Can I run both Wine and Wine Staging on the same OS without any interference between both?

Question

I'm asking before trying because I already have a few things set up in Wine Stable, so I don't want to mess things up by installing something else over it.

Basically, I want to install Staging because I have an app which is said to require the former to function properly under Linux (it's a music player.)

Will installing Staging affect the way Wine Stable behaves? If so, how? Can I configure Wine Stable and Wine Staging separately?

I'm running Debian Bullseye Stable.

Thank you.

Answer 1

The default is no. But you can use Lutris. It is very easy to use. With it you can use different versions of Wine for different applications, what you need.

Answer 2

You perfectly can by using WINEPREFIX:

https://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ#Wineprefixes

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So, here's how you go about it.

First you need two wine installations separately, i.e. two different commands to run wine, e.g. /usr/bin/wine for the "normal" Wine and e.g. /usr/bin/wine-staging for Wine Staging.

Then, whenever you want to use normal wine you just run

wine "C:\Program Files\Application\Application.exe"

And if you need to work with Wine Staging you do the following:

WINEPREFIX=$USER/.wine-staging wine-staging "C:\Program Files\Another Application\Another Application.exe"

It's all kinda tedious when running manually, so I'd recommend creating launchers or using aliases.

Now you have two "prefixes": $USER/.wine and $USER/.wine-staging.

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If your distro does not allow to co-install wine and wine-staging you have to compile them manually and install in the directory of your choice. I've always compiled and installed wine into /opt/wine. You can choose whatever you want. Here's my compilation string:

build-wine ./configure --prefix=/opt/wine --disable-tests && make -j16 && make install-lib

where build-wine is:

#! /bin/bash

export CFLAGS="-O2 -pipe -m32 -march=pentium-m"
export CXXFLAGS="$CFLAGS"
export LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1 -Wl,--hash-style=gnu"

echo "CFLAGS:  $CFLAGS"
echo "LDFLAGS: $LDFLAGS"

"$@"

This compiles an i686 version of it because I don't run x86-64 Windows applications. You can simply run ./configure --prefix=/opt/wine if you need an x86-64 version.