noted issue, however.- The Wine Prefix: Wine allows multiple simultaneously usable "containers" referred to as a "prefix", as @Monsen mentioned. Applications installed in these cannot see each other and do not "see" the same system. If you want applications to interact with each other then, they must be installed in the same prefix. Many helper tools for managing Wine installation like `Play on Linux`, `Lutris` and `Steam` create a new prefix for each application by default. @CSANecromancer notes `Play on Linux` allows overriding this (excepting Steam), and most other tools do as well. Using Wine via CLI without declaring a prefix will also "default" to assuming the same prefix.
- Printing from Wine: This is hit or miss as some applications access printing in strange ways, but the first step I usually take is installing a PDF printer for diagnostic purposes via this package: `printer-driver-cups-pdf`, then ensuring the 32 bit version of `cups` (the Linux printing system) is installed. Under Debian/Ubuntu/Mint this would usually be:
`sudo apt install libcups2:i386`- Note the ':i386' bit for "multiarch" support.
I hope this was at all useful.
p.s. BBCode still?, any plans for Markdown?
For all those of you (all three of you ;) using Linux, I just wanted to report that I installed CC3+ on Fedora 36 with Wine 7.12.
No extra steps, no tweaks, no hassles.
I installed cups-pdf to see if printing was working (had to restart CC3+ for the printer to show). It seems to hang for a bit, but finishes in about a minute.
I didn't test font compatibility, but I assume orbatos' answer above still holds.
I've posted a test report to winehq (still under review as I type this).
I load Campaign Cartographer 3+ using Crossover Linux. The software works just fine as far as I can tell.
@roflo1 Fedora 36 ships with wine 7.2, not wine 7.12. Fedora 37 ships with wine 7.12. Was there a typo in your message or did you really get it (specifically the installer) working with wine 7.12?
I did some testing. I use Qubes OS, which makes it easy to do this kind of testing.
I tried with Fedora 37, wine 8.5. The installer starts, but crashes after verifying the contents of the installation package.
I tried with Fedora 37, wine 7.12. The installer runs, but when I click "next" after entering the license key it just doesn't do anything.
I tried with Fedora 36, wine 7.2. The installer completes successfully, and I'm able to run CC3+.
AFTER installing on Fedora 36, wine 7.2, I can upgrade wine to 8.4, and running CC3+ works.
AFTER installing on Fedora 36, wine 7.2, I can upgrade to Fedora 37, wine 7.12, and running CC3+ works.
AFTER installing on Fedora 36, wine 7.2, I can upgrade to Fedora 37, wine 8.5, and running CC3+ works.
No matter how I get it running under wine, there is a lot of lag in the cursor if I move it too fast. For example if I'm drawing the coastline (or anything, really) and I move the cursor too far after a click, the crosshairs will freeze for a second or two periodically. The lag happens even if I'm not drawing (just moving the crosshairs around the map), but it's much worse when drawing.
Also it really doesn't like redrawing the main viewport. The whole viewport goes a solid green sometimes (a lot). Sometimes hitting ctrl-r fixes it, but it usually doesn't.
I gave the domain running CC3+ 6 GB of RAM and 8 cores. It doesn't seem to be CPU bound even when it's grinding away trying to 'catch up' the crosshairs to the mouse cursor.
Qubes has its plusses and minuses. One of the minuses is that the GPU is not available to applications. I did not think that would be an issue for CC3+ though because I've seen forum posts saying it doesn't use the GPU anyway.
If you really did get the installer running with wine 7.12 then maybe you had already installed something that added a file to your wine that the installer needed. CC3+ is the first, last, and only thing I've ever tried to run with wine.
It's pretty unusable overall. I think Qubes might be the issue. When the crosshairs lag, the whole domain stalls ... even htop stops updating. I think it's spending a lot of time in the kernel. Qubes uses a custom video driver in X and I think it's getting overloaded somehow. The lagging goes away when I make the window small. But if I make it that small it again is unusable, just for a different reason. It is actually faster to run it in a native Windows domain on the same computer, although it's pretty stuttery. If I RDP to my Windows machine with Remmina it's smooth like butter so it's not the screen updates themselves, it must be how wine is doing it.
I'm not asking for help, I have other ways I can run the software. I thought I would post my experiences here though in case others find them useful.
Hi!
Fedora 36 ships with wine 7.2, not wine 7.12. Fedora 37 ships with wine 7.12. Was there a typo in your message or did you really get it (specifically the installer) working with wine 7.12?
According to my dnf logs, I installed wine 7.12 back in August 2022, about a week before my previous post above. So yeah: 7.12 is correct.
Right now I have 8.4-1, still on Fedora 36 (I should upgrade). CC3+ still works on 8.4-1, but I haven't tested reinstalling from scratch.
Little late to the party but everything works with my Fedora - for good 5 versions (or even more?). And lately I've moved whole installation to "network drive" (to be precise - NFS share on one of my servers). And it works - on direct share and with rsync'd installation. With minor problems (sometimes i get blank window) - when network speed is decent, it works like a charm.