Windows Games On Linux, WINE & PlayOnLinux

I no longer use playonlinux scripts. I have found that a lot of them seem to not be updated very frequently to account for new wine releases or patches which may have affected compatibility. I still use playonlinux, but only as an easy way to manage multiple versions of wine. I just install the applications from scratch into new virtual drives and go to winehq to see if anything needs to be done to make it work.

PlayOnLinux can be very user friendly but can also be too simple for its own good. My favorite Wine Helper is a nice Qt based application called Q4Wine. While not super user friendly, you can set up multiple prefixes, custom and integrated Desktop files, easy Winetricks support and many more features.

Personnally I do not use Wine anymore except maybe for very old games such as 3D Ultra Pinball that would not run under modern OSes. I prefer having a Windows VM for Windows games and using Linux for the other stuff (including... Linux games ;-) )

And I do not use multiboot anymore on my new PC as it is too hard to maintain, and I'm too lazy to reboot my PC.

And I do not use multiboot anymore on my new PC as it is too hard to maintain, and I'm too lazy to reboot my PC.

I must admit, I'm a hair's breadth away from doing that myself. It's only one or two game franchises that are keeping it there.

My favorite Wine Helper is a nice Qt based application called Q4Wine.

I'll have to remember to give that a spin. Thanks for the info.

Your videos are really good. Looking forward to more in the future.

I found PlayOnLinux to be super helpful, even though I still needed to do some tinkering. I much prefer it over Vanilla Wine for anything complex, particularly if you start making changes to Wine, it's great to sandbox it.

To be honest, years ago I used to think Wine was a joke...such an ambitious task that would never go anywhere. These days I'm really impressed how far they've come. Wine may well in the future be the ONLY way to run old Windows apps on new hardware...it will become this amazing archiving tool.

I also used to think that Wine (no pun intended) watered down the purity of Linux by running evil MS stuff. However, I've changed my opinion on that too...Wine is like this boa constrictor, squeezing the life out of native DX9 apps and rendering Windows useless. I mean WHY would you run Windows, when you can run Linux...AND run Windows apps as well?? The Borg wants you to assimilate....

i use "PlayOnLinux" for 3 games wait for port for now :D

My experiences with Wine have been pretty positive over the past 8 years. I've had the good fortune to have most things that I like/care about either have native builds available or run fairly well in Wine without fiddling.

As mentioned in the video, things have definitely improved over time. There was a time when getting many games to run required compiling Wine with particular patches, but I haven't found any need for that since the fixes needed to make StarCraft 2 run out of the box were merged into the main line.

One recent problem my partner had was not having 32 bit audio libraries installed, which made Morrowind crash at the main menu. Other than that and Zombie Driver HD needing a DLL override, I don't think she's had to do anything to get the games that she plays in Wine working.


I've never used PlayOnLinux, but it seems to solve a problem I don't have. Winetricks sorts out a bunch of library/configuration things that some people might have trouble with, and creating separate .wine profiles is as easy as putting WINEPREFIX=~/.wine_foo/ before calling Wine in a terminal. I prefer to install all my apps via a command line so that if there are any problems, I have some idea of what's going on, and Wine automatically creates .desktop launchers for applications which include the appropriate prefix, so running after installing is just a matter of double clicking an icon.

The Wine project's AppDB is a nice resource for looking whether others have had success running an app, and has a nicer way of presenting test results/information than the PlayOnLinux site IMO.


Before Steam for Linux landed, I think all but two or three games from my Steam library (it was around 200 by the time Steam for Linux launched) ran happily under Wine, and DRM didn't play a role in the problems I had with those. I'd definitely advocate people buying stuff from GOG, but those considering Steam shouldn't need to be wary of DRM related problems unless the game uses some third party DRM (in which case, it's worth considering not buying/playing it anyway :D ).

Back in the early days of SteamLUG, we were a community of Linux users who ran Steam in Wine. There were definitely people who had problems, but on the most part, I think positive experiences were the norm. These days we don't see much Wine discussion - I guess that either fewer people are using it or nobody's having any problems.


I definitely don't use it as much as I used to, but Wine is a tremendously impressive piece of software that represents a mind boggling amount of work, and I'm glad it's there (alongside DOSBox, ScummVM and UAE) for legacy stuff :)

awesome video! I used to use wine in order to play diablo2 ages ago.

Well I have to admit that I am using Wine only for hearthstone , such an addictive game

Wine is the reason I was finally able to get rid of Windows. The one game that kept me using windows is World of Warcraft, which runs great for me using wine.

I've used play on Linux once or twice in the past but I'd rather just manually figure stuff out with wine. (I like messing around until something works the way I want it to ;) )

i wanted to use PlayOnLinux but i always felt the interface quite slow and weird
specialy the parts where its configuring something or making shortcuts etc (its like windows with lots of next, next buttons imo)

i'm mostly using my own scripts for standalone wine versions and prefixes
i sometimes use playonlinux compiled wine packages though which i download from here:
http://www.playonlinux.com/wine/binaries/ and then just extract to the place where i want.


my basic scripts are like that: http://pastebin.com/Xhr7K2ty
then also same scripts for winecfg, winetricks and regedit.

i just copy those scripts to new game folder and then modify the game executable :)

that's how i like to keep my stuff organized

I have over 150 Windows games running in Wine and never use POL. I do have multiple prefixes, but I just manually create them. I do use winetricks to get some of the libraries I need installed.

I have to admit I do like PlayonLinux but the bundled scripts are poor. I mainly use it as a manager for multiple Wine installations and then use Wine AppDB for the install guides. The only real problem I have ever had is getting my joypad to work for fighting and platform games.

I recently started using Wine again, and it's surprisingly well done nowadays.

Decided to stop excluding myself from franchises I love just because I'm on Linux, and thankfully Starcraft 2 works well in wine :D

The only game I play, using PoL is World of Tanks. I find the script a good start to easily install the game and then tweak it to have the best Wine version and entries in the wine registry.

For someone new tho Wine, PoL is a great and easy start, but you must know that it might not be the best setup for your game. Often it's a good basis to work with.

Well, I have purchased and used Crossover, and also used PlayOnLinux. I have, to my surprise, gotten better results with POL. I used it to install Skyrim and a couple of others (a lot fewer since CIV V, X-COM, and Borderlands, etc.), and it worked when Crossover didn't.

Nonetheless, I'd not ever seen or tried q4wine, and it looks very good indeed, and major thanks for pointing it out. Of course, when my some of my favorite GOG games are getting Linux versions (even the ones that come as a .tar.gz file that uses wine), I'm using them and removing the POL versions.

Life is good, and the future's so bright, I gotta wear shades.:D

POL has been OK on Linux Mint. The main reason was to play EA's Spore. I could not use the keyboard what so ever, but I still could play it. Funny thing, I just uninstalled Steam under POL today..... now I am stating to have second thoughts..... However, I never liked WINE. I find it hard to use and half the time it doesn't even work! I had Spotify under WINE (Not POL mind you) and it was fine, but the icon would glitch out half the time I would have to restart. But....I am sure that other people love WINE, I just one of those people that dislike it. Thanks for the video Were! You have been awesome too!

Before the says of Steam on Linux, I used to use PlayOnLinux all the time to keep all the games in order and manage them in a user friendly way.

Now I barely use it, used it for the first time in maybe 5 months this month to play FF7. Though it's less essential for gaming than it used to be, it will still always be great for those games we know will never get ported.