TUTORIAL: Wine Ste-by-Step

With Wine, you can run many MS Windows application on your Fedora Core desktop.

If you want to try out Wine, it seems that the latest version from the CSV server is the best way to go. The Wine FAQ at http://www.winehq.org/site/docs/wine-faq/index provides detailed instructions, but here is a step-by-step guide based on them to get Wine up and running. We'll be doing most of the work as a regular user ($).

Preparation

Have all you GNU build tools installed (the same as if you were going to compile any application). Also, if you want printing support using CUPS, also install the CUPS-devel package. Also, as root, add the line '/usr/local/lib' to /etc/ld.so.conf. Wine will need to know where to find its libraries.

Step 1 Get Wine from CVS

Log into the CVS server (mirror list at http://www.winehq.org/site/cvs#cvsservers):

 $ cd ~

 $ export CVSROOT=:pserver:cvs@cvs.winehq.org/home/wine

 then,

 $ cvs login

 Use the password 'cvs' when prompted. Now,

 $ cvs -z 3 checkout wine

will download the entire Wine CVS tree into a directory named 'wine' in you home directory.

Step 2 Compile and Install Wine

The canonical guide is found at http://source.winehq.org/source/README.

Make temporary directory for Wine to use and let it know about it:

$ mkdir tmp

$ export TMPDIR=~/tmp

Change to the top-level Wine directory and use the convenient Wine build script:

$ cd wine

$ ./tools/wineinstall

It will do it initial configuration then ask if you want to build as a regular user, then su to root to install; tell it "yes" and continue.

We'll answer "yes" to create the configuration file locally at ~/.wine/config, "yes" that we want a Wine-only installation, and change the default fake C:\ directory to ~/.wine/c.

Step 3 Test Wine From a command prompt, run the following command:

$ wine regedit

and you should see the Windows registry editor.

Step 4 Configure Wine

You may or may not need to specially configure Wine. For many applications the defaults are adequate.

Load the file ~/.wine/config into your favorite text editor to examine it or edit it. A good source for information on what all that stuff means can be found in the Wine User's Guide at http://www.winehq.org/site/docs/wine-user/config-file. A great graphical configuration interface can be found at http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wine/winesetuptk-0-71.i586.rpm?download; just install the rpm and run 'winesetuptk' as a regular user to configure Wine. A source tarball is available at http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wine/winesetuptk-0.72.tar.gz?download for those that prefer it.

Step 5 Do Something with Wine

While you can continue to run wine from a command prompt, there is a nice graphical interface known as WineTools available to install and manage your Windows applications. Download it from http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/winetools/winetools-1.30.tgz?download (or the tarball from http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/winetools/winetools-1.30-src.tgz?download). Unpack the binary file with:

$ tar -zxvf winetools-1.30.tgz

and copy it to someplace useful like ~/bin (if it's in your path) or even /usr/local/bin for all users.

Step 6 Experiment with Wine

You built it yourself, so you get to keep all the parts when it breaks. Both the Wine homepage and Frank's Corner contain useful links to help on getting specific applications functioning. Frank's Corner even contains step-by-step instructions on how to build WineX from CVS -- that allows you to run many Windows games that require DirectX support (with a little more work on your part). Have fun!

RESOURCES

Wine Homepage - http://www.winehq.org/
Wine User Guide - http://www.winehq.org/site/docs/wine-user/index
Frank's Corner - http://frankscorner.org/
WineSetupTK - http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wine/winesetuptk-0-71.i586.rpm?download
WineTools - http://franksworld.net/winetools/

Write to me at hoyt@maximumhoyt.com.