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I would like to know if I could connect to a wine desktop interface, like I do for Cinnamon, KDE or else. I've noticed that wine doesn't use the x-server, but the wine application to load window frames.

What does it really take to run an x-server session with wine as desktop interface or window manager?

It would be interesting to me, to know the minimal desktop requirements to run a full wine desktop on top of a Ubuntu 22.04 server optimized only for wine gaming.

I've been on the cage its man page on the advice of @Savchenko Dmitriy, in order to understand its working.

It seems it launches one base application. What would obviously be only a wine environment. That's a nice way to put it, but I didn't think pure wine would work this way. I think it will not work based on what I’ve read on winehq's website (I do not have stored the page link). It says pure wine would have no point, because it’s the possibility of deleting the entire configuration and creating another easily that is more convenient for its purpose.

Therefore it should remain à linux interface with a gnome menu and taskbar, but the desktop and file browser should be wine. That's more what I'm looking to do.

I would use TTY1 for my wine instance in 32bit and TTY2 for 64 only to run wine tasks, but by remaining on the same linux user account.

My interest of doing this would be for me to be able to:

  • Force to kill processes by switching to the tty0 if needed.

It happens that a stuck game in fullscreen makes the mouse pointer unavailable and no tab goes through the "start"-menu. I made a keyboard shortcut to open the process manager, but it remains in the background or doesn't open in some cases. The only thing that did work was by accessing TTY0, login in and using the reboot. (I'm used to GUI, there might be commands to control the TTY7, default GUI session from there).

  • Without the need to restart, I would be able to force closing the stucked app or manage processes and edit configurations from my default Cinnamon desktop and installed GUI tools.

  • The restart of wineboot would occur every logoff and logon.

I'm still searching for how. I think I should search how a linux desktop session is made (on Ubuntu in my case) to find a way to do it.

This winehq article is about the same question, but the answer doesn't contain the solution. Only the great lines on how to do it. I'll try it as soon I've time to do so.

Here you'll find a screenshot of wine running in 1920x1020 so I see the taskbar.

  • I can't get rid of the wine title bar.
  • In full screen I need to know how to run the Cinnamon taskbar on top.

I might be able to run it as an X-App but I've found little information about it. It will probably be more complicated.

My next step is see how to create a CustomXSession running wineboot over a clear Cinnamon desktop environment with wine explorer as default file browser.

I can also see that all folders opened in wine, have a glass of wine as icon in the Cinnamon taskbar. There it should show the wine explorer icon instead.

Wine on Cinnamon

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  • "I've noticed that wine doesn't use the x-server, but the wine application to load window frames." - I'm sorry, what? What does it really take to run an x-server session with wine as desktop interface or window manager? - I've no idea what you're asking about.
    – Artem S. Tashkinov
    Oct 31, 2022 at 2:47
  • I was not really sure the what's needed to launch a wine tty. Maybe my question needs to be reformulated. Any advice? @Artem S. Tashkinov
    – user330163
    Oct 31, 2022 at 3:14
  • I've found this article and will try to apply it. I might be back with and answer if I get it to work.
    – user330163
    Oct 31, 2022 at 3:18
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    I've no idea what a "Wine tty" is. Again, I don't understand what you're talking about and I'm not sure people here understand either. You've seemingly made up something which you cannot explain.
    – Artem S. Tashkinov
    Oct 31, 2022 at 6:08

1 Answer 1

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The simplest way is to run winecfg, and in Graphics::Virtual Desktop enable it and set the resolution to your monitor resolution. Then, in a tty:

xinit winetricks explorer $* -- :1 vt$XDG_VTNR

It is much easier and fail-safe with cage:

cage sh -c 'winetricks explorer'

That should open an empty Wine desktop.

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  • I didn't try it yet, but ... If I use winecfg to configure a desktop on the screen's resolution, I should be able to use xinit wineboot $* -- :1 vt$XDG_VTNR to load the wine's boot order (like game launchers and other) and it would open fullscreen, do I suppose it right ? @Savchenko Dmitriy
    – user330163
    Nov 1, 2022 at 7:39
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    @Wingarmac, I've tested wineboot, and it seems that wine only keeps up a virtual desktop when there are child processes running inside. wineboot doesn't spawn child processes as wine clients, so the desktop appears, and disappears after several seconds. It is also nigh useless to spawn an empty wine desktop, as it doesn't have any features - just a plain blue window. Spawning explorer allows to actually do stuff, like launch executables, and to keep the desktop running. Also, I highly recommend cage instead of xinit.
    – Savchenko Dmitriy
    Nov 1, 2022 at 9:41
  • I found this wiki article after consulting this article. Maybe I would be able to run wine as an xapp in Cinnamon. since it's the desktop interface I use. I was looking into my current system how it's desktop interface is loading.
    – user330163
    Nov 1, 2022 at 20:04

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