How It Works
A deep dive into what the installation script does under the hood. Understanding this will help you troubleshoot any issues.
Installation Process
Distro Detection
Reads /etc/os-release to identify your distribution family and selects the correct installation path.
cat /etc/os-releaseRemove Conflicting Packages
Checks for and removes any existing Wine installations that may conflict with the required version.
Install Wine
Installs Wine using your distro's package manager. Arch uses Chaotic AUR, Debian/Ubuntu uses apt, Fedora uses dnf, openSUSE uses zypper.
Wine Prefix Setup
Creates a dedicated 32-bit Wine prefix at ~/.multisim32, isolated from your default Wine environment, configured with Windows XP compatibility mode.
WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.multisim32" winecfg -v winxpWine Dependencies
Installs required components via winetricks: corefonts (Microsoft core fonts), mdac27 (Data Access Components), jet40 (Jet 4.0 database engine).
winetricks corefonts mdac27 jet40Download & Install Multisim
Downloads the official NI Circuit Design Suite 14.0 installer from National Instruments' servers, extracts it, and runs it through Wine.
Desktop Launcher Fix
Automatically patches the .desktop file to ensure it uses the correct Wine prefix and wine32 binary when launched from your application menu.
Cleanup & Reboot
Removes the downloaded ZIP and extracted installer directory, then prompts for a system reboot.
Why Multisim 14.0?
Multisim 14.0 is the newest version that works reliably on Linux with minimal issues while still including most of the features available in Multisim 14.3. Newer versions have compatibility problems with Wine that make them unstable for daily use.
Read more about version compatibility →Troubleshooting
Multisim not appearing in launcher
Run: update-desktop-database ~/.local/share/applications
Arch Linux package conflicts
If a wine-* package gets wrongly queried, remove it manually before re-running the script
openSUSE winedbg popup
The forceClosewinedbg.sh script handles this during install. After reboot, close the winedbg window manually.
Wine prefix location
The prefix is stored at ~/.multisim32 and is completely separate from any existing Wine setup.
License Notice
This project is released for educational and personal use. NI Multisim is proprietary software owned by National Instruments — ensure you have a valid license before use.