ADE 2.0.1 Linux

Howto Install ADE 2.0.1 on Linux using Wine

With Version 1.7.2 of ADE no longer working for Overdrive and Google Books it has been necessary for users of this venerable version to upgrade. The preferred version to upgrade to for those of us who wish to stick to versions that don't support Adobe's new DRM scheme (and can deal with .acsm) is 2.0.1. Unfortunately, unlike version 1.7.2 it is not a simple matter of using Winetricks, though perhaps this will come later. However, many Linux users seem to be having difficulty in getting this version to run in Wine. Fortunately, it can be done.

My thanks to the contributors on the various MobileRead threads who have posted their experiences and workarounds.

Cautions

These procedures will create and install ADE into a new 32 bit wine prefix at $HOME/.adewine. You can damage your existing wine installation. Follow this at your own risk.

I have successfully followed this method to install ADE 2.0.1 on Sabayon, Arch, Manjaro and Linux Mint.

You will be working in a terminal and one of the first steps is to set an environmental variable to point to the ade wine prefix. You should run all commands from this terminal. Using another terminal will apply the commands to your default wineprefix unless specified otherwise in that terminal.

Prerequisites

You should have Wine and Winetricks installed and functioning. Wine version 4.13 seems to break this installation, producing a run32.dll error, at least on Arch. Downgrading Wine to version 4.12 resolves the problem.

Files to Download

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=25150

http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/digitaleditions/ADE_2.0_Installer.exe

Procedure

Open a terminal window.

Step 1

We will now create the new WINEPREFIX for installation. At the command prompt run

WINEPREFIX=~/.adewine WINEARCH=win32 wineboot

Step 2

Now we will set the environment so that any relevant command run from this terminal will use the new wineprefix. Run:

export WINEPREFIX=$HOME/.adewine/

Step 3

Now we will use Winetricks to install some needed files. There is a Winetricks verb also for the dotnet framework SP1. However, this should be avoided. as it downloads earlier versions which seem to create a conflict. We will install the framework later using the installer file downloaded earlier. Run:

winetricks -q corefonts && winetricks -q windowscodecs

Problems have been encountered with windows codecs not being properly installed on Ubuntu and therefore likely also on similar distributions. It is not currently known whether this applies to all releases. It will usually be apparent because the installation of windowscodecs fails. The files windowscodecs.dll and windowscodecsext.dll need to be in ~/.adewine/drive_c/windows/system32/. If they are not after running the above winetricks command see windowscodecs heading under troubleshooting below. Once you have successfully copied the dll files to the correct location proceed with step 4.

Step 4

This step is optional but recommended. The new wineprefix has default settings and the windows produced may well be too small for comfortable reading.

Run:

winecfg

A window will appear. Select the graphics tab and you should see a slider to adjust the dpi. Adjust this to a more comfortable setting. It is not necessary to make any other adjustements at this point.

Step 5

Install the dotnet framework file you downloaded earlier. Assuming the file is stored in ~/Downloads the command would be:

wine ~/Downloads/dotnetfx35.exe

ALTERNATIVE 1: Just before installation there is a "download". If this "download" failed, disconnect from internet (ethernet and wifi) to force wine to use "dotnetfx35.exe" that you already downloaded (before step one).

ALTERNATIVE 2: If installation of dotnet does not complete success has also been reported by using the winetricks verb winetricks -q dotnet35sp1. This method has, at least so far, never worked for me and I do not recommend it.

Step 6

You should now have the dotnet framework installed. It is finally time to install ADE 2.0.1 which you downloaded earlier. Once again assuming it is in ~/Downloads the command would be:

wine ~/Downloads/ADE_2.0_Installer.exe

If all has gone well you should now have a working installation of ADE 2.0.1. If it offers to migrate books I recommend refusal, though I didn't personally try.

Congratulations.

Troubleshooting

Winetricks Version

This procedure failed to install for a user running Linux Mint with winetricks 20140302 and wine-1.6.2. The procedure was developed using winetricks 20160628 and wine-2.0.

The user only got as far as installing corefonts which failed. The log showed that the older version of winetricks was trying to download the corefonts from an obsolete link.

The easiest solution would of course be to update winetricks to the later version. Another possible solution would be to manually download the 10 corefonts and install them.

Wine Dependency on lib32-gnutls

lib32-gnutls must be installed for ADE to function properly. Without this package installed ADE will be unable to communicate with the License Server, a very frustrating error. At least some Distribution's Wine packages do not have this as a dependency, This is not peculiar only to Version 2.0.1 but applies to all later versions of ADE which run under Wine.

Windows Codecs not installing correctly

Thanks to Pat David (https://patdavid.net).

The files windowscodecs.dll and windowscodecsext.dll should be in ~/.adewine/drive_c/windows/system32/. If they are not first ensure that cabextract is installed on your system and that you previously attempted to install windowscodecs using winetricks. Then use the following commands:

cd ~/.cache/winetricks/windowscodecs/
cabextract -d tmp wic_x86_enu.exe
cd tmp/
cp windowscodecs* ~/.adewine/drive_c/windows/system32/
cd ..
rm -fr tmp
$ cd ~/

Crashes immediately after install

If ADE crashes immediately after install and can never be opened, you should try setting the Windows version to XP in Wine.

This can be done via the "winecfg" GUI or typing "winetricks -q winxp" into the CLI. This was verified in multiple docker installations with Ubuntu 18:04 and debian buster and the error message was "Application has generated an exception that could not be handled"