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SkyDemon on Linux

http://23588_2017.hs2.instantasp.net/Topic18508.aspx

By Dario70 - 4/3/2016 9:37:22 AM

Hello all,

For all Linux user that want use Skydemon on linux :
http://www.bytebang.at/Blog/Running+SkyDemon+under+Linux+with+wine
Link

Work 100% on Arch.

Happy landings.
By specialized_ken - 4/27/2026 8:46:13 PM

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.