[CONFIGURATION] Upgrade from 20.04 to 22.04 LTS trashed WINE (but now fixed)

[Tom_ZeCat]

Upgrade to 22.04 broke WINE

I went a few months unable to run my favorite program, Ultralingua 6, from WINE. Strangely, other Windows apps still ran in WINE, but then another one, Treepad Business, also quit running. To run Ultralingua 6 (which is pretty old), I installed Windows 2000 under VirtualBox. Then at least I could run it. But I missed the days when I could just run Ultralingua directly in Kubuntu.

I can, once again. The key was to purge-uninstall WINE and everything related to it (like Winetricks and Q4Wine) and then to install the latest WINE, version 8.0. However, then I could only run a WINE app by double clicking on its exe file. However, Q4Wine helped me to get it running from a desktop icon and from the program launcher. My problem is solved, so what would I post about it? I'm posting in detail what worked so that it might end up helping another *buntu user. Plus, I welcome any comments. I don't fully understand what happened or why this worked, but I'm thrilled to have found a solution. I'm also including some screenshots at the end.

Here's what I did:

1. With Muon package manager, I purge-unintalled WINE and everything pertaining to it. One thing didn't let me purge, so I just went with "remove" for it.
2. I command-line installed the latest version of WINE (8.0 at present). (https://tipsonunix.com/2023/01/26/ho...tu-linux-mint/)
3. At this point Ultralingua, and other Windows programs, would run, but only if I double clicked on their exe file from Dolphin. Programs would not run from KDE's launcher.
4. Installed Q4Wine (and other WINE-helper programs like PlayOnLinux), though I think it's Q4Wine that fixed things.
5. I double clicked on Ultralingua's exe file, and it wanted to run from Q4Linux. Q4Linux put Ultralingua's icon in Q4Linux's interface.
6. At this point, I was able to run Ultralingua by clicking on its icon within Q4Linux's interface, but I wanted to be able to run it from the desktop and the launcher.
7. I therefore drag and dropped Ultralingua's icon from Q4Linux's interface to the desktop.
8. At this point, I could run Ultralingua from its desktop icon, but not from the launcher.
9. I therefore right clicked on the Ultralingua desktop icon and chose "properties". I then clicked on the Applications tab and found the command that QT had created for Ultralingua. I copied that into a text file. (It was: /usr/bin/q4wine-cli -p "Default" -d "system" -i "ultralingua" %f)
10. I then right-clicked on KDE's launch icon (start button) and chose "Edit Applications". I went into Education ==> Languages and found the Ultralingua entry I had created before.
11. I replaced the "browse to" command line I had created before with the command that Q4Linux had created for the desktop.

And, voilà! It all works now.

The path which did not work with a desktop icon or with the launcher was this:
/home/tom/.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Ultralingua 6/ultralingua.exe

The one that worked was this:
/usr/bin/q4wine-cli -p "Default" -d "system" -i "ultralingua" %f

I'm at a loss to understand why WINE quit working from the upgrade or why, after I installed WINE 8 could I double click on Ultralingua's exe file, but that direct link to the EXE would not work in the program launcher. If anyone knows, I'm all ears.

Some other programs installed before the upgrade would no longer run from the launcher, but using Q4Wine to create a desktop icon, and then getting its link worked for them as well.

Here are some screen shots:

Running a Windows app from WINE 8.0 now has a very different interface. On the left is Ultralingua 6 running under WINE 8. On the 8 is it running from Windows 2000.



Here's Q4Wine's interface:

[Schwarzer Kater]

[…] or why, after I installed WINE 8 could I double click on Ultralingua's exe file, but that direct link to the EXE would not work in the program launcher. If anyone knows, I'm all ears. […]

I don't use Wine, because I simply boot into Windows if I do need to use a Windows program (fortunately very rarely) - but did you check the settings for .exe in System Settings -> Applications -> File Associations?

[claydoh]

I suggest looking at things like lutris, playonlinux, and Bottles. They might prove useful
I didn't know that q4wine was even still around, the version you are running IS three years old. though.


https://www.playonlinux.com/en/
https://www.playonlinux.com/en/
https://usebottles.com/


I won't use wine by itself if I ever had to use it for any reason. Far too messy. These tools keep that crap sort of separate from my system. Kinda like Steam.
I am pretty sure their Wine usage is separate from the distro altogether, so backing up and system upgraded are much less effected.


I am trying to remember the last thing I "needed" wine for.
Steam, of course, before they supported Linux. I can't recall the last non-game thing, it has been so long.
Probably some nasty version of Quicken that I didn't really need, that I had to pay my bank to allow access for.
That's how I ended up figuring out how to set up and maintain a PPA for KMyMoney for while there.

[GreyGeek]

I use wine for only one thing, a 32bit exe that was supplied with the EKG device I use to monitor my wife's heart.
I had switched to KDE neon use edition 20.04 a couple years ago and had no problem getting wine32 installed from the repository. On a whim I decided a couple weeks ago to install KDE neon 5.27 from a LiveUSB instead of just rolling forward. The install was clean and straight forward and I pulled my ~/.wine32 directory, which contains EGK.EXE, from the last snapshot of my old system. I noticed that the amd64 architecture was present, along with wine64, was preinstalled. I purged the existing wine packages and then I added i386 with "sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386".
I followed the instructions on adding wine (32 and 64) to KDE neon 22.04 given in this link: https://wine.htmlvalidator.com/insta...base22.04.html

The procedure failed at this step:

The installation fails with the following message:

jerry@jerry-hplaptop17cn1xxx:~$ sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-stable
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Starting pkgProblemResolver with broken count: 1
Starting 2 pkgProblemResolver with broken count: 1
Investigating (0) winehq-stable:amd64 < none -> 8.0.0.0~jammy-1 @un puN Ib >
Broken winehq-stable:amd64 Depends on wine-stable:amd64 < none @rc H > (= 8.0.0.0~jammy-1)
Considering wine-stable:amd64 0 as a solution to winehq-stable:amd64 9999
Considering wine-stable:i386 0 as a solution to winehq-stable:amd64 9999
Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
winehq-stable : Depends: wine-stable (= 8.0.0.0~jammy-1)
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
jerry@jerry-hplaptop17cn1xxx:~$

Claydoh, I had totally forgotten about bottles (Chris TItus gave an excellent tutorial on it is his YT channel), so I am going to play around with it and see if it can bridge the gap. If that doesn't work then I still have two options: PlayonLinux or waiting until KDE neon adds wine32 to their repository.

EDIT:
Bottles displayed the EKG app but the menu options were not functional and it appears that the fonts were ignored.
I next tried Playonlinux and it, too, displayed the app but the menu options were not functioning.

Ergo, I'll wait until KDE neon adds wine32 to the repository.

[Tom_ZeCat]

I suggest looking at things like lutris, playonlinux, and Bottles. They might prove useful
I didn't know that q4wine was even still around, the version you are running IS three years old. though.


https://www.playonlinux.com/en/
https://www.playonlinux.com/en/
https://usebottles.com/


I won't use wine by itself if I ever had to use it for any reason. Far too messy. These tools keep that crap sort of separate from my system. Kinda like Steam.
I am pretty sure their Wine usage is separate from the distro altogether, so backing up and system upgraded are much less effected.


I am trying to remember the last thing I "needed" wine for.
Steam, of course, before they supported Linux. I can't recall the last non-game thing, it has been so long.
Probably some nasty version of Quicken that I didn't really need, that I had to pay my bank to allow access for.
That's how I ended up figuring out how to set up and maintain a PPA for KMyMoney for while there.

I'll only run a Windows app under WINE if it runs extremely well. If something runs buggy under WINE, I run it under Windows in VirtualBox. This Ultralingua has run flawlessly under WINE since I first started using Ubuntu with version 12.04. I do a lot of foreign language studying, and it's great to have Ultralingua's icon in panels so that I can quickly access it at any time. I did okay running it under Win 2K. It uses less resources than other Windows versions, and this Ultralingua version is old, so Win 2K is fine. But now it's so much nicer to have it run in WINE, so I can just run it really quick without loading up another OS.

I got this thing running, and was thrilled, so we're good. I have installed PlayOnLinux before, but I ended up never using it. I will, however, try this Bottles thing at some point. It would be nice if WINE would run any Windows or Mac program flawlessly, but that is not the case. However, there are a few things that run well. Ultralingua 6 is one of them. Strangely, I've never been able to get Ultralingua 7 to run.

I have a new project coming up. I wanted an older version of Chessmaster because the latest won't run under Windows 7 unless I muck around with the .NET framework and set up exactly the right one, and I would probably have to manually install a bunch of Win 7 updates. So I ordered off for Chessmaster 6000, which is pretty old and might even run on Win 2K, if not it will on my Windows 7 install. However, they sent me the Mac version, which runs on Mac OS 9. I paid almost nothing for it, so I'm not sending it back. I'm going to install this thing called SheepShaver that will let me run various versions of Mac OS, including 9. That will be cool to be able to run old Mac software.

[claydoh]

The thing about Lutris and Bottles is that wine is 100% separated from the OS, like Steam does it, so updates and upgrades will heave much less an effect, if any. AND you can try out and swap between different versions or implementations of wine that might fit an application much better.

[Tom_ZeCat]

The thing about Lutris and Bottles is that wine is 100% separated from the OS, like Steam does it, so updates and upgrades will heave much less an effect, if any. AND you can try out and swap between different versions or implementations of wine that might fit an application much better.

Cool to know, thanks. I might use those things at some point. Right now, I've got Ultralingua working, so I'm leaving it alone.

[claydoh]

so I'm leaving it alone.

Until it breaks again

Luckily you are not using neon, which breaks a 32-bit dependencies every time some minor dependency of a dependency of a new KDE application touches something with a 32-bit version needed by a dependency of a dependency of Wine, lol.

[GreyGeek]

Ya, NOW you tell me.

I am assuming that KDE neon will eventually update their repository to include wine32. If they don't then I may have to consider trying another distro. With that possibility I installed mxLinux 23.2 KDE in a VM. Setting up the wine32 environment was easy, but I didn't want to run a VM every time I used the EKG. And, it's 3+ GB more space that gets snapshotted and increases the snapshot and send command times. Also, I can't mount /dev/vda2 to /mnt and expose the ROOTFS and @, so I would be forced to use TimeShift or Snapper. mxLinux's partition software is better, however, when it comes to setting up BTRFS subvolumes during install.

My EKG machine allows me to run the test, evaluate the results on the machine's display, and saving the results to the machine's storage device and transfer it to my laptop. The EKG strips are encoded and only the app can decode them. What it doesn't allow me to do is print an EKG strip and send it as a PDF to my wife's cardiologist.

[claydoh]

I am assuming that KDE neon will eventually update their repository to include wine32

Neon doesn't package anything not KDE related, it is all Ubuntu, for the 32-bit stuff, except for those few bits that affect Wine/Steam.
But that has its own problems.

What is happening is that something, such as Digikam, (or maybe Krita?) in this recent case, needs an updated library libjpeg-turbo8. A dependency for this new thing has a 32-bit component that is also a dep of something needed for Wine, or more often, WineHQs third party stuff.

32- and 64-bit version have to be identical in Debian-land, and Neon doesn't build (many) 32-bit packages, and specifically just to support Wine etc. But sometimes the layers of deps become a bit cumbersome to manage, for just one package.
The libjpeg-turbo needs a32-bit version built, as well as any lower level deps.
Add in the even more confusing virtual packages thing, and my brane hertz.

Someone is working on a fix for the recent problem, it might be ready quite soon.
I also believe that they are trying to come up with a better way to check and test this properly, in order to get to the problem areas and builds as well.
But Neon has had issues with Wine off and on since the beginning, and I doubt it will go away.

I will suggest using alternative sources for anything Wine related, even for a normal *buntu or other distro. WineHQ is not always a stable package base itself, on Ubuntu even.

Unpopular opinion as it is, but flatpaks for Lutris and Bottles are 2000 times more usable and stable, and avoid system install of Wine. Heck, even the 'normal' Lutris uses mostly standalone Wine 'Runner' implementations, though some game configs for it seem to require system level winetricks or other bits. Even though it may not be necessary. World of Warcraft, for one seems to have outdated info on Lutris' website.

Personally, I won't use a system-installed wine, and prefer the Steam/Lutris method.

But Neon is NOT a distro, as we need to keep being reminded. It has a focus on KDE, and sometimes other things will break, as has been the case since day 1.

[GreyGeek]

It's worse than that, Claydoh
While trying several ways to install wine32 on neon all failed because of the failure to install a specific library. I don't remember its name.
JRidelle stated in a post that neon won't be fixing that library to enable wine32 because of reasons.
So, no wine32 from neon repositories and other sources because of that block. ALL the guides, and I've tried them all, fail.
Also, absolutely no distro I want to use uses BTRFS the way Ubuntu does, which allows me to store @yyyymmddhhmm inside a subdirectory in the rootfs. All of them put their snapshots inside the subvolume they want to snapshot, To rollback to a specific snapshot they modify grub's menu. With Ubuntu/Kubuntu I merely "mv @ @old" and "btrfs su snapshot @yyyymmddhhmm @", then reboot.

Anyway, I'm playing with Kubuntu 22.04.2 LST to see if I can install wine32 on it using one of the guides.

[GreyGeek]

...

Anyway, I'm playing with Kubuntu 22.04.2 LST to see if I can install wine32 on it using one of the guides.

I followed the method shown at https://wine.htmlvalidator.com/insta...ntu-20.04.html
and it worked beautifully.

So, today I will be moving back to Kubuntu.

[Snowhog]

So, today I will be moving back to Kubuntu.

We’re going to have to insist you sign a long term lease.

[claydoh]

JRidelle stated in a post that neon won't be fixing that library to enable wine32 because of reasons

Not quite true, someone is working on the current libjpeg-turbo dependencies for 32 bit. I have been in chat with him
Actually:
The issues has been PARTIALLY fixed, as of this morning.
32-bit package building will be happening soon (ish??)

Though it is true that neon, being a KDE repo on top of Ubuntu (and NOT a distro in itself) does not focus on things outside that scope.
They do try to fix these when they pop up.
Right now, the focus is on migrating to Qt6 on the dev builds (in Unstable, atm, iirc).

wine32 itself is becoming less and less important, other than as part of a blanket dependency for system-level wine installs.

Yet, my Steam works fine, and since I use Lutris and Bottles on those rare occasions that Steam won't suffice, I have zero issues with wine related crap, since they are all separate from the actual OS
Lutris in *buntu does not install wine32, it is only a 'suggests', for example.

Heck, if one uses the dreaded flatpak for it, there are zero wine deps, of course.

I installerd World of Warcraft the other day, a game I have never tried, not my thing.
Supposedly it is a pain, and Lutris' own guide (three years old now) gives instruction to install a number of Wine dependencies for things to work.
Of course, I completely ignored them, and Just Installed The Thing without following any guide at all.
I was in in under 5 minutes, and a few more minutes tweaking some settings related to the Proton-based wine 'runner' I basically guessed on, as well as some in-game graphics settings, I was playing in no time. 15 or 20 mins?
No system installed wine stuff on my system whatsoever.
I still don't see the allure of the the game, though, lol

tl;dr
neon is about KDE. Outside of that, there will be compromises. Just like it always has been.