How to install and uninstall WineHQ on Linux: Run Windows applications

Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator) allows running Microsoft Windows applications on Unix-like operating systems. WineHQ version 5.7 was launched on the 24th of April, 2020, and comes with a bucketful of cool features and improvements to enhance your experience when running Windows applications and games on the Linux platform. For some of us that are not familiar with Wine, Wine is an application in Linux that allows Windows users to seamlessly run their applications, etc. on Linux. For WineHQ improvements and capabilities, see the following link. Kindly refer to these related guides: What is Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), WineHQ: How to run Windows applications on Linux, and and how to run Windows applications on Linux. 

If you have previously installed a Wine package from another repository, please remove it and any packages that depend on it (e.g., wine-mono, wine-gecko, winetricks) before attempting to install the WineHQ packages, as they may cause dependency conflicts.

Install WineHQ

Installing WineHQ packages is pretty straightforward. Below are the following steps employed.
Step 1: Before proceeding to install WineHQ, you will need to check if your system is 32-bit or 64-bit. Then choose the suitable Wine version

This output above shows my system is 64 bits. You can also determine this by opening your terminal and type the code below.

lscpu

Note: If your system is 32 bits, you will you need to run the following command to add the Wine i386 architecture before proceeding with the next steps,

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386

This command will enable the Wine i386 architecture

Step 2: Firstly update the Linux (system) repository with the command below

sudo update 

Step 3: Download and add the repository key

wget -O - https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/winehq.key | sudo apt-key add -

Step 4: Add the latest available Wine repository. For Ubuntu 20.04, use the following syntax below

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

Step 5: Install one of the following WineHQ packages. Here are the available three options to install WineHQ
– WineHQ stable branch: sudo apt install –install-recommends winehq-stable
– WineHQ development branch: sudo apt install –install-recommends winehq-devel
– WineHQ Staging branch: sudo apt install –install-recommends winehq-staging

I will be installing the stable version as shown below

sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-stable

Now that WineHQ is installed, we can now verify the version by running

wine --version

To install WineHQ without an internet connection, see this link

Configure WineHQ (Launch and test WineHQ)

By running the GUI Wine configuration tool, you’ll generate a fresh configuration file for WineHQ which you can then configure to your own requirements later.

Run the command below to open up the GUI application

winecfg

Thereafter, Wine’s configuration panel below will be launched as shown.
– Also to verify the version of wine, click on the ‘About’ tab located at the far right corner.

Note: Now it is safe to close the configuration tool if you don’t plan on changing Wine’s configuration
– Click on “OK.”

Using the Wine application database, you can find relevant settings for any Windows games or software you’re looking to run. You can then modify your settings using the Wine configuration tool to meet these requirements.

Uninstall WineHQ

If you ever need to uninstall any Windows software, open the terminal and type the following command into your terminal.

wine uninstaller

See how to run Windows applications on Linux, see the following link.
Note: You can also install Wine from the Ubuntu Software Center as shown below. Search for Wine and Click on it to have it installed.

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