Installing Wine

If you find you cannot use sudo, or if you get error messages referring to a CDROM repository, see Appendix 1 or Appendix 2.

Check installed architectures

Verify 64-bit architecture. The following command should respond with “amd64”.

dpkg --print-architecture

See if 32-bit architecture is already installed. The following command should respond with “i386”

dpkg --print-foreign-architectures

If it does not display “i386”, execute the following.

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386

Re-check with

dpkg --print-foreign-architectures

Download and add the WineHQ repository key

sudo mkdir -pm755 /etc/apt/keyrings  
sudo wget -O /etc/apt/keyrings/winehq-archive.key https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/winehq.key

Add the Wine repository

sudo wget -NP /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/debian/dists/bullseye/winehq-bullseye.sources

Update the package database

sudo apt update

Install Wine

The next command installs Wine Stable. To install Wine Development or Wine Staging, replace winehq-stable  by  winehq-devel or winehq-staging

After a major Wine upgrade (from Wine 6 to Wine 7, for example), Wine Stable may temporarily be unavailable, but Wine Development and Wine Staging can still be installed.

sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-stable

Verify the installation succeeded.

$ wine --version

Configure Wine

To bring up Wine’s configuration panel, open a Terminal window and execute winecfg. If installing mono or gecko is offered, accept the offer.

When prompted, set your preferred version of Windows. Windows 10 may be preferred for most applications.

wine winecfg

If you are creating custom Wine prefixes, this configuration must be repeated for each prefix.

Two simple tests

Just for fun, or to see Wine in action …

Display a simple clock

$ wine clock

How to install a Windows app

Wine is a Terminal application. Even after installing Wine, you will not find it listed with the desktop apps that came with your Linux distribution. Wine is invoked using Terminal commands.

As an example of using Wine, here is how to install WinPgm, a fictitious windows application. You can use the same procedure to install your own Windows apps by replacing the installer for WinPgm with your app’s installer.

The first step is to download the WinPgm installer and store it in ~/Downloads.

After doing that, execute winecfg (if you haven’t already).

wine winecfg

The command to install WinPgm must be issued from within the same directory as the installer, so execute

$ cd ~/Downloads

The next command starts the installation. Respond to the installer’s prompts just as you would in Windows.

wine WinPgm-installer.exe

When installation is complete, look for a WinPgm launcher on your desktop. There may also be an entry named Wine in your distribution’s Applications. Launchers may require you to confirm execution of your app is safe.

More about installing Windows apps

• The installer does not need to be in ~/Downloads. Any directory is fine, as long as you issue the wine command from that directory.
• If the installer is a Windows .msi file instead of an .exe, use the wine msiexec /i command instead of wine.
• Not all Windows apps can run under Wine. Consulting the Wine Application Database may be helpful.
• For more information, search for online tutorials on using Wine. One that includes basic information plus some advanced techniques is Installing Windows Apps on Linux