Downloading Dreamspark Microsoft Windows on Ubuntu

Dreamspark is Microsoft’s name for providing discounts to educational and research institutions, like schools and universities. At my institution (and I don’t know how many others), we have access to Windows, Word, etc… through onthehub.com. As a big open-source fan, I usually run Ubuntu on my laptop and desktop, but occasionally need to use Windows-only applications for work. My usual solution to this is to use VMWare or Virtualbox to run Windows without having the mess of dual-booting.

Unfortunately for me, onthehub uses a “Secure Download Manager” (SDM) to download the ISO needed to install Windows. And that SDM will only run on Windows or Mac. Now, I could just hvae gone to a Windows-using colleague and have them download it for me, but, well, I’m stubborn. In the hopes of helping someone else (or just me) out, here’s what you have to do to download Windows Dreamspark from onthehub.

This only works if you are already able and authorised to download Windows from such a service. It doesn’t get you a pirate or illegally-shared copy of Windows, it only allows you to run the service’s download-management software on Ubuntu.

1) ‘Buy’ the software you want from the store. You should end up at a page entitled “Get Your Software in 4 Easy Steps” (heh heh) that looks a bit like this:

You’ll notice that if you click on Download SDM, you’ll download a .pkg file. This is intended for mac, and is no use to you.

I used to have a complicated method here, using User-Agent Switcher in Firefox to trick the site into thinking you’re on a windows platform.Thanks to JO, who found a much simpler way to perform this step.What you need to do is just change the link — mine is
http://e5.onthehub.com/Static/Installers/SDM.pkg to http://e5.onthehub.com/Static/Installers/SDM_EN.msi If your link is different, just change the last part.

Now we can use  WINE to allow us to run this Window-only file. WINE is a software package that allows most many some windows applications to run on Linux. Get it through

apt-get install wine
on Ubuntu

But, we want to use IE6 as our browser in WINE — the SDM just works with this and not with IE9. So, also get the winetricks package
apt-get install winetricks

Then, setup wine.

export WINEARCH=win32
export WINEPREFIX=~/.wine32
winetricks ie6


Now, install the SDM.

cd directory-where-you-saved-SDM.msi
wine msiexec /i SDM.msi


Click through the installer. I suggest changing the install directory to C:\SDM\ or something similar

Now you need to get the .sdx file from onthehub.com (the second download link you’re given). Save it. The file is named something like 100001234.sdx.

Now, we put it all together with

wine ~/.wine32/drive_c/SDM/e-academy\ Inc/SecureDownloadManager/SecureDownloadManager.exe 100001234.sdx

Remember to change the name of the sdx file and the path to the executable, if necessary.

The SDM should then “just work” and download your .iso. Congratulations!

Updated February 27th 2013 with corrections, thanks to Benjamin
Updated June 21th 2013 with a small correction, merci à
deguipi, and thanks to Francesco
Updated December 8th 2013 with a better method to get the SDM, thanks to JO.