How to Install Wine Staging on Debian 10 Buster

Wine’s Staging branch is miles ahead of standard Wine in terms of both performance and features. You can install the latest Staging releases on Debian just as easily as the default version and get the latest updates as soon as they’re released.

In this tutorial you will learn:

  • How to Enable 32bit Support
  • How to Import the Wine GPG Key
  • How to Add the Wine Repository
  • How to Install Wine Staging
  • How to Open the Configuration and Test

Wine Staging on Debian 10

Wine Staging on Debian 10.

Software Requirements and Conventions Used

Software Requirements and Linux Command Line Conventions
Category Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used
System Debian 10 Buster
Software Wine Staging
Other Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the sudo command.
Conventions # – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command
$ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user

How to Enable 32bit Support

Before you can install Wine, you’re going to enable 32bit support on your system. Wine is fully capable of running on 64bit only systems, but that will limit the Windows applications you can run the 64bit ones. Unfortunately, a large portion of Windows applications are still 32bit, so it would be fairly limiting.



It’s really simple to enable 32bit support on Debian. Just tell dpkg to add the architecture.

$ sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386

Now, update Apt to apply the change.

$ sudo apt update

How to Import the Wine GPG Key

Like all Debian repositories, the official Wine repo requires a GPG key to secure your downloads and verify them. Start by downloading the key with wget.

$ wget -nc https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/winehq.key

Import the key with Apt.

$ sudo apt-key add winehq.key

How to Add the Wine Repository

You can add the repository to your system now. This is an official repository straight from the Wine developers, so there’s no need to worry about broken packages or instability, and it certainly won’t be abandoned any time soon.

Add the Wine Repository on Debian 10

Add the Wine Repository on Debian 10.

Use your text editor to create a file at /etc/apt/sources.list.d/wine.list. Place the following line in that file.

deb https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/debian/ buster main


Save the file and exit. Then, update Apt again to add the repository.

$ sudo apt update

How to Install Wine Staging

Install Wine Staging on Debian 10

Install Wine Staging on Debian 10.

You’re finally ready to install Wine. It’s better to install it along with the recommended packages to ensure more complete support for whichever software you’re running.

$ sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-staging

It’ll be a fairly large download, so sit back and relax for a bit.

How to Open the Configuration and Test

You can make sure that Wine is installed on your system by running winecfg. Open a terminal window and run the command as a regular user. Wine will take a few seconds to set itself up for the first time. Then, you’ll see the Wine configuration settings. Click the About tab. You should see the version of Wine that you installed with “Staging” next to it.

Conclusion

Wine Staging is installed and ready to use. Because you installed Wine Staging from the official repository, expect frequent updates to the latest versions as they arrive. You also won’t ever be limited by using the Stable branch of Debian because the repository will remain both compatible and up-to-date.