How do I remove WINE as a virtual package?

Question

I recently wiped my image to get rid of weirdness going on with my system and reinstalled Ubuntu. I followed the usual WINE installation instructions (add the WINE PPA, update/upgrade, and install), and ran winecfg, and everything went smoothly. However, it refuses to run any Windows .exe file, though it does show up on the right-click menu.

I decided that I would uninstall WINE and compile it myself so as to make sure no odd bugs were going on with the public binary. I opened the terminal and typed sudo apt purge wine, but was told that Virtual packages like 'wine' can't be removed. How do I fix this?

EDIT: Here is the output of apt-cache show wine:

Package: wine  
Source: wine1.8  
Priority: extra  
Section: metapackages  
Installed-Size: 6  
Maintainer: Scott Ritchie <[email protected]>  
Architecture: amd64  
Version: 1:1.8.0-0ubuntu1~ubuntu15.10.1~ppa1  
Depends: wine1.6 | wine1.8  
Filename: pool/main/w/wine1.8/wine_1.8.0-0ubuntu1~ubuntu15.10.1~ppa1_amd64.deb  
Size: 992  
MD5sum: a39802d002bc8288e788b8ed18cda444  
SHA1: bb16cb968823dbde908bb5062d45a6df145d97d4  
SHA256: 85d8c892be1c13c0c819473f767217ee0c90fb05baf99fbbe0a57292afa86515  
Description-en: Microsoft Windows Compatibility Layer (meta-package)  
 Wine is a compatibility layer for running Windows applications on Linux.
 Applications are run at full speed without the need of cpu emulation.   Wine  
 does not require Microsoft Windows, however it can use native system dll  
 files in place of its own if they are available.  
 .  
 This meta-package always depends on the latest stable version of Wine.  
Description-md5: 7ca999b13ee007110685ad22b3ecb3b6  
Multi-Arch: foreign  

Package: wine  
Priority: extra  
Section: universe/otherosfs  
Installed-Size: 6  
Maintainer: Scott Ritchie <[email protected]>  
Architecture: amd64  
Source: wine1.6  
Version: 1:1.6.2-0ubuntu14  
Depends: wine1.6  
Filename: pool/universe/w/wine1.6/wine_1.6.2-0ubuntu14_amd64.deb  
Size: 974  
MD5sum: bea5bed393084b4406fcda336325bc71  
SHA1: 12cb87640d0cb8a707ce2e89ebd872e5e32c8c9b  
SHA256: ab68e0b0f6122e5d189171242a3fc706cd8689ed45feb25b3140530f17c81188  
Description-en: Microsoft Windows Compatibility Layer (meta-package)  
 Wine is a compatibility layer for running Windows applications on Linux.  
 Applications are run at full speed without the need of cpu emulation.   Wine  
 does not require Microsoft Windows, however it can use native system dll  
 files in place of its own if they are available.  
 .  
 This meta-package always depends on the default version of Wine.  
Description-md5: 6474b3e541944944e61aec502ceb28f2  
Multi-Arch: foreign  
Homepage: http://www.winehq.org/  
Bugs: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+filebug  
Origin: Ubuntu

Putting aptitude search '~i~Px-wine' into the terminal created no results.

Answer 1

:) I forgot about you, More than 5years surprise and you didn't use @ notification.

Anyway, the answer may help in the future

• apt-cache show wine

  The command didn't bring what I expected. All we got are two meta packages and both don't provide wine. Because they miss a line that declare it, Provides: wine

• aptitude search '~i~Pwine'

  The 2nd command, It was my mistake (This is wrong: aptitude search '~i~Px-wine').

  The command should give all installed packages that provides wine virtual package. You can then uninstall them using apt.

  sudo apt remove <package-name>
  #or
  sudo apt purge <package-name>
  

  In worst case when a package have same name as virtual one. Use dpkg.

  sudo dpkg --remove <package-name>
  #or
  sudo dkpg --purge <package-name>
  

Answer 2

I installed wine using wine_5.7~bionic.orig.tar.gz instead of sudo apt install wine-stable. After extracting the tar file I got a folder wine-5.7/ and from there I did the further installation i.e. ./configure followed by make and make install. It installed wine completely but when I wanted to remove it completely I go to wine-5.7/ folder and typed sudo make uninstall to remove wine virtual packages completely.

Answer 3

It looks like wine is a virtual package made from wine-stable or wine-development. Removing either or both via sudo apt remove <package> should fix the issue.

After this, I suggest using sudo apt autoremove and sudo apt clean. This is because last time I uninstalled Wine I had just under 1GiB of extra stuff to remove after wine-stable. Hope this helps!