box86/docs/X86WINE.md

Installing Wine (and winetricks)

TwisterOS users, take note: Wine, winetricks, and Box86 are pre-installed in TwisterOS. TwisterOS users do not have to install anything.

Using Wine with Box86 allows (x86) Windows programs to run on ARM Linux computers (x64 is not yet implemented).

Even though wine-armhf is available in many repo's on ARM devices (ie using apt-get will attempt to install wine-armhf by default), wine-armhf will not work with Box86. Box86 actually needs wine-i386 to be installed manually on ARM devices instead (installing wine-i386 on ARM systems with multiarch will fail due to too many required i386 dependencies).

Overview and Notes

The general procedure for installing Wine for Box86 is to...

• Download all the install files (.deb, .zip, or even .pol files) for the version of Wine you wish to install
• Unzip or dpkg the install files into one folder
• Move that folder to the directory that you wish Wine to run from (in TwisterOS, this is ~/wine/ by default)
• Go to /usr/local/bin and make symlinks or scripts that will point to your main wine binaries (wine, winecfg, and wineserver).
• Boot wine to create a new wineprefix
• Download winetricks (which is simply a very complicated bash script), make it executable, then copy it to /usr/local/bin

Your entire Wine installation can reside within a single folder on your Linux computer. TwisterOS assumes that your Wine installation is located inside the ~/wine/ directory. The actual directory where you put your wine folder doesn't matter as long as you have symlinks within the /usr/local/bin/ directory which point to the wine folder so that Linux can find Wine when you type wine into the terminal). When you first run or boot Wine (wine wineboot), Wine will create a new user environment within which to install Windows software. This user environment is called a "wineprefix" (or "wine bottle") and is located (by default) in ~/.wine (note that Linux folders with a . in front of them are "hidden" folders). For more Wine documentation, see WineHQ.

Some versions of Wine work better with certain software. It is best to install a version of Wine that is known to work with the software you would like to run. There are three main development branches of Wine you can pick from, referred to as wine-stable, wine-devel, and wine-staging. The wine-staging branch requires extra installation steps on Raspberry Pi.

Winetricks is a script which makes it easier to install & configure any desired Windows core system software packages which may be dependencies for certain Windows programs.

Installation files for Wine can be found in the WineHQ repository, the TwisterOS FAQ page, or the PlayOnLinux website repository. Box86 requires the "i386" (x86) versions of Wine install files (even though we are installing it on an ARM processor). Box86 "wraps" many of Wine's core Linux i386 libraries so that their calls are interpretable by Linux ARM libraries. Below are examples of how to install Wine from each of those places.

Note that manual installation is required since using multiarch will result in your ARM device thinking it needs to install lots of i386 dependencies to make wine-i386 work. The "twist" in Box86 is that Box86 "wraps" many Windows and Wine i386 libraries (.so or .dll files) so that they will work with your ARM device's libraries. Also note that wrapping libraries is an ongoing process throughout Box86 development and that some programs may not run properly until all of their i386 library dependencies are wrapped.

A note for Raspberry Pi users: Wine requires a 3G/1G split memory kernel. Raspberry Pi OS for the Pi 4 has a 3G/1G split kernel, but the Pi 3 and earlier models have a 2G/2G kernel by default and will need you to install a custom-compiled 3G/1G kernel to get Wine to work. Pi 3 (and Pi 4) users can use the pi-apps installer to install Box86, Wine, winetricks, and a new kernel. Users running Pi 2 and earlier will have to google some instructions on how to install a custom 3G/1G kernel to work with Wine.

Examples

These examples were all tested on Raspberry Pi 4. Note the similarities between the different install methods.

Installing wine-devel, wine-stable, or wine-staging for Raspberry Pi OS Buster from WineHQ deb files

Links from the WineHQ repo

# Backup any old wine installations
sudo mv ~/wine ~/wine-old
sudo mv ~/.wine ~/.wine-old
sudo mv /usr/local/bin/wine /usr/local/bin/wine-old
sudo mv /usr/local/bin/wineboot /usr/local/bin/wineboot-old
sudo mv /usr/local/bin/winecfg /usr/local/bin/winecfg-old
sudo mv /usr/local/bin/wineserver /usr/local/bin/wineserver-old

# Download, extract wine, and install wine
# (Replace the links/versions below with links/versions from the WineHQ site for the version of wine you wish to install. Note that we need the i386 version for Box86 even though we're installing it on our ARM processor.)
# (Pick an i386 version of wine-devel, wine-staging, or wine-stable)
cd ~/Downloads
wget https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/debian/dists/buster/main/binary-i386/wine-devel-i386_5.21~buster_i386.deb # NOTE: Replace this link with the version you want
wget https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/debian/dists/buster/main/binary-i386/wine-devel_5.21~buster_i386.deb  # NOTE: Also replace this link with the version you want
dpkg-deb -xv wine-devel-i386_5.21~buster_i386.deb wine-installer # NOTE: Make sure these dpkg command matches the filename of the deb package you just downloaded
dpkg-deb -xv wine-devel_5.21~buster_i386.deb wine-installer
mv ~/Downloads/wine-installer/opt/wine* ~/wine
rm wine*.deb # clean up
rm -rf wine-installer # clean up

# Install shortcuts (make 32bit launcher & symlinks. Credits: grayduck, Botspot)
echo -e '#!/bin/bash\nsetarch linux32 -L '"$HOME/wine/bin/wine "'"$@"' | sudo tee -a /usr/local/bin/wine >/dev/null # Create a script to launch wine programs as 32bit only
#sudo ln -s ~/wine/bin/wine /usr/local/bin/wine # You could aslo just make a symlink, but box86 only works for 32bit apps at the moment
sudo ln -s ~/wine/bin/wineboot /usr/local/bin/wineboot
sudo ln -s ~/wine/bin/winecfg /usr/local/bin/winecfg
sudo ln -s ~/wine/bin/wineserver /usr/local/bin/wineserver
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/wine /usr/local/bin/wineboot /usr/local/bin/winecfg /usr/local/bin/wineserver

# These packages are needed for running wine-staging on RPi 4 (Credits: chills340)
sudo apt install libstb0 -y
cd ~/Downloads
wget http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/f/faudio/libfaudio0_20.11-1~bpo10+1_i386.deb
wget -r -l1 -np -nd -A "libfaudio0_*~bpo10+1_i386.deb" http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/f/faudio/ # Download libfaudio i386 no matter its version number
dpkg-deb -xv libfaudio0_*~bpo10+1_i386.deb libfaudio
sudo cp -TRv libfaudio/usr/ /usr/
rm libfaudio0_*~bpo10+1_i386.deb # clean up
rm -rf libfaudio # clean up

# Boot wine (make fresh wineprefix in ~/.wine )
wineboot

Installing Wine for Raspberry Pi OS from the Twister OS FAQ page

Links from the TwisterOS FAQ

# Backup any old wine installations
sudo mv ~/wine ~/wine-old
sudo mv ~/.wine ~/.wine-old
sudo mv /usr/local/bin/wine /usr/local/bin/wine-old
sudo mv /usr/local/bin/wineboot /usr/local/bin/wineboot-old
sudo mv /usr/local/bin/winecfg /usr/local/bin/winecfg-old
sudo mv /usr/local/bin/wineserver /usr/local/bin/wineserver-old

# Download, extract wine, and install wine (last I checked, the Twister OS FAQ page had Wine 5.13-devel)
wget https://twisteros.com/wine.tgz -O ~/wine.tgz
tar -xzvf ~/wine.tgz
rm ~/wine.tgz # clean up

# Install shortcuts (make launcher & symlinks. Credits: grayduck, Botspot)
echo -e '#!/bin/bash\nsetarch linux32 -L '"$HOME/wine/bin/wine "'"$@"' | sudo tee -a /usr/local/bin/wine >/dev/null # Create a script to launch wine programs as 32bit only
#sudo ln -s ~/wine/bin/wine /usr/local/bin/wine # You could aslo just make a symlink, but box86 only works for 32bit apps at the moment
sudo ln -s ~/wine/bin/wineboot /usr/local/bin/wineboot
sudo ln -s ~/wine/bin/winecfg /usr/local/bin/winecfg
sudo ln -s ~/wine/bin/wineserver /usr/local/bin/wineserver
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/wine /usr/local/bin/wineboot /usr/local/bin/winecfg /usr/local/bin/wineserver

# Boot wine (make fresh wineprefix in ~/.wine )
wineboot

Wineprefixes (and Wine initialization)

The first time Wine is run (wine wineboot), it will create a fresh wineprefix for you (by default, located in the hidden folder ~/.wine). Think of a wineprefix as Wine's virtual 'harddrive' where it installs software and saves settings. Wineprefixes are portable and deletable.

If you at any point corrupt something inside your default wineprefix, you can start "fresh" by deleting your ~/.wine directory (with the rm -rf ~/.wine command) and boot wine again to create a new default wineprefix.

Transplanting wineprefixes (side-loading)

If software isn't installing in Wine with Box86, but is installing for you in Wine on a regular x86 Linux computer, you can copy a wineprefix from your x86 Linux computer to the device you're running Box86 on. This is most easily done by tarring the ~/.wine folder on your x86 Linux computer (tar -cvf winebottle.tar ~/.wine), transferring the tar file to your device, then un-tarring the tar file on your device running Box86 & Wine. Tarring the wineprefix preserves any symlinks that are inside it.

Swapping out different versions of Wine

You can change which version of Wine you are running simply by renaming your old wine and .wine folders to something else, then putting a new wine folder (containing your new version of Wine) in its place. Running wine wineboot again will make a fresh wineprefix with your new version of Wine. You can check which version of Wine you're running with the wine --version command.

Installing and Using winetricks

# Backup old winetricks
sudo mv /usr/local/bin/winetricks /usr/local/bin/winetricks-old

# Download
cd ~/Downloads
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Winetricks/winetricks/master/src/winetricks

# Install
sudo chmod +x winetricks
sudo cp winetricks /usr/local/bin

# winetricks needs this installed
sudo apt-get install cabextract -y

Whenever we run winetricks, we must suppress Box86's banner by typing BOX86_NOBANNER=1 to avoid errors. Similarly, invoking Box86's logging features (with BOX86_LOG=1 or similar) will cause winetricks to crash (unless we patch winetricks - see the Troubleshooting section) # future work.

Here is an example of how we should run a winetricks command with box86: BOX86_NOBANNER=1 winetricks -q corefonts vcrun2010 dotnet35sp1