October 8, 2025

How to Install Wine on openSUSE Leap 16.0

This document explains how to install

• Wine Development WOW64
• Wine Staging WOW64
• Wine Development
• Wine Staging

"WoW64" is short for "Windows 32-bit on Windows 64-bit" and is a technology that enables 32-bit execution on 64-bit Windows without 32-bit libraries. Wikipedia

Wine WOW64

• These two versions of Wine (Development and Staging) execute compatible Windows 64-bit and 32-bit applications with no need for 32-bit repositories. See Announcement and Potential Issues (according to Arch Linux).
• As of Wine version 10.16, 16-bit Windows applications are also supported. I have not tested this.

Wine that is not WoW64

• Choose one of these two options (Development and Staging) if you want a pure 64-bit Windows environment for running 64-bit Windows applications, and you know that no 32-bit applications will ever be needed. Be aware that many 64-bit Windows apps have 32-bit installers, so Wine cannot install them. However, one can install such applications in MS Windows and subsequently copy the installation folder from the MS Windows C:\Program Files folder into the Program Files directory in a Wine prefix. If compatible with Wine, such apps can be executed using the $ wine command.
• 32-bit Windows applications cannot run in these versions of Wine because no 32-bit repositories have been provided for Leap 16, but 32-bit applications will execute if 32-bit libraries are added. The recommended way to do this is to install Wine using Flatpak. If you choose that route, do not install Wine by the method in this document. Do a Flatpak Wine installation instead, and subsequently install Windows apps using Flatpak. I believe the Terminal command  > sudo zypper install selinux-policy-targeted-gaming  must be executed before installing Wine with Flatpak. (I have not tested Flatpak Wine with Leap 16.)

Download and install the openSUSE Wine repository key

Open a Terminal window and download the repository key.

> wget https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Emulators:/Wine/16.0/repodata/repomd.xml.key

Install the key.

> sudo rpm --import repomd.xml.key

Add the openSUSE Leap 16.0 Wine repository

> sudo zypper addrepo https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Emulators:/Wine/16.0/Emulators:Wine.repo

Update the package database

> sudo zypper refresh

Install wine

The next command will install Wine WOW64, accompanied by Wine Mono, Wine Gecko, and Winetricks, on 64-bit hardware. This option supports 16-bit, 32-bit, and 64-bit Windows apps. (I have not tested 16-bit Windows apps.)

If you prefer Wine Staging WOW64, replace wine-wow64 by wine-staging-wow64.

For pure 64-bit Wine Development, replace wine-wow64 by wine or wine-staging.

If you encounter Problem 1: [Wine 32-bit cannot be provided], choose Solution 2: Break wine-10.16]. The resulting 64-bit Wine installation will be fine.

> sudo zypper install wine-wow64

Verify the installation

Do not execute winecfg yet, but you can check the version of Wine.

> wine --version

Configure SELinux for Wine

SELinux is a Linux kernel security module that is integrated into Leap 16. For Wine to function, certain SELinux security features need to be relaxed. The next command makes the necessary adjustment. For more information and security implications, see selinux-policy-targeted-gaming.

> sudo zypper install selinux-policy-targeted-gaming

Enable IA-32 Execution Layer

Enable IA-32 emulation if you intend to run 32-bit apps with Wine WOW64. It is not needed for Wine that is not WOW64. If you do not know what IA-32 is, see WikipediA IA-32 Execution Layer.

The next command installs IA-32. If the result is the message PackageKit is blocking zypper, wait a few minutes and try again, or accept the option to Ask PackageKit to quit.

> sudo zypper install grub2-compat-ia32

Next, edit the GRUB configuration file and add ia32_emulation=1 to the kernel parameters.

> sudo nano /etc/default/grub

Locate the line that starts with

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT

and append ia32_emulation=1 to the list of parameters within quotes. The result should look like

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="mitigations=auto quiet security=selinux selinux=1 ia32_emulation=1"

Save (Ctrl-O) and close (Ctrl-X) the file.

Update the GRUB configuration.

> sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

Complete the GRUB configuration by rebooting the computer.

> sudo reboot

After the reboot, Wine Wow64 is ready to install and execute 32-bit Windows apps. if Wine (not Wine WOW 64) was installed, it will execute 64-bit Windows applications and will install 64-bit Windows applications that have 64-bit installers.

Continue on to configure and test wine.

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