I built a machine with linuxmint17/Cinnamon and installed TWS per the instructions at IB's website. Went to set up the TWS API to connect to third party packages and it's grayed out, message says "API disabled" Is this for real? I don't want to run everything with Wine, my third party packages are linux native.
You seem to be a power user/ pro. Would be funny if it's something as simple as this. Maybe API is closed by default. Check your settings. https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/software/api/apiguide/api/trader_workstation_api_settings.htm
On the Interactive Brokers download page there are two packages for download. One is the daily package of the most recent build, and the other is the 'stable' package that has been tested and used for some time. The 'daily' package has the API closed by default. So, download the 'stable' package and try again. I had the same problem and was really pissed that the stable and daily packages were not configured the same way.... But hey, its their code and they can release it the way they want. Good luck.