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SkyDemon on Linux


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Belga
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Thanks Joachim, I finally got SkyDemon running. 

I always struggled with winetricks since I didn't get the grasp of it (e.g. I tried to create a 32-bit prefix but that isn't supported anymore), looked for other solutions (like Bottles) but they all had their own quirks. To be honest, changing from Windows to Linux comes with its own challenges.

Joachim Zach
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Belga - 3/17/2026 7:29:04 AM

Thanks Joachim, I finally got SkyDemon running. 

I always struggled with winetricks since I didn't get the grasp of it (e.g. I tried to create a 32-bit prefix but that isn't supported anymore), looked for other solutions (like Bottles) but they all had their own quirks. To be honest, changing from Windows to Linux comes with its own challenges.



Joachim Zach
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Joachim Zach - 3/17/2026 2:05:36 PM
Belga - 3/17/2026 7:29:04 AM

Thanks Joachim, I finally got SkyDemon running. 

I always struggled with winetricks since I didn't get the grasp of it (e.g. I tried to create a 32-bit prefix but that isn't supported anymore), looked for other solutions (like Bottles) but they all had their own quirks. To be honest, changing from Windows to Linux comes with its own challenges.




As far as I understood, there is a new way of handling 32bit Apps inside a 64bit prefix called wow64. It seem to be not enabled in some distributions. With this you don't need a wine32. But you still need to enable multiarch as some i386 libraries are still required. For me this worked fine.
specialized_ken
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I managed to get it running too, with Claude's help. Tested with: SkyDemon 4.2.5, Wine Staging 11.7, Arch Linux (Wayland, NVIDIA)

PREREQUISITES
Install Wine Staging and supporting packages:
sudo pacman -S wine-staging wine-gecko wine-mono winetricks

Use wine-staging (not plain wine) — it includes patches that improve font rendering for fractional-DPI setups and makes fonts clearer on my setup.
wine-mono is critical. Do not use winetricks to install dotnet48 or any other .NET version. For me, the Microsoft .NET Framework causes a crash on startup (System.OverflowException in InputLanguage.get_Culture) due to a Wine bug with keyboard layout handles. wine-mono avoids this entirely.

STEP 1 — Create a fresh Wine prefix
wineboot --init

STEP 2 — Install SkyDemon
Download the SkyDemon Windows installer from https://www.skydemon.aero and run it:
wine ~/Downloads/SkyDemonSetup.<version>.exe


STEP 3 — Fix WebView2 (required for app startup, at least on my system)
SkyDemon uses WebView2 (embedded Chromium) to render maps. Two fixes are needed after installation. Without this, I was stuck on a "Webview is missing" dialog.

** Fix A: Add the 64-bit registry key **
The SkyDemon installer registers WebView2 only in the 32-bit registry hive, but SkyDemon itself runs as 64-bit and looks in the 64-bit hive. Run these three commands:
wine reg add "HKLM\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\EdgeUpdate\\Clients\\{F3017226-FE2A-4295-8BDF-00C3A9A7E4C5}" /v "pv" /t REG_SZ /d "147.0.3912.86" /f
wine reg add "HKLM\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\EdgeUpdate\\Clients\\{F3017226-FE2A-4295-8BDF-00C3A9A7E4C5}" /v "location" /t REG_SZ /d "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft\\EdgeWebView\\Application" /f

wine reg add "HKLM\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\EdgeUpdate\\Clients\\{F3017226-FE2A-4295-8BDF-00C3A9A7E4C5}" /v "name" /t REG_SZ /d "Microsoft Edge WebView2 Runtime" /f

Replace "147.0.3912.86" with whatever version was installed if yours differs (check: ls ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files\ \(x86\)/Microsoft/EdgeWebView/Application/)

This is pure AI magic, I didn't come up with those.

** Fix B: Copy WebView2Loader.dll into the SkyDemon directory **
wine-mono does not resolve .NET's "runtimes/<rid>/native/" path convention for native P/Invoke calls. WebView2Loader.dll must be in the app's own directory for Wine to find it:
cp ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files\ \(x86\)/SkyDemon/runtimes/win-x64/native/WebView2Loader.dll ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files\ \(x86\)/SkyDemon/WebView2Loader.dll

STEP 4 — Launch SkyDemon
wine ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files\ \(x86\)/SkyDemon/SkyDemon.exe
or even better, from your favorite window manager start menu.

KNOWN LIMITATIONS
  • Approach plate map overlay crashes Wine. Displaying approach plates as a map overlay (not the standalone plate browser) triggers a crash in Wine's GDI+ library.This is a Wine bug triggered by the PDF rasterizer used by SkyDemon (TallComponents.PDF.Rasterizer). The upstream fix is in Wine master (commit 7ece436, "gdiplus: Bypass span combination for intersected rects",April 2026) but has not appeared in a release as of Wine 11.7. Workaround: use SkyDemon's built-in plate browser (Charts → Approach Plates) instead of the map overlay. The standalone browser is unaffected. This should be fixed automatically once wine-staging picks up the fix from Wine master, likely in Wine 11.8 or later.
  • Do not use winetricks gdiplus — it installs Microsoft's native gdiplus.dll which is incompatible with wine-mono and will break SkyDemon entirely.

GO

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