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How to Install wine on Ubuntu - The proper way

Updated - May 14, 2018 by Arnab Satapathi

After switching to Ubuntu, many of you need to run your favorite windows application. Well, for that Wine is here.

To properly install wine on Ubuntu, you have to follow the steps below.

  1. Add i386 architecture support.
  2. Add extra repository if needed.
  3. Update the software repository.
  4. Find out which wine version you need.
  5. Install wine Ubuntu with apt.
  6. Configure and apply fixes to wine, if necessary.

After installing wine, you can install and run your windows apps through it, let's get started.

Contents

  • Add 32 bit architecture support
  • Add extra Wine repository
  • Update the apt software repository
  • Which Wine version should you use?
  • Install wine Ubuntu with apt
  • Configure and apply fixes to Wine Ubuntu
  • Extra - Uninstall Wine
    • Conclusion

Add 32 bit architecture support

Most windows apps depends on many many 32 bit linux shared libraries to run. In fact you can not run most windows apps on a 64 bit system without them.

Open up your favorite terminal emulator like gnome terminal and the type the commands listed below one by one.

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386

The command will ask for your password, type it and hit Enter. Now you can verify if the command worked properly or not.

sudo dpkg --print-foreign-architectures

The above command should return i386 , ant that's all you need to do in this step. add i386 architecture on ubuntu for wine

Add extra Wine repository

Ubuntu's default repository doesn't have the latest wine builds, so if you need a very recent wine release, then you've to use another repository.

There's three main wine repository from WineHQ, Stable branch, Development branch and Staging branch .

You need to run the commands below one by one to add the WineHQ repository.

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wget -nc https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/Release.key
sudo apt-key add Release.key
sudo apt-add-repository https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/

Update the apt software repository

Next you need to update the repository to make the changes available, it's fairly easy.

sudo apt-get update

Here's a detailed apt tutorial, have a look for more advanced options.

Which Wine version should you use?

Lightweight windows apps runs flawlessly on any linux Wine version. But large software or games runs much better on a specific version of Wine.

So, that's a bit complicated, you've to find out the best wine version for your software. Searching the web could help you, here's the official wine apps database.

You can install and use multiple versions of wine at the same time. But be careful about dependency and conflict betwen multiple versions.

The easiest way to manage multiple wine installations is by using different WINEPREFIX for each version. That's another big topic, I'll discus about it later.

Install wine Ubuntu with apt

You can use either Ubuntu software center or the command line to install wine, here we'll use the commands.

To install full wine use the apt command, it will install wine and all it's 32 bit dependencies.

sudo apt-get install wine1.8

However, if you need a minimal install, use the --no-install-recommends flag with apt.

sudo apt-get --no-install-recommends install wine1.8

To install wine 2.x series from the WineHQ development branch repository, use the command below.

sudo apt-get install wine-devel

Note that wine devel branch is installed under /opt directory and doesn't create any application menu.

Configure and apply fixes to Wine Ubuntu

You need to install some windows related libraries and frameworks to use wine properly.

So, run winecfg or /opt/wine-devel/bin/winecfg  depending on your wine version.

You'll be asked to installed .NET framework, Wine Gecko or Mono framework. Next they'll be installed automatically from internet.

install wine ubuntu with run time dependencies

You may also need to choose proper windows version, like windows 7 in the wine configuration editor.wine select windows version

Extra - Uninstall Wine

If you think wine is no more useful, and want to uninstall, then it's here.

Again We'll use the apt command to uninstall wine from Ubuntu. Simply run the command below.

sudo apt-get purge wine wine-*
sudo apt-get autoremove --purge

Finally remove the directory containing all run time data generated by wine.

rm -rf ~/.wine/
rm -rf ~/.local/share/applications/wine*

It should be a pretty clean uninstall, removed almost everything related to wine.

Conclusion

Now most application has their Linux alternative, so it's better to run the native linux alternative than through wine.

However for games and some application like LTspice, we have no choice, so in that case wine is necessary.

So, that's all how to install install wine in Ubuntu 16.04, 17.04, 17.10 and later versions, hope that's simple enough to understand. If you have any question or suggestion, just drop a comment.

Filed Under: linux basics, Quick tip Tagged With: install wine on ubuntu, install wine ubuntu, ubuntu install wine, wine

Your comments
  1. Nathan says

    June 6, 2020

    Good article, you may want to update the section about the keys, as I ran into an error:
    https://forum.winehq.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=31621

    Also, I don't know if "wine1.8" is too specific, you could do:
    sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-stable
    That's according to:
    https://wiki.winehq.org/Ubuntu

    Thanks for the article

    Reply
  2. vankata says

    July 19, 2019

    Reading package lists... Done
    Building dependency tree
    Reading state information... Done
    Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
    requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
    distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
    or been moved out of Incoming.
    The following information may help to resolve the situation:

    The following packages have unmet dependencies:
    winehq-staging : Depends: wine-staging (= 4.12.1~cosmic)
    E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages
    PLZ HELP!!

    Reply
  3. Towhid says

    February 18, 2019

    When I ENTER THIS"sudo apt-get install wine1.8".I get this error:"Reading package lists... Done
    Building dependency tree
    Reading state information... Done
    Note, selecting 'wine1.6' instead of 'wine1.8'
    Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
    requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
    distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
    or been moved out of Incoming.
    The following information may help to resolve the situation:

    The following packages have unmet dependencies:
    wine1.6 : Depends: wine-stable
    E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
    "

    Reply
    • Arnab Satapathi says

      February 18, 2019

      May be Wine 1.8 not available on the Ubuntu repository.

      Reply
  4. Martin says

    November 29, 2018

    Please help!
    Reading package lists... Done
    Building dependency tree
    Reading state information... Done
    Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
    requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
    distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
    or been moved out of Incoming.
    The following information may help to resolve the situation:

    The following packages have unmet dependencies:
    wine-devel : Depends: wine-devel-amd64 (= 3.21~cosmic) but it is not going to be installed
    Depends: wine-devel-i386 (= 3.21~cosmic)
    E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

    Reply
    • Arnab Satapathi says

      December 1, 2018

      Are you sure that the i386 architecture is added to your system?
      Try these commands below.
      sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
      sudo apt update
      sudo apt-get install -f

      Reply
  5. David says

    May 14, 2018

    Great article, however you have one mistake in the commands. You have:

    sudo apt-get install install wine-devel

    and it should be:

    sudo apt-get install wine-devel

    Reply
    • Arnab Satapathi says

      May 14, 2018

      Yeah, a small typo, fixed.
      Thanks!

      Reply
  6. Charles M. says

    March 14, 2018

    Thank you. Ready to make the Linux leap. Getting as much info as possible beforehand.
    Great prep tutorial.

    Reply
  7. Scott says

    March 11, 2018

    It's always good to see wine write-ups however they always seem to stop at the installation stage which although necessary is not terribly helpful. What would be really helpful to me and I assume other new/prospective users is an in detail walk through of how to get a program to work when it does not work out-of-the-box.

    Reply
    • Arnab Satapathi says

      March 11, 2018

      Agreed, I should have added a troubleshooting section.

      But the problem is it will be extremely long, and different for different applications.

      Reply
  8. Lesego says

    March 7, 2018

    Following this installation steps I get the error below, the

    /usr/bin/wine: error while loading shared libraries: libwine.so.1: cannot create shared object descriptor: Operation not permitted

    I libwine.so.1 available - ldd $(which wine):

    linux-gate.so.1 => (0x2aa5c000)
    libwine.so.1 => /usr/bin/../lib/i386-linux-gnu/libwine.so.1 (0x2a8a1000)
    libpthread.so.0 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0 (0x2a859000)
    libdl.so.2 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libdl.so.2 (0x2a854000)
    libc.so.6 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0x2a69e000)
    /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x2aa5e000)

    Please help

    Thanks

    Reply
    • Arnab Satapathi says

      March 7, 2018

      May be a 32bit and 64bit shared library mismatch problem.
      Try to run Wine like below.
      LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/lib32 wine

      Reply
  9. Emils says

    January 19, 2018

    Thank you

    Reply
  10. Александр says

    September 6, 2017

    Very good tutoriel wine ubuntu, thank you,

    Reply

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