Switching from Windows to Linux, can it be done with Scrivener intact?

Scrivener Scrivener on Linux (Unofficial)
,
1

For obvious reasons. Windows 11/Microsoft is going a terrible direction, so, now, in my 40s, I have this shiny new PC I’ve built, and an older laptop that will receive a new screen and hard drive. Both will be loaded with Linux and I’m still dithering on which format.

My question for you all, as Windows users who may have or have partially made the linux change, what works best with Scrivener? For those who could not make the change, what didn’t work?

I cannot afford an Apple laptop. My fully loaded new, game level desktop came in around $1500. The laptop is 4 yrs old an cost $2k then. $200 to refresh on that laptop is in the budget, but I’m fresh out of funds for an Apple that isn’t the old phone or ipad mini.

Anyway, what works? What doesn’t work? Both sets of information are valuable right now. Thanks in advance.

2

I’ve had various levels of success in the past trying to run Scrivener under Linux, but these days, life’s too short for me to waste time tinkering.

Instead I’ve gone down the VirtualBox route.

Linux Mint is the virtualbox host, with Windows 10 as a guest OS. This works really well, even on an old i5 with 16GB RAM. I won’t be upgrading to W11 next year though.

3

If your ‘game level’ Desktop came in at $1500 you could have had an even higher performing MacBook Air M3 for the same or less.

1 Like
4

That may be true, but the desktop is already sitting in the OP’s office, and the MacBook Air is not.

5

I’m now successfully running Scrivener under Wine 9 on Fedora 40. The only thing I could not make work was speech-to-text. I suspect it can be done given some time and effort, but personally I don’t use this function anyway. Apart from that there were no significant issues neither with installation, nor with activation.

6

I’ve been running Scrivener on linux for years, first under Wine and after I got tired of messing with Wine (maybe it’s easier to configure and run these days?), CrossOver. To me the cost is worth it. Scrivener on Ubuntu or Debian based distros has been rock-solid for me.

Just couldn’t get speech-to-text (in Scrivener) to work. Found a program called “piper”, downloaded the binary instead of installing it and cobbled together a couple of bash scripts. Best free voices I’ve heard under linux. Probably not for everybody but it works.

7

It’s dead easy with Lutris. It’s very nearly just hitting “okay” a bunch of times. Check this out:

1 Like
8

I’ve just been gifted a 17" MacBook Pro in pristine condition that I intend to do a dual boot on and give this a crack - just because I can. AFTER I rip out the spinner and stick an SSD in and increase the RAM to 16GB.

Now to think about which version of Linux to go with. Recommendations?

9

I tried to get Scrivener running under latest Mint with Lutris as recommended, but it just would not work. Then I tried Bottles, no joy either.

So I installed latest Ubuntu and Bottles, and it works really well. There is a start-up issue with Scrivner hanging at the “Loading fonts” stage, but removing all permissions from the TextToSpeech folder inside the Scrivener installation directory resolved that issue. I haven’t tried Lutris under Ubuntu.

10

Yeah, I just tried the Lutris installation on the most recent Linux Mint, and it’s choking in a couple of different spots, which is a real pain. I’m glad you got it going in Bottles.

The TextToSpeech thing is a known bug. You used to have to delete the whole folder to make it work, but Lutris had solved that. Alas, it appears to be back. Or something.

I’m starting to think I should just run it in a virtual machine, honestly.

EDIT: Ignore! It worked fine for me. The final “install” window was behind something, so I didn’t see. Pure user error. :slight_smile: