Silent Installation Failure on Linux Mint 22 (Ubuntu 24.04 Base) with SOLIDWORKS 2023 SP2.1 #78
Description
Hey everyone,
I've been trying to get SolidWorks 2023 SP2.1 installed on Linux Mint 22 and have hit a wall. The installer seems to complete, but it doesn't actually install the main program files. Here's a log of everything I've tried:
- I started with the official install script. I had to edit it to recognize Mint 22 (mapping it to the Ubuntu 24.04 functions), but the installer UI was very buggy with blank windows and disabled buttons, so I moved on.
- To get a more stable environment, I switched to installing it via Lutris. This got me much further.
- The first major error I hit in Lutris was "Error parsing XML. 'Checksum mismatch'. I was able to fix this completely by using Winetricks to install msxml4 and msxml6 into the Lutris Wine prefix. After that fix, the installer ran perfectly. It downloaded the full 8.4 GB installation package into the drive_c/users/username/SOLIDWORKS Downloads folder. The download part seems to work flawlessly.
This is the main problem: After the download finishes, the installer reports success, but the main Program Files/SOLIDWORKS Corp/SOLIDWORKS folder is nearly empty. The main SLDWORKS.exe file is never copied over.
- I tried running the installer again from the download cache. It gave me a "Repair your installation" option. The repair process also reported "Repair done," but still, no files were actually installed.
- Finally, to make sure it wasn't a bug in the standard Wine runner, I deleted everything and started over from scratch using lutris-GE-Proton. I followed the exact same steps (installed msxml4/6, etc.) and got the exact same result: the installer downloads everything, says it's finished, but never actually installs the program.
It seems like the 2023 installer has a bug on Wine where it fails to copy the files from its own download cache into the Program Files directory. It doesn't throw any error; it just fails silently and reports that the installation was successful. Hope this helps track down the issue. Let me know if you need me to test anything else.