Option C (running with nextnanomat)

Instead of using the nextnanomat GUI on Linux, we strongly recommend to use nextnanopy since it runs Linux-native executables and also provides methods to modify input files and interact with simulation output.

Option A (running from Terminal)

Option B (running with nextnanopy)

Tux penguin

The nextnanomat GUI is programmed in C# and uses the WinForms Framework for its frontend, it is developed on and optimized for Windows. On Linux, you have to either install Wine or Mono to be able to execute nextnanomat. Still, many things might not work as expected.

For those who nonetheless wish to run the nextnanomat GUI on Linux, we recommended to use Wine as described below.

Option C1: Wine

The following instructions are for Ubuntu version 20.10 (Groovy Gorilla). Commands for the Wine installation on various distributions are given in Wine Installation. A detailed description on how to install WineHQ on Ubuntu can be found here: Install WineHQ package on Ubuntu

The following commands are needed to install WineHQ on Ubuntu 20.10 (Groovy Gorilla). For older versions of Ubuntu, please see here: Wine Installation.

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
wget -nc https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/winehq.key
sudo apt-key add winehq.key
sudo apt-add-repository 'deb https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/ groovy main'
sudo apt update
sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-stable

Download the portable version of nextnanomat for Windows from this site or any other portable package containing nextnanomat from Downloads.

  • Unzip this file.

  • Open a Terminal window and change to the directory where the nextnanomat.exe is located.

  • Type: wine nextnanomat.exe

  • There will be a pop-up message that a Mono package is missing which can be installed automatically. Click ‘’Install’’.

  • There will be a pop-up message that a Gecko package is missing which can be installed automatically. Click ‘’Install’’.

  • If nextnanomat does not work, close the terminal and open a new terminal and then try again.

The first thing you have to do when nextnanomat opens is to activate your license, you can follow the documentation for License Activation. In case this process fails, you can activate your license via command line. Afterwards, you need to update the paths within nextnanomat Tools ==> Options ==> Licenses.

Known problems are:

  • On very old CPUs, the 64-bit version of nextnano++ does not work. In this case, please select the 32-bit version of nextnano++. Tools => Options => Simulation => nextnano++ executable => <path>\nextnano++\bin 32bit\nextnano++_Microsoft_32bit_serial.exe

  • Somehow the settings are not saved, i.e. you need to re-enter custom paths or settings at each program start.

  • The program crashes.

  • Missing (monospaced) fonts for the Input tab. One can choose a different font for the editor: Tools => Options => Preferences => Editor => Editor font

The following instructions are for Ubuntu version 18.04 LTS.

Run commands in a terminal:

$ sudo apt update      # Update system
$ sudo apt install wine-stable winetricks # Install required packages (without "-stable" in versions bevore Ubuntu 16.10)
$ winetricks dotnet45  # Install .net support, follow along on-screen instructions, ignore warnings
$ winetricks corefonts # Install basic fonts of Windows

Finally run winecfg -> Select “Windows 8, 10 or 11” in Applications -> Windows Version and reboot afterwards.

To start the application, use wine /<your_directory_name>/nextnanomat.exe

Example: ‘’wine ‘/home/ubuntu/nextnanoTestversion/nextnanomat.exe’ ‘’

Option C2: Mono

Attention

This documentation is for old Ubuntu and Mono versions. It is not clear if it works with their latest versions!

$ mono nextnanomat.exe &

On some Linux distributions (e.g. Ubuntu), Mono is already preinstalled.

The current Mono version uses .NET Framework version 4.0 by default. The nextnanomat GUI, however, still requires the installation of the .NET Framework version 2.0. Therefore the following error occurs:

The assembly mscorlib.dll was not found or could not be loaded.
It should have been installed in the `/usr/lib/mono/2.0/mscorlib.dll' directory.

The following solution works:

$ sudo apt-get install libmono-corlib2.0-cil
$ sudo apt-get install libmono-winforms2.0-cil
$ sudo apt-get install mono-complete

All nextnanomat features seem to work on Linux Ubuntu. However, what does not work satisfactorily is the coloring of the 2D plots. They look too bright, so one can hardly recognize the results. A quick fix is to activate “Show grid”. Then the figure looks better.

If you have any feedback on these instructions, please let us know, then we can keep our documentation up to date.

Last update: 08/01/2025