Wine for Linux Mint

Topic

New Reply

Does anybody have experience installing wine on Linux Mint? The reason I ask is that most forums at Linux Mint suggest not installing using Software Manager but follow the directions from wine’s webpage.

 

Reply | Quote

Replies

My guess would be that is about obtaining a newer version. In Mint 20.3, I see the Software Manager offers Wine version 5. Adding the official repository from the Wine website will let you get the latest stable branch (version 7). Though I noticed that version is also available via Flatpak.

Reply | Quote

The directions for installing Wine that are on the Wine website didn’t work for me. Got a bunch of error messages and I gave up and installed from Software Manager, which went flawlessly. The drawback is what @SB9K said above: you get version 5 (5.4 IIRC) which is far from the latest version (7.n IIRC).

But I then installed Play on Linux (POL), also from the Software Manager, and that allows you to install any of a multitude of Wine versions. POL also has a fairly large catalog of programs that are easily installed and can also install programs that are not in their catalog. That’s about as far as I’ve gotten with Wine. It has potential but my feeling so far is that it’s going to take some technical knowledge combined with luck and ‘art’ to coax it into doing what you want.

I’ll be interested to hear what works and what doesn’t work for you.

1 user thanked author for this post.

bassmanzam

Reply | Quote

The usual go-to for handling WINE and such these days is Lutris. That is where the majority of development is taking place, and the devs work with the devs of other projects so that all the goodies are taken care of within Lutris itself, so you need not worry about them.

I use WINE under Lutris for many things. For gaming, I have played World of Warcraft, GTA 5, Witcher 3, Sims 4, and bunches of others on WINE, and they run very well. I’ve also run a number of Windows utilities and benchmarks (Furmark, Cinebench) under WINE. I used to use a Windows application to find and compare similar image files until I discovered FSLint and then Czkawka. I used Windows-based firmware editors in Linux, since the firmwares are at that point data files. I am sure there are more that I don’t remember!

For most Steam titles, I just use the Steam client’s built-in fork of WINE, called Proton. You can use Steam to run non-steam titles if you wish, and it’s certainly the most “no muss, no fuss” way of using Proton. Proton is every bit as capable as WINE, and includes extra libraries like DXVK that would otherwise have to be handled separately (which Lutris does for you). Many or most of the leaps and bounds by which gaming with Windows titles on Linux has improved lately are a function of Steam’s work on WINE (as a precursor to Proton) and Proton itself. All of the work that goes into improving Proton goes into WINE also.

If you do go with Lutris, it does not really matter that much which WINE version you install, as you won’t be in any way limited to that one. The main reason is to pull in the WINE dependencies so that Lutris can manage WINE itself. You can go to the “runners” section of the WINE config and see all of the WINE versions that are available, and usually I will just select the newest “GE” version (GE stands for Glorious Eggroll, the dev who has created the WINE or Proton versions that are generally the most compatible and fastest-running). For each game or program you have set up in Lutris, you can use a dropdown to run it with any WINE version you have on Lutris, or the system version if you wish too.

Lutris is under heavy development and has changed a lot in a short time. They’re trying to make it simpler to use while still permitting all of the power-user stuff. It now has a switch to toggle between the default mode and the advanced mode (“advanced” being what it used to be all the time before). It is not as simple as using Steam with Proton, but it allows a much greater granularity of settings, if you know what they mean (and if not, you can simply leave them in their defaults).

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/16GB & GTX1660ti, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed

3 users thanked author for this post.

bassmanzam, DrBonzo, Cybertooth

Reply | Quote

I guess I will play around with these different ways to run Windows programs. I only need it for 1 program which is Quicken 2000. Yes I know it’s over 20 years old but it “fits like a glove”. I probably don’t need the latest and greatest version of wine. So maybe I am better off with an older version?

Reply | Quote

Go here:

https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/text-editor-for-pdfs/page/4/#post-2513048

and scroll down to the first post by @cybertooth which describes an installation of a windows program in Wine. A slight variation on that is in my post just a bit farther down. Alternatively you might find Quicken 2000 – or some other Quicken version – in the Catalog of installable programs in Play on Linux

2 users thanked author for this post.

bassmanzam, Cybertooth

Reply | Quote

There is another thing that you can do in order to run Quicken 2000 in Linux Mint: If you have a retail copy of Window (that is, one whose Windows license isn’t tied to the computer it is installed on), then you can install Oracle Virtual Box for Linux Mint, then install Windows in a virtual machine. Once you get that all done, you can run Windows in a virtual machine on your Linux Mint computer. You can then install Quicken 2000 in the Windows virtual machine.

I run Windows 8.1 in a virtual machine on my Linux Mint computer. I’ve done it that way for a very long time. This allows me to run the handful of Windows programs that I can’t find replacements for in Linux, such as Microsoft Office.

It is likely that you can install and activate Windows 10 in a virtual machine on your Linux Mint computer. Microsoft has been extremely generous in allowing people to activate Windows 10 without having to purchase a license for it. In my opinion, if you do a straightforward install of Windows 10 (i.e. with no “hacking” of any sort), and Microsoft lets you activate it without any problem, then they have given you their permission to use it. (Not everyone would agree with me on that question.)

As for running Quicken 2000 under Windows 10, that may be a problem. However, there is something that used to be called “compatibility mode”: Windows 10 will let you install old software using the rules of an older version of Windows. You can also set the properties on the icon so that it runs the software using the rules of an older version of Windows. I would probably go with Windows XP rules in your case, since the Windows version you would be using wouldn’t be that much newer than the software you want to install and run; and XP isn’t as far removed from Windows 10 as, say, Windows 3.1 would be.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 8.1 running in a VM

1 user thanked author for this post.

bassmanzam

Reply | Quote

The directions on the WineHQ page worked for me when I was using Linux Mint. I used it with Lutris to play games and things worked out well.

2 users thanked author for this post.

bassmanzam, DrBonzo

Reply | Quote

So I still haven’t installed wine on my LM 21. I am getting confused about whether to install 32 bit wine or 64 bit wine. I am assuming that Quicken 2000 is 32 bit (maybe even 16 bit?) So does that mean I need 32 bit wine? Or can I just install 64 bit wine and set WINEARCH=wine32 then run wine to run 32 bit windows app?

Thanks to all for your insights. I’m a little slow on implementing.

Reply | Quote

Just install what’s on this page:

https://wiki.winehq.org/Ubuntu

You’ll be doing it from a terminal, so you’ll want to do the first thing mentioned, i.e., enable 32 bit architecture (the command is given in the above link).

If you install from the Software Manager, you’ll find that 32 bit gets enabled during the installation. I’m not totally sure but I think most programs will run in 32 bit mode. I don’t know what Quicken 2000 requires. If you need 64 bit you can install it from Play on Linux, and from what @Ascaris has said, probably from Lutris, as well.

1 user thanked author for this post.

bassmanzam

Reply | Quote

SUCCESS! I am happy to report I have successfully installed Wine on my LMC 21.1.  I basically followed the steps here from DrBonzo

https://wiki.winehq.org/Ubuntu

It went quite easily without any issues or error messages. After it installed I tested by downloading notepad++. I just right clicked and select open with Wine and it just worked. Then I tried to install Quicken 2000 and it installed without issues.

I want to thank everyone for their suggestions and advice.

2 users thanked author for this post.

Cybertooth, DrBonzo

Reply | Quote