Scrivenix Beta Update

Scrivener Scrivener on Linux (Unofficial)
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Hey everyone,

I just wanted to provide a brief update on the Scrivenix Project.

First, thank you to everyone who slogged through the manual install and spent time testing this out and providing me with feedback. At this point I believe we have an install working on most versions of Linux. The only changes I plan to make now are a few tweaks to the text in the dialogue boxes, unless new bugs/issues are reported.

At present we have successful deployment on:

  • Fedora (Wayland / GNOME)

  • Linux Mint (X11 / Cinnamon)

  • Manjaro (Wayland / KDE)

  • PopOS (Wayland / Cosmic)

  • Debian (Wayland / Gnome)

  • Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Wayland / Gnome)

  • KDE Neon (Wayland / KDE)

This covers most of the major distribution branches. I’d still like to see some more beta testing before I package it as a Flatpak and start the process of getting it accepted on Flathub.

For those of you a little unsure about trying it out, I’ve made a proof of concept video detailing a full installation on Ubuntu from start to finish.

The files remain on GitHub at GitHub - adgalloway/Scrivenix: A WINE based application for running Scrivener 3 seamlessly on Linux · GitHub

I’m making small aesthetic and UI tweaks, but the basic install logic is complete to the best of my knowledge.

Looking forward to the next steps.

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How can we bring back a Linux version of Scrivener?
2

Very nice, thank you!

I currently move from Windows 11 to CachyOS and tried to install Scrivener with your setup and it seemed to work, the icon shows up in my application menu, but when I click on Scrivenix, other than the pointer showing busy for a moment, nothing much happens.

Is arch/cachy simply not supported ATM or are there other things I can try?

I’m pretty new to CachyOS so please be gentle :wink:

Thank you, great initiative!

Cheers,

Tom

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I’m sure it is something simple we can work through. Arch is the least tested distro so far, but this is a great opportunity for me, so let’s talk through it.

  1. You downloaded the files from GitHub how long ago? Within the last couple of days or was it longer? Just want to make sure we are both working from the most recent files.
  2. You are following the steps in the Install.txt file? If so, sounds like you got through step 2 without any errors? You can see how that should go in the “Building the Environment” section of this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF0IFLG417s&t=1s which starts at about the 2:40 mark. It’s important we get the green check mark next to each package that it installs.
  3. Just to rule out a problem with the app shortcut pop open a terminal and run
flatpak run com.local.Scrivenix

If the install dialogue opens and allows you to proceed then the shortcut didn’t create correctly and that’s an easy fix, if it still fails to launch then Wine is failing silently and we can almost certainly figure out why. Let’s rule out 1, 2, and 3 as issues first.

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Thanks for the reply! :slight_smile:

  1. I downloaded today, so should be latest.
  2. I followed the steps and nothing did fail obviously, although in the huge stream of stuff, I can’t be sure. I got the final output as advised in install.txt
  3. If I run this, nothing happens and I get back to the prompt.
    I never get to the installer.

I also tried installing Scrivener directly via wine independently and it starts, but hangs at “loading fonts”.

Cheers,

Tom

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That part at least, should be easily solved by running winecfg and adding an override for ‘sapi’ (or the Speech API) to use native Windows methods. TTS won’t work, I don’t believe anyone has figured that out, but at least it won’t crash trying.

Screenshot...

If for some reason that does not work, you can rename or delete the ‘texttospeech’ folder from the install folder, but that is a much more annoying approach as you have to remember to do that after every upgrade.

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Amber gave you some good advice Another approach is to navigate into the wine prefix and find Scrivener in the Program Files and look for a folder called “TexttoSpeech” and delete it. That will get past the loading on fonts hangup.

Even if you do that and it works, I would appreciate if you could give me a little more information so I can sort out this Arch support problem.

The install dialogue boxes are built on Zenity. Can your run this and paste the results back here? This will tell me if Zenity is supported on your install:

flatpak run --command=bash com.local.Scrivenix -c 'which zenity; which wine; which wine64; echo $PATH'

Step 2 — Run Wine directly inside the sandbox with error output visible

This bypasses the 2>/dev/null suppression in the wrapper script:

flatpak run --command=bash com.local.Scrivenix -c ’export WINEPREFIX=“$HOME/.var/app/com.local.Scrivenix/wine”export PATH=“/app/bin:$PATH”export WINELOADER=/app/bin/wineexport WINESERVER=/app/bin/wineserverWINEDEBUG=err+all wine “$WINEPREFIX/drive_c/Program Files/Scrivener3/Scrivener.exe” 2>&1 | tee /tmp/scrivenix-debug.txt

Then send me the contents of /tmp/scrivenix-debug.txt. That’s the most likely place to find the actual error. You can send it to me as a private message on here, or I can DM you my email address so you can send the .txt file directly.

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Thanks to both of you. The override worked for the direct install through wine, but I can’t activate the license. I guess that is what the actual problem is with Linux? I read that in other threads.

As for Scrivenix: I entered the commands you posted, this is the return:

  1. /usr/bin/zenity
    /app/bin/wine
    which: no wine64 in (/app/bin:/usr/bin)
    /app/bin:/usr/bin

  2. This gives me an error:
    WINEPREFIX=“/home/thomas/.var/app/com.local.Scrivenix/wine”export: line 1: ’export: command not found

    Cheers,
    Tom

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There’s likely to be a few more back and forth messages to get this sorted out. Do you want to take this into direct messages? I sent you one on here and also included my Email. I’m happy to correspond either way.

The next thing I want to try is having every line of the script print as it is executed so I can see exactly where the Script goes off the rails during initial launch.

flatpak run --command=bash com.local.Scrivenix -c 'bash -x /app/bin/scrivenix-wrapper.sh 2>&1 | tee /tmp/scrivenix-trace.txt'

The output file from that command assuming it runs should identify the problem

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Ok, lets continue via email and post a possible solution on here.

Cheers,

Tom

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So Scrivenix did not work for me, and we couldn’t figure out why.
adgalloway tried on a fresh install of CachyOS with KDE Plasma and it worked for him.

What did work for me in the end:

  • Installing Scrivener 3 normally via Wine.
  • Adding an override for sapi as AmberV explained above.
  • Installing all the fonts via WineTricks.
    That got Scrivener to work without crashing or hanging, but I could not authorise.
  • dgalloway then also told me to install dotnet 4.0 and 4.8, and that did the trick for the authorisation.

I had installed the “gaming package” that CachyOS offers, since I was told it was a good way to get all the wine stuff running and set up (I’m not a gamer), so this may make my system different from a vanilla install.
I also installed the “proaudio package” that adds wine stuff for running windows audio plugins.

So thanks a ton to dgalloway and AmberV to get me up and running - after just three days, I have most of my software working, including Affinity, DaVinci Resolve and my 4 DAWs and feel that I finally may have found my Linux home :slight_smile:

BTW: This is the installer for Affinity that worked for me (may be interesting to more people here):

I used the python option for the new free unified Affinity.

Cheers! :folded_hands::folded_hands::folded_hands:

Tom

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