Wine HowTo

Before you install Wine, make sure that there is no previous Wine installation on your system, either from a package or from source. If you haven't yet installed Wine, you should be fine. See the Removing old Wine versions chapter in the User Guide for details.

Many Linux distributions come with an included Wine package, but due to Wine's rapid development rate these are usually old and sometimes broken versions. It is best to uninstall included package versions and update to the latest Wine version available here.

Ready-made, updated binary packages for Wine can be found at the WineHQ downloads page here. In addition, full source code is available for both the current Wine development tree and every Wine release here. For help with installing from a package or from source, please consult the Getting Wine chapter of the User guide here.

As of Wine release 20050628 we have transitioned away from the config file and now place these values in registry files found in your .wine directory. Winecfg (wine configurator) in conjunction with regedit (registry editor) are two graphical front ends that makes changing registry values easier for end user's. Winecfg while still beta software can be used for basic configuration and optimizations, more advanced users may wish to use regedit to make changes that winecfg isn't capable of performing.

If you are upgrading don't forget to update your registry using the wineprefixcreate command. This will ensure that you have all default registry values set.

Note to Debian users: The packages included in the main distribution are currently very out of date. We're working on having the latest packages available officially from Debian's servers, but until then we suggest you install the latest Wine by using our apt repository here. Ubuntu users can install the latest Wine packages by using one of the repositories from the Ubuntu backports project .

How to help get applications working in Wine

If you want to help get an application working in Wine, the first thing you should do is register yourself in the applications database and use one of your votes to indicate that you'd like more effort to be spent on the application. Every once in a while, a Wine developer will finish a project and look for something to do - combing through the higher voted apps to find one that people need work on is a great way to spend one's time and fill up a todo list.

If the application that you want working is not listed in the applications database, there is an easy to use form available for you to add it. If the application is in the database, but lacks a maintainer, you should consider becoming one. If you are familiar with Wine and have a desire to test the application and help get or keep it working, please apply by clicking the link in the application's page. Each application should have a supermaintainer, and, if different versions of the application are substantially different (such as in Internet Explorer), each subversion should have a maintainer. Please don't feel deterred by the need to apply to become a maintainer - the application form is largely a formality to prevent abuse and we can virtually guarantee your acceptance.

If you are the developer or publisher of the application, you obviously have a very big incentive to help get your application working under Wine. Fortunately, there are many options available to you other than reporting bugs and hoping someone will fix them. By far the easiest way is to simply send free copies of your software to Wine developers and hope they'll take an interest in getting it working. You'd be amazed how effective this approach can be, particularly for games. An alternative option, perhaps more effective and expensive, is to pay Wine developers for their work on your application, either directly through a negotiated contract or indirectly by posting a bounty. CodeWeavers, a major Wine developer, offers a special section for pledges at their compatibility center website. The most direct method, however, is to help develop Wine itself and contribute code directly, which is exactly what Corel did for WordPerfect several years ago. In any case, making a post on the Wine developers email list can go a long way.

If your application doesn't work:

If your application experiences problems in a particular area, or fails to even run at all, there are a number of steps you can take to help us. The most important thing is to find out where exactly the application is failing. To diagnose application problems, the first step is to run the program from the console using Wine, rather than from a gui shortcut. This will allow Wine to output error messages to the console, the understanding of which are key to solving the problem and getting the application to work.

An application may not work because Wine doesn't yet fully implement one of the DLL files the application is trying to use. If you encounter a DLL not found error, or see a lot of "FixMe:" messages while running the application in Wine, this is likely the case. When this occurs, you can try using native (non-Wine) DLL files in place of Wine's builtin ones. Check the application database page for the program. There may be special configuration options or instructions for installing native DLL files there that you can try to get the application working. For further configuration help, please see the Running Wine section of the User Guide.

If the application still doesn't work, it's probably due to a bug or deficiency in Wine and we'd like to hear about it. Please see the reporting bugs page for instructions on how to best report bugs with applications. Alternatively, if you're a programmer, we'd really like it if you tried to help us directly; please read the getting started with Wine development guide if you're interested.

If your application does work, but with some difficulty:

Sometimes, applications run under Wine but don't function quite as smoothly as they do in windows. They may have display errors, a feature may be broken, or they may run unusually slow. These applications should receive a lower rating from their maintainers ("bronze" or "garbage") in the Application's Database, depending on the degree of difficulty encountered.

If you have found a way to make an application work that is more complicated than simply installing it, please share that information by posting on the application's page in the database. If you are the maintainer for the application, please post the instructions in a "howto" which will appear inside green bars at the top of the application's page.

If your application used to work, but has since broken in a new version of Wine:

Wine is a large and complex project, composed of many files written by different authors. Sometimes, an attempt to change a file and expand support for one application will unexpectedly cause another application to stop functioning. These changes are known as "regressions", and they are unfortunately sometimes found in the Wine source code because the author of a patch that causes a regression is quite simply unaware of it. Since the Wine developers can't possibly test every application with every patch, we have to rely on the community to inform us of when regressions occur so that the problem can be easily identified and ultimately fixed. Without community involvement, regressions can go unfixed for potentially very long periods of time.

If your application has experienced a regression, please try and provide us with as much information as you can about when and how it broke. This allows us to isolate the exact thing we screwed up in the code and provide a fix. Please provide as much as you know about which version of Wine worked, and which version didn't, including the version number and how you installed it (from source, binary packages, etc.) Finally, please post these things in the Application Database page for the application.

If you wish to be extremely helpful, you can try to isolate the exact patch which broke your application. This takes quite a bit of time and effort, but it is quite simply the best way to get your application working again. When it comes to fixing regressions, the only thing more helpful to the Wine developers than knowing exactly which patch caused a regression is receiving a fix for the patch itself. For help with isolating problem patches, please see the documentation on regression testing.