Wine update?

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Currently running LM 21.1 with Wine 7.0.1. I am now getting an update to Wine 8.0.1. Do I need to update to this latest version or am I safe to stick with Wine 7.0.1? I originally installed Wine following the instructions on Wines webpage.

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I would check the link below out and the link to winehq.org that’s in it that announces the 8.0.1 release. Any of the bugs apply to you?

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Wine-8.0.1-Released

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bassmanzam

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DrBonzo wrote:

I would check the link below out and the link to winehq.org that’s in it that announces the 8.0.1 release. Any of the bugs apply to you?

If so, these bugs were probably in 7.0 as well.

WINE has been improving rapidly with each subsequent release for some time. Each new version is generally more compatible, quicker, and less buggy than previous versions. I would suggest setting a Timeshift snapshot, then letting it upgrade. Odds are that it will be better than the old version of WINE, but in the unlikely event that it is not, you can revert to the old version quite easily.

Another option is to use Lutris to manage your Windows programs used with WINE. With Lutris, you don’t need to have just one WINE version installed that all of your Windows programs must use… you can have as many WINE versions as you want at the same time, and you can switch between them at any time if one version fails to work as well as you would have hoped. Each program has its own profile entry where you can assign a different WINE version to each one if you wish.

Lutris has a little bit of a learning curve to it, and while its devs are trying to make it more usable by non-techie users, its many options can look intimidating (though you need not touch them most of the time). Even so, compared to trying to manage multiple WINE profiles (sometimes called “bottles”) manually, it’s quite a bit simpler, and it is in more active development than any other WINE frontend program.

If you only ever use one Windows program, whatever WINE version runs that the best is the only one you need, but when you start having multiple Windows programs you want to use, there will often be one or another WINE version or configuration that works the best with a given program. Lutris makes it as easy as it reasonably can be to set up multiple profiles, and this allows you to use WINE versions that may be specially customized for the exact program you are using without having to also use that for the other Windows programs for which it was not designed.

For a dead-simple way of running Windows programs in Linux, using the Steam client with Steam Play is as easy as it gets. The programs themselves do not need to be Steam downloads to do this, and it usually works very well with no fiddling around required. Lutris does not eliminate the fiddling around as much as it makes it as simple as it can reasonably be, which may still be too difficult for less technical users. Personally, I use both.

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/16GB & GTX1660ti, KDE Neon
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, KDE Neon

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bassmanzam, Rick Corbett, Cybertooth

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Ascari, I’ve thought of creating a snapshot then doing an update but not sure if it’s worth it since the only app I am using is currently running well.

I’ll need help with Wine for LMDE if I ever get to it.

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Hi DrB. thanks for the link. From what I can see these are just bugs and not any security updates. My one and only app running under Wine has been running like a champ. I guess if there are no security updates I’ll stick with what works!

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DrBonzo

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Just curious is Wine any good as I am currently running Office 2019 for macOS Monterey here and well its not as full featured as Outlook in windows, more often than not for Office applications including Outlook its easier to boot in to Windows Bootcamp.

Sort of read some where that Office 2019 didn’t run too well under Wine, I did try it a few years ago and it wasn’t that good locking up all the time and the odd crash, just wondering if they had ironed out the bugs.

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I don’t know how well it runs personally, as I have not tried it, but WineHQ lists it as “silver” with the most recent tests (which are a few Wine versions out of date).

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/16GB & GTX1660ti, KDE Neon
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, KDE Neon

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