To run Houdini on Linux you'll need to install Wine or Wine64.

Below some installation experiences and tips kindly shared by Houdini users. If you have additional experience - positive or negative - that could benefit other Houdini users, please let us know by e-mail and we'll add it in this manual.

Ubuntu 16.04 or Ubuntu 14.04

The following commands install "Houdini 6 Pro" using wine version 1.6.2 on a 64-bit machine.

Install Houdini 6 Pro on Ubuntu 16.04 (64-bit) or Ubuntu 14.04 (64-bit) with the following:

 

wget

http://www.cruxis.com/download/xxxxxxx/Houdini-6-Pro-Setup-xxxxxxxx.exe

sudo apt-get install wine

wine Houdini-6-Pro-Setup-xxxxxxxx.exe

 

Click through installation steps, accepting default values.

Installation is complete. Houdini 6 is installed in your /home/user/

 

~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Houdini 6 Chess/

 

Houdini can be launched from the command line with

 

wine ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Houdini\ 6\ Chess/Houdini\ 6.exe

or

wine ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Houdini\ 6\ Chess/Houdini\ 6\ Standard.exe

Ubuntu 12.04

Success. I installed the 64-bit wine and then made another mistake and installed Houdini again and once again got the 32-bit version. My mistake? The .wine directory on my system was already created under wine 32-bit. So ... removing that directory and THEN installing Houdini results in a working 64-bit Houdini installation.

 

Arena 3.5 installed under 64-bit wine (running on Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit) is able to make use of the 64-bit Houdini exe file just fine. For those that like to run engine-vs-engine matches on their Linux computers, this will be good news. Until today I had not figured out how to install 64-bit wine and thus Arena was always limited to running 32-bit engines for me.  No longer ...

 

The key steps for me in getting this to run on Ubuntu 12.04 were these:

 

1. To install wine, run the "Ubuntu Software Center" application.

 

2. In the upper right search bar, enter "wine" (minus the quotes of course)

 

3. Here was the real revelation for me -- click on the link shown as "show 25 technical items" at the bottom of the Ubuntu Software Center window. This reveals

Microsoft Windows Compatibility Layer (64-bit support). Click on that to install 64-bit wine. If you do not do this and just click on the "normal" wine, you get a 32-bit wine installed despite the fact that you are running Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit as an OS!

 

4. If you have a .wine directory already in your home directory, rename it to something else; I chose to rename it to: .wine-32bit . This is crucial also since wine "knows" this is a 32-bit wine and the Houdini installation step about to come will install 32-bit Houdini if you do not take this step.

 

5. Open a terminal window and execute: wine Houdini-5-Setup-nnnnn.exe . This will create a new .wine directory in your home directory and this will be suitable for using 64-bit Windows applications.

Follow the Houdini installation prompts and it will install a 64-bit Houdini engine for you to work with. I use SCID to run Houdini but Arena 3.5 works very well also.

Ubuntu 11.10

I found this script which did a parallel 32-bit + 64-bit install on Ubuntu 11.10, which got it working for me:

 http://www.jesseo.com/chess/64-bit-wine-ubuntu.sh