Zwift

What works

• Installation, after setting up WINEPREFIX (see below)
• Launching game, with workarounds (see below)
• Registration, setting up character, joining game in observation mode.

What does not

• The game launcher will not complete on its own and requires intervention.

Workarounds

• The game is 64-bit only, and so requires a 64-bit build of Wine to run after installation.  The installer uses 32-bit binaries, and so for installation, a 32/64-bit multi-lib build is required.
• The installer requires .NET v4.0.30319.  We used winetricks to install dotnet40_kb2468871 (a random choice).  Winetricks will fail from the command-line because of reported incompatibilities between the library, Wine 6.0, and 64-bit Wine.  If you run winetricks from the GUI, all of these warnings may be ignored and after clicking through all the dialogs something will get installed that lets you proceed.
• NOTE The installer SPAMS your current working directory with files (as well as installing into WINEPREFIX), so it is best to create a installation directory to contain everything and launch from there.
• Running the installer with wine64 eventually completes. There is no feedback except for a warning about a dependency that was ignored - watch CPU activity and the log files.
• After installation, the launcher will display a blank pop-up and no further activity can be seen. By viewing the log files, you can see that it is attempting setup and patching. If you have a system tray, an icon will appear, but the game will fail to launch.
• In order to launch the game, the launcher must first be run, then shortly after, the game itself must be manually launched. This was done with the appropriate parent process name by downloading and using RunFromProcess-x64.exe, downloaded from Nirsoft.
• After quitting the game, there are a lot of hanging processes. pgrep patterns of wine*, Zwift*, and *.exe.
• One of our tested systems did not meet the graphics requirements to play. Another started the game with broken graphics, but exporting the environment variable MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=3.1 allowed it to run fine (albeit, kind of choppy on that system). On a system with a dedicated Nvidia card, the game ran fine without environment changes.
• NOTE! The game will write patch and log files to the directory where wine was launched, and does not contain its activity to WINEPREFIX. The patcher will delete executables and certain directories from the launch directory - even files it did not create - and without regard to the file mode. It is strongly advised to backup any launch scripts you create and it wouldn't be a bad idea to create an underprivileged user to run the game.  Do not run this as root and always cd to a working directory before launching.

What was not tested

• We did not attempt to pair sensors and join as a rider.

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU: Nvidia
• Driver: proprietary

Additional Comments

export WINEPREFIX = /your/desired/wine/directory

export MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=3.1 (if necessary)

cd to/path/with/setup

wine64 ZwiftSetup.exe

wine64 start ZwiftLauncher.exe

wine64 RunFromProcess-x64.exe ZwiftLauncher.exe ZwiftApp.exe

When done:

killall ZwiftApp.exe ZwiftLauncher.exe

killall wineserver

killall -9 winedevice.exe

killall services.exe svchost.exe plugplay.exe explorer.exe rpcss.exe mscorsvw.exe mscorsvw.exe