Problems running a Windows app in Wine

Question

When i download the leagueoflegends.exe from leagueoflegends.exe and trying to run it with the last version of wine, i get nothing, not even an error. (wine works fine with other .exe files)

Anybody knows something?
I am using ubuntu 11.10 64-bit.

Answer 1

When trying to execute any Windows application with wine we need to make sure that it works correctly. Take the following steps to always know that your app will work:

1. SEARCHING FOR WORKING APP - Search in google or the winehq.org site for the app you want to use to see what rating the app has. Ratings such as Platinum or Gold are good. Ratings as Silver are good in some cases. Ratings as bronze or garbage are typically very bad. The rating is for the user to know if the app will work flawlessly in the PC or not. Will it install correctly?. Will it run correctly?. Can the user make changes to the video, sound or control settings with no problems at all?.

   All of this questions are used to add a rating to an app. If it works as it should in everything, the rating is Platinum. If it has 1 or 2 small problems, a Gold rating might appear. This continues until a Garbage rating where the app does not work at all. To search for an app you can use Firefox or Chrome and just type in the URL "winehq leagueoflegends" for example. This will typically show you in the first 3 results the winehq like so http://appdb.winehq.org... Click on the appdb.winehq.org links and you should arrive at the winehq page for that particular app. It will show you several users that have rated the app. If all of them rated the app as Garbage your best bet is that the app will not work with wine right now. You will have to wait for a newer update of wine. If most users have platinum or gold you have a good bet it will work correctly.

   You can also go to: http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&sTitle=Browse%20Applications&sOrderBy=appName&bAscending=true to search for the app you want in there.

   Even better to go: http://appdb.winehq.org/index.php to see the best rating apps with the best score so far. Also make sure that the ratings applied to the app have the same version you are using of Wine or at least a very close version to it. An updated version is always better than an older version. Now that you know how to search first if your app works on wine or not we go to the next step. Wine installation.

2. INSTALLING LATEST WINE VERSION - Wine comes in several branches. The 1.2 stable branch and 1.3 dev branch. Let me be VERY CLEAR in this part. For the last 5 wine years in my life I have used always the latest. You can call it unstable, explosive, beta, alpha, dev or any name you want to give it but the fact remains. Any updated version of wine is always better than any older version. This is also true comparing the 1.2 stable versus the 1.3 dev.

   The 1.2 is more stable in that it has been checked more for compatibility than the 1.3 dev branch but believe me when I say, the 1.3 dev is more compatible with more apps, has better solutions to many app problems, more directx fixes and in general will give you a better result than the 1.2 branch. Since the creation of the PPA for WineHQ I have used this as my 1.3 upgrading repository and it has never let me down. It has solved many problems with many apps, directx fixed, sound fixes and many MANY other. Every 2 weeks is like a party when a new release of the 1.3 branch comes to the PPA. So my really good suggestion is to use the 1.3 branch instead of the 1.2 stable one. And I mean GOOD SUGGESTION! since many problems will be gone in the 1.3 branch. The information to install the PPA is very easy as shown here: http://www.winehq.org/download/ubuntu

   After installing the PPA winehq, updating the repositories and downloading/upgrading to the 1.3.x version of wine (Should be 1.3.30 right now. To check, go to the terminal and type wine --version or open winecfg and go to About tab.) we can continue with the configuration.

3. CONFIGURING WINE - There are a couple of things you can do to tune and configure wine. The first steps should be opening the winecfg app for wine. Just open the dash or ALT+F2 and type winecfg. It will begin an automatic update for wine. Wait a couple of seconds and then go to the Graphics and Audio Tabs to configure them. If an app does not work in fullscreen you can change the max resolution in the Graphics tab. If an app is not making a sound or has some sound problems you can change the sound options in the Audio tab. You also have the famous winetricks. WineTricks is used to install additional apps that are needed for other apps to work. Example are the latest DirectX, .NET Framework, etc.. To open winetricks do like winecfg above but type winetricks instead. For multiple apps running and configurations related to this I suggest to go here: Adjusting resolution for individual Wine programs

4. GETTING HELP - When asking for help in Askubuntu or in the winehq forums/bugtracker. Always remember to include the wine version you are using, any additional packages installed by winetricks (if any were installed), how did you install the app (Via steam, web, directly with a setup.exe, CD...) and how did you execute the app (via a desktop link, directly with the executable...) and additional information so anyone that has some knowledge can help.

Following this 4 steps you can reduce:

• Amount of problems using Wine
• Know if an app works or not in wine
• Know which configurations work best for a particular app (Changing windows Version, graphics, sound...)
• Know tricks for configuration in the appdb.winehq.org site for a specific app.
• Save time while asking for help for a particular app.

Answer 2

Wine is Windows compatibly layer for Linux. Unfortunately, it is not perfect and not every app runs, and after doing some research it appears that League of Legends is one of the games that does not work on wine.

If you still want to try and make it work, check out this page at WineHQ http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?bShowAll=true&bIsQueue=false&bIsRejected=false&sClass=version&sTitle=&sReturnTo=&iId=19141

or this page over a Codeweavers (They create a non-free version of wine with support) http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/name/?app_id=6282

As wine updates games like this should start to work better and more often.