OK so SketchUp can be made to run on linux

Posted on January 6, 2009 by tpepper

Since Dan Kegel commented on my blog, I thought I’d confirm the Windows version of SketchUp does work on x86 linux via wine. It’s a bit slow at times and goes into deep never-never-land at times only to return and seemingly run at near native speed. But if I’m wanting to do some minor twiddling of a small model while on the go, I do technically have the option on linux with the T61p I’m using.
This is in Fedora 10 with rawhide’s wine (1.1.10 though 1.1.11′s supposed to be better) and compiz turned off and an Nvidia graphics card. The last point there though comes with a requirement on the Nvidia binary-only proprietary driver, which in effect means you’re running Sketchup on an Nvidia kernel with a linux OS shimmed into it…the Nvidia driver is nearly 7MB while the (unnecessarily large for this machine) linux kernel plus all other drivers is combined under 6MB on this machine.
At any rate, wine is certainly an impressive endeavour and it’s amazing that it can successfully allow a migration path to linux for even complex windows applications. I certainly used to use it daily until the last non-linux app I had to use came out with a native version.
Now if it could only run Husqvarna / Viking’s 4D Software (overpriced, requires hardware dongle and crazily expensive sewing machine) then I might be able to get my parents off Windows too.

This entry was posted in Technology. Bookmark the permalink.

2 Responses to OK so SketchUp can be made to run on linux

  1. Dan Kegel says:
    January 6, 2009 at 3:31 pm

    Thanks for posting. So, how much slower is it
    with your largest model? Can you quantify that
    somehow?

  2. Tim Pepper says:
    January 6, 2009 at 8:07 pm

    My largest model is a mere hundred or so “faces”…a few dozen pieces of dimensional lumber, so really quite small by most standards I’d guess.
    And it is (at times) sloooooow. As in go get a coffee and then mow the lawn and get groceries and come back to move the mouse a little more if it’s updated to be the centimeter I’d pushed it to before. It is a certainly odd though in that when it goes it is completely gone that far off the performance edge. It’s been at times where I’m not even doing anything (ie: not panning the 3d model or doing something “in” sketchup….just literally moving the mouse around the window toward a UI element in order to ultimately click on it). Otherwise it is pretty much normal sort of speed.
    I haven’t had time to build and try profiling the latest wine. Was thinking if Fedora’s rawhide catches up to 1.1.12 that’d nudge me to try again. I’m also a bit skeptical of the distro’s 2.6.27 kernel as the scheduler’s been interesting…this may not even entirely be wine vs. Sketchup.

Leave a Reply