How to install Wine on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS?

Wine is a popular free and open source software that allows users to run Windows applications on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. To be a bit more technical, Wine it is a compatibility layer; translate system calls from Windows to Linux and it uses some Windows libraries, in the form of .dll files.

For those people who are migrating from Linux, they very possibly need some Windows software or game that is not available or has no equivalent in Linux. Wine makes it possible to run those Windows programs and games on your Linux desktop.

Wine it is one of the best ways to run Windows applications on Linux. In addition, the Wine community it has a very detailed application database, we find it as AppDB it contains more than 25,000 programs and games, ranked by their compatibility with Wine:

• Platinum Applications- Installs and runs smoothly in a ready-to-use Wine installation
• Gold Applications- work flawlessly with some special settings like DLL overrides, other settings, or with third party software
• Silver applications- They run with minor issues that do not affect typical usage, for example a game can run in single player, but not in multiplayer.
• Bronze applications- These apps work, but have noticeable problems, even for regular use. They may be slower than they should be, have UI issues, or lack specific features.
• Junk apps- The community has shown that these apps cannot be used with Wine. They may not install, may not start, or may start with so many errors that it is impossible to use.

Before installing Wine, we must decide if we want the latest stable version or the development version.

The stable version has fewer bugs and higher stability, but it supports fewer Windows applications. The development version offers better compatibility, but has more unresolved bugs.

If you are looking to have the most recent version of the stable Wine series, for now we have version 3.0.

Installing Wine on Ubuntu 18.04

To install it in our system they must open a terminal pressing 'CTRL + ALT + T' or from the desktop and run the following commands to install it.

The first step will be to enable the 32-bit architecture, that even if our system is 64 bits, performing this step saves us many problems that usually occur, for this we write on the terminal:

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386

Now we must import the keys and add them to the system with this command:

wget -nc https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/Release.key
sudo apt-key add Release.key

Done this now we are going to add the following repository to the systemAt the moment there is no repository for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS but we can use the repository of the previous version that will work perfectly, for this we write in the terminal:

sudo apt-add-repository https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/

sudo apt-add-repository 'deb https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/ artful main'

Finally, We just have to write the following command to install Wine on our computers, this is to install the stable version of Wine 3.0:

sudo apt-get install --install-recommends winehq-stable

Now we also have access to the Wine development branch, which contains many more features and improvements than 3.0, the problem being a development version is that we run the risk of having some bugs with the execution.

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Dependencies unfulfilled

However if you want to install it, which is currently in progress is the Wine 3.7 version, for installation you just have to run:

sudo apt-get install --install-recommends winehq-devel

Done the installation You just have to run this command to verify that it was installed successfully and know what version you have installed:

wine --version

Where it was the stable version you will receive an answer like this:

wine-3.0

How to uninstall Wine from Ubuntu 18.04 LTS?

If you want to uninstall Wine from your system for whatever reason, sYou just have to run the following commands.

Uninstall the stable version:

sudo apt purge winehq-stable

sudo apt-get remove wine-stable

sudo apt-get autoremove

Uninstall the development version:

sudo apt purge winehq-devel

sudo apt-get remove wine-devel

sudo apt-get autoremove