Install Wine on Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa Linux

WINE is a lightweight compatibility layer that “translates” Windows applications into a language that Ubuntu can work with. The objective of this tutorial is to install Wine on Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa Linux.

In this tutorial you will learn:

  • How to install Wine from a standard Ubuntu repository
  • How to install Wine from the official Wine repositories
  • How to install Wine stable, staging and development versions

Install Wine on Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa Linux

Install Wine on Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa Linux

Software Requirements and Conventions Used

Software Requirements and Linux Command Line Conventions
Category Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used
System Installed or upgraded Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa
Software WineHQ
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

Install Wine on Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa Linux step by step instructions

  1. How to install Wine from a standard Ubuntu repository

    The recommended approach to install Wine on Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa Linux is to perform the installation from an Ubuntu repository as it will provide you with a stable wine version. The WineHQ requires multiarch to be enabled. Therefore the first step is to enable i386 architecture:

    dpkg --add-architecture i386 
    $ sudo apt update
    

    Next, to install Wine we need to install both wine64 and wine32 Windows API implementation packages. To do so execute the following command:

    $ sudo apt install wine64 wine32
    

    Onec the installation is completed confirm the wine installation by checking for the wine version:

    $ wine --version
    wine-5.0 (Ubuntu 5.0-3)
    


  2. How to install Wine staging from the official Wine repositories

    The following procedure can be used to install Wine directly using WinHQ packages. To start add i386 architecture to your Ubuntu 20.04 system:

    $ sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386 
    $ sudo apt update
    

    Next add WineHQ signing key and repository:

    NOTE
    At the time of writing the Ubuntu 20.04 Wine repository is not available yet. From this reason we are using bionic repository instead of focal to complete the installation.
    $ wget -qO- https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/winehq.key | sudo apt-key add -
    $ sudo apt-add-repository 'deb http://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/ bionic main'
    

    At this point we have the following WineHQ installations available: stable, staging and development version. Select the installation command to suit your environment:

    WineHQ Stable

    To install stable WineHQ packages enter:

    sudo apt-get install --install-recommends winehq-stable
    

    Check version after Wine installation:

    $ wine --version
    wine-5.0
    


    WineHQ Staging

    To install stating WineHQ packages enter:

    sudo apt-get install --install-recommends winehq-staging
    

    Check version after Wine installation:

    $ wine --version
    wine-5.2 (Staging)
    

    WineHQ Development

    To install development WineHQ packages enter:

    sudo apt-get install --install-recommends winehq-devel

    Check version after Wine installation:

    $ wine --version
    wine-5.2