Well, trial and error: Seems it was a runner problem anyway. I tried more than one, Lutris-6.21-6 works. (not the newest ones…) No more any keystroke lag either.
Now I can continue trying it out, maybe I can let my Win10 VM finally go…
Recently bought a new M4 macbook pro so decided to wipe my old mid-2012 mbp and put linux on it. MX Linux with KDE installed flawlessly, everything so far has worked out of the box and snappy. Really liking this distro. Happy to hear about the success getting scrivener working on linux. If I understand right, this only applies with windows licensing, right? I can’t remember but i got a voice in my head saying the licenses are OS-dependent? I have only used Scrivener 3 on macOS before so I’m guessing I wouldn’t have success getting it authorized on linux without buying another license. Somebody correct me if I’m wrong. Good to know there’s options if I ever fully go away from macOS
Yes, you’ll need a Windows licence to run Scrivener legally on Linux.
Whatever the technical ins and outs, you’re effectively using a wrapper (Wine) which recreates the Windows environment in Linux, so only Windows Scrivener version will work, and you need the appropriate Windows licence.
Anyone want to try and make it work for Red Hat 9? Not the fanciest distro but a solid favorite.
I’m using Linux Mint and Debian 13, Trixie which came out a couple of days ago.
Scrivener 3 running on both, installed with Lutris.
The Mint install took, I think, about 15 minutes and was smooth.
The Debian install took over an hour. The .net was the delay but the message read “installing” so I kept making tea till it finished. However, it said failed to install and gave an option to close, and I chose to close and remove the “game” files (i.e. Scrivener).
Rebooted Debian, launched Lutris, and tried again from the start.
Success!
I’m (still) not a techie, so this is just a report of a successful install on Debian 13 using Lutris but it took a really long time and two attempts.
----begin system details----
Operating System: Debian GNU/Linux 13
KDE Plasma Version: 6.3.6
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.13.0
Qt Version: 6.8.2
Kernel Version: 6.12.38+deb13-amd64 (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 16 × 11th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-11800H @ 2.30GHz
Memory: 16 GiB of RAM (15.4 GiB usable)
Graphics Processor 1: Mesa Intel® UHD Graphics
Graphics Processor 2: NV177
Manufacturer: Dell Inc.
Product Name: Inspiron 16 7610
----end system details----
You need a Windows license to run Windows apps on Linux?
No. Just a Scrivener license.
That post was in response to a specific question whether you need a Windows Scrivener licence rather than a MacOS one to run Scrivener on Linux, and the answer, of course, is yes.
Wine itself doesn’t need a Windows OS licence, but any proprietary apps you run on it need the relevant app licence.
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Hello all. I am a new Scrivener user and I was able to install using Lutris on Garuda Linux, which is Arch Linux based (August 2025).
I had to change the exe as it was defaulting to point at the install exe rather than the installed exe. I also had to delete the folder to get past the font issue that @adgalloway had noted in his original lutris video. I also had to change the DPI scaling in the application configuration to work on the 4k screen of my laptop to 250. Not sure if that is what the lutris 2 video was about since I hadn’t realized there was a second video.
I just wanted to give some confirmation to others that it could work on other distros too.
Oh, and I forgot to mention, using Desktop Environment: Plasma 6.4.3 (Wayland) and Window manager: kwin_wayland_wr
Just FYI – I just opened Scriv and got the notification for the 3.1.6.0 update. I decided to YOLO and just run the in-app upgrade process. It worked like a charm.
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Thanks for the update! It’s been working well for me too, though I hadn’t actually tried the built-in updater come to think of it. I ran the installer .exe over it, so that works too, if anyone does have issues with the auto-update.
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The Lutris install worked well on a fresh Fedora 43 KDE install. The only issue was fonts looked bad – overly bold, odd spacing, size, etc.
I was able to fix the font display issue by opening Winetricks from the up arrow menu next to the Wine logo at the bottom of Scirvener 3’s install page in Lutris. Then select “Select the default wineprefix” → click OK → select “Change settings” → click OK → select “fontsmooth=rgb - Enable subpixel font smoothing for RGB LCDs” → click OK → then click Cancel on the Winetricks windows that come up until Winetricks closes.
For me this now has Scrivener fonts and UI looking nearly identical how it was on my Windows 10 install I just replaced with linux. I left the Wine configuration screen resolution set at 96 dpi (default I believe), so the only other change I had to make was changing the Wine windows version from 7 to 10.
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I’ve gotten a couple of reports of the Lutris method failing in the last couple of days on Mint. One of the people who contacted me ran Lutris via terminal with the debug flag and provided me with the output via Google doc file. Any chance you could have a look and see what you make of it?
I installed Scrivener 3 two days ago on a laptop by using the script from the website. I think the problem is due to the wine version. I used “wine-10.16.staging-amd64-wow64-x86_64” and everything is OK. I recommend to change the default Windows font (Segoe) for “Liberation Sans” or similar.
Regards.
I wanted to thank people for creating this thread, and also for regularly bringing it back up or I might have missed it the first time around. A little bit over a year ago, I failed to install Scrivener with Wine, but installing it with Lutris was an absolute breeze, so easy and straightforward. I’ve now gone through 2 Fedora upgrades without a hitch as well, still happily writing (well, editing really!). I wasn’t aware of Lutris back then, and even if I’d known about it I probably wouldn’t have thought to try it for software that’s not a game so, thanks again!
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So. It’s broken. The Lutris upgrade seems to be bad for just about everyone, including those of us on Scrivener.
I’ve looked at the Lutris discussion forums, and there is no indication that anyone’s paying attention to us, so we might be back to manual Wine installation.
Has anyone heard anything else?
Mine stopped working properly too, and I’ve just spent hours trying to find a solution. What troubles are you having?
My DPI reset so Scrivener + all Wine menus have been opening teeny tiny for weeks. Adjusting the DPI specifically for Scrivener through Wine Configuration no longer worked – it wouldn’t save my settings.
Today I looked through the advanced configuration settings for Wine, accessed via the left hand navigation menu in Lutris, and found that the DPI settings there had been toggled off. I toggled them on, adjusted DPI, saved, and now I can actually read my Scrivener menus again. Very relieved.
Hopefully this makes sense – I’m brand new to Linux, so can only point at things enthusiastically without knowing what they’re called. And hopefully the troubles you’re experiencing are this easily fixed, too 
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Oh my god you genius. Yes! Thank you! Now I can actually interact with it.
The other problem I was having was that it wasn’t recognizing my Documents directory. I’d had it aimed at the Docs on my Linux setup this whole time, but for some reason, it can’t see that one any more, so I had to dig through the many virtual drives in Wine (why it has so many, I do not know), and I found my .scriv files way down in S:/
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All I did was trip over the toggle while stumbling around in the dark, but am very happy to hear that was a solution for you too
And yes, gosh, trying to find my files was another adventure I could’ve done without. At least Scrivener remembers the file path – hopefully we won’t need to deal with that again.
Is your title bar now old Windows blue? I’m sure mine didn’t used to be.