I have seen previous posts about this and the company says the demand would be low and the work would be high. Far enough. But I do need a new PC (mine is very old and increasingly unreliable.
I am not keen on moving to Windows 11 due to its direction of travel. Apple mini would be ideal except it doesn’t allow linux VM guests (I know work is being done on a few distributions).
So that leaves a linux host that will run linux VMs. But no em client and I do like em client.
What’s the situation with Wine? Is anyone running this successfully and reliably? Looking at the Wine page, it seemed to be “possibly”.
Apple mini would be ideal except it doesn’t allow linux VM guests.
I’ve seen lots of Apple Mac developer websites who say you can already run Linux on a Mini Mac in VM Guest mode. Suggest to do more web searching on how to.
I personally run eM Client 10.3.x on Mac Sequoia and Windows 11 and both run excellent on my Mini Mac M1 & M2 Pro.
There is a lot work even with the “Wine” path. And we can’t offer or sell eM Client as is, with many issues. We must either guarantee it works well to be able to sell it or not develop it at all. The effort to make it mature enough is horrendous and we decided it still isn’t worth it and I believe we do have some technical and business insight into this.
If one of Apple’s offerings would generally work well for you, then I think you’d be fine. You’d be able to run eM Client just fine and you would actually be able to run Linux in a virtual machine, from what I’ve seen. For example, Parallels does support a number of Linux distributions and makes the setup process quite straightforwards:
Supported distributions include:
Ubuntu Linux 24.04, 23.04, 22.04, 21.10, 21.04, 20.10, 20.04
Fedora Workstation 41, 40, 39
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9
Debian GNU/Linux 12, 11
Kali Linux 2024.2, 2023.1, 2022.2, 2022.1, 2021.3
CentOS Stream 9
VMware also explicitly mentions being able to create virtual machines from Linux distributions:
To be honest, it also sounds like the eM Client team does listen to its users and keeps an eye on whether to create a Linux version of the product, but, for now, the costs (currently unmanageable workload) outweigh the benefit for the company. If they were pushed towards providing something for Linux users that was not really up to the company’s desired standards, it would cause a lot of complaints and support requests further down the line, rather than people being pleased that they provided something. That means doing something to help could even become a rod to beat them with, and I can understand their caution here.
Yes, we continously monitor it and we have even made a proof of concept for the “Wine” option and cost analysis for “Wine” and “Native” options. Currently it is not justifiable, but this may change in the future. We may reconsider that again after eM Client 11 release.
Firstly I would just like to thank everyone for the replies.
I can certainly understand the reasons for not porting em client to linux if the business numbers do not add up.
Not every linux distribution has an ARM version and I must admit my favourite does not.
An X64 PC running linux would certainly run VMWare and means I could use existing VM’s. And it does seem as though em client on Wine is not ready for primetime and is probably a moving target as eMDash said.
Is there a chance you have some time to talk to Codeweavers? They are the main maintainers for Wine and the commercial distribution Crossover (for Mac and Linux). At least in the past I think they could be hired to make a specific application work. If they still do that, maybe they can at least quote you what it would cost to get a Wine build specifically for eM Client. That would then also somewhat solve the commercial support issue, since you have their knowledge at hand. Obviously the feasibility will depend on how much they ask for that service, but if you have the time, it can’t hurt to contact them about it.
I think they could be hired to make a specific application work. If they still do that, maybe they can at least quote you what it would cost to get a Wine build specifically for eM Client.
I suspect if eM Client went down the Crossover / Wine path, it would be much cheaper “to use your own current eM Client developers” than paying Crossover to make a Wine specific build, and as @Michal_Burger already advised further up, eM Client has “already done a proof cost analysis” and it’s not currently justifiable to do a Wine or Native version but may reconsider in the future.
If eM Client does a Linux version I suspect they would probably do the eg: Native version and not rely on using Crossover and Wine.
Note: No, CodeWeavers’ CrossOver does not write your apps for you to work on Linux.
Again Id say that’s one main point to make.
Native is always the best if enough users in long run.
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Crossover, it provides a compatibility layer, based on the open-source Wine project, that allows many Windows applications to run on Linux and other operating systems like macOS and ChromeOS. CodeWeavers develops CrossOver and also offers porting services to help developers bring their Windows applications to Linux and macOS. Note: Many meaning some, even Paint.Net still won’t work incompatible to this day.
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But yes, CodeWeavers offers expert consulting and porting services to help developers adapt their Windows applications to run on macOS and Linux. This involves technical adjustments to make the application compatible with the new environment. Mind u, whether that involves them modifying your source code I’ve got my doubts, they probably point things out that need to be changed.
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But yes for a small audience it’s a lot of work at this point in time unless it could be done simply but still require a lot of resources and modification development no doubt as it maybe no small feat.
But hey, anything is possible in time.
Successfully running it in Winapps. Yes, it uses a virtual machine but the Windows apps appear on the Linux desktop. One caveat: any link clicked in eM Client will open in the browser in Windows but on the Linux desktop. Setup your favorite browser in Windows and set it to the default browser.
Is anyone running em client under Wine successfully and reliably?
I’m running it with the help of Bottles. sys-wine-10.0.
Thus far, everything seems to work. Is it reliable? Hard to tell – who knows if a future update will break this install. Perhaps WinBoat will be the safer option going forward but I’ll keep using this for now.
Win 11 in my opinion is terrible. I also want to switch from MS to Linux. I like Em Client, would be great to see a Linux Version. Look at Google Trends and other OS Trends, Linux is getting more volume and I guess with bad reviews of Windows 11 it will be more in the future.
I’m using WinApps.
I uploaded my configuration to the Git repository some time ago, and it should be incorporated by now. You can install the User Agent Switcher to open things (e.g. email links) directly on eM Client.
Mac Mini is a perfect choice. It allows VMs without any problems. Even some of the older models would be good option if you are short on money. And there’s eM Client for MacOS.
An eM Client version for Linux would be absolutely fantastic. I purchased eM Client for my Windows installation and am now switching to Linux. Unfortunately, there is currently no email client on Linux that is truly comparable to eM Client. Thunderbird comes close in some areas, but eM Client’s feature set is far more professional overall.
Bringing eM Client to Linux would close a significant gap.
It is indeed incredible how bad all email clients except eM are. Just a simple mail client for average prosumer use - do you remember how good Outlook Express used to be? Now all clients have these post-mobile approach with “connected” pointless bloat and “features”.
I truly hope one day we will have eM on Linux. The real problem now is OAuth2 of course, that really reduces the choice to a couple clients on Linux. I know the devs must have looked into this in detail, but I really think that the percentage of adoption of eM under Linux would be much much higher than under Windows. So even if Linux usage is a few percent, all those who need a good “true” client, i.e. not a web frontend, will have nowhere else to go basically.
Perhaps now, with Valve pushing Linux in gaming and the widespread criticism of Windows 11, more prosumer users will migrate and it will make sense to port apps. Fingers crossed.