Running Fusion 360 installer on Linux through Proton libraries

[Anonymous]

Valve recently released Proton, a new emulation layer on top of WINE. Proton has proven itself to be extremely well tuned for a lot of graphical applications, not only games.

I myself have experience running Windows software natively on a Linux host through Proton with stunning graphics performance.

During the last couple of weeks I've spent some time over the evenings to figure out if Fusion 360 would run this way. It would require no development efforts on Autodesks part and if it were to work gracefully, it could be added as a PlayOnLinux setting to make it trivial to get Fusion 360 running on Linux based machines. This would be a huge plus for FabLabs, Makerspace and Hackerspaces (which is more than a small part of the Instructables community). However, the Fusion installation process is actively working against me and I'm not sure if it is intentional, or just a 'bug'.

Here's the problem: On the Fusion website it is checked which OS is running on the host machine. As a Mac user, you get redirected to the DMG download, as a Windows user you get redirected to the .exe downloader. As a Linux user, no option is given, it just states that your OS is unsupported. It's great that it mentions that although I'm already aware of that fact. I tried to mention this over Twitter, but I got a standard message that this behavior was because my OS was not supported. (thanks again, I know, but I still want to download this file anyway)

So today I downloaded the installer on a Windows machine, put the file on a USB drive and headed over to a Linux host. I set up Proton 3.7 and told PlayOnLinux that I wanted to install an unlisted application through the Proton setup.

The Fusion installer starts, without any hassle, but after about 15 seconds I'm greeted with "Unmet system requirements". It states: "What's wrong? Your computer does not meet the OS requirements for installing and running the software. Fusion 360 requires a minimum of Apple Mac OS X El Capitain (10.11) or higher." (side note: does this mean the entire installer is the same for Windows and Mac OS? Because if it's just a different wrapper that would make it interesting...)

I hope this isn't done to intentionally hold me from installing the application on my machine, but it is sad to watch... I understand that Autodesk, in good economical concience, can't dedicate resources to support Linux. But in this case I'm willing to jump through the hoops myself to resolve the caveats. I've been fortunate enough to get a tour of Pier 9 in SF, I saw there that Autodesk cares about (partial) openness in their development! So I hope this is just an 'oversight' because nobody thought about using the application in this way.

I work in a University Makerspace, we've got a bunch of students passing by, using our 3D printers, lasercutters and mills (among others). Fusion 360 is by far the easiest program to have some serious work done in designing and processing a file to be manufactured. Furthermore, being able to write plugins for Fusion without the need to use virtual studio and .net frameworks like most other software suites opens up a new dimension in how our students and researches can make innovative designs (I'm talking generative design for instance). Having it available on Mac + Windows + Linux (albeit with workarounds) would make it a no-brainer to make Fusion our default choise. Right now, depending on the person sitting before us we advice them one of the following: OpenSCAD, TinkerCAD, Fusion360, Inventor, SolidEdge, Solidworks, Sketchup, ArchiCAD, Blender, Rhino, OnShape.

The only ones that available across all OSes are OpenSCAD, Sketchup, Blender, OnShape. All of which are inferior for general purpose mechanical design to Fusion 360. We've tried to suggest students to run Fusion 360 in browser, but support for it is not good enough and some critical functions are unavailable. We've also tried to run Fusion 360 in a VM, but few laptops are good enough to pull that off without running redicullously slow.

So, in the end, my question is the following:

Is there any way for me, or for Autodesk to help me, get an installer that surpasses the OS check and just tries to install on a Linux host system? I'm willing to do in depth testing of the system and present/log my findings to Autodesk and/or the community to help us all get further.

[Anonymous]

Does anyone have an updated procedure for installing Fusion360 using wine + dxvk (from lutris)? Is that link from message 12 above still valid? 

[Anonymous]

I haven’t yet tried it, got a bit fed up with fusion over wine during the last release, will try today and report back.

[EasyDawg]

AutoDesk can you work with us on this, just the low effort things as mentioned in these posts. Windows may not be around forever, hoping and praying at least. They may go down with FB google, Twitter and the rest when the indictments come out. Billy will be getting one =O

[Anonymous]

Update: I forgot that Lutris no longer officially supports Proton builds, though you can technically enable it in the configs. I’m having trouble getting it to get past the splash screen. Not done much debugging yet though.

[joao_mamede]

Fusion 360 is working 100% (better than before, only the overlay menus still bug) in my crossover office. 

Worked with both nvidia or the intel gpu.

[Anonymous]

Do you have the steps you used to install the program?

 -I downloaded the Fusion360 installer for windows(using windows)

-Put it on a usb and migrated it to Linux

-Downloaded the trial version of Crossover for Linux Mint

-Tried to installcfusion 360 via crossover and the install failed. 

This could be because the installer was in fact fusions 360's "down-loader" that then installs the software, but still. 

How did you get it to work for you? Stand-alone installer? Got the link address?

[joao_mamede]

I think with either the online installer or offline installer works (it doesn't update visually but installs in the background). You can try to use an older version and then let fusion 360 update itself.

So in cxOffice it's important (since mid last year fusion 360 updates) to install and  use the DVVK packages and activate it in this menu.

This are all the packages that I installed on it. I think the C++ and XMLs are very important.

The html and geck are for the fusion browser.

Some of the winecfg settings (I think I needed windows 7 to install and then change to 10 to have fusion 360 to allow it to update)

My dx10 and dx11 are not disabled and using native windows dlls

[Anonymous]

I was able to replicate everything you did so far.....with one exception. How do you install WINE Gecko into the bottle. I was able to do a browse applications search for all the other items that go into the bottle....but could not find Gecko though....only something called WINE Mono. Any idears? 

[joao_mamede]

Oh, I can't anymore either, weird.

You might not need it hopefully. If not maybe a ticket with cxoffice would solve the problem.

Let me know if you can't install it, I'll try to reinstall maybe to try to figure out things.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for making the guide above Joao..but...I couldn't get it working using the crossover application.

But!!!...its working very well on Lutris! (Still has the weird floating menu bug...but very usable)

Install is a modification of a install video off YouTube that didn't work for me initially, but worked when i changed a few things. Here is the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRhrM8eJ22k

Basic (very) steps ______________________________________________

- Install Lutris on your particular distro (I'm using Mint 20). If you can't get Lutris to start there are quick fixes for that (here's one (try at your own risk https://forums.lutris.net/t/solved-lutris-wont-start-launch/11653/2)).

- Install Fusion360 from within Lutris using the provided installer(click on the Lutris icon and type fusion in the search bar).

- After install (or before....for some items) you need to configure a few things.

- From within Lutris you need to configure Wine to use version (lutris-lol-4.17-x86_64) 

- From within Lutris make sure the Wine is running Fusion as Windows 10

- From within Lutris make sure to Enable DXVK/VKD3D

Lastly, and I don't know is this helped...but in Fusion360 under preferences, graphics, I change the model display settings to simple. 

In the video he changed his direct x setting to version 9....I left mine as auto. Again....new to all this stuff...but this worked for me. 

Hope this helps someone else, cheers

[joao_mamede]

Can you try to use the installer from lutris in cxoffice?

I also have lutris installed (I used to use it before I got it to work in cxoffice).

Another option is, I try to install it and export the bottle to you!

[Anonymous]

An exported bottle sounds good.

Lutris outside of cxoffice...just as a standard install into the distro (mint in this case)...is working pretty good...but if cxoffice works better I am down to try it out. Pretty sure the issue was not having access to WINE Gecko. 

Can you provide the file...or link to it?

[johnmorse1]

please for the love of god make fusion available for linux so i can ditch windows 

[ampster40]

got a supply of oxygen bottles handy?

[Catrik]

Just commenting here to express my wishes of having better Linux support as well. There may be relatively small number of linux users, but there are also currently ZERO viable 3D CAD softare on linux for professional use. 

[jaka.jese]

I'm turning blue from holding my breath since around 2000 something something when I started doing CAD stuff and wanted to switch to Linux completely. FreeCAD just doesn't cut it and Autodesk just refuses to support Linux in any shape or form because there are still too many dummies using Windows and most corporate environments are Windows only (with some Apple exceptions).

[Bednar24info]

To się chyba niebawem zmieni , obecnie zmieniam w firmie IT systemy z windowsa 11 na Linuxa ponad 60 komputerów, wysypało im cały serwer z systemem któryś raz po aktualizacji , część robi właśnie projekty pod Autodesk solid works niestety tam musi pozostać tylko do tego windowsa inne programy już działają na Linuxie oficer , bazy klientów dane , zarządzanie stanami magazynowymi , czy komunikacja maszyn obrabiarek , auto desk zyskacie napewno wiele wprowadzając udogodnienie na Linuxa 

[jaka.jese]

Hmmm, SolidWorks is from Dassault Systèmes, but yes, the same logic applies.

[piotrstrzelczykk]

Patrząc na daty tych postów i tego jak długo ta kwestia jest kompletnie ignorowana przez Autodesk, można tylko dojść do wniosku, ze wsparcia dla Linuxa nie otrzymamy nigdy.