Wine

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Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator) is an application that allows Windows software to run on Linux. This article deals with installing, configuring, and maintaining a general purpose Wine environment on Gentoo.

Packaging details

As many Wine users know, there are often regressions or an application works better on one version of wine than another. Going forward, packaging in Gentoo will allow simultaneous installation of multiple versions of Wine.

Additionally, to expedite vanilla releases as well as permit multiple configurations for each Wine installation, the major patchsets have been split out into separate packages.

Quick start

For most users, worrying about the various packages and what they do should not be a concern.The split packaging and slotting is a power user feature, and most users will be OK with simply installing virtual/wine, which chooses which wine version for the user.

root #emerge --ask virtual/wine

Wine variants

app-emulation/wine-vanilla: upstream Wine with no external patchsets.
(like if the old packaging forced USE="-staging -d3d9".)
app-emulation/wine-staging: Wine with Wine-Staging's patchset.
(like if the old packaging forced USE="+staging -d3d9".)
app-emulation/wine-d3d9: Wine with Ixit's Gallium Nine patchset.
(like if the old packaging forced USE="-staging +d3d9".)
app-emulation/wine-any: Wine with any of the patchsets or flags.
(exactly like the old packaging regarding USE flags.)

wine-any exists to allow the user to build any combination that they'd like (like the old packaging). This means the user could use wine-any to use both Wine-Staging and Gallium Nine. Alternatively, the user could use wine-any to try out another configuration from other packages. For example, the user could build wine-vanilla without PulseAudio, and could build wine-any with PulseAudio. The sky is the limit on how a user may choose to use app-emulation/wine-any.

Choosing a variant

Shouldn't I just choose wine-any, even if I'm not going to use all of its flags?: The answer to that is a resounding no. virtual/wine manages selection of of a variant in such a way as to provide the best experience to the user. Most users don't want to be dealing with external patchsets. External patchsets may introduce bugs that don't exist in the vanilla Wine release and can make using Wine more complicated for the user. External patchsets also can be released up to a week or two after vanilla wine (or each other), meaning that the period for releases can be significantly slower for those using app-emulation/wine-staging, app-emulation/wine-d3d9, or app-emulation/wine-any.

I was perfectly happy with app-emulation/wine, what should I choose?: For the least change, wine-any should do, since regarding its USE flags, it's exactly like the old packaging.

What if I want to manually choose a variant anyway? Which should I choose?

This really isn't a question that the authors of this document can answer. Typically, the logic works as follows:

Unless you need something more, choose app-emulation/wine-vanilla.
If an application requires advanced features only available in Wine-Staging, choose app-emulation/wine-staging.
If you do research online and find that Wine-Staging provides better performance for an application, choose app-emulation/wine-staging.
If you do research online and find that Gallium Nine provides better performance for an application, choose app-emulation/wine-d3d9
If you do research online and find that you need Wine-Staging features and Gallium Nine for an application, choose app-emulation/wine-any
If you have built another variant with a USE flag set and want to try an alternative flag set, like using Gstreamer on app-emulation/wine-vanilla and are wanting to use PulseAudio on the same version, choose app-emulation/wine-any in addition to the other variant choice.

I went through the trouble of choosing a variant... Why don't I see an ebuild for a particular version?: As mentioned earlier, part of the benefit of the split packaging is that some packages can be released without holding up others. A chart detailing all available versions and where in the pipeline they are can be found here.

Installation

USE flags

USE flags for virtual/wine Virtual for Wine that supports multiple variants and slotting

`proton`	Enable Valve Software's fork of Wine
`staging`	Enable Wine-Staging's Patchset

Data provided by the Gentoo Package Database · Last update: 2022-10-12 13:43 More information about USE flags

Note
Not all USE flags are available on all package variants.

Cannot load package information. Is the atom app-emulation/wine-any correct?

Users may also find information about specific USE flags required to run their applications here.

32-bit vs 64-bit

Invariably, users want to understand why they have to rebuild tons of packages to install Wine because they have to enable abi_x86_32 on a lot of Wine's dependencies... This is unavoidable, and we must highly warn against disabling abi_x86_32 and installing only with abi_x86_64 unless you really know what you are doing. Often, an application will have components that are 32-bit (or even 16-bit) and by installing Wine without 32-bit support, the user is left unable to install or launch an application. It is best to enable 32-bit support on a per-package basis, as indicated by the package manager, rather than globally.

Environment variables

Traditionally, live (9999) ebuilds support setting the repository commit as an environmental variable. This poses some issues with an ebuild that has multiple upstream repositories. To work around this issue, Wine's live ebuilds support three environmental variables for individually configuring the commit that each repository checks out. The WineHQ repository is controlled by WINE_COMMIT, Wine-Staging repository by STAGING_COMMIT, and Ixit's Gallium Nine repository by D3D9_COMMIT. The *_COMMIT variables may contain either a commit hash from that repository or a git tag from that repository.

For example, one could select the WineHQ tag "wine-2.0-rc5" to emerge the 2.0 RC 5:

root #WINE_COMMIT="wine-2.0-rc5" emerge -av '=app-emulation/wine-vanilla-9999'

One could additionally pin Wine-Staging to the same release by finding the appropriate tag, "v2.0-rc5" and augmenting the previous as follows:

root #WINE_COMMIT="wine-2.0-rc5" STAGING_COMMIT="v2.0-rc5" emerge -av '=app-emulation/wine-staging-9999'

Other environmental variables, which affect Wine at runtime, are discussed below.

Emerge

Enable the USE flags of your choosing on the virtual and then on the variant selected (automatically by the virtual or manually by yourself) and emerge the package:

root #emerge --ask virtual/wine

or

root #emerge --ask app-emulation/wine-${VARIANT}

Only versions classified as "stable" by upstream will be stabilized in Gentoo, and only as the app-emulation/wine-vanilla variant, as external patchsets are not considered stable. Some users may opt to add Wine variants to their package.keywords file to allow for installation of development versions of Wine.

Configuration

Runtime environment variables

The environment variables of the shell that wine is started from are made accessible to the Windows/DOS processes. Some very useful Wine-specific variables include, but are not limited to, WINEPREFIX, WINEARCH, and WINEDEBUG.

See the man wine and man wineserver manual entries for more detailed information concerning Wine's environment variables.

WINEPREFIX

Important
The prefix directory (by default $HOME/.wine) is generated when Wine is executed in any way (by for example, running winecfg). This also means that, if executed as the root user (see WineHQ FAQ - Should I Run Wine as Root), a Wine prefix will (by default) be generated at /root/.wine.

To create a Wine prefix in a custom location (instead of ~/.wine) without affecting the default:

user $WINEPREFIX="~/.wine-someprefix" wineboot

The above would create a Wine prefix at /home/<user>/.wine-someprefix.

Note
Once a prefix has been created, the 'bitness' (arch) can not be changed. As such, the WINEARCH should be defined the when the prefix is created if the user wants to override the default. WINEARCH is meaningless beyond prefix instantiation.

WINEARCH

To create a 32-bit installation instead of the default (when built) 64-bit:

user $WINEARCH="win32" WINEPREFIX="~/.wine-someprefix" wineboot

The Wine executable used could be anything that runs Wine, such as winecfg, which often makes sense while creating a clean, new prefix.

WINEARCH requires that Wine be built with the corresponding abi_x86 flags.

WINEDEBUG

Essential in finding out why an application is misbehaving when the basic terminal output or messages boxes are not enough. See https://wiki.winehq.org/Debug_Channels for examples.

Configuration tools

The following tools include graphical and command line interfaces for managing Wine prefixes:

app-emulation/q4wine – Qt5 GUI configuration tool for Wine.
app-emulation/winetricks – Easy way to install DLLs needed to work around problems in Wine.
app-emulation/playonlinux – Set of scripts to easily install and use Windows games and software.

Upstream FAQs

Some upstream FAQ entries that users might find useful:

Troubleshooting

When a user encounters a problem with an application, they should try the latest development version to see if the unwanted behavior still exists. If Wine has been built with options such as -fomit-frame-pointer or --hash-style=both, the Wine developers will likely be unable to help with the issue, and reports including output from such builds should not be reported to the Wine Bugzilla.

The custom-cflags USE flag should be enabled for debugging builds.

For more directions on reporting bugs, see Bugzilla and Bugs at wiki.winehq.

Support

Users may find additional support in the #gentoo-wine channel on Freenode.

External resources

Gentoo bugtracker: known bugs – Wine related bugs.
WineHQ Wiki
Wine Application Database – Search for the game or program to install here to see if it is stable.
Wine Staging at GitHub