How to update Wine versions?

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1

Hello.

I’m using Lutris as a flatpak on Xubuntu 23.04, not sure if that matters. When I manage the Wine versions in Lutris, the most recent regular one is lutris-7.2-2, which I find a bit weird as Wine 8 has been released several monthes ago. There’s a Proton-GE version that seems more up-to-date, though (lutris-GE-Proton8-8). I’m a bit confused: did Lutris switch to Proton starting with Wine 8? does it provide custom builds only for specific versions for some reason and I’m supposed to use the system one in other cases?

So, I’m wondering if I have access to the latest versions available and, if not, how to refresh the list?

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2

I use the Lutris ‘deb’ to install on Debian/Ubuntu based systems, which you can get here… github[.]com/lutris/lutris/releases ; I suggest the v0.5.12 (from Dec 2012) over the current v0.5.13 (from May 2023) due to regressions on at least a couple of games I play as they went from working great to pretty much not working.

but about the Wine etc… the newest official ‘stable’ Wine (from winehq[.]org (official Wine website)) is currently v8.0.1. but the newest ‘development’ version is v8.12. the ‘development’ version is released roughly once a month where as each “major” ‘stable’ version seems to be released about once a year in January with an occasional minor update throughout the year, like for example… v8.0 was released Jan 2023 where as v8.0.1 was released April 2023.

Lutris uses the system default profile for it’s Wine and game saves etc which is located “~/.wine” (or basically the “.wine” folder in ones Home directory). you can force it to use other locations (i.e. wine prefixes) if you need to (as I did with the “offline” copy of RDR2 build 1436.28) in Lutris… ‘right click game shortcut > Configure > Game options > Wine prefix’ and simply enter the location of the wine prefix to use. for example I create them with PlayOnLinux, to to use one of these for example you would do… “/home/user/.PlayOnLinux/wineprefix/PlayOnLinuxPrefixNameHere/” (without the ")

the ‘lutris-GE-Proton8-8’ you mention… these I generally use for playing my games through Lutris since they tend to have more games supported than using stock Wine etc. but at least to my knowledge you have to manually install these as it’s not used by default. the easiest way to install these is with Lutris open, under the ‘Runners’ on the left side of the program under that you will see ‘Wine’ as if you hover your mouse pointer over it you will see a ‘folder’ and ‘gear’ looking icon. click the ‘folder’ icon as you can install the Lutris-GE runners through here (alternatively, you can also get the file from the Github page (github[.]com/GloriousEggroll/wine-ge-custom/releases) and extract it to “~/.local/share/lutris/runners/wine”). but to make sure the game shortcut you created uses it, right click the game shortcut you made > Configure > Runner options’ and on ‘Wine version’ choose the Lutris-GE etc runner here and click ‘save’.

but basically… since you are using a Ubuntu based Linux distro I suggest just following the official Wine instructions from Ubuntu WineHQ Repository - WineHQ Wiki then install Lutris etc.

there is basically six separate commands (since you are on 23.04 make sure to use this one on the official Wine website (but I tend to stick with the LTS Ubuntu based versions since they are supported for much longer like 22.04 etc)) you enter into the terminal to get your preferred Wine installed (I generally suggest either ‘stable’ or ‘development’). but I usually suggest doing one more terminal command after that so you get the basic Wine menu entries in your start menu… ‘apt install wine-desktop-files’ which makes it a bit easier to configure Wine with the ‘Configure Wine’ entry on your start menu vs having to do ‘winecfg’ from terminal etc.

but in general… you don’t always need to use the newest Wine version if all of your games work. while I currently am using the newest ‘development’ version of Wine v8.12 for most of my games, I do have a older profile setup (currently Wine v7.0.2) for one of my games since anything newer than 8.1 no longer works from a clean profile state and I generally stick to “lutris-GE-Proton7-28-x86_64” for my games as it still supports forcing FSR 1.0 into games that don’t have native support which can come in handy if you need a bit more performance without sacrificing graphics much since with a typical 1080p(1920x1080) monitor for example, I can force 1477x831 into a game and, as long as you got ‘fullscreen = on’ in the game, it will then upscale it to 1920x1080. so the game is actually rendering on the GPU at 1477x831 but give you similar to 1920x1080 graphics. it’s easily worth the slight trade-off if you need more frame rate as I use that on a couple of my games that I need more performance from. but I think in the newest or nearly newest Lutris GE’s runners that feature has been removed.

hopefully that gives you the gist of things as I don’t know all of the details like with ‘lutris-7.2-2’ etc, since I don’t use those, but what I said I suspect is more commonly used for gaming through Lutris anyways.

3

Oh, I know how Wine works, the release cycle, prefixes and such. What I’m curious about is specifically the list of Wine versions installable through Lutris and why there are only a few specific versions available, that are quite old, except for one that seems to be derived from Proton GE. I’m wondering if that’s normal or if there’s something I should do to update the list.

4

Now I understand you a bit better. I think that’s pretty much normal with how you see it now :wink:

I don’t really use anything besides stock Wine or the GE stuff through Lutris (and thereabouts), so I could not comment much beyond that with what’s listed in the ‘Manage wine versions’ screen as I currently see five GE things listed there on Lutris v0.5.12 as the four near the top (7-28/8.7-1/8-8/8-10) and then 6.16-1 a bit lower on the list.

but you can add in additional versions if you want through the Github page if needed as it appears to have all of the GE versions here… github[.]com/GloriousEggroll/wine-ge-custom/releases ; which to use these, as I was saying, you just extract the ‘tar.gz’ file of whichever version you want to “/.local/share/lutris/runners/wine” and then Lutris will see it as a option.

but in regards to the ‘default’ list I suspect they got the older versions along with newer GE versions to cover a wide range of games running in Lutris in my best guesstimations.

5

On my side, I see three versions of Proton GE: 6.16, 8.8 and 8.10. It looks like the list has been updated by itself (I assume it’s due to the check Lutris does at start) as I didn’t have 8.10 when I opened the thread (not sure about 6.16), but I don’t have the other two that you mention, which is a bit weird.

Not that I need them or can’t install them manually, it’s more a curiosity thing (especially why is there no regular Wine 8.x and only an derivative version of Valve’s Proton), given that Lutris is tailored at regular users that wouldn’t install that kind of stuff by themselves.

6

Hello @abelthorne .

I like use “Protonplus” application. Is a simple tools manager for gnome. You can choose the wine or Dxvk you want, and the link from lutris/steam is automatic.
And little + you have a little discription of the difference between differents versions.

7

Again, I don’t have issues to install Wine (or derivatives like Proton, Proton GE, Wine GE…), my questions are only about the versions management in Lutris itself.

I’m surprised to see that there are missing major versions, that recent ones have apparently switched to Proton and thus I’m wondering if that’s normal or if I missed an option somewhere to refresh the list.

E.g. let’s say that I want to use Wine 8.x (not Proton) for a game for some reason: am I supposed to install it outside Lutris or is it supposed to be in the list of Lutris and mine is outdated?

I’m really trying to understand a situation that I find weird, not looking for any workarounds. :wink:

8

The basic Wine installation is separate from Lutris in general and to start a game/program on the typical system Wine installation you would just load the ‘exe’ file, which will use the system installed Wine by default.

basically if you want THE newest ‘development’ version of Wine (which I personally have installed on my system for general Wine usage) you basically issue the following six commands from terminal for Ubuntu 22.04 based systems…

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo mkdir -pm755 /etc/apt/keyrings
sudo wget -O /etc/apt/keyrings/winehq-archive.key https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/winehq.key
sudo wget -NP /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/dists/jammy/winehq-jammy.sources
sudo apt update
sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-devel
sudo apt install wine-desktop-files

NOTE: that last command is optional but makes it a bit easier to do some stuff through GUI.

that will currently install the ‘development’ version of Wine, which is current v8.12 to the system. so if you run a random EXE file it will use Wine v8.12 which is totally separate from Lutris. but if you run stuff in Lutris it will basically use the “.wine” profile (which is where the system install Wine saves general data to) for storing games save data etc.