How to Install Wine 1.8 on Ubuntu 15.x / Centos 7

Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator)) is a free and open source compatibility layer software application for the implementation of Windows based applications to run on Linux. Different applications have their own dependencies to run on any operating system. Windows programs won’t run on Linux and Linux programs won’t run on the Windows applications because both are the different operating operating systems developed in their own languages. So, in order to run Windows based applications on UNIX like operating system we need an intermediate application called WINE to be installed on Linux. Using WINE whenever a Windows based program tries to perform a function that Linux doesn’t normally understand, it will translate that program’s instruction into one supported by the system.

There are multiple features of using WINE like on the thin clients by simply installing Wine on a Linux server and access from any X Windows terminal by make existing Windows applications available on the Web by using VNC and its Java client.

1) Prerequisites

To install the latest version of Wine 1.8 on your Ubuntu 15 and CentOS 7 operating system, you need to complete the basic OS requirements before moving to the installation setup.

First of all open the command line terminal from the the drop down ‘Applications’ from your Ubuntu 15 or CentOS 7 desktop menu and run the commands below using root privileges to update your operating system with base system and security update.

On Ubuntu:

#apt-get update

On CentOS:

#yum install update

2) Download Wine 1.8 Source

You can download latest package 1.8 version of Wine to download.

You can directly download it on your system using the ‘wget’ command by copying the source link address by using the command below that would be same for both Ubuntu and CentOS systems.

# wget http://dl.winehq.org/wine/source/1.8/wine-1.8.tar.bz2

3) Extract the Archive

Change your directory to the extracted folder of Wine and then configure the source package by running the below command.

# tar -xvjf wine-1.8.tar.bz2

4) Compiling Wine 1.8

You need to enable 32 bit architecture in your 64 bit operating system for installing 32 Bit supporting packages. So, run the below commands as per your requirements.

For 32 Bit:

# ./configure

For 64 Bit:

# ./configure –enable-win64

You might get few warnings about some missing libraries that you can install on your Desktop system upon requirements and then proceed to with the compilation process by using the below command in your system.

# make

The compilation process would take some time to complete its compilation process. Once the compilation completes the finally run this command to install Wine on your Ubuntu or CentOS 7 system.

# make install

5) Installing Wine 1.8 Through PPA

You have the option to install the latest version of Wine 1.8 from the Official PPA of Ubuntu by using the following below commands on Ubuntu 15.

Enable 32 Bit Architecture

To enable 32 Bit software architecture system run the below command.

#dpkg –add-architecture i386

After adding teh Wine PPA repository Update your system packages by using the below commands.

#apt-get update

# add-apt-repository ppa:wine/wine-builds

More info: https://launchpad.net/~wine/+archive/ubuntu/wine-builds
Press [ENTER] to continue or ctrl-c to cancel adding it

gpg: keyring `/tmp/tmp2c2c3jtl/secring.gpg’ created
gpg: keyring `/tmp/tmp2c2c3jtl/pubring.gpg’ created
gpg: requesting key 77C899CB from hkp server keyserver.ubuntu.com
gpg: /tmp/tmp2c2c3jtl/trustdb.gpg: trustdb created
gpg: key 77C899CB: public key “Launchpad PPA for Wine” imported
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg: imported: 1 (RSA: 1)
OK

# apt-get install –install-recommends winehq-devel

You will be prompted to accept or reject by choose from the available options whether to proceed with installation or not.

6) Using Wine 1.8

You can check the version of your currently installed Wine 1.8 by executing the below command and see its version as shown in the image.

For 32 Bit and 64 bit installation of Wine you can execute the following commands respectively on your installation

# wine –version

# wine64 –version

To get help about using the Wine you can run the following command.

root@ubuntu:~/wine-1.8# wine64 –help
Usage: wine PROGRAM [ARGUMENTS…] Run the specified program
wine –help Display this help and exit
wine –version Output version information and exit

To run any windows based application on your Ubuntu and CentOS 7 Desktop run the below command.

root@ubuntu:~/wine-1.8# wine64 vlc-2.2.1-win64.exe

root@ubuntu:~# wine putty.exe

You can run the windows based applications by doing a right click and openning it with “Wine Windows Program Loader” as shown in the image.

7) Configure Wine

You can configure your Wine application by opening its configuration panel by running the below command in the terminal and then configure is different settings like adding new applications and Drivers as shown.

Conclusion

That’s it, we are successful in installing the latest version on Wine 1.8 on Ubuntu 15 and CentOS 7 by following the simple steps mentioned in this post. Now you can easily run your window’s based software applications on your Linux system and enjoy with your best X window operating System on Linux. You will get every thing in your Linux System that you want from your Windows system. Let’s enjoy using Wine on Linux and feel free to leave your comment for your valuable suggestions and comments, Cheers.