I’m a software engineer who fancies themselves a good enough writer to occasionally bust out scrivener and plot away their hopes and dreams in the form of a fantasy novel. My biggest hangup? Starting scrivener in mac or windows. It makes me physically ill to boot my perfectly valid linux machines into windows or (god forbid) consider buying a Macintosh computer just to write in scrivener.
In the past, I’ve gone as far as using the AppImage for Scrivener 2. But really, I’d like to use the 3 license that I’ve paid for in the operating system I prefer. While I understand ports can be costly, hell, I’ll volunteer to help convert it. Hoping I’m not the only person longing for this.
Just buy a quality machine that will last for years with the least problems (Mac)
Seriously though, Your (I guess) Win 3 licence you paid for is for a Win machine. Just as the 3 licences I have paid for are individually for Mac, Win, and iOS. I can’t reasonably hope to run any of them on Fortran or Cobol OS’s, assuming either of those relics of my earlier days were my ‘preferred’ OS.
However, you can very easily run Scrivener 3 Win on Linux Mint ( & probably other Debian based) using Lutris. I’ve written a book on it that probably needs updating and there’s a number of YT videos.
I can’t speak for L&L, but I’m guessing there is zero commercial incentive to invest in writing and supporting a new Linux version, especially given the workload L&L currently have with adapting Scrivener to iOS/MacOS 26, and the ongoing work on the ‘other’ writing app.
That’s a lot of words to say “I accept vendor lock-in as a personality trait.”
Nobody is confused about per-OS licensing. The complaint is about a company charging premium prices while shipping a cross-platform document editor that still treats Linux like it’s 1999.
Also, “just use Lutris” is not a solution. It’s an admission that the product doesn’t meet its own professional use case. If I wanted to debug Wine prefixes to write fiction, I’d just open VS Code and pretend it’s intentional.
IMHO (I’m not L&L) The company (L&L) charges a very reasonable price (nowhere near premium) for a product that it has spent months/years developing for each platform. It would likewise have to spend months/years developing a Linux version for an OS that despite it not being 1999 is still a very small (insignificant?) segment of the PAYING app market.
I suggested Lutris as a very viable solution which of course you are free to explore or reject. The install took an insignificant amount of time and it worked perfectly. No debugged of Wine involved. There are L&L staff on this forum who have provided excellent advice on running Scrivener under Linux.
The product exactly meets its use case for the OS’s it supports. Holding one’s breath and stamping feet is unlikely to change anything.
As for “I accept vendor lock-in as a personality trait.” - Rubbish!
I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying here. Scrivener doesn’t support Linux, and you knew that when you purchased it. We have always asked people to buy Scrivener based on its current features and their current needs, not speculation about what it might do in the future.
We do not at this time believe that the business case for a Linux version justifies the investment it would require. We wish you success in your writing, whether you choose to use Scrivener or not.
Apologies — I’m outside the Linux debate, but am trying to follow it to form an opinion. I didn’t understand the point you were making with the above quote, or why it would be a bad thing.
I’ve usually understood the phrase “vendor lock-in” to mean a technical or operational design that makes leaving a supplier’s ecosystem difficult or expensive, perhaps because of a proprietary data format or long-lead contractual exit procedures (none of which I’ve ever heard LL accused of), but that doesn’t follow from your argument so I’m assuming I’ve gotten the wrong end of the stick here.
I may very well be guilty of what you’re suggesting… do you mean: “someone who accepts that vendors only have to supply to buyers what they’ve sold them?” because that probably is me.
I understand that Scrivener does not currently support Linux, and I’m not claiming otherwise. This isn’t confusion about the present state. It’s feedback about the product’s future and the business assumptions behind it.
The objection isn’t “I bought something expecting unsupported features.” It’s that OS-locked licensing for a fundamentally cross-platform, document-centric application is increasingly anachronistic, especially given how many professional writers, developers, and academics now use Linux as a primary environment.
Saying “buy based on current features only” is fair as consumer guidance, but it also neatly closes the door on ever hearing from customers who are explicitly saying “we would pay if you supported our platform.” That’s not speculation: it’s market signal. I’m here. I’d pay.
I respect that you don’t currently believe the business case justifies the investment. My point is simply that the assumption “Linux users don’t represent a paying market” is widely contradicted by modern professional software ecosystems, and continuing to treat Linux as a niche or hobbyist OS may itself be part of why that signal is missed.
I’m not asking for promises. I’m saying there is demand, there is willingness to pay, and many of us would prefer native support over workarounds.
I’ve seen little evidence of this and I look after a community of several hundred writers. Maybe a few (like… below 5) of them are not in Mac or Windows (or iPad) - we do survey the tools they use when they join. While this is not evidence in itself, exactly, it doesn’t lead me to thinking there is vast demand. Also I’m definitely not against the idea! But I’ve also heard similar echoing of the “now is the time of Linux desktop!” for 20 years. Still waiting.
Edit: wow I realise how negative that sounds reading it back now. Didn’t mean to! Very much a fan of OOS.
It’s an OS specific app that has the great ability to share the project file on multiple platforms, but each of those platforms requires a full development process for the app.
Nothing you, or other Linux/Android fans have said shows there is a viable market to justify the investment in development and ongoing support for those platforms. (Android potentially viable?)
I’m sure the L&L team have had a long hard look at that equation more than once.
As a program written in Qt, it is incorrect to say that it is not fundamentally cross-platform. That’s the whole idea behind Qt, and if anything the software is more alien on the Windows platform than it would be running on a KDE Plasma system. It could just as well be compiled for macOS, for that matter, and probably be just as home as on Windows.
As noted many times before, the reason we stepped away from providing Linux builds had zero to do with market potential, financial blah blah and so on. It had everything to do with focussing on getting a woefully out of date code base up to date. No need to even go back and forth on that aspect, it’s entirely irrelevant.
As for its viability these days as opposed to in the past, we cannot look to the past because things are different now. Windows 11 has bombed, a very significant percentage of people would prefer to continue using an obsolete and increasingly vulnerable version than upgrade, and those that wish to avoid either of those conditions are indeed switching to Linux. 2025 saw a large swing upward in its adoption, and we will definitely will be keeping an eye on that.
Only the Windows version is written in QT, and writing a Mac app in Qt would be throwing away capabilities ending with an app that is less than the current one, so is it really ‘fundamentally cross-platform’? Yes, only if you absolutely want to force it and chuck away the Mac OS benefits, but is it worth the effort.
I don’t dispute that a large number of people don’t like Win 11, and some (Some) have switched to Linux, (apparently more switched to Mac) but that still puts Linux in the region of 5% - thats almost just a rounding error type percentage.
A large number of those staying with Win 10 appear to be simply because they have hardware that doesn’t work with Win 11, a bit like people with 5 yr old Macs staying with Sequoia. Both remain perfectly useable OS’s.
Will those less than 1% movers stay with linux, and has the ‘move’ plateaued are serious questions?
Sure, but in a thread about making a Linux version available, I don’t think the Mac version is terribly relevant. I’m speaking only of what is viable, and in this case it is the fact that we could compile a Linux version tomorrow if we stripped out the activation code and a few other things. That we haven’t is mostly down to logistics and having our attention drawn to other things at the moment.
Again though, festering about market share numbers isn’t what matters. It’s entirely all about what we can do as a few people, and keep our heads on straight while doing it. My only point in bringing up the surge in 2025 is to point that we are aware of it. We don’t really care if it’s a small or large number, it’s that writers are on it, and we’d like to help them out too, if we can.
To comment on that part personally, I use all of our software through Wine on a daily basis, and heavily. It’s good enough to do 99.9% of the QA testing we do, never mind just using it to write. I wouldn’t call it a workaround, it’s a valid way of using it. Steam would probably agree with that, given how much they have thrown into the Proton project.
That said, a native version would indeed be nice, don’t get me wrong, I just don’t think you have to wait or wonder if we will. You can get to work, right now.
I also use Scrivener and $NewApp on Wine on Debian – though far less often and deeply than you! – and for me, the issues with the Scrivener version aren’t really to do with it being on Linux/Wine, it’s because the Windows version itself isn’t as smooth and capable as the Mac version, and if you have access to both it’s a no-brainer to use the Mac version unless there are other factors involved..
But the Windows version is still very good on Wine, and if I have to leave the Mac (something I’m considering because of the whole Apple lickspittling a president who’s threatening to invade Nato countries so perhaps trusting the big US Tech firms isn’t the best idea thing) then I’ll be happy with it on Linux / Wine too[1].
A native Linux version would be simpler because then you may not need the complication of Wine, but it doesn’t really affect the equation much: it’s more than good enough on Wine.
[1] Unlike with DEVONthink and Tinderbox, where there are no viable Windows / Linux alternatives.
You realize pretty much every tech CEO is sucking up to the Orange T.rd? It’s all to do with keeping him from hitting them with massive tariffs on the gear made overseas as he’s threatened multiple times.
Whatever you replace a Mac with will be made by a company that also sucks up.
Guess you also won’t be dealing with Amazon in any way with Bezos going further than just sucking up with that $70M bribe. (1 seat pre-sold in Sydney, 0 in Canberra )
I’m not happy with all the groveling, but there’s $Billions involved, and as a shareholder in some of those companies, I’d rather not have my modest retirement funds destroyed.
I’ve commented that I don’t believe a Linux version would be economically viable, but if such did appear I’d likely buy it for one of my Linux machines. It would be perfect on the 2011 17” MB Pro that I currently use to try various distros. It’s been running Win V3 great with Lutris.
Well, as I like to think that I am neither blind nor completely senile yet, then of course I know that the other US Tech giants are despicable…
I’ve haven’t used anything Musk- or Zuckerberg-defiled for years, for exactly that reason, and I’ve cut down on my Amazon usage to almost nothing. I thought Apple was (slightly) better than this, though, and it’s causing me to re-evaluate the extent to which I engage with them as well in future. I’m not alone in this, of course: technical dependence on a no-longer trustworthy ally is a huge problem with far wider implications than for my minuscule portion of the internet.
There are two issues: replacing the hardware and the software.
Hardware: I can continue to use the Macs I have, either until they’re obsolete, or use Asahi Linux on one of them at least (the M2 Studio, not the M4 MBA yet, sadly). Or I could buy from a European / Korean etc company – there are enough to give a reasonable choice. Of course there will be mingling of components and there isn’t a ‘pure’ solution, but one can get closer. Or buy secondhand, of course. All doable – the biggest issue will be connecting the Studio Display. I’m not particularly bothered about the phones / iPads at the moment because I only use them as toys anyway.
Software: a bit harder. The biggest issue will be finding a replacement for Tinderbox and DT4. They’re both US companies (DT with German links as well) but I trust the developers completely and it will be a wrench to leave them as there are no viable Windows/Linux alternatives.
I really haven’t decided either way yet. I really don’t want to leave the Appleverse, but I do think it’s important to understand the issues and plan accordingly, don’t you?
I too would like a current native linux version, and I used L&L’s native version before they nixed it. But I also understand a company’s need to focus limited resources.
I have found success running the current win version of Scrivener in Linux using virtual win machines inside Linux, namely both Winboat and VirtualBox. I choose the virtual machine route because for the life of me I could not get scrivener to work properly under wine or it’s various permutations & spinoffs.
Currently, I think I’ll be sticking with Winboat (https://www.winboat.app/) as opposed to VirtualBox because of the way Winboat is more seamlessly integrated into the Linux workflow.
