[Quicksand]

And here's a screenshot:



On my Ubuntu 11.04 64-bit desktop. It seems to run MUCH faster than it runs in a virtual machine -- like 3 OR 4 TIMES faster. It's a huge improvement. Not everything is perfect, but it runs fairly well.

I used to run Bibble 5 Pro with my K20D, and was pretty happy with it. I upgraded to a K-5, which I love, but Bibble is utterly, irredeemably broken when used with the K-5 (and other cameras too!). They have known about the problem for half a year, but there has been no update to fix the problem. So I swallowed hard and bought Lightroom, and spent quite a while getting it to work.

Anyone want the (fairly complicated) installation recipe?

[Emacs]

Didn't you try the darktable? I found it to be better than Bibble.

[sjwaldron]

I use Photoshop on Ubuntu Linux (CS2 until I bought CS5 a few months ago when it was somewhat cheap).

Sure, I'd like the steps for Lightroom. Are there any benefits over Photoshop? Hmm, well if it does work well I could use it to substitute Bridge that doesn't work too hot in WINE...

[simico]

Anyone want the (fairly complicated) installation recipe?

Yes for sure! I guess Wine or some other Wine-based solution is involved, right?

Being an unsatisfied and angry bibble user myself (I reported the K-5 profile issues 7 months ago) I compared different raw softwares yet again. I found the differences are much smaller between output of latest RT, DT, LR and DCU than 1 year ago. Handling red colors seem to be the obvious difference, otherwise image output is very similar, so now it's more of a features and user friendliness question for me.

As much as I hated LR in the past, it seems to be the perfect app for me - but I'm using OpenSUSE and I'd like to avoid running it in VMWare (even though I use several virtual machines both for work and hobby purposes). So I'm quite interested in running LR without VMWare or VirtualBox

[troelsmeister]

I have also bitten the bullit and bought lightroom and I am stuck on Windows7.

PLEASE show the recipe.

[Quicksand]

PLEASE show the recipe.

I will . . . but I haven't written it up yet!

Sorry to tease. I'll post it soon, probably Monday. Today's time got away from me, and now I'm heading into the redwood trees to go camping . . .

[mysticcowboy]

That's great news. Looking forward to learning how you did it.

[Quicksand]

Yes, it's running under Wine, the Windows compatibility layer, of course.

The screenshot shows Lightroom 3.4.1 running under Wine 1.3.28 in Ubuntu 11.04 64-bit (using the proprietary nVidia graphics driver -- I don't know if that matters or not). There are definitely some GUI glitches (like, what's that dark rectangle to the upper right of the image?), but most functions seem to work pretty well. Most, but not all. Read on.

It took some experimentation to get to this point. Naturally, it's not as easy as just running the Lightroom installer under Wine. A lot of programs work this way, but not this one.


INSTRUCTIONS

These are modified from the HOWTO at WineHQ for running Photoshop CS5. As it turns out, the same basic framework gets the job done for Lightroom 3.4 too, with a few changes. Link: WineHQ - Adobe Photoshop CS5 (12.0)

I don't recommend trying this unless you're at least passably comfortable with the Linux command line and Windows standard directory and registry structures.

I offer no guarantees. I don't know if it will work for you, since everyone's setup is different.


STEP 1: INSTALL LIGHTROOM IN WINDOWS -- YES, REAL WINDOWS

Sorry, you need a Windows license for all this to work. It can be the same machine you run Linux on, but it doesn't have to be.

First, install Lightroom into a real working, licensed Windows installation. I have 32-bit Windows XP (Service Pack 3) on a separate partition, used with a virtual machine. Lightroom has TERRIBLE performance in a virtual machine, but it installs and runs properly and bug-free there, and we'll be copying the installation from real Windows into Wine to avoid problems the installer has running under Wine.

Make sure Lightroom runs properly when booted into real Windows.


STEP 2: BACK UP ADOBE REGISTRY ENTRIES

In real Windows, run regedit (Start->Run..., type regedit then Enter), navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software, and export the 'Adobe' key to your Desktop, as adobe_lr.reg


STEP 3: COPY THE WINDOWS FILES AND SETTINGS OVER TO WINE

Start with a fresh wine prefix (i.e., BACK UP your existing .wine directory if you have one, then nuke it to start from scratch for Lightroom). This MIGHT work with an existing Wine setup, but I don't know if it will, and there's also a possibility that the setup steps below will screw up something else that you had working before. So if you try it and it breaks, sorry, and good luck fixing it!

Then, as detailed below, copy files from your real Windows setup to Wine (and if you're on a 64-bit version of Windows, or a version of Windows other than XP, adjust directory names accordingly -- you're on your own here, since all I have tried is XP SP3). If you're running Windows in a virtual machine, you'll probably need to mount the container file to get access to the files within, or find some other way of getting them out. If Windows is on a separate partition, mount it in Linux. If it's on a different machine, do a network copy or use a USB stick. In my case, I was able to mount a separate partition on the same machine.

For the following copy steps, use your file copying tool of choice (command line, GUI, whatever):

First, copy the program files themselves ...

Copy everything from (Real Windows) "C:\Program Files\Adobe" to (Wine) "{YourHomeDir}/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Adobe"

Copy everything from (Real Windows) "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe" to (Wine) {YourHomeDir}/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Common Files/Adobe"

... then the Application Data, both for your specific user account and the shared "All Users" account ...

Copy everything from (Real Windows) "C:\Documents and Settings\{YourWindowsUsername}\Application Data\Adobe" to (Wine) "{YourHomeDir}/.wine/drive_c/users/{YourLinuxLogin}/Applications Data/Adobe"

Copy everything from (Real Windows) "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe" to (Wine) "{YourHomeDir}/.wine/drive_c/users/Public/Application Data\Adobe"

... then some specific Windows DLL files ...

Copy from (Real Windows) "C:\windows\system32\odbc32.dll" to (Wine) "{YourHomeDir}/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32/odbc32.dll"

Copy from (Real Windows) "C:\windows\system32\odbcint.dll" to (Wine) "{YourHomeDir}/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32/odbcint.dll"

... and the exported registry file you made earlier, which will be re-imported later ...

Copy from (Real Windows) "C:\Documents and Settings\{YourWindowsUsername}\Desktop\adobe_lr.reg" to (Wine) "{YourHomeDir}/.wine/drive_c/users/{YourLinuxLogin}/Desktop/adobe_lr.reg"


STEP 4: UPDATE WINE SETTINGS TO MAKE IT ALL WORK

Install some optional Windows-derived Wine components with the winetricks script (winetricks - The Official Wine Wiki):

$ winetricks atmlib comctl32 dotnet20 gdiplus ie7 msxml3 riched30 vcrun2005 vcrun2008 vcrun2010 vcrun6

(I'm not sure all of these are necessary -- but they don't seem to hurt. The "$" above is your prompt, not something you need to type. If you don't recognize that, you shouldn't be doing this!)

Now add some fonts:

$ winetricks corefonts tahoma

And set the Windows emulation mode to Vista

$ winetricks vista

(For some reason, if you leave it set at the XP-emulating default, Lightroom doesn't show a menu bar.)

Now, import the Adobe registry settings that were on the real Windows installation:

$ wine regedit

Then within regedit, navigate to and import the adobe_lr.reg file you made previously. Confirm that there's how an "Adobe" key under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software.

Next, override the odbc32 and odbcint DLL's as native:

$ winecfg

Within winecfg, choose the library tab, type "odbc32" in the override box, and choose Add. Repeat for "odbcint". Choose "gdiplus" in the existing list in the library tab, then Edit, and select "native, then builtin."


STEP 5: YOU'RE DONE!

You can now run Lightroom!

$ cd "{YourHomeDir}/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Adobe/Adobe Lightroom 3.4"

$ wine lightroom.exe

Ta da!

There are no guarantees that the above will work for you. In particular, since I documented these steps after I finished performing them, I might have forgotten something. Hopefully nothing too important! (I have done this twice now, so this should be pretty correct.)

Finally, keep the real-Windows installation with Lightroom around -- don't delete it from where it's installed. I'm not sure a version updater will cooperate with this Wine installation, so we'll probably need to update the real Windows version when 3.5 comes out, then transfer the program files over again as described above. Beware of losing user information (presets, settings, etc.) when this happens!


STEP 6: NOW WHAT?

A few things don't work very well:

The clone/heal tool causes fairly dramatic (but temporary!) graphical corrupion. You can't see the size of the cursor circle or where it is when you move the pointer over the image. Once you press the mouse button and drag to locate the source, everything works fine, and ultimately, the tool does what it's supposed to do. More or less the same problem occurs with the red-eye tool and the adjustment brush. Fortunately for me, I don't use those tools very often, and when I do, I'll just tolerate a bit of user interface annoyance. Your mileage may vary.

Cropping/rotation and the gradient tool seem to work perfectly well.

I haven't tried printing -- I do all my photo printing online, so export is all I need. I have no idea if printing works at all!

Serial number entry for product registration seems to work fine, after all of the above steps.

Please don't report any Wine bugs against this. Winetricks is an unsupported hack, basically, and the described manual installation method is also highly non-standard and difficult to reproduce for testing.

I know you're thinking "Hey! I run a color managed workflow here! What about that? Where do I set my monitor profile?"

I'm working on that, and have some testing to do. Plus I'll be experimenting on the graphical corruption issues. Wine 1.3.29 just came out, and I'm going to see if that fixes anything. Updates to come...

In the meantime, have fun!

[rubin110]

Hi there. Thanks for the short tutorial, it's given me some hope in not wanting to install a Windows boot on this machine. I'm however running into a small snag that I'm wondering if you've seen before. Lightroom loads, I'm able to feed it some raw files, the thumbnails show up in the importer, but once they're inside my catalog, I don't get any thumbnails or previews of any size.

My setup is slightly different, I'm running Debian Sid with Wine unstable, Lightroom 3.5, Intel graphics. I can paste in version details if that helps.

Any help would be appreciated, as this post of yours seems to be the only place on the net where anyone is discussing such a hack. Thanks.

Update: I've tried importing a slew of different formats, all the same, no thumbnail or previews. Everything else works, including Develop, but of corse I can't see what I'm editing.

[simico]

I get no luck in OpenSUSE 11.4, can't install msxml3 at all, it always fails with a generic error message. Of course vcrun2010 needs msxml3 and LR needs vcrun2010. I'll try with latest unstable Wine later.

[rubin110]

I think running the latest unstable debs for Debian fixed that issue for me.

[Quicksand]

rubin110, I'll throw a few ideas at you:

Try, once again, to install the gdiplus DLL via winetricks, in case (for some reason) it didn't work the first time. The wine built-in version of gdiplus simply isn't full-featured enough, and I believe that is often a cause of blank images.

In testing, if I use winecfg to switch gdiplus from the "native" override back to "builtin," I see the same thing you're reporting -- blank spaces where the images should go. So try installing gdiplus again, either via winetricks or by manually copying it over from C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 on an actual Windows installation. Then make sure winecfg has it properly set as "native."

The other wildcard is your graphics driver. I'm using Nvidia (proprietary), and you're using Intel. I have no idea whether that makes a difference, but in graphics issues, it certainly might.

simico, if updating to a current wine version doesn't help, also try using winetricks to select a different Windows "flavor" (xp vs. vista vs. 7) before installing all those DLL's. I think some installers might behave differently depending on the version of Windows they think you're running. Then, if it works, switch back to "vista" flavor before running LR.

Good luck!

[rubin110]

In testing, if I use winecfg to switch gdiplus from the "native" override back to "builtin," I see the same thing you're reporting -- blank spaces where the images should go. So try installing gdiplus again, either via winetricks or by manually copying it over from C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 on an actual Windows installation. Then make sure winecfg has it properly set as "native."

So between the few Windows instances I have, I haven't been able to find a gdiplus.dll in any of them, only gdi32.dll. Are you actually seeing this on any of your installs?

Thanks.

[simico]

With the latest unstable Wine I could install everyting and LR starts fine. But now I get the same issue as rubin110, the images and some of the graphical UI elements (e.g. histogram) are not displayed. I did install/copy gdiplus and set it to "native", use the latest nvidia driver - no matter what I try the issue remains. Maybe I'll give it a try on a different pc with clean OS and new user profile later.

[Quicksand]

Strange. I wonder what explains my luck!

rubin110, I looked around a bit and the gdiplus.dll situation is more complicated than I thought. It actually resides in a directory called "winsxs" below the main windows directory, NOT in system32.

Winsxs is for "windows side-by-side," and it allows multiple versions of the same dll to co-exist, for programs that expect a certain version to be present. So under winsxs, there will be multiple directories with very long names, each with a version of a dll (like gdiplus) inside. What a horrifying kludge! But not entirely surprising with that vintage of Windows.

I have no idea how that's supported in wine, unfortunately. I think it is supported, but I don't know how it works, or how you might go about copying it over.

I've actually had to run through my own instructions -- I screwed something up in my wine installation so that Lightroom could no longer delete files, so I trash-canned it and started over with a new .wine folder and actually used my own instructions to reinstall. It still works, so whatever the problem is, I suspect it's NOT anything to do with an omission from my writeup.

simico and rubin110, what version of Windows are you using to copy files from? I'm using XP Professional, SP3, 32-bit, but I don't know if that makes a difference.

I'll think about whether there's anything else that might explain the graphical rendering issues, but for now, I'm drawing a blank. Sorry! What a disappointment.

Is there anyone out there who followed the directions and DID get it to work as described?