Chapter 13. WINE

As mentioned in the Synopsis for this chapter, WINE is a compatibility layer that allows Windows® applications to run on other operating systems. In theory, it means these programs should run on systems like FreeBSD, macOS, and Android.

When WINE runs a Windows® executable, two things occur:

Installing WINE on a FreeBSD system will entail a few different components:

As an operating system where terminal utilities are "first-class citizens," it is natural to assume that WINE will contain extensive support for text-mode program. However, the majority of applications for Windows®, especially the most popular ones, are designed with a graphical user interface (GUI) in mind. Therefore, WINE’s utilities are designed by default to launch graphical programs.

However, there are three methods available to run these so-called Console User Interface (CUI) programs:

These approaches are described in greater detail on the WINE Wiki.

WINE itself is a mature open source project, so it is little surprise it is used as the foundation of more complex solutions.

For FreeBSD users, some alternatives to using WINE are as follows:

Before installing WINE itself, it is useful to have the following pre-requisites installed.

Most Windows® programs are expecting to have a graphical user interface available. If WINE is installed without one present, its dependencies will include the Wayland compositor, and so a GUI will be installed along with WINE. But it is useful to have the GUI of choice installed, configured, and working correctly before installing WINE.

The Windows® operating system has for some time had a default web browser pre-installed: Internet Explorer. As a result, some applications work under the assumption that there will always be something capable of displaying web pages. In order to provide this functionality, the WINE layer includes a web browser component using the Mozilla project’s Gecko engine. When WINE is first launched it will offer to download and install this, and there are reasons users might want it do so (these will be covered in a later chapter). But they can also install it prior to installing WINE, or alongside the install of WINE proper.

Install this package with the following:

Alternately, compile the port with the following:

This port installs the MONO framework, an open source implementation of Microsoft’s .NET. Including this with the WINE installation will make it that much more likely that any applications written in .NET will install and run on the system.

To install the package:

To compile from the ports collection:

With the pre-requisites in place, install WINE via package with the following command:

Alternately compile the WINE sub-system from source with the following:

Like most software, Windows® applications made the upgrade from the older 32-bit architecture to 64 bits. And most recent software is written for 64-bit operating systems, although modern OSes can sometimes continue to run older 32-bit programs as well. FreeBSD is no different, having had support for 64-bit since the 5.x series.

However, using old software no longer supported by default is a common use for emulators, and users commonly turn to WINE to play games and use other programs that do not run properly on modern hardware. Fortunately, FreeBSD can support all three scenarios:

There are two different methods to launch a Windows program from the terminal. The first, and most straightforward is to navigate to the directory containing the program’s executable (.EXE) and issue the following:

For applications that take command-line arguments, add them after the executable as usual:

Alternately, supply the full path to the executable to use it in a script, for example:

After installation graphical shells should be updated with new associations for Windows executable (.EXE) files. It will now be possible to browse the system using a file manager, and launch the Windows application in the same way as other files and programs (either a single- or double-click, depending on the desktop’s settings).

On most desktops, check to make sure this association is correct by right-clicking on the file, and looking for an entry in the context menu to open the file. One of the options (hopefully the default one) will be with the Wine Windows Program Loader, as shown in the below screenshot:

In the event the program does not run as expected, try launching it from the command line and review any messages displayed in the terminal to troubleshoot.

In the event WINE is not the default application for .EXE files after install, check the MIME associate for this extension in the current desktop environment, graphical shell, or file manager.

A WINE prefix is a directory, usually located beneath the default location of $HOME/.wine though it can be located elsewhere. The prefix is a set of configurations and support files used by the wine to configure and run the Windows® environment a given application needs. By default, a brand new WINE installation will create the following structure when first launched by a user:

While WINE will create a default prefix in the user’s $HOME/.wine/, it is possible to set up multiple prefixes. There are a few reasons to do this:

Creating a prefix from the terminal requires the following command:

This will run the winecfg program, which can be used to configure wine prefixes (more on this in a later section). But by providing a directory path value for the WINEPREFIX environment variable, a new prefix is created at that location if one does not already exist.

Supplying the same variable to the wine program will similarly cause the selected program to be run with the specified prefix:

As described above WINE includes a tool called winecfg to configure prefixes from within a GUI. It contains a variety of functions, which are detailed in the sections below. When winecfg is run from within a prefix, or provided the location of a prefix within the WINEPREFIX variable, it enables the configuration of the selected prefix as described in the below sections.

Selections made on the Applications tab will affect the scope of changes made in the Libraries and Graphics tabs, which will be limited to the application selected. See the section on Using Winecfg in the WINE Wiki for more details.

The winetricks tool is a cross-platform, general purpose helper program for WINE. It is not developed by the WINE project proper, but rather maintained on GitHub by a group of contributors. It contains some automated "recipes" for getting common applications to work on WINE, both by optimizing the settings as well as acquiring some DLL libraries automatically.

Mizutamari is an application similar to winetricks, although it was inspired by the Lutris gaming system for Linux. But while it is focused on games, there are also non-gaming applications available for install through Mizutamari.

it is worth noting that the above solutions are not mutually exclusive. it is perfectly acceptable, even advantageous, to have both installed at the same time, as they support a different set of programs.

However, it is wise to ensure that they do not access any of the same WINE prefixes. Each of these solutions applies workarounds and makes changes to the registries based on known workarounds to existing WINE issues in order to make a given application run smoothly. Allowing both winetricks and Homura to access the same prefix could lead to some of these being overwritten, with the result being some or all applications do not work as expected.

Like most UNIX®-like operating systems, FreeBSD is designed for multiple users to be logged in and working at the same time. On the other hand, Windows® is multi-user in the sense that there can be multiple user accounts set up on one system. But the expectation is that only one will be using the physical machine (a desktop or laptop PC) at any given moment.

More recent consumer versions of Windows® have taken some steps to improve the OS in multi-user scenarios. But it is still largely structured around a single-user experience. Furthermore, the measures the WINE project has taken to create a compatible environment means, unlike FreeBSD applications (including WINE itself), it will resemble this single-user environment.

So it follows that each user will have to maintain their own set of configurations, which is potentially good. Yet it is advantageous to install applications, particularly large ones like office suites or games, only once. Two examples of reasons to do this are maintenance (software updates need only be applied once) and efficiency in storage (no duplicated files).

There are two strategies to minimize the impact of multiple WINE users in the system.

As shown in the section on WINE Configuration, WINE provides the ability to attach additional drives to a given prefix. In this way, applications can be installed to a common location, while each user will still have a prefix where individual settings may be kept (depending on the program). This is a good setup if there are relatively few applications to be shared between users, and they are programs that require few custom tweaks changes to the prefix in order to function.

The steps to make install applications in this way are as follows:

Once complete, applications can be installed to this location, and subsequently run using the assigned drive letter (or the standard UNIX®-style directory path). However, as noted above, only one user should be running these applications (which may be accessing files within their installation directory) at the same time. Some applications may also exhibit unexpected behavior when run by a user who is not the owner, despite being a member of the group that should have full "read/write/execute" permissions for the entire directory.

If, on the other hand, there are many applications to be shared, or they require specific tuning in order to work correctly, a different approach may be required. In this method, a completely separate user is created specifically for the purposes of storing the WINE prefix and all its installed applications. Individual users are then granted permission to run programs as this user using the sudo(8) command. The result is that these users can launch a WINE application as they normally would, only it will act as though launched by the newly-created user, and therefore use the centrally-maintained prefix containing both settings and programs. To accomplish this, take the following steps:

Create a new user with the following command (as root), which will step through the required details:

Enter the username (e.g., windows) and Full name ("Microsoft Windows"). Then accept the defaults for the remainder of the questions. Next, install the sudo utility using binary packages with the following:

Once installed, edit /etc/sudoers as follows:

The result of these changes is the users named in the User_Alias section are permitted to run the programs listed in the Cmnd Alias section using the resources listed in the Defaults section (the current display) as if they were the user listed in the final line of the file. In other words, users designates as WINDOWS_USERS can run the WINE and winecfg applications as user windows. As a bonus, the configuration here means they will not be required to enter the password for the windows user.

Next provide access to the display back to the windows user, as whom the WINE programs will be running:

This should be added to the list of commands run either at login or when the default graphical environment starts. Once all the above are complete, a user configured as one of the WINDOW_USERS in sudoers can run programs using the shared prefix with the following command:

it is worth noting that multiple users accessing this shared environment at the same time is still risky. However, consider also that the shared environment can itself contain multiple prefixes. In this way an administrator can create a tested and verified set of programs, each with its own prefix. At the same time, one user can play a game while another works with office programs without the need for redundant software installations.

There are a number of resources focused on other operating systems that may be useful for FreeBSD users: