This guide aims to provide a way to manage Wine that does not make use of GUI launchers like Lutris or Bottles. We will instead use rum, a small shell script that will help us manage multiple Wine runners.
Install the following programs (or the equivalent for your distro) before proceeding.
- wget
- unzip
- git
- winetricks
sudo apt update && sudo apt install wget unzip git winetrickssudo pacman -Sy wget unzip git winetrickssudo dnf install wget unzip git winetricksFirst, we'll create two directories in ~/.local/share/ which will help us organize our runners and prefixes without messing up our $HOME:
mkdir -p ~/.local/share/wine/runners
mkdir -p ~/.local/share/wine/prefixesThen we'll download a build of ElementalWarrior's wine fork and unzip it.
Note
You can check ElementalWarrior-x86_64 page for newer builds of ElementalWarrior's wine fork.
pushd ~/.local/share/wine/runners &&
wget https://github.com/seapear/AffinityOnLinux/releases/download/Legacy/ElementalWarriorWine-x86_64.tar.gz &&
tar xvzf ElementalWarriorWine-x86_64.tar.gz &&
rm ElementalWarriorWine-x86_64.tar.gz &&
popdDownload rum into /opt
cd /opt/
sudo git clone https://gitlab.com/xkero/rum.git
Let the current user you're logged in as take ownership of the folder.
sudo chown -R $USER:$USER rum/
Create a symlink in /usr/local/bin/
sudo ln -sf /opt/rum/rum /usr/local/bin/rum
We also need to make a small change in rum to adapt it the custom runners path we previously set up:
nano /opt/rum/rumChange the wines variable to:
wines="$HOME/.local/share/wine/runners"
Now let's test if it's setup correctly.
Just run rum without arguments and check if it prints the following:
Not enough arguments!
Usage: rum <wine-version or /path/to/wine/version> </path/to/wine/prefix> <wine command> [wine arguments...]
Wine versions available:
ElementalWarriorWine-x86_64
Notice how rum correctly found our ElementalWarriorWine.
We'll register an alias so that we don't need to always give rum the full path to the affinity wine prefix.
Open either your .bashrc or dedicated .bash_aliases file, and add the following alias:
alias wine-ew-affinity='rum ElementalWarriorWine-x86_64 $HOME/.local/share/wine/prefixes/affinity/'I gave mine a pretty verbose name, but feel free to name it how you like.
Also remember to source the file you just modified for the changes to take effect, e.g:
source ~/.bash_aliasesVerify once again that your alias is setup correctly by calling it without arguments and checking that you see the same error as before.
If you're using Fish as your default shell, you might have to manage your aliases and environment variables in Fish's configuration files instead of .bashrc. For the alias you added, you can define it in Fish by editing
nano ~/.config/fish/config.fish(create it if it doesn't exist) and adding:
alias wine-ew-affinity='rum ElementalWarriorWine-x86_64 $HOME/.local/share/wine/prefixes/affinity/
We're now ready to actually set up the wine environment to run our Affinity installer in.
First, initialize the prefix:
wine-ew-affinity wineboot --initImportant
We use the remove_mono verb becase the .NET version we're installing would directly conflict with it, as stated in the Wine Mono README
Now run winetricks with the following options to install all the needed dependencies in your Affinity prefix:
wine-ew-affinity winetricks --unattended --force remove_mono vcrun2022 dotnet48 corefonts tahoma win11Note
We set the renderer to vulkan in a separate step, after all the previews winetricks have been applied.
wine-ew-affinity winetricks renderer=vulkanNote
This step will take a while and throw a bunch of warnings. This is expected so be patient and let it run.
We'll now download some Windows system files and place them in the C drive of our prefix:
pushd ~/.local/share/wine/prefixes/affinity/drive_c/windows/system32/ &&
wget https://archive.org/download/win-metadata/WinMetadata.zip &&
unzip WinMetadata.zip &&
rm WinMetadata.zip &&
popdWe're finally ready to actually run the installer. You need an installer of Affinity software in the EXE format, not MSIX format.
Tip
Official download links of Affinity installers:
| Program | URL |
|---|---|
| Affinity by Canva | https://www.affinity.studio/download |
| Photo V2 | https://store.serif.com/update/windows/photo/2/ |
| Designer V2 | https://store.serif.com/update/windows/designer/2/ |
| Publisher V2 | https://store.serif.com/update/windows/publisher/2/ |
| Photo V1 | https://store.serif.com/update/windows/photo/1/ |
| Designer V1 | https://store.serif.com/update/windows/designer/1/ |
| Publisher V1 | https://store.serif.com/update/windows/publisher/1/ |
Note
For Affinity by Canva, you need to select "Enterprise (Intel/AMD)" from the "Download for Windows" drop-down menu on the official download page to download the EXE installer.
We'll use the installer for Affinity Photo V1 as an example.
wine-ew-affinity wine ~/Downloads/affinity-photo-1.10.6.exe
Click Install, and ignore all the warnings wine throws.
Once it completes, close the installer.
Finally, launch the software!
wine-ew-affinity wine ~/.local/share/wine/prefixes/affinity/drive_c/Program\ Files/Affinity/Photo/Photo.exe
You can launch the various Affinity apps by running the following commands:
Affinity by Canva:
wine-ew-affinity wine ~/.local/share/wine/prefixes/affinity/drive_c/Program\ Files/Affinity/Affinity/Affinity.exeAffinity Photo V2:
wine-ew-affinity wine ~/.local/share/wine/prefixes/affinity/drive_c/Program\ Files/Affinity/Photo 2/Photo.exeAffinity Designer V2:
wine-ew-affinity wine ~/.local/share/wine/prefixes/affinity/drive_c/Program\ Files/Affinity/Designer 2/Designer.exeAffinity Publisher V2:
wine-ew-affinity wine ~/.local/share/wine/prefixes/affinity/drive_c/Program\ Files/Affinity/Publisher 2/Publisher.exeAffinity Photo V1:
wine-ew-affinity wine ~/.local/share/wine/prefixes/affinity/drive_c/Program\ Files/Affinity/Photo/Photo.exeAffinity Designer V1:
wine-ew-affinity wine ~/.local/share/wine/prefixes/affinity/drive_c/Program\ Files/Affinity/Designer/Designer.exeAffinity Publisher V1:
wine-ew-affinity wine ~/.local/share/wine/prefixes/affinity/drive_c/Program\ Files/Affinity/Publisher/Publisher.exeTo adjust the scaling on high resolution monitors, run:
wine-ew-affinity winecfg- Go on the
Graphicstab - Temporarily enable
Emulate a virtual desktop - Adjust the
Desktop size - Disable
Emulate a virtual desktop - Increase the
dpito your preference
Note
As we understand it, the dpi value is a percentage applied to the currently set Desktop Size.
So, for a 4k monitor, setting the desktop size to 1920 x 1080 and scaling it by 200% works quite well.
To enable the dark theme for Wine, follow these steps:
- Visit the repository's
wine-dark-theme.regfile page to download the.regfile by clicking the download button on the top right just like we did for the.yamlfile earlier. - Save the file to your Downloads folder.
- Launch your terminal app, then type
cd Downloadsto change to your Downloads folder. - Run the following command:
wine regedit wine-dark-theme.reg
- Press
Enter. You might get a message again saying "Wine could not find a wine-mono package...". Just clickInstall.
If you also want to enable dark theme for the Wine prefix for Affinity, run the following command, and replace username with your local user name:
WINEPREFIX="/home/username/.local/share/wine/prefixes/affinity" wine regedit wine-dark-theme.regNote
When running wine regedit to install an .reg file, the WINEPREFIX environment variable only accepts an absolute path as its value, so including another environment variable in the value, such as $HOME/.local/share/wine/prefixes/affinity would not work.
Create a .desktop launcher by following this Desktop Launcher Guide so you can open Affinity from your desktop.
Thanks to:
- ElementalWarrior for his wine fork
- Twig6943 for building the wine binary
- xkero for his rum script
- foinf for finding a fix for the broken .NET install
- wanesty for the original rum guide