Here’s a tutorial to get Vara FM or HF up and running as easily as possible on Linux. Other guides have you installing dlls by hand, or using Winetricks. None of this is necessary any longer, and as a matter of fact, often doesn’t work with newer versions of Wine. We’re going to use Bottles, which is a Gnome application for running programs under Wine and Linux.
Vara is NOT free software. It is speed limited if you choose to operate it without a license. Consider supporting the project.
Definitions
- Vara FM
- A software TNC which utilizes FM communications to provide up to 25 kbps in WIDE mode, or 12 kbps in NARROW mode. Significantly faster than 1200 or 9600 AX.25 packet.
- Vara HF
- A software TNC designed for SSB (Single Side Band) mode over HF. Capable of 5600 bps over excellent HF conditions. Packet is usually 300 bps over the same conditions.
- Wine
- Wine stands for “Wine is not an emulator”. Yes, they use their own acronym in the acronym. I guess it’s a circular acronym. It’s a complete reverse engineered version of all the parts needed to run Windows programs. Legal to use without a valid Windows license.
Expectations
This guide will not attempt to teach someone how to operate a Linux installation. It is assumed that you know where to grab program and how to install them. If something is non-standard, additional details will be given.
Which versions of Linux are needed?
This has been tested on Ubuntu Desktop 24.02 as well as Fedora 40. Although it works as of 12.30.2024 on these systems, it is absolutely not guaranteed that they will continue to do so. Wine, Bottles, and Linux in general are in constant development and subject to change.
Software To Download
Installation of Bottles
The only officially supported version of Bottles exists as a Flatpak in Flathub. Distro packages may exist from Fedora or Canonical and may work correctly. We won’t be trying them.
Bottles from Fedora or potentially other distros can be installed through Gnome Software, or a package called Software Center. Recent versions of Ubuntu make things difficult because they want you to download their own in-house Snap packages.
You can potentially follow this guide for getting Flatpaks to work on Ubuntu.
Setting up Bottles
Launch Bottles.
After a welcome screen you’ll be dropped at the following screen. Ignore the already created bottle in the top/center. We’ll be making a new one as an example.
Click the hamburger menu (three horizontal lines icon) in the upper right corner, then select “Preferences”.
Click the “Runners” Tab.
Drop down the Caffe section and press the download (down arrow with a line) button to grab caffe-9.7. If this version isn’t available, you have an old version of Bottles. Go back to Installation. Wait for it to install and change to a folder icon.
Close the Preferences window.
Next, we’ll create a new bottle with our freshly minted caffe-9.7 runner. Click the + icon in the upper left corner.
Name the new Bottle “Vara” or something similar. Change the Environment to “Custom”. Change the runner to caffe-9.7 and the architecture to “32-bit”. It doesn’t matter if you have a 64-bit system. 32-bit is required to install the older libraries needed to run Vara.
Choose “Create”.
Close the success window.
Click in the middle of your new Vara Bottle listing. Just in the white space, not any of the icons on the same line.
Click “Settings”.
Scroll down and change the “Windows Version” to “Windows XP”. Click the back arrow.
Click “Dependencies”.
The following dependencies will need to be installed in EXACTLY the following order. Click one at a time and wait for it to be completely installed. Some installs with pop up with a traditional installer that you’ll need to manually step through. Some will just automatically do everything in the background.
- dotnet20
- dotnet20sp1
- dotnet35
- dotnet35sp1
- vbrun6
- vcredist2015
Here’s an example of the installer for dotnet20:
If any of the installers claims it needs to “restart the computer”, just choose to “restart later”.
Click the back button after all the installs are complete.
Install Vara in Bottles
Both Vara HF and FM are confirmed to work in Bottles 51.17.
Click “Run Executable” and point it to your previously downloaded and unzipped Vara installer of choice.
The normal Vara installer will appear. Step through it like on a normal Windows installation.
If you choose to automatically launch the program when the installer closes, it will launch, otherwise you’ll need to launch with the play button next to the installed program in Bottles.
Vara should launch!
The only thing that doesn’t seem to work in either version of the software is the CPU meter. Everything else is functioning. The last thing we’ll need to do is make sure you can access your PTT.
Windows uses COM ports instead of /dev/ttyUSB devices and it will emulate them from symbolic links in the working bottles directory. Explaining which of your ttyUSB devices belongs to your radio’s PTT line is beyond the scope of this document, but here’s how to enable it in Wine, and thus Vara.
Launch a terminal and navigate to /home/USERNAME/.var/app/com.usebottles.bottles/data/bottles/bottles/Vara/dosdevices
Replace USERNAME with your linux user, and replace Vara with whatever you named your Bottle.
Some links are already in there as default with the Wine install, however you’ll likely need to add your device manually. To add a new one:
ln -s /dev/ttyUSB0 com3 (or whatever your ttyUSB device might be)Finished
You’re all set! You should now be able to configure Vara just like on a standard Windows install. Select your sound card and your new mapped PTT COM port.