Wine (originally an acronym for “Wine Is Not an Emulator”) is an execution layer that allows applications developed for Windows to run on Linux, macOS, & BSD. So you come from Windows and you need an application that is not available for Linux, Wine is for you.
Wine translates Windows API calls into POSIX calls on the fly, which helps to improve performance compared to Virtualbox or an emulator. But, remember that it always accomplishes its task, and depending on the program, it might not work as expected.
You can also use wine to install windows games on Linux. You may not have the same performance as windows, but it works.
So, this post is about how to install Wine on Linux. We will cover the installation steps for Ubuntu, Debian, Linux Mint, Fedora, and OpenSUSE.
Getting Wine on Linux
Wine is a very popular and veteran application, so it is available for most Linux distributions. However, in some cases, it requires a previous step which is the enabling of 32-bit processor architecture.
1. Install Wine on Ubuntu / Debian/Linux Mint
First, enable the i386 architecture, then refresh the APT cache and then install Wine using the APT install command on Ubuntu, Debian, Linux Mint, and other Debian-based Linux Distros as shown below.
So, open a terminal and run.
sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
Once it is over, refresh APT.
sudo apt update
And now install wine with this command.
sudo apt install --install-recommends wine64 wine32
The program requires many rooms so it will take a while.
2. Install Wine on Fedora
The Wine development team provides a repository for various versions of Fedora. This repository allows for the installation of development versions of Wine, although this is not recommended.
If you are using Fedora 32, run the following command
sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/fedora/32/winehq.repo
For Fedora 31:
sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/fedora/31/winehq.repo
Finally, install Wine on your Fedora system using the command given below.
sudo dnf install winehq-stable
And by the end, Wine will be settled and ready for work.
3. Install Wine on OpenSUSE
In the case of OpenSUSE, Wine is in the “Emulators” repository for this distribution. So you have to add it first and then install it.
So, to add the repository:
sudo zypper addrepo https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Emulators:Wine/openSUSE_Leap_15.1/Emulators:Wine.repo
Then, refresh the OpenSUSE package configuration with the following command:
zypper refresh
And finally, installs Wine on Opesuse using the command given below.
zypper install wine
Using Wine on Linux
You can check the wine version with the following command,
wine --version
It is also easy to use WIne. Just pass an EXE file as a parameter to run your Windows application as shown below.
wine [exe-file-path]
Remember, you may not always get the results you want.
Conclusion
Windows applications that are compatible with Linux are a dream that many people have. However, for whatever reason, this cannot be and then some problems arise. In this sense, installing Wine on Linux can help to run Windows applications with quite good results in some cases.
You can read the below article which shows how to install a Windows application on Linux using wine.
I also recommend you to read our article on PlayonLinux which is a fully graphical interface to use Wine.
Official Site – https://www.winehq.org/