Even if you get it running with Wine it might not work really. I have a 2011 MacBook pro with the integrated Intel graphics and a couple of years ago they stopped supporting it and graphics performance severely deteriorated to where it was unusable.. This happened with one of the updates. Given you say that yours is an old laptop its probably going to have the same problem.

Your best bet is to get a refurbished apple TV for like $70. That's really the cheapest way to get on zwift.

---

What's your CdA?

I spend quite a bit of time trying to get it to work using Wine and a number of different virtualization techniques (VirtualBox, VMWare for example), and haven't gotten it to work. This, and some other things, caused me to switch my main personal laptop to Windows, after having been a dedicated Linux user since, oh, 1999.

On the plus side Windows is better than the Windows 7 hell I remember from my last job where I had to use Windows.

---

Citizen of the world, former drunkard. Resident Traumatic Brain Injury advocate.

yeah I havent thing about that but a used apple TV might be a go idea! Tks

the laptop is not that old ( 2015 ) but I guess is a lot of work for not much reward !

I'm surprised to hear people say it wasn't easy to get working with things like VirtualBox, VMWare, etc. That would have been my first try as well. I don't specifically have an image that I use for Zwift (I use an Apple TV setup solely for Zwift), but I would imagine that getting a Windows 10 virtual machine running on KVM/Qemu in Ubuntu should be doable. You might need additional libraries such as VirtIO and SPICE to make sure you have the right drivers for disks, networking, and 3D graphics acceleration. It might be worth asking Zwift customer support as well. I wouldn't be surprised if their own developers have done something like that for testing.

You'll need a 4th generation Apple TV to run Zwift.

Not sure what US prices are, but UK Apple refurbished once start at £119 ($150).

I am running on a PC laptop, as a wall mounted TV doesn't work for my TT position and makes me ride upright.

Edit: Never mind .. you're interested in running 😴

Zwift is basically telling you to go away. There are a couple of threads on their support forum but it's crickets there.

The issue is the graphics. I have a pretty beefy laptop with a good graphics card which, under Windows, runs Zwift just fine. When I tried that same laptop with Linux and VirtualBox Zwift basically died bitching about that my graphics driver needs to be updated. I had all the latest and greatest VirtualBox libs, and still nada.

And KVM? Who's got time for that? I surely don't.

---

Citizen of the world, former drunkard. Resident Traumatic Brain Injury advocate.

Maybe the original poster has time for it? I don't know. But at any rate, it is a viable solution, provided the laptop hardware can support it (or more specifically, can support virtualization requirements like IOMMU, VT-d, or whatever is appropriate to his CPU). KVM itself is not that tough to get working.

But yeah, if you have no time, go buy an Apple TV. Can't go wrong there.

Sorry to bring up an old thread. In the current pandemic more people have been asking me how to install Zwift on Linux. It's easy, using Lutris, an open app that attempts to make installs of software easier.

Zwift works in Ubuntu linux and Mint Linux. Mint is based on ubuntu kernels.

The easiest way to get this working without much effort is to do the following:

• Install Lutris from repository, following their website instructions.

• Run Lutris. Search for a game to install within the app: Zwift
• Whilst it installs, you are in for a wait. It has to download wine, winetricks and other supporting software
• Once it's finished everything, launch Zwift. A white blank window will appear. Leave this for a few hours. It will provide a progress bar of downloading the full Zwift software from Zwift servers.
• Once this is done overnight, close everything down and reboot your linux computer.
• Launch Lutris, once laptop has finished rebooting.
• Right click on the newly installed Zwift game within Lutris and select "Run EXE within WINE prefix". Navigate to 'Program Files' folder, 'Zwift' folder, and select 'ZwiftLauncher.exe'
• Wait 10 seconds or so for the Zwift system tray icon to load and for the white window to again appear.
• Now, within Lutris, click the 'Launch' button with Zwift selected. A zwift window should appear and Zwift will begin running.
  
• Please note that you can't pair bluetooth or ANT+ as WINE doesn't support passing through these protocols to the Zwift app, so you're going to have to use the Zwift Companion app on your mobile phone to pair bluetooth/ANT+ sensors. Remember that Android supports the ANT+ protocol AND bluetooth, whereas iOS only supports bluetooth.

If you launch 'Zwift' using the launch button and the full screen Zwift window loads blank and then exits, especially if you're running an intel integrated graphics driver, then you have to launch Lutris in a different way. It's a coding problem with the graphics driver:

• Open a terminal window
• Enter the following command and hit enter: export MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=3.1
• in the SAME terminal window then enter: lutris
• (hit enter again. Lutris will load using the graphics version override above. Repeat the steps to run the zwiftlauncher within WINE prefix, then launch zwift manually using the 'launch' button Lutris after a short wait.)

I have been racing for hours on end with this setup and it works really well on ubuntu. If you are a masochist you can perform the individual tasks required, but Lutris does all these tasks for you, so you can make life easier for yourself by sticking with my abridged version.

Thanks.

thanks. this is the sort of post from a new user that i find very welcome. this is an upgrade in the collective knowledge of this community.

---

Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Thanks for posting this.

I can’t get it to work for me.

I’m getting the Zwift launcher starting and closing within a minute despite the ‘Mesa gl version override command’.

Terminal tells me Lutris is running Intel Mesa driver 21.0.3

Any advice appreciated if possible!

Randolph