Installing Scrivener 3 on Linux using Lutris

Scrivener Scrivener on Linux (Unofficial)
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I think this may be the easiest way to run Scrivener 3 on Linux WITH license activation. I have confirmed this works flawlessly on a fresh install of Linux Mint, so I expect that holds true for all Ubuntu based distributions.

I made a quick tutorial to help anyone interested walk through the necessary steps.

I hope this helps someone.

TG

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For anyone who doesn’t want to watch a video to get the steps.

Install lutris
Click the plus in lutris to add a game, search for Scrivener 3
Let the installer run

I submitted and update to add sapi to the installer at lutris. If you crash on starting the program after registering this stuff is needed.

After installation click on the wine button next to Play
Hit wine tricks
Ok on default wineprefix
Install a Windows DLL or component
find sapi and highlight it
hit ok.

I also like to up the dpi a bit, since wine’s fonts are pretty gross at 96dpi.
wine button next to Play
Wine configuration
Graphics pane
Move the slider up a notch or two. I use 144dpi on my 4k and 120dpi on my laptop

Write your face off, in linux.

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SAPI removes the need to delete the text to speech folder?

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It does. I’ve uploaded a new installer to lutris with it so hopefully it will be plug and play for linux users going forward.

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A tip there, once you get Scrivener running, is to go into options, under Appearance: General, and set the global UI font to something else. Noto Sans is a pretty good UI font and gives Scrivener an instant face lift.

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Any update on this? I didn’t know users could modify the Lutris installers. I can see how that could be a good or very bad thing. I’d like to keep these videos up to date with these little changes, but apparently you cannot do much in the way of editing YouTube videos once they are published.

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Here’s a quick video I made for another user on increasing the DPI. I’m going to try out the Appearance changes suggested by Amber as that seems like an even cleaner way to accomplish the same thing.

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The update has been done on lutris.net so sapi should come with the installer and it should just work going forward.

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That’s awesome! I will test this out this weekend and update the tutorial description. It is a minor enough change in not going to film a whole new tutorial.

New question: With the guidance of another forum member, I’ve gotten the Bottles method working again using a custom Bottle with dotnet48, allfonts, and gecko dependencies. Do you know if there is a way to add the SAPI dependency in Bottles to eliminate the need to delete texttospeech in that method?

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@AmberV – perhaps a wiki post with @adgalloway as co-editor for the various Linux install methods could be good idea to collate the different install methods together?

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I’m on Debian/Gnome on a MacBook, and while the Lutris installation works, if I alt-tab away or three-finger swipe (to reveal apps or switch screens), the Scrivener window blinks out of existence and stops “playing” in Lutris.

I can hit the Super key to reveal desktops and then two-finger swipe from there without Scriv disappearing, but the swipe consistently makes it blink out.

Any idea what this is or what to do about it? My only thought was to disable three-finger swiping, but that’s not a great solution.

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Another user, Fernando, noted the same phenomenon on my Scrivener Using Bottles Tutorial in another thread on this forum. I have no idea why this happens or what the solution might be, but I wonder:

  1. How are your Gnome workspaces configured? I know you can allow the OS to open and close workspaces as you need them (I don’t do that, I have four workspaces always on). I am wondering if the OS isn’t preserving the workspace where Scrivener is located if you navigate away from it. Like maybe it isn’t recognizing it. I haven’t had a chance to test this myself.
  2. If you navigate back to the workspace where Scrivener was located and press ALT+TAB does either Lutris or Scrivener appear in the list of open apps in the app switcher?
  3. After you swipe away and lose Scrivener, swipe down with three fingers or hit the super key to see the dash/overview. Is Scrivener or Lutris present on the dash with a small white dot underneath it?
  4. Open the system monitor app and look for Lutris and/or Scrivener processes. Are they still running or completely closed?
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Those are good questions!

  1. I just tried turning that feature off to see if it changed Scriv’s behaviour, and sadly it did not. Good guess, though!
  2. After it disappears, it does not appear on the alt-tab list.
  3. The application has no dot. It’s fully shut down and not on the “running apps” list next to the dash, either.
  4. No sign of Scriv or Lutris in the System monitor, either.

What’s the name of that other thread where Fernando has posted? Maybe he and I can put our heads together. It’s sad to hear it’s a problem in Bottles, too. I had hoped perhaps that doing a straight Wine installation (ie, the hard way) might clear it up, but if it’s in Bottles, too, I doubt that very much.

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Good news! Lutris now has a fully automated installation! You don’t have to delete that one directory. You don’t have to specify dependencies. You don’t even need to download the EXE file! They’ve got it down. AND it doesn’t disappear when you swipe to another desktop. Someone at Lutris took this on, I figure. Lucky us.

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That’s great news. I’m planning to make a comprehensive tutorial video where I go over all methods of installation in one video in order of difficulty. Lutris will definitely be in first place. There was another user on this forum who responded to one of my posts and said he was going to update the Lutris installer to include a dependency called SAPI which he said would eliminate the need to delete those directories. Apparently he came through for us.

Question: I know we had talked about your Gnome glitches with Scrivener, and I saw another user said Flatpaks were often glitchy. I chose to use them in my videos because they are self-contained and remove a lot of variables users might encounter between one distro/system and the next. Are you using a Flatpak version of Lutris or a system package? If a system package, what distro are you running?

Thanks,
TG

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I’m on Linux Mint, but I’m running the flatpak version. It’s only been a half a day, but so far: no Lutris glitches. That said, it still has the resolution issue that you have to fiddle with the DPI in Wine Config (within Lutris, ofc) and adjust the fonts so that they’re readable. But that’s not something Lutris can address, AFAICT, so fair enough. They’ve come through big time.

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I just ran through this install on Fedora Workstation, which uses Gnome desktop environment. It went off without a hitch, I’m just working out how to associate the Scrivener icon with the shortcut Lutris created in my app menu. Easy to do on Cinnamon and KDE Plasma, but a little more aggravating in Gnome.

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I would love to hear about how to do that! It would be great if the icon in the bar and the alt-tab menu were Scrivener and not Lutris (as much as I appreciate Lutris!).

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So, I was able to edit the desktop entry to point to the Scrivener icon so that I can launch Scrivener directly without launching Lutris first. As you mentioned, the app in the dock and on the ALT-Tab menu shows the Lutris icon instead of the Scrivener one once the software is up and running.

The easy solution that comes to mind is to change the Lutris application icon to the Scrivener one. If you only use Lutris to run Scrivener this wouldn’t be a problem, but if you use Lutris to launch games and/or other software I can see how that wouldn’t be an ideal thing to do.

I’m messing around with it to see if there’s an option in Lutris for that.

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I love it. I do not intend to use Lutris for anything else, so I’ll change the logo. Very clever.

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