WINE Windows Program Loader - for running Windows applications under Linux

Note: This guide was made in Fedora 14 and confirmed to work in Fedora 15. Other Linux distributions should be similar.

There is a common misconception that WINE is an emulator, it's not. It is a program loader that runs programs the same way Windows does for those times you still need to run Windows programs but don't want to dual boot. In my case it is mostly games. I recommend using the 32-bit version of wine, even under 64-bit linux, as I have found the 64-bit version of WINE to have glitches and bugs. After all, unless you are trying to run 64-bit Windows applications, you are just running a 32-bit emulator inside a 64-bit program loader. Why not just run the 32-bit program loader?

Installing WINE is a breeze. If you already have the 64-bit version or a broken WINE install, remove it first, then proceed.

Open a terminal and type in the following:

yum list wine

Yum will look up what versions of WINE are available and/or installed on your machine. Then type in:

sudo yum install wine.i686

The '.i686' is specifying the 32-bit version. On a 64-bit system the default is to install 64-bit WINE. Yum will automatically find all the 32-bit package dependencies just like with any other Linux program and install them too.

Next I always install winetricks which make WINE more compatible with programs. You can read more about it here. In order to use winetricks you will need a few more items:

sudo yum install wget cabextract unzip p7zip

Now we can install winetricks:

wget http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks

Now run winetricks and use it to download some packages. Vcrun2008 is needed to run steam. If you are not running steam, you can skip it. I would still download the the others as some programs may assume a specific font or need to display html content, which needs the gecko engine.

sh winetricks corefonts allfonts tahoma gecko vcrun2008

If you try to run something you now will find you likely have no sound! This is easily rectified by running the WINE configuration. By default WINE has no sound driver loaded. In Fedora running Gnome click Applications>Wine>Wine Configuration. Or you can type into a terminal:

winecfg

Click the Audio tab and it will give an error about no sound driver loaded into the registry. That's ok (it's just a first time dialog.) Make sure the PulseAudio Driver box is checked, click Apply and then test the sound by clicking the Test Sound button. If it gives an error try selecting Emulation in the Hardware Acceleration drop down box and try the Test Sound button again. Some users have found that sound will still work with most programs even if there is an error or no sound here, so don't fret it too badly unless your applications don't work. For instance my desktop plays the test sound and my laptop gives an error but both have working audio in WINE.

Removing WINE

If you need to remove 64-bit WINE to install 32-bit (or vise-verse) it is a little more involved. The following steps will wipe WINE and all of it's program data off your hard drive. BE SURE TO BACKUP ANY DATA FIRST!

sudo service wine stop sudo yum remove wine

At this point you would think WINE would be gone but if you look in your Applications menu it will still be there! Yum cannot remove the WINE files. First use the package manager (in Fedora it's under System>Administration>Add/Remove Software) to remove all WINE packages from your system. Hint: type “wine” into the search box.

After removing WINE using the package manager we can remove the hidden files WINE installs on your system. (Hint: in Linux hidden files and folders are named with a starting period “.”) Be very careful with the following commands, the -f switch stands for FORCE which does not prompt verification of deleting files.

rm -rf $HOME/.wine rm -f $HOME/.config/menus/applications-merged/wine* rm -rf $HOME/.local/share/applications/wine rm -f $HOME/.local/share/desktop-directories/wine* rm -f $HOME/.local/share/icons/????_*.{xpm,png} rm -f $HOME/.local/share/icons/*-x-wine-*.{xpm,png}

Time to do one final check to be sure all those WINE files are gone. Use YUM to check for any other installed WINE packages.

yum list wine*

If any are listed as installed then remove them. Check when YUM prompts to remove the packages. Be sure YUM is only going to remove WINE packages and nothing else that may be important.

sudo yum remove wine*

Now you should have a clean system with no trace of WINE.

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