How To: Install Wine In Lubuntu

Today’s article isn’t going to be complicated or long as we are going to cover how you install Wine in Lubuntu. This should be straightforward and work with any modern version of Lubuntu.

I suppose we should start with the basics…

Lubuntu is a distro in the Ubuntu family. This is my favorite distro and I’ve covered Lubuntu-specifics in the past. However, these directions are going to work just fine on Ubuntu or even Linux Mint. They should also work just fine for Debian and any other distro that uses ‘apt‘ and some standard repositories. 

Wine is software used to run Windows software on Linux. It once stood for “Wine Is Not an Emulator” and it is indeed not an emulator. Wine is a compatibility layer that lets you run some Windows software on Linux. Not all Windows applications will run, and things like Windows drivers don’t work, but it can be a handy application for those who still rely on Windows software.

I’ll only cover the basics. There’s a lot to Wine (not WINE, at least according to the project page) and this is only going to cover how to install Wine in Lubuntu. Of course, other distros can use these same few steps, but I only tested in Lubuntu. (It’s a giant amount of software to download and my bandwidth isn’t the greatest.)

If you’ve tested this in other distros, let us know!

And, yes, I did test this in Lubuntu and Wine appears to be installed.

Install Wine In Lubuntu:

You can likely do this with the GUI software installation tools but we’ll do this in the terminal. As you’re using Lubuntu, you can open a terminal by simply pressing CTRL + ALT + T on your keyboard.

Because you’re using Lubuntu, I can surmise that you’re using 64-bit. If you’re not, you’re using a very old version of Lubuntu. You should upgrade to a supported release immediately, or move to a distro that’s still supporting 32-bit hardware.

If you’re not using Lubuntu, you should read this:

Is My System Capable of 32 or 64-Bit Linux?

You’ll need to use a 64-bit CPU and operating system if you want to follow these directions with any hope of success.

The first thing we will do is enable 32-bit software from the repositories. This is just a simple command:

sudo dpkg –add-architecture -386

I don’t always remember to suggest you update your device, but it’s a good idea if you update now. You can update with this command:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

With all of that done, you only need to install Wine in Lubuntu. That’s easily done:

sudo apt install wine64

That’s all there is to it, at least at the basic level. As I don’t use Wine, because I don’t use Windows software, I’m going entirely from my notes and a time when I did try to retain some Windows software. (Crimson Editor, I’m looking at you.)

Closure:

There’s a lot more to this, but that’s the gist of it. If you want to install Wine in Lubuntu, it’s not all that difficult. You may then want to do things like install Plays On Linux or whatnot, but I don’t think that’s technically required. So, this is just an intro to Wine. There’s much more to it.

Thanks for reading! If you want to help, or if the site has helped you, you can donate, register to help, write an article, or buy inexpensive hosting to start your site. If you scroll down, you can sign up for the newsletter, vote for the article, and comment.