Wine

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.

USE flags
It is likely for many users to desire Wine to support as much media as possible, in these cases be sure to enable the related flags under the "Recommended" columns in the USE flag sections below. Pay special attention to the recommendations in the Media and Audio categories.

Emerge
Enable the USE flags of choice and emerge :

To install the latest development version of Wine the package needs to be individually unmasked:

The above command does not apply to systems that have  defined globally in the   variable located in

Disabling the Menubuilder
To prevent Wine from adding menu entries and desktop links, the following .dll override can be used:

Previously added entries can be deleted by removing the corresponding files from

Tools and interfaces
Tools such as graphical interfaces for Wine can be helpful for users who want an alternative to the command-line:


 * - Qt4 GUI configuration tool for Wine.
 * - Wine-doors is a package manager for Wine.
 * - Easy way to install DLLs needed to work around problems in Wine.
 * - Set of scripts to easily install and use Windows games and software.

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,,  , and.

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

WINEPREFIX
To create a Wine prefix in a custom location without affecting the default:

The above would create the Windows installation in the home path of the user, under

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

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

WINEDEBUG
Essential in finding out why an application is misbehaving when the basic terminal output or messages boxes are not enough. See Debugging for examples.

Debugging
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  or , 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  USE flag should be enabled for debugging builds.

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

External resources

 * WineHQ Wiki
 * Wine Application Database
 * Wine Application Database