This document, called the Wine User Guide, is both an easy installation guide and an extensive reference guide. This guide is for both the new Wine user and the experienced Wine user, offering full step-by-step installation and configuration instructions, as well as featuring extensive reference material by documenting all configuration features and support areas.
If, after examining this guide, the FAQ, and other relevant documentation there is still something you cannot figure out, we would love to hear from you. The mailing lists section contains several mailing lists and an IRC channel, all of which are great places to seek help and offer suggestions. If you are particularly savvy, and believe that something can be explained better, you can file a bug report or post a patch on Wine documentation itself.
In order to be able to use Wine, you must first have a working installation. This guide will help you to move your system from an empty, Wineless void to one boasting a fresh, up to date Wine install. The first step, Getting Wine, illustrates the various methods of getting Wine's files onto your computer. The second step, Configuring Wine, shows how to customize a Wine installation depending on your individual needs. The final step, Running Wine, covers the specific steps you can take to get a particular application to run better under Wine, and provides useful links in case you need further help.
The process of installing and running Wine can be summarised as follows:
Get a distribution as indicated in Getting Wine and see the Wine Downloads page. For the casual or new user the simplest is to get a packaged version for your distribution.
Optionally configure Wine using the winecfg command. Wine should work without any additional configuration options.
To test your installation run Wine notepad clone using the wine notepad command.
Check the Wine AppDB for specific instructions or steps required to install or run your application.
Run Wine using the wine path/to/appname.exe command.
The first command you will run will be to install an application. Typically something like wine /media/cdrom/setup.exe or the equivalent path might be used to install an application from CD.
