Running Orbiter under Wine

This article explains how to run Orbiter2016 with DirectX9 client under Wine. Use only stable version of Wine for this (tested on 1.6.2)

Preparation

Installing the base environment

Install the latest STABLE version of Wine and Winetricks in your system.

# cd into your Orbiter2016 directory

# We will be operating on a specialized Wineprefix
echo "$HOME/.local/share/wineprefixes/orbiter2016" > wineprefix.txt
export WINEPREFIX=`cat wineprefix.txt`

# Create the Wineprefix for Orbiter 2016. Select Windows 8.1 as the supported operating system.
WINEARCH=win32 winecfg

# Install VC++ runtimes
winetricks vcrun2005 vcrun2008 vcrun2010 vcrun2012 vcrun2013 vcrun6 vcrun6sp6 corefonts
winetricks vcrun2015 # This may fail under older winetricks/wine

Installing DX9

export WINEPREFIX=`cat wineprefix.txt`

# Download page of the DX9 runtimes
#https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/confirmation.aspx?id=8109

# A direct link
#wget https://download.microsoft.com/download/8/4/A/84A35BF1-DAFE-4AE8-82AF-AD2AE20B6B14/directx_Jun2010_redist.exe

# Adjust your DX9 extraction directory
DX9_EXTRACTED_DIR=../../orbiter-clean/install/dx9_jun2010/

# Extract the redistrubutable to the directory, that you entered above
wine directx_Jun2010_redist.exe

# Let wine install it in your prefix
wine $DX9_EXTRACTED_DIR/DXSETUP.exe

Run scripts

Create the following two scripts in your Orbiter2016 directory to and run them with:

bash run-wine-orbiter-ng.sh # DirectX9
bash run-wine-orbiter.sh    # DirectX7

run-wine-orbiter-ng.sh

#!/bin.bash

killall orbiter.exe
export WINEPREFIX=`cat wineprefix.txt`
wine Orbiter_ng.exe

run-wine-orbiter.sh

#!/bin.bash

killall orbiter.exe
export WINEPREFIX=`cat wineprefix.txt`
wine orbiter.exe

Remarks

The typical Ctrl+F1-4 combinations don't work under Linux. Use the upper pane of the Orbiter window to invoke these special functions.