How To Install Wine 9 on CentOS 8 / RHEL / Rocky 8

Let’s capture the steps required to install Wine on CentOS 8 / RHEL 8 / Rocky Linux 8 Desktop. Wine is an open source software solution that enables Linux users to run Microsoft Windows applications as if they’re working on a Windows machine. As of this article writing the latest stable release of Wine is version 9. This release is available for installation and it comes with large number of improvements which includes:

• Wayland driver: There is an experimental Wayland graphics driver with features such as basic window management, multiple monitors, high-DPI scaling, relative motion events, and Vulkan support.
• Running on ARM64: The completion of the PE/Unix separation means that it’s possible to run existing Windows binaries on ARM64.
• Direct3D improvements
• DirectShow updates and feature improvements
• Desktop integration feature improvements
• Audio support enhancement with the implementation of several DirectMusic modules
• Among many other new features and improvements

I couldn’t find any RPM repository which contains Wine packages. This leaves us with an option of installing Wine on CentOS 8 Desktop system by building the software from source.

You’ll need a console or ssh access to the system as user with sudo permissions or root. An internet connectivity is also required for packages installation and downloading Wine tar file.

Upgrade System

Updating your system is another way of validating working package management system on system.

sudo dnf -y update

As always we reboot the system after upgrades.

sudo reboot

Install Building dependencies

Install Development Tools:

sudo dnf groupinstall 'Development Tools' -y

Enable EPEL and PowerTools repositories:

sudo dnf -y install epel-release
sudo dnf config-manager --set-enabled powertools

Install other build dependencies:

sudo dnf -y install libxslt-devel libpng-devel libX11-devel zlib-devel libtiff-devel freetype-devel libxcb-devel  libxml2-devel libgcrypt-devel dbus-devel libjpeg-turbo-devel  fontconfig-devel gnutls-devel gstreamer1-devel libXcursor-devel libXi-devel libXrandr-devel libXfixes-devel libXinerama-devel libXcomposite-devel mesa-libOSMesa-devel libpcap-devel libusb-devel libv4l-devel libgphoto2-devel gstreamer1-devel libgudev SDL2-devel gsm-devel libvkd3d-devel libudev-devel make cmake gcc flex

Build and Install Wine

If wget is missing in the packages installed on the system install it.

sudo dnf -y install wget

Then use curl to pull latest release of Wine archive.

wget https://dl.winehq.org/wine/source/9.0/wine-9.0.tar.xz

Extract the file downloaded using tar.

tar xvf wine-9.0.tar.xz

Compile and build Wine on CentOS 8:

cd wine-*/
./configure --enable-win64 
make
sudo make install

Confirm Wine installation

Verify installation of Wine by checking the version:

wine64 --version

For basic usage of wine, check help page.

wine --help

Example below is used to run Notepad++ editor on Linux.

cd ~/Downloads
VER=$(curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/releases/latest | grep tag_name | cut -d '"' -f 4 | sed 's/v//g')
wget https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/releases/download/v${VER}/npp.${VER}.Installer.exe
wine64 ./npp.${VER}.Installer.exe

Follow installation prompts like for any other Windows application.

Similar wine installation guides:

• How To Install Wine on Ubuntu
• How To Install Wine on Debian
• How To Install Wine on Fedora