• Wine Questions

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    #2175316

    I installed Wine through Linux Mint’s Software Manager. It is stable 4.0 while the latest is 5.0. When I checked on Playonlinux and Lutris the emphasis was on the later build.

    • In Windows the idea is to get the latest stable release and build from there. How dependent are POL and Lutris on Wine? If something doesn’t work in 4.0 and I have to upgrade will that mess with the other programs?

    I heard that somebody had problems with installing an online game I play due to memory issues in Wine. I saved the whole game folder (files,exes etc) onto a USB stick and plan to install it into Wine and then run the installer. Theoretically the installer should check the files and only install newer ones.

    i ran a program called Paragon Chat which was based on the old City Of Heroes game. It used the latest version of COH before it shut down. Last year a group revived COH and offered the program for download. I just directed the COH installer to the Paragonchat folder and the game ran great.

    • Has anyone had trouble doing this in Wine?

    Thanks.

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    • #2175330

      There have been a ton of improvements in WINE since the 4.0 release, in terms of compatibility and performance.  I use the latest staging developer release (5.3 as I write this) via the WineHQ PPA for my main go-to, but with Lutris, you can have multiple WINE versions quite easily, switching between them at will, or having different versions for each application if you wish.

      I used Play on Linux before, but its function overlaps with Lutris to a great degree, and Lutris is more up to date and more capable, so I only use Lutris now.

      Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
      XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
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      • #2175345

        Thanks! Play On Linux and Lutris did seem quite similar and I heard better about the latter. I will install Lutris when I get a chance.

    • #2175426

      Speaking of WINE, I’m “in the market” for a truly good, well-written and -organized guide to using WINE. I’ve tried using it a few times, but I don’t really understand the file structure it creates or where they end up on a Linux system.

      I think what throws me is the creation of those pseudo-C: drives. But if I install more than one Windows program for use through WINE, do they all go into this pseudo-C: drive, or are there separate C: drives created… and then how do I differentiate among them?? Which brings me to the next snag: once I’ve installed and used, say, Microsoft Word in WINE and then close it, how do I open it the next time I want to use it, and if I have more than one Windows program how do I select from among them?

      In my previous toe-dipping into WINE, it’s been mostly in Linux live CDs that disappear when the computer reboots.

      Most of the material I’ve seen online on WINE seems to envision the use of one single Windows application this way, as I haven’t come across anything that discusses managing multiple such applications. Then again, it’s been some years since I looked into it.

      Any hints or links to information that’s helpful in this regard will be appreciated.

       

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    • #2175580

      I think what throws me is the creation of those pseudo-C: drives. But if I install more than one Windows program for use through WINE, do they all go into this pseudo-C: drive, or are there separate C: drives created… and then how do I differentiate among them??

      You can do it either way.  WINE is not a VM, but the way it virtualizes the Windows hard drive makes it act like one in some ways.  Each virtual setup (for want of a better word) is called a WINE prefix.  You can install all your programs into one prefix, or you can put them each in their own (which makes it easier if you want to tweak something that affects that program only, but not others), or any combination in between.

      When you set WINE up through Lutris, you can put the WINE prefix anywhere you wish within your home folder:

      lutris

      The red box shows where you would enter the location of the WINE prefix you wish to create, or if one exists already, that you wish to use.  Other front-ends for WINE may put the WINE prefixes somewhere else by default.

      A WINE prefix is simply a folder, and inside that will reside the various configuration settings, the virtualized Windows registry, as well as the program itself, in all of the various locations that it may have installed something.  You can use a regular Linux file manager to browse the virtualized C: drive.

      You don’t need to specify anything else in the attached image other than the path to the program you want to run (in the “executable” field).  The working directory will be the location where the specified executable lives, by default, so you can usually leave that field blank (since using the location of the executable is usually what you want). There are some confusing and hard to understand bits of the Lutris interface, but for the most part, you can ignore these and use the default settings.

      That image I posted is the second tab, Game Options.  The first, Game Info, just asks what you want the name of the application to appear as in the menu, and it asks you what runner you want to use, from a dropdown menu.  For a Windows application in Lutris, you would select WINE, of course.

      Once you fill in the info in the first and second tabs, you can then see the option in Lutris to run the program you listed in the “Executable” field as in the screen image.  WINE will start, and it may ask you some questions about whether it should download some things, like Mono or Gecko, and you would generally say yes to these. If everything works well, the program will run and you can use it just like in Windows.

      The easiest way to install something using Lutris is to go to the Lutris site and see if there is an installer for it.  If so, all you would have to do is press the button to download the installer script, and if the browser asks you what program you want to use to open the script, it should already have Lutris selected.  Press OK, and Lutris will install the program and set it all up for you.

      Which brings me to the next snag: once I’ve installed and used, say, Microsoft Word in WINE and then close it, how do I open it the next time I want to use it, and if I have more than one Windows program how do I select from among them?

      If you use Lutris, you can have entries within the Lutris program for each Windows application you wish to run.  Lutris is focused on gaming, so a lot of the buttons and such will read “Play” instead of “Run program,” but there’s nothing fundamentally different about any other kind of application… I use Lutris with games and non-games alike.

      You can also have Lutris create direct entries in your application menu (like Windows Start menu), or put them on the desktop, where you can launch them like any other application.  They will start up like a Linux program… there’s no booting to Windows or anything like that first, like there would be with a VM.  You simply launch the program in the normal way, and it behaves as if it were a native Linux program.  When you close it, you do that however you would in Windows, and the WINE server for that application will close (you don’t have to be aware of it; it’s operating behind the scenes).

      You can do all of this stuff without a graphical front-end like Lutris, but Lutris makes it a lot easier.

      WINE itself also has a default prefix, which is in ~/.wine.  You can use that in Lutris, if you wish, by specifying that location as the location of the WINE prefix (as in the red box in the image).  With the default WINE prefix, you can launch an executable by right clicking it and selecting “Run with” and “WINE”.  If you have WINE set as the default application for .EXE files, you can simply double click it and it will run in the default WINE prefix.  Running a program from outside of the virtual Windows drive(s) is not ideal, though, and most Windows programs need to be installed (rather than just run as portables) anyway, so that installation would be in the virtual C: anyway.

       

      Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
      XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
      Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

      • This reply was modified 5 years, 3 months ago by Ascaris.
      • This reply was modified 5 years, 3 months ago by Ascaris.
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    • #2176407

      Just a quick update. I tried out Wine 4 – the version in the Software Manager and tried running the two exe files needed for COH. Tequila wouldn’t even load and Homecoming briefly flashed on my screen then gave an error/dependencies message.

      I tried another program in the folder called Icon – a costume maker – and I the gui opened and i got nice music and a moveable mouse but nothing else worked and I had to reboot to get back to mint.

      What is the keyboard code to “close/kill the current open program”?

      I tried again today (but left Icon alone). tequila wouldn’t start and but I got the full screen view of the opening COH graphics and then got a full page Wine error message that I copied.

      I think I will uninstall version 4 and then install the stable version 5 of Wine and then Lutris.

      https://wiki.winehq.org/Ubuntu

      https://lutris.net/downloads/

      There is a post on the COH Homecoming forums about getting COH to work on Pop! OS and most of the info seems to have been taken from the sites I linked above.

      I will keep you posted.

      • #2176557

        What is the keyboard code to “close/kill the current open program”?

        Alt-f4 works on KDE Plasma.  I never really used that in Windows, so I hadn’t had the impulse to try it in Linux before now, but it did work.  I don’t know if it works in Cinnamon, but I would guess that it would.

        There are other ways to gain control when a fullscreen program stops responding.  Alt-tab will usually break the hold of the fullscreen program when the usual means fail, if the underlying X server process and window manager are still working.  Ctrl-alt-backspace is a Linux standard for killing the X server (instant logout, should take you back to the account select/password screen), but some distros may use that key combo for something else.

        When I had this kind of thing happen in Windows, I would usually use Ctrl-alt-del and use the Task Manager to kill the offending program.  Linux distros have their own version of the Task Manager also… I forget what the one Cinnamon uses is called, but it’s in there somewhere, and you can bind that to Ctrl-alt-del if you wish.

        In Linux, you can also use Ctrl-alt-F2 (or 3, or 4…) to start a new session from the command line.  Ctrl-alt-F1 will take you back to the original session.  I don’t know whether you can use a new session to kill a nonresponding program in another session, but you can type ‘reboot’ from there and try again.

        If the system is locked up too severely for that to work, you can try Alt-Printscreen to send a SysRq.  Keep the ALT key held down after pressing Printscreen, then type REISUB.  As soon as the B is pressed, it should reboot.

        Both of these last two methods are safer for the file system than simply forcing-off, though Ext4 is pretty resilient.  If the magic SysRq+REISUB (it’s busier backwards, to make it easier to remember) does not work, a force-off will be required.  A force-off will trigger an automatic fsck of the disk at bootup… Windows does the same thing when it was not shut down properly, but fsck usually takes one or two seconds, while the Windows check takes a lot longer.

         

         

        Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
        XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
        Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

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    • #2176474

      My only reason for being interested in using an Windows application while running Linux is two fold: (1) because I would like to be able to work with Office in my dual boot Windows 7 / Linux Mint PC when I’m logged in with Linux; (2) because I would like to run some of my own executables, the ones from programs I have written, debugged, compiled and been using on Windows, also on Linux, without having to recompile them there. Of these two reasons for the question that follows, (1) is the main one. As to the executables, to run under Linux would require to have the necessary dlls availabe, among other things, so the answer is probably “no.” But it does not hurt to ask…

      So here is my question: Is there a known problem with either Wine version 4 or version 5 when trying to use it to run Office, or those executables I have created with Windows, or both? In particular, if the answer is “yes” for Office, which current version of Office: 2016, 2019, or both have problems with Wine? Thanks.

      Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

      MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
      Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
      macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

      • #2176513

        I rarely used Microsoft Office and used free programs for anything personal so the native Linux office apps are fine for me. For those of you reliant on Office you can test them in Wine and/or try out Codeweavers – a commercial version of Wine for Linux and Mac.

        https://www.codeweavers.com/

        Codeweavers is a major contributor/sponsor to the Wine project according to the Wine site. I did a quick check and saw that there is a rating page that mentions Office. They have a free trial too.

        My first Linux distro Xandros had Codeweavers included and I experimented with it a bit and found it easy to use.

        One thing you could try is copying your Office folder to your Mint /Home folder and then run the installation. It may make things go faster as Wine reportedly can run out of memory on large downloads/installs.

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        • #2177188

          One thing you could try is copying your Office folder to your Mint /Home folder and then run the installation.

          I did some experimenting today. The program you wish to run has to go in your -wine folder or “c drive” not the /home folder.

          I had copied the game I wish to get working to the -wine folder but didn’t rename it so things were a little confusing when I was troubleshooting. After I renamed the folder in /home/docs I could see that Wine targeted the other one.

      • #2177238

        My only reason for being interested in using an Windows application while running Linux is two fold: (1) because I would like to be able to work with Office in my dual boot Windows 7 / Linux Mint PC when I’m logged in with Linux; (2) because I would like to run some of my own executables, the ones from programs I have written, debugged, compiled and been using on Windows, also on Linux, without having to recompile them there.

        For office applications, graphical performance is not critical, so you may be able to put Office in a VM and use it that way, if it does not work in WINE.  Using Virtualbox, that’s the biggest limitation for me… the graphics subsystem is slower than it is natively, but the virtualized disk and CPU performance is pretty close to native, bare-metal performance.  There are ways to dedicate a second GPU to the VM and to have nearly native graphical performance within the VM, but that’s not something I’ve investigated.

        I don’t know what your own programs do, but you could certainly give them a try in a VM and see if it meets your needs.  Again, that’s if they don’t work in WINE… they very well might.

        Of these two reasons for the question that follows, (1) is the main one. As to the executables, to run under Linux would require to have the necessary dlls availabe, among other things, so the answer is probably “no.”

        I am not sure if you mean that they would run under Linux with WINE or whether you were talking about recompiling them.

        WINE is able to emulate many of the Windows core .dlls, but it’s also able to use .dlls directly.  Whatever package you installed in bare-metal Windows to provide those .dlls, you can do the same in WINE and that WINE prefix will be able to use them just as your native Windows did.

        Linux natively does not use .dll files, as those are a Windows standard, but (as you would expect in any OS), it does use dynamically linked libraries.  You’d have to make some changes to reference the Linux libraries instead of the Windows ones.  Maybe someday you’ll want to… until then, WINE or a VM will probably do well for you.  There are no guarantees in life, but nearly everything works in a VM, and a lot work in WINE.

         

         

        Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
        XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
        Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

        • #2177263

          Linux natively does not use .dll files, as those are a Windows standard, but (as you would expect in any OS), it does use dynamically linked libraries. You’d have to make some changes to reference the Linux libraries instead of the Windows ones. Maybe someday you’ll want to… until then, WINE or a VM will probably do well for you. There are no guarantees in life, but nearly everything works in a VM, and a lot work in WINE.

          This was in reference to recompiling your programs in Linux.  I managed to delete that reference in editing!

          Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
          XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
          Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

        • #2177277

          Ascaris: “I am not sure if you mean that they would run under Linux with WINE or whether you were talking about recompiling them.“,

          I meant to run those executable files that I have already made, running Windows 7, by compiling the sources I coded myself, back when, without having to recompile them, as for some programs I may not have the source files anymore, just the executables, so the option of recreating the executables is pretty much out in such cases. As to installing in Linux the same libraries used by the compiler to either include or point to the necessary dlls: I have no idea of how even to begin doing that, starting from the fact that I don’t know, and have no easy way to know, even their names or where they are. There is the very tedious possibility of running the executables, geting (maybe) the message that “dll such and such is not found”, then go to the Windows side and fish for that dll, repeat the process to find another, repeat the process… you get my drift.

          The use of a VM in Linux is definitely something practical to keep in mind, and that might solve this question, as well as others, assuming, in this particular case, that I can install in the VM, on the Linux side of the PC, without re-registering with, or buying again from the compilers’ maker (Intel), something really expensive I bought from them and registered on the Windows 7 side of the computer.

          Regardless of that, I have promised myself to try using a VM, once I have finish a seemingly endless and quite tricky job that has been keeping my professional and my computing capacity to handle other computer things totally swamped for too long already.

          Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

          MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
          Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
          macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

          • #2177290

            You would not have to register the compiler in the VM or WINE to be able to run the executables the compiler created, though, right?  If you want to create more programs for Windows, you ‘d have to use that, but here we were just talking about your existing Windows executables.

            Linux distros, for what it’s worth, come with a compiler that can work with C, C++, and others.

            If finding the .dlls you need would be a pain in WINE, it would be the same in a VM, unless you converted your existing Windows 7 installation into a VM (in which case it would carry over all of the .dlls already set up there).  Unless you’re talking about hundreds of .dlls, it seems doable, if annoying!

             

            Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
            XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
            Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

            • #2177300

              Ascaris. Thanks. Yes, I installed some time ago the GNU’s compiler suite, GCC, that is for free. The problem I have is that I might need, now and then, to run under Linux some important, or else occasionally useful, “orphan” executables I compiled a long time ago from now lost source files I coded myself.

              Also, I am not sure how I can run those executables in the VM without first installing in it the compilers, with their own unique sets of dlls — which is probably out of the question without buying those very expensive compilers again, and in a new and therefore different version, where some of the dlls from my old version might or might not be still included. Previous experience with Cygwin (a freeware emulation of Linux for Widows) tells me that the finding “one-dll-at-the-time” approach is really too hard to be a practical one, particularly with those old executables. Once it was easy enough: just install something called, if I remember correctly, the “cygwin1.dll” and then it was entirely possible to run, under Cygwin, my own Windows executables — until it wasn’t.

              Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

              MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
              Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
              macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

    • #2178241

      I got everything working!

      I uninstalled Wine 4.0 and installed Wine 5.0 and Lutris using the information in the following link as a guide. The info is almost identical to that at the WineHQ site.

      How To Install Wine 5 on Ubuntu 18.04 / Linux Mint 19

      It took a bit of time to find the settings in Lutris to activate Wine to download the exe I needed to run. Then I had issues with Wine wanting to redownload all files even though I had a copy of my game files in a folder. Finally I just let it copy to a new folder.

      One odd issue I had related to how the Tequila launcher works. It deals with 32 and 64 bit versions of City Of Heroes and also Icon and Paragon Chat. The latter two are not needed for COH. Install stalled because Tequila couldn’t download Paragon Chat. I fixed this by copying the exe from my earlier install.

      There are a few quirks when launching the game but gameplay is as smooth as it was in Windows.

      Thanks all for the help!

      • This reply was modified 5 years, 2 months ago by firemind.
    • #2289670

      I never could quite get my head around Lutris (discussed upthread). Wondering if q4wine may be a practical alternative for making Wine easier to use?

      Been giving q4wine a tryout today on my Kubuntu box, and the setup and usage procedures seem to mesh better with the way my mind works.

      Opinions? Insights?

       

      • #2289699

        I haven’t tried it, but there’s only one way to know if it works for you! It might be what you’re looking for.

        As for Lutris… it’s very powerful, and power comes with complexity.  It’s daunting at first looking at all of those options, like the scene in Airplane when Ted Stryker goes into the cockpit of the plane, and the camera pans over the huge number of instruments and switches as the scary music plays, but most of the options can be left in their defaults (I don’t know what most of them do myself), and the effect would be like the option’s not there… but someday you might need it.  Even though I don’t know what a lot of the options do, I’m not intimidated by the complexity anymore. I know what the subset of options I need to use are for!

        I am not sure if anything simpler like q4wine would be able to handle some of the use cases that Lutris can. For example, to make DirectX games performa well on Linux, you need to use something like DXVK, which translates the DirectX API calls to Vulkan, which Linux can handle natively.  To install DXVK, you need do nothing than toggle a switch (like checking a box, but they use a toggle switch visual metaphor) to turn it on, and a dropdown menu will show you the versions it has available. The default one is usually the newest and best choice, so you could usually leave it. Lutris will then download and install DXVK with no further ado.

        Compared to how installing DXVK into each game’s prefix or bottle (same thing, different names), used to be, this is a snap.

        Another thing I just noticed recently is that Lutris added a toggle for nVidia Prime Render Offload, used by gaming laptops to engage the nVidia GPU when needed, but to allow the thriftier integrated one to run the rest of the time. Just click the toggle switch and it will turn prime render on for that game, and it works nicely, offloading the work to the nVidia and using DXVK to deliver frame rates similar to Windows itself when running Windows games, while seamlessly dropping back to the integrated Intel graphics for regular tasks that do not need the nVidia.

        Another option would be to add your games to the Steam library, which you can do with the Steam client even if they are not Steam games. You can then have them run with Steam play, which uses Steam’s fork of WINE, called Proton, to run the games. Proton has DXVK already baked in, so that could work quite nicely. I haven’t investigated this, since Lutris has done all I want so far, but it sounds like this could give you the less complex interface you seek.

        I used to be a Steam/Valve skeptic, thinking of it as an unwelcome DRM platform whose presence is sort of Microsoftian, but I’ve changed my mind. The DRM is still there (and without it, many of the games would not be), but Steam has done more to make Linux gaming a reality than anyone else in recent memory, and the impressive progress made recently in Linux gaming may be part of the reason that Google’s Stadia gaming system runs Linux with Vulkan under the hood, at least on some stuff (don’t know the specifics). If Stadia takes off, more game devs will see the logic in making native Linux games, perhaps.

        I just saw this a few hours ago, coincidentally, from Linus Tech Tips:

        Microsoft Should be VERY Afraid– Noob’s Guide to Linux Gaming

         

         

        Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
        XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
        Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

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        • #2289725

          Good news! I managed to install q4wine. It sets up the fake Windows system, complete with C:, D: (optical), and Z: drives.

          According to the documentation, you can install Windows applications by running the relevant .EXE setup file. There is a tab built into the q4wine GUI listing dozens of Windows applications,including several versions of MS Office. Some of these applications are described as “downloadable,” while Office is not. However, when I clicked on the Office 2007 listing in q4win, it asked me to insert the Office 2007 installation disk (not in so many words, but I managed to figure out what they wanted) and I slid it in.

          Imagine my surprise and delight when the familiar Office installation window made its appearance on my Kubuntu screen! It went through the entire installation process and I was able to open the program (trial basis as I didn’t enter a product key).

          Office 12 is listed under Program Files (x86) in the C: pseudo-drive. Somehow, Word found the .DOCX files stored in the Linux Home > Documents subdirectory; I’d thought that it would limit itself to using its own Documents library on that C: pseudo-drive, but this is even better in a way.

          A very promising start.

           

    • #2289700

      I’ve not used it for games but used it for cad software and it never ran right.  Maybe there is a way, I used which ever one in ubuntu installs by repo.  The packages are wine32 and wine64 idk versions.  For less graphics intense programs it worked fine for me, I think it’s just things written for directx don’t play nice.

      • #2289742

        You might be surprised if you gave a newer version a shot now!

        WINE has changed a ton lately, for the better, and the versions in the Ubuntu repos tend to be quite old and much less capable than the newest ones released by WINEHQ and those modified by others. The only ones in the 5.xx series of WINE are the ones in the 20.04 repo, while the venerable 18.04 gets an ancient 3.xx version. The current development version of WINE is 5.15, meaning that there have been 15 releases since the 5.0 version (as in Ubuntu 20.04) was released.

        Their versioning is kind of weird… they release a new build every so often, but they’re not considered stable builds. The stable build is a full point release, like 5.0, and by the time the next one comes around, 5.0 is lacking a lot of improvements, bug fixes, and compatibility fixes that have been added. The stable tree itself lacks a lot of the features that are important in getting a lot of things working, but for whatever reason, those features are only available in the staging build, which is the one generally considered to be the most usable and compatible with the most software. Usually you’d think of “stable” as being better, but to me, the one that runs my program faster and better is the one that’s more stable, and that’s seldom the one they call “stable.” Sometimes there are regressions, where the previous version ran something perfectly and the newest one doesn’t, but that’s easily fixed by using multiple WINE versions.

        Lutris now has WINE versions with its own name attached in the list of available WINE versions, and thus far the newest one of those, 5.7.8, has shown to be better than WineHQ 5.15 Staging in getting a game working in Linux just today.

        There are lots of modified versions of WINE that have new features added and some that are meant to work in specific circumstances, and those specialized builds will never make it to the Ubuntu repo at all. I just pick the specific WINE variant I want to use from the Lutris dropdown and it sets that version of WINE up for that one prefix/bottle. You can have as many different versions as you wish, and if you use the script on the site to do all the configuration, you don’t need to even go into the menu, assuming everything works as it should.

        DirectX (up to 11, with support for 12 already beginning to show in recent WINE build patch notes) works really well with WINE if you use DXVK. Some Windows games run at higher frame rates in Linux under WINE than they do in actual Windows on the same machine!

        Without DXVK, a couple of years ago, I would have had to turn my graphics settings down to low in a game on WINE to get the same frame rate I’d have in Windows on high or ultra, but that’s not how it is now.  I haven’t tried DX without DXVK in some time (years), but it is my understanding that the native non-DXVK performance may have been improved too.

        There has been talk of merging DXVK with WINE itself, but the usual squabbles seem to be preventing that. WINE devs insist that their code has to compile and build on really antiquated setups and compilers, using standard C, and DXVK is written in C++, if I recall correctly. Steam’s fork, Proton, has combined them, but for now at least, WINE itself is separate from DXVK. Doesn’t really matter to me, as the DXVK versioning and installation is all handled for me by default by Lutris.

         

        Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
        XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
        Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

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