Linux for Starters: Your Guide to Linux – Wine – Part 21

Last Updated on May 22, 2022

This series offers a gentle introduction to Linux for newcomers.

Part 20 of this series explored VirtualBox, virtualisation software that lets you run operating systems (including Windows) as a guest operating system. With VirtualBox you can therefore run Windows software on a Linux machine. There is another, and very different way, of running native Windows software. It’s called Wine.

Wine (originally an acronym for “Wine Is Not an Emulator”) is a free and open-source compatibility layer that aims to allow computer programs developed for Microsoft Windows to run on Unix-like operating systems including Linux.

The goal of Wine is to implement the Windows APIs fully or partially that are required by programs that the users of Wine wish to run on top of a Unix-like system. This is exceptionally difficult. The software has been in development for 28 years.

Wine lets you run many thousands of Windows programs with varying degrees of success. Software that runs well include Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, and many games such as World of Warcraft, StarCraft, and Team Fortress 2.

If you install Wine from the official Ubuntu repositories you’ll get an old version of Wine. Instead, follow these steps:

We need to enable 32 bit architecture as we’re running 64 bit Ubuntu.

$ sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386

Download and add the repository key with the commands:

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

Next, we need to add the project’s repository.

$ sudo add-apt-repository 'deb https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/ hirsute main'

Press ENTER to continue.

Now update our system with the command:

$ sudo apt update

We’ll install the stable branch of Wine with the command:

$ sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-stable

There’s also a development branch and a staging branch, but we recommend you start with the stable branch.

Page 2 – Install and run Windows software

Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Install Wine
Page 2 – Install and run Windows software

All articles in this series: