I've tried the WSL route to no avail. So don't bother. It will reliably fail with the same cryptic error code.
dudeonwineondebianonwindows.png
We've gotta think harder than that. First of all, how big is the desire to run this software on Windows 11? Quite a lot, I believe. Many would consider Wine on WSL crazy, if not outright blasphemous. That includes
the official Wine documentation. Of course it does work with e.g. notepad, but not in this particular case. Let's try something different.
Follow that rabbit hole at your own risk. I'm not paying back for lost time, jobs, sanity, borked Windows installs, exploded routers or getting invaded by a neighboring country.
I know for a fact that Dude is fully usable inside Wine on Debian. Actually even Mikrotik states that Dude works in Wine on Linux. A virtual machine will do as a workaround, but it will be resource heavy. A full-blown distro with whole desktop environment just for one application. There has to be another way. And there is.
I've spun up a VM in VirtualBox and installed Debian. Later I've migrated it to Hyper-V for better performance and integration with Windows. Hyper-V comes only with Pro versions of Windows, so use whichever you have at hand. 8 GB drive, 1GB RAM and 2 cores is plenty. You will need two network interfaces: one comes default, with NAT to access internet and your Dude instance; another to connect on X server on host OS (read on!). You need to create another virtual switch configured as "internal network". A virtual Ethernet device will be created and I've set some private address to it (192.168.57.1/24 in my case).
vEthernet.png
It doesn't differ a lot in VirtualBox.
After booting the VM, install Debian with default settings on a single partition to keep things simple. Uncheck desktop, GNOME etc. in tasksel, leave checked only "standard system utilities" and (important) ssh. Then install WineHQ according to
instructions. I chose winehq-staging because I like risk but not danger. Setup network interfaces (/etc/network/interfaces):
allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
auto eth1
iface eth1 inet static
address 192.168.57.2/24
The interfaces might be named like enp0s3 in VirtualBox so pay attention. The static address of eth1 is of course supposed to connect with host Windows vEthernet, so please set addresses accordingly. Use another subnet if this one overlaps with your network. Place host's address in DISPLAY env variable of your user (not root!):
echo "export DISPLAY=192.168.57.1:0 >> ~/.bashrc
. You may restart networking in systemctl to enable your IP address, and log out then log in to read .bashrc... or just reboot, it will be super fast anyway. The system is ready to start GUI apps, it just needs an X server.
VcXsrv is good enough on basic settings, just check "Disable access control" to allow network connection. Note: it allows anyone in your network to pop windows on your desktop, so you might want to seal this hole using windows firewall or host-based access. Refer to VcXsrv documentation for that. When you've got your X server up and running, you can now
wget https://download.mikrotik.com/routeros/7.1.3/dude-install-7.1.3.exe
wine dude-install-7.1.3.exe
wine .wine/drive_c/Program\ Files\ \(x86\)/Dude/dude.exe
and from now on it goes almost as easy as it would on Windows. If you want to do something about the ugly default Wine theme, there's a Windows 10 inspired one:
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/c ... indows_10/. And more importantly, a launch file so you don't need to type it every time. Create a text file Dude.xlaunch
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<XLaunch WindowMode="MultiWindow" ClientMode="StartProgram" LocalClient="False" Display="-1" RemoteProgram="wine /home/dude/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files\ \(x86\)/Dude/dude.exe 2> /dev/null > /dev/null" RemotePassword="12345" PrivateKey="" RemoteHost="192.168.57.2" RemoteUser="dude" XDMCPHost="" XDMCPBroadcast="False" XDMCPIndirect="False" Clipboard="True" ClipboardPrimary="True" ExtraParams="" Wgl="True" DisableAC="True" XDMCPTerminate="False"/>
Adjust RemotePassword, RemoteHost, RemoteUser accordingly. Remove
to have a super-annoying window with log pop up everytime you touch anything in Dude window. Or better don't. Place this file on your desktop and double-click it anytime you want to use The Dude. You will need a running VM in the background for this to work, but from what I've found i doesn't burden my computer a lot. One could think of a PowerShell script for starting and shutting down the VM, but I'm way too lazy for that. And this hack will hopefully lose its usefulness, as I hope that The Dude gets fixed soon.
dudehyperv.png
note: I've found out that plink.exe that comes with VcXsrv has a bug that prevents using launch files, producing a weird error about unknown parameter ssh. I've procured plink.exe that's not broken
from PuTTY's website and replaced it in
.
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