I have installed Wine
and I am quite happy with my current version but winetricks
has let me down a few times with various error messages.
How do I update winetricks
to get the very latest version on Ubuntu?
The version of winetricks
that comes with the stock Ubuntu installation is often quite old. It is a great idea and a very safe one to update winetricks
manually, independent of your main Wine
installation, this can be done in a few simple steps:
1. Check for the latest version, remove the old version:
First check to see what is the latest version available from upstream with this handy one-liner:
curl --silent --show-error \
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Winetricks/winetricks/master/src/winetricks --stderr - \
| grep ^WINETRICKS_VERSION | cut -d '=' -f 2
Then if this trumps your own installed version (to see your version run winetricks --version
from a command line) remove your currently installed version:
sudo apt-get remove winetricks
2. Install the latest version:
Then download and install the very latest version:
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Winetricks/winetricks/master/src/winetricks
chmod +x winetricks
sudo mv -v winetricks /usr/local/bin
As demonstrated on my own system the latest version can then be tested:
andrew@ilium~$ winetricks --version
20240105-next - sha256sum: c43ad4a2529441656e3f5a0b5ed6e248de15bf5cf657510ec2c0f6efc2562080
andrew@ilium~$
3. Add some extras & check for newer syntax:
It may also be a good idea to ensure that you have a few required 'helper' applications for winetricks
to run, although most of these should have already been installed with your copy of Wine:
sudo apt-get install cabextract p7zip unrar unzip wget zenity
Then check the correct usage, which could have changed from your older version:
andrew@ilium~$ winetricks -h
Usage: /usr/local/bin/winetricks [options] [command|verb|path-to-verb] ...
Executes given verbs. Each verb installs an application or changes a setting.
Options:
--country=CC Set country code to CC and don't detect your IP address
-f, --force Don't check whether packages were already installed
--gui Show gui diagnostics even when driven by commandline
--gui=OPT Set OPT to kdialog or zenity to override GUI engine
--isolate Install each app or game in its own bottle (WINEPREFIX)
--self-update Update this application to the last version
--update-rollback Rollback the last self update
-k, --keep_isos Cache isos (allows later installation without disc)
--no-clean Don't delete temp directories (useful during debugging)
--optin Opt in to reporting which verbs you use to the Winetricks maintainers
--optout Opt out of reporting which verbs you use to the Winetricks maintainers
-q, --unattended Don't ask any questions, just install automatically
-r, --ddrescue Retry hard when caching scratched discs
-t --torify Run downloads under torify, if available
--verify Run (automated) GUI tests for verbs, if available
-v, --verbose Echo all commands as they are executed
-h, --help Display this message and exit
-V, --version Display version and exit
Commands:
list list categories
list-all list all categories and their verbs
apps list list verbs in category 'applications'
benchmarks list list verbs in category 'benchmarks'
dlls list list verbs in category 'dlls'
fonts list list verbs in category 'fonts'
settings list list verbs in category 'settings'
list-cached list cached-and-ready-to-install verbs
list-download list verbs which download automatically
list-manual-download list verbs which download with some help from the user
list-installed list already-installed verbs
arch=32|64 create wineprefix with 32 or 64 bit, this option must be
given before prefix=foobar and will not work in case of
the default wineprefix.
prefix=foobar select WINEPREFIX=/home/andrew/.local/share/wineprefixes/foobar
annihilate Delete ALL DATA AND APPLICATIONS INSIDE THIS WINEPREFIX
andrew@ilium~$
4. Safely reverse these steps:
If for some reason you wish to return to your older repository version you can simply run the following:
sudo rm /usr/local/bin/winetricks
sudo apt-get install winetricks
And all will be as it was.
Notes:
sudo winetricks --self-update
and if not happy with the results roll this back with: sudo winetricks --update-rollback
./usr/local/bin
or even ~/bin
but certainly /usr/bin
will work.
winetricks
indeed (August 2017 insteadt of August 2014) ! → this advice is still great and valid.
The winetricks versions that are available in Disco and Eoan are able to update themselves [1].
If you happen to be using 19.04 or later, just run:
sudo apt install winetricks
sudo winetricks --self-update
If you're on an older version of Ubuntu, you can fetch the .deb package here:
https://packages.ubuntu.com/eoan/all/winetricks/download