I need Cisco Packet Tracer for my course and work, but since I moved to Linux recently and the only official port is a .deb file and I run Fedora 42 which is incompatible with .deb files.
Through my research I did find a program called "Alien" that supposedly converts deb files to rpm (what fedora uses), I don't really feel comfortable playing around with something so… weird, and from my experience, converting executables can get funky so I'd rather avoid that if possible.
So what am I to do? I could run a virtual machine with Windows 11 on it but that has a lot of performance hits as I don't have the greatest laptop, so that doesn't sound like the greatest option for me. Well how about Bottles? a program that creates a small container that allows users to run (some) windows programs in Linux by downloading necessary DLLs and dependencies (and many more awesome technologies that are above my pay-grade), that could work, (and spoilers, it did).
Its important to note certain things about my machine before progressing because technology changes all the time and what works for me today may not work for anyone tomorrow.
- Date: 23 August 2025
- OS: Fedora 42 Workstation Edition (Gnome)
- Bottles (flatpak) 51.24
- Packet Tracer 8.2.2 (Windows Installer 64bit Signed)
- Kron4ek wine 10.13
- DXVK 2.7
- Virtualization Enabled
Install the bottles flatpak from flathub (https://flathub.org/apps/com.usebottles.bottles) or (if flatpak is installed in your distro) use the command:
flatpak install flathub com.usebottles.bottles
flatpak run com.usebottles.bottles
and after opening it follow the prompts to finish setting it up.
Download the installer for packet tracer (https://www.computernetworkingnotes.com/ccna-study-guide/download-packet-tracer-for-windows-and-linux.html).
*Using Packet Tracer 8.2.2 for this configuration.
With Bottles (51.24) installed and setup, click on the hamburger menu and select 'Preferences' and navigate to the 'Runners' tab.
Open and install Kron4ek (kron4ek-wine-10.13-amd64)
Under the 'DLL Components' section, 'dxvk-2.7' should be installed, everything else default.
Create a new application bottle using the Kron4ek 10.13 runner and the rest set to default.
Click "Run Executable" and select the packet tracer installer after a couple seconds the installer should start up like on windows.
Follow all the default install options, run it and sign in then it should be working.
You can now run packet tracer!
I find it a bit slower than native windows but much faster than having a whole windows vm!
I run the 'PacketTracer' program from here:
I also added it to my 'Library' tab so I can just upload it from there.
And that's how I setup and got Cisco Packet Tracer to run in a bottle and I hope this can help you out if you need to do something similar, because I find most guides for bottles out there currently pretty unclear.