Linux version of Logos Bible Software

Logos should not be running when you move the files.

There are few moving parts there, Paul, because of the other programs. Do you have Telegram and could you join us in the Logos on Linux Telegram group?

https://t.me/linux_logos

Then we will just have to make do with what we have! (For what it's worth, Telegram is free-to-use chat client. It is one of several popular options among opensource folks.)

You can get your current wine version by running the following in the terminal:

wine --version

You can get your current wine installation's directory by running

which wine

And verify that wine is itself not linked by something else by running, where the path is the output of which:

ls -lah /PATH/TO/wine

You will want to open up your three Wine programs' application launchers (the menu/desktop launch buttons) and copy their command execution (the command which actually makes them run, for which the buttons are shortcuts/links). You can get these either by editing the menu items/opening the menu editor of your application launcher or, going to another likely source, which is found in the folder /home/USER/.local/share/applications/. Just open the appropriate file there for your applications.

Those commands will tell us which wine binary is being executed to run the programs. If the programs list the same path to wine as which wine, the command above, then they are running your system's wine version. If they are running a different binary, the path will be different, and you will want to execute the command /ALTERNATE/PATH/TO/wine --version to get the wine version being used by the other programs. We also need from those commands the wine prefix used, which is little more than the directory that is storing the wine programs, this would be, for instance, /home/USER/.wine-logos, or /home/USER/.wine, or /home/USER/.wine64.

Based on what I am seeing, Ubuntu 20.04 should still be using Wine 5.0.x, unless I am mistaken.

Get that information to share it with us, and we can proceed from there. Feel free to obfuscate personally identifying information if you desire.

When you say that LogosBible_Linux_P is broken what do you mean?

Sounds like a missing dependency or a broken .Net installation. I suggest deleting LogosBible_Linux_P and using the fast install script again without the AppImage option.

Hmmm... The only installer I'm seeing has "AppImage" (https://github.com/ferion11/LogosLinuxInstaller/releases). Or am I supposed to use the "source code" to install it? Or (just re-reading the installation instructions) do I just select option 2 in step 01 when I run the fast install script (https://github.com/ferion11/LogosLinuxInstaller)? Sorry to sound pedantic, but after all the issues I've faced I'd like to get it right!

I had one "Program Error" crash after shutting Logos9 down and restarting it. I started fine the second time (phew!).

I copied 21 GB of Data~Documents~User files to the corresponding folders in LogosBible_Linux_P, and it went through "Preparing library" but not "Indexing". Most of my resources were still unavailable on the device, so I ran "Rebuild Index" in the Command box, but on completion most resources still want me to download them... Is it a matter of waiting for Logos to sort out its brain? Or do I really have to download everything again (2754 items)?

I would have expected the same... Based on what I'm seeing, though, I think I'm going to have to try installing again. :-( I don't even have a logo beside the Start Menu entry, and when I pin it to the Task Bar, it's blank (if I click on the 'blank', though, Logos9 starts).

John Goodman said:

Before that try going to the LogosBible_Linux_P dir and running the script with 'shortcut' as the argument. It should make you a shortcut.

./Logos.sh shortcut

Currently downloading all my resources again... Doing it in chunks so that hopefully indexing doesn't bork. So far so good.

I was informed that the package name on Arch is xorg-xwd. I installed that with sudo pacman -S and ran through the installer fine. I'm now downloading my resources.

A bit of hunting revealed that ntlm_auth is part of samba (https://www.tutorialspoint.com/unix_commands/ntlm_auth.htm). I didn't have samba installed, so I went ahead and installed it. I tried running the fast install script again, but it still errored out... So then I looked more closely at the error message and thought that maybe "usually is necessary" means "these are dependencies that could solve your problem". So while I had cabextract installed, I did not have winbind installed. I installed winbind and now the script is running. Less cryptic error messages would be a huge help for this linux learner! :-P

Glad it's working for you, Jared! I'm on my second attempt at installing it... (and you can see the issues I faced a few pages back in this thread when I first tried the "fast install" script). I followed along with the video step-by-step, but even creating a shortcut doesn't work for me -- at least I don't find anything in the Start menu... :-( There is a Logos item in /.local/share/applications, but I don't know how to move that to the start menu. <sigh> And I tried moving my 20+ GB of /Data, /Documents, and /Users files to avoid having to download them all again, but Logos just errors out on startup... So frustrating! There seems to be a high level of Linux savvy to get this to work -- a level I obviously don't enjoy. Oh well, off to try again; Logos is essential for my work, so I've got to get it figured out...

Just wondering which version of Wine you used, Jared? I have been selecting the first, default option to use native Wine; when the first "Question" screen pops up, I can see in the terminal behind that it's using wine-5.0 (the first time I ran the fast installer, I didn't have Wine installed, so it ended and told me to install it. I used Synaptic Package Manager to do so, and I guess 5.0 is what it installed...). But now I'm wondering if I should be using the Wine 6.5 option to install?

I did do an update on. Wine. 

Did you do the:

chmod +x fast_install_AppImageWine_and_Logos.sh 

I think that was one I was overlooking too.

Yes, I did the "chmod +x" line. That made the "fast_install_etc" file show up green when I ran the "ls" command on the Downloads directory. I guess that 'approves' it somehow?

Anyway, I selected the Wine 6.5 option on my last attempt and it's currently downloading resources -- 8% of 12.2 GB. I guess it's going to do it in multiple chunks. I'm a bit bummed that you can't copy what's already been downloaded from one machine to another, but I guess if it downloads it will be good.

Resources are downloaded and indexed, but I'm left feeling like things are 'broken' under the hood... For example, I created a shortcut with the ./Logos.sh shortcut command. One was created in /.local/share/applications. I copied this to the desktop and it worked -- once... Well, it still launches Logos, but the icon has changed from the blue cross to a bland earmarked-white-page-with-four-lines. I tried changing it back by using right-click, Properties, but I can't find the graphic in the lists and lists of icons. <sigh> I was hoping a fresh install would have gone better... :-\

I only put it on my desktop because I couldn't figure out where else to put it! Believe me, I like a clean desktop as well. But the launcher is not in the Start menu -- anywhere! -- and I can't move the desktop shortcut to the task bar. Like I said, something seems broken... :-(

Try ./Logos.sh shortcut

It will make you a nice shortcut in the desktop menus with an icon etc.

It would be wonderful having LOGOS on Liinux. I love LINUX and have attempted to set up the old LOGOS platform through WINE, unfortunately it crashed each time i tried to open another Bible or Commentary. Please push for LOGOS to wake up and integrate with LINUX. I hardly ever go onto Windows, therefore i use eSword which works well through WINE, but i do miss using LOGOS. God bless all your hard and loyal work at LINUX.

Gerald Winkel said:

it crashed each time i tried to open another Bible or Commentary.

Hi Gerald, you might be pleased to know that while faithlife do not have an 'official' desktop release for linux, they have been supportive of the platform. The webapp appears to be the official strategy for linux, and its come on a long way, but many of us prefer the desktop app.

The desktop app is stable enough on wine 6.0.1 that it is usable as a daily driver. Sometimes a regression slips in to a dev release but so far we have been able to get regressions fixed fairly promptly. There are some significant improvements to speed and printing in more recent releases so I'm hopeful wine 7 (stable) will be a sweet upgrade for most folks.

Behind the scenes faithlife have been very permissive and supportive of these efforts. Having some familiarity with how it all works, I'm hopeful we will get to a point soon where everything works. For now media playback and speech are not working. I think printing is nearly there but not perfect. Most other things seem to work with the correct configuration.

So the good news is it works!

John Goodman said:

Gerald Winkel said:

it crashed each time i tried to open another Bible or Commentary.

Hi Gerald, you might be pleased to know that while faithlife do not have an 'official' desktop release for linux, they have been supportive of the platform. The webapp appears to be the official strategy for linux, and its come on a long way, but many of us prefer the desktop app.

The desktop app is stable enough on wine 6.0.1 that it is usable as a daily driver. Sometimes a regression slips in to a dev release but so far we have been able to get regressions fixed fairly promptly. There are some significant improvements to speed and printing in more recent releases so I'm hopeful wine 7 (stable) will be a sweet upgrade for most folks.

Behind the scenes faithlife have been very permissive and supportive of these efforts. Having some familiarity with how it all works, I'm hopeful we will get to a point soon where everything works. For now media playback and speech are not working. I think printing is nearly there but not perfect. Most other things seem to work with the correct configuration.

So the good news is it works!

Bob Pritchett said:

The decision is simply a business one; at this point we don't have any evidence that there's a significant market for a Linux version, which doesn't make the investment worth it. We don't have massive margins, and developing on a new platform costs a pretty large percentage of what developing on the first one costs; I imagine we'd need to see consumer (not server or business -- we don't sell there) marketshare for Linux reach 8% before we could justify the cost.

The easiest solution might be to get our software running through things like CrossOver:

http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/name/?app_id=321

What I mean is that given the 8% desktop market share is not likely for linux any time soon, the next most likely way for this to happen would be if the cost and time commitment of a port became insignificant.

Knowing what the cost would be is very difficult from outside the company but I think we could guess that if dotnet 6 or 7 makes an easy enough pathway for the codebase of wpf applications like Logos to become cross platform portable then faithlife might be pursuaded that it is worth making Linux port.

dotnet 6 is due in november I think, so I assume that the next release of Logos will not yet be based on that. Maybe some time after Logos 11 the business case will be in our favour?

I don't think it can work because your vm is arm right?

Yes, the vm I have set up in UTM is arm.