Garmin Aviation Database Manager on Linux

readme.md

Garmin Aviation Database Manager on Linux

The Garmin Aviation Database Manager is an application for updating Databases on Garmin Aviation devices however it doesn't have any linux binaries, meaning it can only be ran on Windows or Mac.

I got it working and I saw success using Bazzite, which is a Atomic Fedora distro. Your results may vary depending on the linux distro.

• Garmin Aviation Database Manager on Linux
  • Prep
  • Installation (Via Lutris)
    • Installing The Application
    • Symlink Your SDCard
    • Run The Application

Prep

1. Download the Garmin Aviation Database Manager installer forwindows from the Garmin Website. Save this somewhere on your system.
2. Ensure the SD Card you want to use is already properly formatted (FAT32 and small capacity (More Information)

Installation (Via Lutris)

I did this using Lutris for easy installation of the application, so I can going to use those steps here using Lutris. Though you can probably just install via Wine natively.

Installing The Application

1. Install/Launch Lutris
2. Click "Add Game"
3. Select "install a Windows game from an executable"
4. Game name enter: "Garmin Aviation Database Manager" (Or whatever)
5. Keep installer preset as "Windows 10 64-bit", Click "Install".
6. Click "Install" to the right of setup file.
7. For Select installation directory, leave this default but keep note of it. This is where its going to install. Click "Continue".
8. Here for "Select the setup file", navigate to the installer exe you downloaded earlier, then click "Install".

Symlink Your SDCard

We need to setup a link for Wine to "mount" the SDCard. Mount your SD Card and find its mount point pathing, for me it was /run/media/rico/A48B-C253. You can see your mounted drives and mount points via command lsblk or df -h.

Tip: You can use df -h -t vfat to check for filesystems that are properly formatted for Garmin.

You'll want to make the symlink with command

ln -s /run/media/rico/A48B-C253 ~/.wine/dosdevices/e:

You can also do this in winecfg. The last thing to do is to setup the drive as type "Floppy Disk" (Aka, a removable drive). Open Wine Configuration (or winecfg) , go to the drives tab, select your custom SD Card mount, click "advanced" then change type to "Floppy Disk".

Run The Application

If everything worked out right, you should be able to run the application, login and write databases to SD Cards.