Linux Window emulator and AnyRail

[Rico]

Ok lets face I'm a Linux bigot. So the question is which emulator is the best to run AnyRail under Linux OS. AnyRail, currently is the only windows software I want to run. Maybe that will change down the road.

So I've tried the following with mixed success:

1. Wine - as some have reported using wine to run AnyRail has it's issues. Most of these issues I can live, but not having the 3d view for me is a downer, especially after seeing how powerful it is. Wine is free.

2. Bottle - I haven't tried this software but it appears to be a top layer interface to wine, so it's unclear if it will provide more capability. But I will give it a shot. Bottle is free.

3. VirtualBox - I haven't tried VirtualBox. In my research I found it is heavy on resources, slow  and requires a microsoft license for $139. VirtualBox is free but as stated you need a microsoft license.

4. CrossOver - I down loaded a trail version for CrossOver this morning and tried it with AnyRail. The fonts work and 3d works, yea! CrossOver is not free, i.e. $74 for a license, but it would be $60 cheaper than a microsoft license and you end up using far less computer resources.

Right now I'm leaning towards CrossOver, but there may be better emulators out there

If others are using different emulators that work well, please let me know.

I realize this post is probably of no interest to 99% of the people out there, but hopefully somebody might find it useful.

Thanks

[David]

Thanks for trying all this, it may be of interest to some people.

I want to stress though, that we cannot guarantee anything when you're not on Windows.

If version 7.0 works on CrossOver, this does not imply that version 7.1 works as well. We update our compiler, change compiler optimizer settings, may update to a newer DirectX version, may use other 3rd party libraries, etc.etc. We only test on Windows 10 and 11 before release.

By the way, CrossOver is also based on Wine.

[Rico]

Thanks David. I didn't realize that CrossOver was based on Wine, but am not surprised. Why reinvent the wheel, so to speak. If push comes to shove I'll just buy a cheap windows pc even if it will cost me most of my Linux friends. 

[GeoffA]

Relative newbie user to AnyRail, but long time Linux user, and spotted this thread so thought I'd add something.

I am using AnyRail 7.3.0 (licensed version) under Wine 9 on Linux Mint 22.  3D view works for me, including multi track levels, smooth gradients, groundwork etc all correctly rendered.  However, the Snapshot feature in 3D view seems to give me just black images, and the lights/shadow control is unusual in operation but does have some effect.

All other AnyRail functionality seems thus far fine for me, including printing, which had given issues using other rail modelling software under Wine.

Cheers.