Table of Contents

  1. Pre setup for 32 bit mode
  2. Prefix info
    1. Steps to create new prefix with windows environments
  3. Run this in a shell to temporarily set the wineprefix the specified directory
  4. Any further commands or apps run with wine will use this prefix
  5. Then run the command below , this initiates the prefix and creates the directory structure
  6. Setup 32-bit prefix
  7. Setup 64+32 bit prefix
  8. Issues
  9. Run wine with debug output limited to errors

Pre setup for 32 bit mode

Debian/Ubuntu:

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo apt update
sudo apt install wine wine32 wine64 libwine libwine:i386 fonts-wine

WineHQ Staging( Debian ):

sudo apt install wget software-properties-common
sudo wget -nc https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/winehq.key -O /usr/share/keyrings/winehq-archive.key
sudo wget -nc https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/debian/dists/bookworm/winehq-bookworm.sources -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq.sources
sudo apt update
sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-stable  # or winehq-staging

RHEL:

sudo dnf install epel-release
sudo dnf groupinstall "Development Tools"
sudo dnf install wine wine-alsa wine-core wine-capi wine-fonts wine-libs wine-tools wine-mono wine-gecko
sudo dnf install glibc.i686 libgcc.i686 libX11.i686 freetype.i686

Arch:

In /etc/pacman.conf uncomment the following lines:

[multilib]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Install:

sudo pacman -Syu
sudo pacman -S wine wine-mono wine-gecko lib32-mesa lib32-libpulse lib32-alsa-lib lib32-freetype2 lib32-glibc

See next section for creating a 32-bit prefix.

Prefix info

  • A wine prefix is a environment variable which contains a path to a directory which stores the isolated windows environment.

  • AKA all the files like dosdevices and the imitation windows C drive directory structure.

  • This allows you to configure indpendent environments for different windows applications

  • I’ve created a directory in /home/buhfur/wine-prefixes that acts as the main folder for storing different wine environments

Steps to create new prefix with windows environments

For this example we’re going to be using the /home/buhfur/wine-prefixes/minesweeper folder

  1. Set this environment variable or add as an alias. run this command in your shell ```bash

    Run this in a shell to temporarily set the wineprefix the specified directory

    Any further commands or apps run with wine will use this prefix

    export WINEPREFIX=”/home/buhfur/wine-prefixes/minesweeper”

Then run the command below , this initiates the prefix and creates the directory structure

wineboot -u

2. You can add an export to your environment ( i.e bash , zsh etc ) to point to wine environment to make it easy to switch between prefixes 

```bash
# in my ~/.bashrc , points to prefix I have for a specific app 
export MYPREFIX="$HOME/wine-prefixes/myprefix"

# Then after you set that you can change your prefix by adding an alias or manually 
alias myprefix="WINEPREFIX=$MYPREFIX"

Setup 32-bit prefix

There are multiple ways to do this , you can create a prefix on the CLI or add it to your bashrc to make default

CLI:

WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=~/wine32prefix winecfg

To use this prefix:

WINEPREFIX=~/wine32prefix wine your_app.exe

To make prefix default, add this in bashrc:

export WINEPREFIX=~/wine32prefix
export WINEARCH=win32

Check prefix for 32-bit:

file "$WINEPREFIX/drive_c/windows/explorer.exe"

Setup 64+32 bit prefix 

WINEPREFIX=~/wineprefix winecfg

Issues

Anytime you encounter errors , it’s usually a good idea to delete the ~/.wine cache

rm -rf ~/.wine

Run wine with debug output limited to errors 

WINEDEBUG=-all wine your_app.exe