Which way to install WINE?

[Pepse]

I put Kubuntu 8.04 on another hard drive and I would like to install WINE 1.0.1, but I don't know how to unpack a bz2 file. Or should I gamble and apt-get wine? I would like to do it right as when I had WINE on my Kubuntu 7.04 is worked great. When I put it on my OTHER hard drive with Kubuntu 8.04 it was krap. WINW says donwloading through Winehq is better because distros tend to have problems. I would like to get a good copy running.

I have done a search and there is nothing that answers my questions.

Later. Pepse.

[deathadder]

It's always recommended to use your distro's package manage, so it can deal with updates for you. You could always query apt to find out what version of wine there is, incase your worried about that.

sudo apt-cache search wine

If you do want to install via source it's generally as simple as

tar jxvf wine-VERSION.tar.bz2
cd wine-VERSION
./configure
make
make install

The make install needs to be run as root so you'll need to su and theres going to be a INSTALL / README file that'll explain the wine specifics for compiling.

Did you do a search on the differences of wine or how to install a tar.bz2?

Compiling Software

[gamblor01]

I don't know how to unpack a bz2 file

Use the command bzip2 to compress a file and bunzip2 to decompress. Basically what happens with most software (provided in its source format anyway) is that people create a "tarball" or tar file. This is simply a file that can contain entire directories within it. It's sort of like a zip file except that there is no compression applied to it. Thus, people usually bzip or gzip the tarball after creation.

deathadder showed you one possible way to extract the file (which is probably the more convenient way). Alternatively, you could do it in two steps like this:

# bunzip2 wine.tar.bz2
# tar -xvf wine.tar

Similarly, you can unpack a tar.gz file by replacing the first line with a call to gunzip, or you can do it all in one tar command:

# tar -xzvf foo.tar.gz

Wine is probably just stating to compile from source to protect themselves. They can't be responsible for what other people compile and then pass out for their distro, so compiling it yourself ensures the best compatibility for your system. That being said, Ubuntu is a large distro with many bright people working on it. The package provided by Ubuntu is (in my experience) flawless. You also get the added benefit of getting the updates automatically via apt. I don't think installing wine via apt should be considered a gamble.

If you do choose to build it yourself however, you will need *at least* the build-essential package (sudo apt-get install build-essential) and possibly others. If you don't know what you're doing, building a large piece of software like Wine can be a headache.

[Bryon Speede]

I use Ubuntu 8.10 and I install wine through apt from the wineHQ repositories.

deb http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt intrepid main

Instuctions for use can be found at:
http://www.winehq.org/site/download-deb

I have had very good luck staying on the bleeding edge of the wine repos.

[Pepse]

I guess I am hoping to get as lucky as I did with whatever version of WINE I had in KUB 7.04. I was great and I did get that through Synaptic. I just questioned going that route as WINE says what's through your distro might me broken. As for bz2's I always avoided them. Tar.gz's are a piece of cake. So, with the help and opinions here I will try through Synaptic, unless it is thought that command line would be better.

I see though that opening a bz2 looks similar to tar packages, but I will await another opine or 2.

Later. Pepse.

[JayMan8081]

The version available through Synaptic will be the latest stable release version. If you add repository that Bryon Speede mentions that will install the bleeding-edge development version. The development version isn't always guaranteed to work or be stable. I'm currently using the development version though (from the same repo mentioned above) and haven't had any problems.

[Pepse]

I will go with the synaptic version on this hard drive. If I ever get my other hard drive with Kunbuntu 8.04 to connect to the internet again then I will use that drive for experimenting.

Later. Pepse.