Install Wine on Kubuntu

Question

I'm a totally new user of Linux and just installed 32-bit Kubuntu on a Virtualbox VM to start learning it. I want to install Wine and see how some Windows programs that I still depend on would run. The whole repository and apt-get thing is still very new to me so after trying the advise from various sites and posts to install Wine I gave up. It says that Wine was installed but I can't find it anywhere in the list of programs, nor is there a menu to run an .exe with Wine, so obviously it wasn't installed. Being so new to Linux in general I have no idea what the problem might be.

Can you advise me how to install it and/or what steps to take to diagnose the problem?

EDIT: I tried using the repository, searching for wine and installing it, but nothing gets installed even though it says it's installed. I tried the solutions in the suggested answer, but that doesn't work.

The question might be a duplicate, but the suggested answers don't solve the problem. — kat, May 25 '17 at 17:40
@Rinzwind even though irrelevant - because I've never used any Linux system before (so I'm not going to jump straight to it). — kat, May 25 '17 at 18:38
I only have a few apps not yet available on Linux, why would I install and run a guest Windows in Linux? To what purpose? I want to switch away from Windows. — kat, May 25 '17 at 19:43

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered May 25 '17 at 20:07

It says that Wine was installed but I can't find it anywhere in the list of programs, nor is there a menu to run an .exe with Wine, so obviously it wasn't installed.

Type in command line

wine --version

If it shows an error you are correct but it is likely to show you a version. "wine" is not a program you run by itself so it does not have a icon to start it from. You need to tell wine it needs to start something. So from command like you would use it like this

wine "c:\program files\internet explorer\iexplore.exe"

and it would start internet explorer. Some more on this on Wine HQ and on our Ubuntu help

There is a 2nd part to wine called "play on linux". It is a set of tools to automate setting up software for using it with wine. So also install play on linux. From the link:

Why use PlayOnLinux?

GUI; no need for the command line interface (CLI).
Hides the complexity of Wine.
Uses "virtual drives" (see notes below).
Some applications are "supported" (e.g. Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, Microsoft Office, Spore); PlayOnLinux automates their installation.
You can manually install "unsupported" applications.

The automated install is done by using scripts users made and are proven to work with specific versions numbers of wine.

Installation for play on linux:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:noobslab/apps
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install playonlinux
sudo apt-get remove playonlinux

Play on linux does have an icon you can start and will show you a whole lot of software (though most are probably games (hence the name ;) ))

Thank you! That's the answer I needed! Indeed I had installed wine - I just didn't understand how it works. — kat, May 27 '17 at 11:55

Install Wine on Kubuntu

1 Answers1