Mastodawn

For any #Canadian Linux users out there who haven't done their #taxes and are wondering about whether they have to fire up a Windows VM just to run tax software again, here's an option. There's also potentially a nasty surprise in store for you if you do this in VirtualBox.

I've used a number of tax packages over the years, as they merged or got bought out by other companies. For the last 10, it's been #UFile, which is #Windows-only. [1] I usually fire up an old Windows VM in #VirtualBox, but if you're running a recent Linux kernel, you'll find VirtualBox is broken and won't run. Oops. Now you're in a panic because you need to do your taxes before the end of the month...

I haven't checked to see if you could use kvm/virt-manager or another #VM system.

The next obvious way, if you don't want to install Windows on bare metal, is to try using #Wine to run the software directly on #Linux. If you search the net, you'll find a little info about doing this. A lot is ancient, but still seems to apply - but the stuff I found was not detailed at all, just people saying "it works" or similar.

I was able to finish the process, but ran into some issues, a few of which were not obvious. I thought this might help others.

[1] Well, they have an online version you can use in a browser, but I don't know why anyone would feel comfortable putting such sensitive information into some random company's web page.

#TaxSoftware #IncomeTaxSoftware #CRA #CanadaRevenueAgency #Canada

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C.2d ago

(FFS, Mastodon, losing my long post before I can publish is really annoying)

I use Debian, and the version of wine they ship is old. I configured the winehq.org repository and installed `wine-stable` from there. Also install `winetricks`.

Create a clean directory and cd into it. Configure environment:

export WINEARCH=win64
export WINEPREFIX="${PWD}"/.wine_ufile

Create the wine environment and configure some stuff:

wineboot -u
winetricks -q urlmon

Run the installer with debugging turned up:

WINEDEBUG=fixme-all,loaddll wine "${PWD}"/ufile2025.exe

I then found I needed to install mono before Ufile would run correctly. Download:
https://dl.winehq.org/wine/wine-mono/11.0.0/wine-mono-11.0.0-x86.msi

Put it in the current dir. Then install it with a non-obvious method - run `wine uninstaller`. This brings up the Windows "Add/Remove Programs" utility. Click the install button and select the MSI file you downloaded. It'll install but give no indication of that. You can run the uninstaller again to confirm "Wine Mono Runtime" is now in the list of installed stuff.

At this point, Ufile will run, but there are some graphical UI glitches. The fix for this is to install missing fonts. I didn't try to figure out which ones it needed, instead just installing them all. But that turned out to be fiddly.

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C.2d ago

winetricks has an `allfonts` action. Unfortunately, it loads some of the files from #SourceForge, and SourceForge has gone user-hostile. You can't link directly to a download anymore; they serve a web page instead, so they can show ads, with a timestamp in a meta-refresh URL which your browser then downloads from. But the winetricks script doesn't know how to do that, so it downloads the web page and tries to extract the font, and fails.

It would be more elegant to script this, but I just did it by hand. Run `winetricks allfonts` and it will install some stuff and then stop with a warning about a hash value not matching, and ask if you want to continue. Say "Y", then it will error out. The hash mismatch is because the file is the webpage, not the font file.

In the downloaded file - the full path to it will be in the error message winetricks prints right before exiting - look for the `meta` tag with a refresh property. That will be a URL with a timestamp in it. Copy that URL, and download the file (browser, wget/curl, whatever). Then move the downloaded file on top of the web page it downloaded, which will be in the wine environment.

Run `winetricks allfonts` again and repeat the cycle above for each failure. I think it was about 5 files I had to do it for.

Once it finishes without an error, you're ready. Run Ufile:

wine .wine_ufile/drive_c/"Program Files (x86)"/"UFile 2025"/ufile.exe

Voila, it runs.

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C.2d ago

It mostly works. You can go through the interview/data entry step and fill it all out. Save your file.

The "review" stage does not fully work for me. I could look at the summary and warning messages, but if I try to scroll down through the tax return, it gives an error. That's okay. Once you've fixed any errors and are ready, the netfile steps worked fine for me.

Trying to look through the return from the "tax return" step also gives an error, but I was able to save it as PDF - it doesn't ask where to put the file, so it looks like it doesn't do anything, but it should create them, one for each person in the return, in the same directory as your save file. I was also able to bring up the print dialog, but didn't try printing from it. I just print from the PDF in Linux directly.

So, that's it.

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