Running Metatrader 4 On The Linux Platform

There is a lot of interest out there in running Metatrader 4 on the Linux platform, however until Metaquotes does a native Linux version, the only option if you want to do it is to run it under WINE emulation.

What follows is a step by step guide to installing MT4 in Linux. I have used the excellent Ubuntu distribution for this task though you may adapt it your distribution easily. This also works on Gentoo for example.

Anyway...

1) Install WINE if it's not already installed.

sudo apt-get install wine

Once WINE is installed you need to configure it. This is pretty easy. As a normal user (Not Root!) run winecfg from a terminal and it should set itself up. If you want to do any more configuration or tweaking, have a look around the tabs, but for now I suggest keeping it as default.

2) From a valid windows installation, copy over all the fonts into your wine installation. It also assumes you told Ubuntu to mount your windows partition in /windows.

cp /windows/WINDOWS/Fonts/* ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/fonts/

3) Copy 2 needed DLL files from your valid windows installation.

cp /windows/WINDOWS/system32/mfc4* ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32/

4) Download mt4setup from your favourite broker, or one of the broker suggestions on rebatefx.com.

5) Install MT4.

wine mt4setup.exe

6) You should now have an icon on your Desktop and a working install of MT4 under Linux! Double click it to launch. Don't be alarmed if it takes a while to run first time.

There are some small problems at the time of writing though. This is to be expected when emulating software written for another platform. These problems may include (They don't happen to everyone), not being able to place limit or stop orders due to an invalid parameter error, not being able to change the width of trend lines, and indicator lines, and in some cases the Meta Editor will refuse to run without a copy of Internet Explorer 6 or better being installed also. While it's no guarantee to fix the problem it's useful to have Internet Explorer installed for those web pages that insist on you using it or for web page development.

To install ie6 you can use the excellent ies4linux package. The following commands should get ie6 installed on your linux machine.

sudo apt-get install cabextract
wget http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/downloads/ies4linux-latest.tar.gz
tar xzvf ies4linux-latest.tar.gz
cd ies4linux-*
./ies4linux

So there you have it. Metatrader 4 working in Linux. Well, mostly ;)

It's not perfect, but it's a workable solution if you trade by entering at market prices. It's certainly good for news trading when an unexpected virus check or annoying windows update popup steals the focus from the trading terminal losing you precious seconds which may mean all the difference between making a lot of money or just a little. Even worse, losing your chart setups or even your whole account to a virus or keylogger attack.

Good luck and Happy Trading!