Altium Designer

What works

• Workspace management
• Project management
• Schematic capture
• Libraries
• Mixed signal simulation
• PCB capture
• Signal integrity 

What does not

• Floating docks (technically they work, but only after complaining profusely about there not being a parent window)
• Auto-hidden docks (z-order is not always what it should be)
• Fonts are not always correct

Workarounds

What was not tested

• HTML anything
• Altium Vault
• Anything not specifically listed

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU:
• Driver:

Additional Comments

PCB capture suffers from some performance issues not present on an actual Windows system. It has not been much of a problem yet. This is such an enormous program; there is no way I can test every little part and document it here. Chances are you can make it work in a pinch, but, as is usual around these parts, it is always better to run it on a real Windows system.

Obtain the installer from Altium.  It is AltiumDesignerSetup_16_0_5.exe for the initial release of Altium Designer 16.

Install Wine.  Version 1.8-rc1 (wine-staging from the Pipelight PPA) was used when creating this guide.  Later 1.8 versions should work since it is a stable release. Mono isn't compatible enough so dotnet40 is needed.  AD16 also includes XULRunner/Gecko so it is not required separately.

Set up a 32-bit Wine environment in a non-default directory and install the dependencies.

env WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=(your $HOME)/.wine-altium16 winetricks -q corefonts mdac28 dotnet40

Wine requires an absolute path for WINEPREFIX and variables can't be used in the value.

Launch the installer.  Have your login info handy.

env WINEPREFIX=(your $HOME)/.wine-altium16 wine AltiumDesignerSetup_16_0_5.exe

You can also use winefile to launch the installer exe graphically instead of typing the full path to it.

The login dialog may get stuck behind the splash image.  It may be seen as a dark yellow rectangle bleeding through it.  Use your window manager controls to move it blindly (Alt-space, M on Xfce in Xubuntu) to where you can use it.  Login and follow the instructions.  You can copy and paste your login info by right-clicking on the text fields.  The full install is over 1GB.

After installation, launch it via the entry in your desktop menus.  If you want to launch it via the command line, drag the menu entry (depending on your desktop environment) to your desktop space or panel, or look in the hidden ~/.local/share/applications/wine directory for the *.desktop file. Right-click it and check its properties for the command line.  You can also open the *.desktop file with a text editor but note that backslashes are escape characters so they are all doubled within the file.

You will be prompted to install the USB JTAG driver.  Wine doesn't support drivers and installing it has no effect.

A floating panel dialog will appear with the Storage Manager, Messages, Output, and To-Do panels.  You can drag and move them to the toolbars but do not right-click on their tabs else you will trigger bug #39765 (the panel close button may also trigger it).  Use the menus in the lower-right corner of the app window (System, etc.) to close them.  You can right-click on most anything else without problems.

The administration page will be loaded.  Use it to activate your license.

Participation in the feedback survey is optional and does not affect operation. Also check the network preferences in menu "DXP>Preferences>System>Network Activity" to configure how much phoning home you want Altium Designer to do.

Loading each module and configuring the panels and toolbars is recommended.  Do the PCB editor first because it is prone to hanging at launch and terminating the DXP.exe process will cause preferences and panel settings to be lost.  Be sure to close it before exiting Altium because it will often cause the entire app to hang.

To prevent being locked out at startup by the PCB editor unexpectedly reloading a PcbDoc file, disable reloading of previously open PCB documents by adding "PCB" to the reload exclusions list in DXP>Preferences>System>View>Exclusions or disable reloading entirely by unchecking "Restore open documents".

After exiting, backup your profile data located in:

$WINEPREFIX/drive_c/users/$USER/Application Data/Altium/Altium Designer {3D0987E9-EAF6-4086-A687-CF7895024567}/

This will allow for easy restoration if a crash messes up your settings.  UserTools.TLT contains most of the panel and multiple app window configuration.

To configure multiple app windows, open two schematics then right-click on one and choose "Open In New Window".  Then close both schematic (leaving the app windows) and exit.  Then backup your profile.  Leaving the PCB editor open when exiting Altium with multiple app windows active is a guaranteed hang.

If you are going to submit a test report (please do) be sure to specify the exact version tested from Help>About.

Download the 32-bit (x86) Access 2013 runtime (AccessRuntime_x86_en-us.exe, etc.)  Change the Windows version to win7 and install it.

env WINEPREFIX=(your $HOME)/.wine-altium16 winetricks win7

env WINEPREFIX=(your $HOME)/.wine-altium16 wine AccessRuntime_x86_en-us.exe

(or winefile if you're lazy)

Follow the prompts.  Then change the Windows version back to XP.

env WINEPREFIX=(your $HOME)/.wine-altium16 winetricks winxp

(Altium web browser/html viewer is unstable if set to win7)

The runtime is not usable directly without an execute-only Access application (*.accde, *.mde).  Running it will display a dialog with invisible text asking about registering for automatic updates (fails regardless of choice) then it exits unless a database was specified on the command line.  The runtime itself is not important.  What Altium needs is the ODBC driver it installs.  To configure them open the control panel:

env WINEPREFIX=(your $HOME)/.wine-altium16 wine control

Use the Data Sources control panel applet to add a data source name (name that other programs will use to identify it, the driver, and database location).  Then configure a database link file in Altium Designer (File>New>Library>Database Link File).

If you want to see the data outside of Altium, and you know some SQL (specifically the crippled version of the Access driver), use CuteSQL or the Data Source Browser in the Windows version of LibreOffice.  For native access, try DBeaver.