August 9, 2021

How to Install Wine on Arch Linux

Ensure sudo is available

If you do not know whether sudo is installed, execute the following command. It should ask for your password and then display the word Hello.

$ sudo echo 'Hello'

If it does not display Hello, jump to the section Install and configure sudo, to get sudo working, and then return here.

Enable the multilib repository

The multilib repository enables 32-bit apps to run on 64-bit installations. Many Windows apps are 32-bit or have 32-bit components, and even 64-bit apps often have installation .exe files that are 32-bit. Without multiarch, Wine would have limited value.

To enable multilib, use your favorite command line editor (nano, vim, emacs) to uncomment the [multilib] section of /etc/pacman.conf. If using nano,

$ sudo nano /etc/pacman.conf

and remove the leading # characters from the two lines of the [multilib] section, yielding

[multilib]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

After saving the file and exiting, complete the process with a full system upgrade.

$ sudo pacman -Syu

If there are conflicts with gcc-libs, consult the multilib section in the Arch Linux Wiki.

Install Wine

The next command will install Wine Development. If you prefer Wine Staging, replace wine with wine-staging.

As the installation proceeds, note the list of "Optional Dependencies". If you see something you want, it can be installed after Wine is in place.

$ sudo pacman -S wine

Optional: Install wine-mono and wine-gecko

Consider installing wine-gecko and wine-mono for applications that depend on Internet Explorer and .NET, respectively. These packages are not strictly required as Wine will download the relevant files as needed. However, having the files downloaded in advance allows you to work off-line and makes it so Wine does not download the files for each Wine prefix needing them. wiki.archlinux.org/title/Wine#Installation

32-bit and 64-bit versions of both mono and geko will be installed.

$ sudo pacman -S wine-mono wine-gecko

Verify the installation

The next command verifies the installation and displays version of Wine that was installed.

$ wine --version

If successful, installation of Wine is complete.

Install and configure sudo

Open a console window and login as super user.

$ su -l

Before updating in the next step, you are advised to check the latest news on the Arch Linux home page. Subsequently, the following will update your system and install sudo.

# pacman -Syu
# pacman -S sudo

In order that you have sudo rights, you must edit /etc/sudoers using visudo. The following will open /etc/sudoers for editing with nano. If you prefer vi, skip the export.

# export EDITOR=nano
# visudo /etc/sudoers

In the editor, insert into the section titled

## User privilege specification

the following line, but substitute your username for USER_NAME.

USER_NAME ALL=(ALL) ALL

After exiting from the editor, log out of the root account and close the Terminal window.

# exit
$ exit

Close any open apps.

In order to activate sudo for your user name, Restart your Computer.

When logged in again, continue from here to verify sudo is installed and properly configured.

-------- Waiting for computer to restart --------

To verify you can now use sudo, open a Terminal session and issue the following command.

$ sudo echo 'Hello'

The test is successful if, after requesting and receiving your password, Hello is displayed.