LTSpice on Puppy Linux, Bionic 64 Install.

Gary73 · Post by **Gary73** » Fri May 05, 2023 1:22 am

Hi there, I needed to use the program LTSpice, which I am accustom to using while designing circuits.

I wanted to share the steps that I needed to through to use that program, in case anyone
else has this need.

First of all, I am using Bionic Puppy 64 bit. I imagine the process would be similar for other 64 bit
puppy distros.

Secondly, you will need to use Wine.

There is a little more involved though, so I will tell you the steps that worked for me.

Bionic Puppy 64 bit is installed - meaning you have gone through the install procedure having
done a first save, and have rebooted to make sure your OS loads after your first pupsave file
has been created.
Open quickpet and click on Bionic Updates.
After this click on the Useful tab and click wine to install wine. Near the end of the installation there will be a message that it is a 64 bit version of wine,
and for 32 compatibility, install the 32bit compatibility sfs file. Take a mental note of this.
Try to open a wine program, like wine-notepad for example, which should now show up in the menu.
When trying to open the program, there will be prompts that say that 2 other support applications are needed.
- (If I remember right, the first one was the mono program and the second one was gecko).
- Either way, go ahead and accept these and install.
Now although LTSpice64 is reportedly a 64bit program, for whatever reason, I could not get it to run
without installing the 32bit compatibility sfs file. It appears something is present in that sfs file which, when excluded
does not allow for LTSpice64 (or LTSpiceVII to run properly). So go ahead and go to the quickpet application
and click on the 32bit compatibility sfs, follow the instructions, save changes and restart.

NOTE: For many people using a distro of puppy linux, they are already at this point. In other words they have
a working distro, wine is installed, is working, and the 32bit compatibility sfs file has been added. If you are one
of those people, just follow the following steps.

Of course you'll want to download a copy of the LTSpice at this link:
https://www.analog.com/en/design-center ... lator.html.
(As of today you'd click the button - Download LTspice XVII for Windows (End of Support),
which will give you the LTSpice64.exe download, not the LTSpice64.msi download.)
After downloading the file, click on the LTSpice64.exe file to "install" the program under wine.
Now, the necessary files are present on the computer to run, but the program will not run. I am sure there
are several ways to get the program running, but I will explain what I have done, and I believe this is the most
straight forward approach.

You are going to place a .desktop file, with appropriate paths which the operating system will read in and place in the menu.
- go to the folder /usr/share/applications and make a file called LTSpiceVII.desktop (no spaces in the filename). You can simply save a file
  from leafpad or geany into the folder with that name.
- paste or place the following code into that file and save:
  Code: Select all
```
[Desktop Entry]
Categories=Development;Electronics;
Name=LTspice XVII
Exec=wine /root/.wine/drive_c/'Program Files'/LTC/LTSpiceXVII/XVIIx64.exe
Type=Application
StartupNotify=true
Comment=Analog Devices's LTspice XVII
Icon=/root/.local/share/icons/hicolor/256x256/apps/DB38_XVIIx64.0.png
StartupWMClass=xviix64.exe
```

At this point the program should show up at restart and run from the menu. However if you want to make available in the menu now, you can issue
the following commands to refresh the menu systems. (This will prompt a review of all of the /usr/share/applications ... .desktop,
the menu will be rebuilt, and the window manager will be relaunched. If anyone feels like the .desktop file can be trimmed down, feel free to chime in of course.

Code: Select all

fixmenus

Code: Select all

jwm-restart

I believe I remember these steps correctly from memory, so if I haven't please post and let me know. The only testing I have done so far was to make
a RLC circuit with sine wave generator and load and observed a Bode plot. Then I saved my project and reopened. So far so good.

Thanks to the puppy linux developers (and the kindly shared Analog Devices prorgam) I am able to carry around a puppy operating system, my circuits, and my favorite software on a thumb drive.