Background My Windows PC has a 4th generation i7 chip and will not take Windows 11. I am not about to run an unpatched Windows of any version nor am I prepared to upgrade a perfectly usable PC just so I can use W11 so I will need to dump Windows before the end of life date in October 2025. I counted 40 programs that I use, two of which are games so do not really count. Of the 38, only a few were hardcore Windows packages where there was no existing equivalent or anything similar enough. Some of the main ones had paid-for licenses, for example VARA and SatPC32 - somehow those need to work on Linux! I decided I would keep the two PCs even after one no longer ran Windows. It may seem odd to have two identical Linux systems but I find it convenient to have one PC for each of my HF rigs - even though wsjt-x, for example has profiles and can support several rigs that may not be the case with each bit of software that I use, and there may be items specific to each rig. The PCs are almost identical, both with large-ish SSDs - the current Linux PC has one extra disk and the current Windows PC has a better graphics card and a GPIB card. So in preparation for getting rid of Windows I wanted to see that I could at least run the main Windows programs on the existing Linux box which runs Lubuntu 22.04 LTS. Running Windows programs on the existing Linux box I first tried VARA. I already had Wine installed so tried to run it there but it constantly fell over asking for some dll. I did not investigate this further because I came across an amazing guide ‘Vara Software TNC With Wine On Linux’ from Jay, NT0Y ( https://www.we8chz.org/?p=505 ) which uses Bottles. I had already come across Bottles when looking for a Mac solution in case I wanted to run some ex-Windows software there so this caught my eye. The guide is exact, I mean you follow the steps and it just works. I like that kind of guide. I installed Bottles following guidance in https://linuxcapable.com/how-to-install-bottles-on-ubuntu-linux/ and then followed the NT0Y guide and got VARA installed and running. I had a go at installing Winlink Express in Bottles but it would not run. Then I engaged my brain and installed it into the same Bottle as VARA and it then ran just fine, loading VARA when needed. After the rest of my brain decided to work I set the CAT rate correctly for there FT450D and CAT worked. After trying several stations and getting nowhere I tried a couple of days later and succeeded with an LA station. HF has been odd lately but at least it proved it all works. Next was VarAC. This was downloaded and installed, again in the same Vara Bottle. Setup was relatively easy although CAT did not…
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