How to install/use Wine in Elementary (Wine32 that is)?

Question

I installed Wine via Appcenter. All good. But when I wanted to start 32bit program it said - wine32 wasn't installed, please install.

So I try to install Wine32, but then it goes:

 ivan@ivan-linux:~/Downloads$ sudo apt-get install wine32
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 wine32:i386 : Depends: libwine:i386 (= 3.0-1ubuntu1) but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

But when I try to pinpoint dep. of libwine:386 it goes way back to pulseaudio 32bit and asks to remove some crucial Elementary packages, like Elementary desktop.

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 libwine:i386 : Depends: libpulse0:i386 (>= 0.99.1) but it is not going to be installed
                Recommends: libasound2-plugins:i386 but it is not going to be installed

So I stop there. IF not this is what it wants:

ivan@ivan-linux:~/Downloads$ sudo apt-get install libpulse0:i386
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  espeak-ng-data fonts-wine gir1.2-wnck-3.0 io.elementary.cerbere libao-common libao4 libasyncns0 libaudio2 libcapi20-3 libdotconf0 libodbc1 libopenal-data
  libopenal1 libosmesa6 libsnapd-glib1 libsndfile1 libsndio6.1 libsonic0 libspeechd2 libspeexdsp1 libwebrtc-audio-processing1 nautilus-data
  ocl-icd-libopencl1 python3-brlapi python3-louis python3-pyatspi python3-speechd rtkit sound-icons xbrlapi
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.
The following additional packages will be installed:
  libasyncns0:i386 libdbus-1-3:i386 libflac8:i386 libogg0:i386 libsndfile1:i386 libvorbis0a:i386 libvorbisenc2:i386 libwrap0:i386
Suggested packages:
  pulseaudio:i386
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  elementary-desktop gala gnome-settings-daemon gstreamer1.0-pulseaudio libasound2-plugins libcanberra-pulse libespeak-ng1 libpcaudio0
  libpulse-mainloop-glib0 libpulse0 libpulsedsp libsdl2-2.0-0 libwine orca pantheon-shell pantheon-xsession-settings pulseaudio pulseaudio-utils
  speech-dispatcher speech-dispatcher-audio-plugins speech-dispatcher-espeak-ng switchboard-plug-notifications switchboard-plug-pantheon-shell
  switchboard-plug-sound wine-stable wine-stable-amd64 wine64 wingpanel-indicator-sound
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  libasyncns0:i386 libdbus-1-3:i386 libflac8:i386 libogg0:i386 libpulse0:i386 libsndfile1:i386 libvorbis0a:i386 libvorbisenc2:i386 libwrap0:i386
0 upgraded, 9 newly installed, 28 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 1026 kB of archives.
After this operation, 431 MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] 

... how do I get around that?

Answer 1

AppCenter now only allows you to install Flatpak apps, so I'm not sure how relevant this answer is going to be to your situation three years ago, but here goes…

In 2023, with elementary OS Jólnir (6.1, based on Ubuntu 20.04), here are the steps to get Wine installed. Unless you need the absolute latest-and-greatest Wine, I think it would be fine to just install the distro packages as root (assuming you have admin rights), and avoid the Flatpak option for Wine.

sudo -s  # get a root shell
apt install wine

# if you need 32-bit support for Wine
dpkg --add-architecture i386
apt update
apt install wine32

I don't totally understand the circumstances where you need to install the 32-bit components, but those steps are there if you need them.

As far as running installation programs or .msi files, the experience is not nearly as nice in elementary OS as other Linux distros, in that .exe and .msi files don't seem to be properly associated with a Wine runtime. I haven't put the effort in to ascertain how the other distros do it, but I imagine it's something buried in some .,desktop file somewhere.

Anyway, here's the command-line version:

# for a .exe file
wine /path/to/installer.exe

# for a .msi file
wine msiexec /i /path/to/installer.msi

You can drag-and-drop from the file manager into the terminal app to get the /path/to/installer. Or right-click and choose "Copy" from the file manager to put the path in the clipboard. You don't have to type that from scratch.

Hope that helps.