How To Install Wine Staging, Development Or Stable On Ubuntu, Linux Mint Or Debian 10 (Avoiding Dependency Issues)

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Wine Ubuntu Debian Linux Mint

Wine is a Windows compatibility layer that lets you run Microsoft Windows applications and games on Linux, macOS, and Android (experimental). No code emulation or virtualization occurs when running a Windows application under Wine, thus the name (Wine Is Not An Emulator).

You can use Wine as a stand-alone app to directly launch Microsoft Windows applications and games, or via a third-party tool such as Lutris on Linux. Wine is also used by Proton, Valve's Steam Play compatibility layer that allows playing Windows games on Linux, and by CrossOver, a commercial Microsoft Windows compatibility layer for macOS and Linux, among others.

I keep seeing Ubuntu (and Ubuntu-based Linux distributions like Linux Mint or Pop!_OS) and Debian 10 users trying to install Wine and running into dependency issues, so I thought I'd make a post about properly installing Wine Staging and Development builds (and Stable, though there are no dependency issues with these builds).

Many Ubuntu or Debian users go to the WineHQ installation page, add the official Wine repository and then proceed to try and install Wine Development or Staging builds, which results in missing dependencies:

$ sudo apt install wine-staging
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been created or been moved out of Incoming.

The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 wine-staging : Depends: wine-staging-amd64 (= 4.15~disco) but it is not going to be installed
                Depends: wine-staging-i386 (= 4.15~disco)
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

This error message is not exactly helpful, so users don't even know what the missing dependency is. If you continue investigating this though, you'll eventually get:

$ sudo apt install wine-staging-amd64 wine-staging-i386
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been created or been moved out of Incoming.

The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 wine-staging-amd64 : Depends: libfaudio0 (>= 19.06.07) but it is not installable
..........................

So libfaudio0 is the missing Wine Staging and Development dependency. This dependency was added with Wine 4.5, released back in March, 2019, and is required for all Wine builds released since then, but not Wine stable for now (which is version 4.0.2).

This dependency is not directly available in the official WineHQ Ubuntu and Debian 10 repository because it's not part of the Wine project. It is mentioned (along with a link to a forum post) at the top of the WineHQ Ubuntu and Debian installation pages that users need to download and install this package separately, but many users ignore it / don't read that part. On the other hand, those upgrading from older Wine builds / those that already have the WineHQ repository added never get to the official WineHQ installation page, so they won't notice this very important detail.

And there's also the issue that the official WineHQ Ubuntu and Debian installation page recommends downloading libfaudio0 and installing it without the use of a repository, which is problematic:

  • users may be confused as to what exactly they need to download since the forum link points to an Ubuntu/Debian repository listing (for example they might not know they need both the amd64 and i386 builds);
  • if you just download and install libfaudio0 without adding its repository, later on you may need to update this package in order to upgrade Wine (for example I already had libfaudio0 15.*.* or something like that installed, but the latest Wine Staging needs a libfaudio0 version newer than 19.06.07), and since this package is not in the official WineHQ repository, upgrading will fail.

This article aims to solve this by providing simple, straight-forward Wine Staging and Development (and Stable, though that's not problematic for now) installation instructions for Ubuntu 19.10, 19.04, 18.04 or 16.04, Linux Mint 19.* and 18.*, and Debian 10, which works not only to install Wine right now, but also for future Wine upgrades. For this we'll use the Wine OBS repository which is recommended by the WineHQ installation page for downloading libfaudio0. This OBS repository also includes the latest version of Wine Stable, Development and Staging, so in fact you only need to use this repository to get everything you need, instead of adding both this and the WineHQ repository.

This may sound a bit confusing, but the installation instructions below are straight-forward, I promise 😁️.

It's worth noting that the missing libfaudio0 dependency has been added to the Debian bullseye / sid and the upcoming Ubuntu 19.10 release, so this is only an issue for older releases.

You might like: How To Use Lutris To Play Windows Games On Linux (Quick Start Guide)

How to install Wine Staging, Development or Stable on Ubuntu (and Linux Mint) or Debian 10


Add the Wine OBS repository for Ubuntu (and Linux Mint, etc.) and Debian, which includes libfaudio0 (as opposed to the https://dl.winehq.org WineHQ repository which does not have this dependency):

  • Ubuntu 19.04 (and other Linux distributions based on this Ubuntu version, like Pop!_OS 19.04, etc.):
wget -O- -q https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Emulators:/Wine:/Debian/xUbuntu_19.04/Release.key | sudo apt-key add -    

echo "deb http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Emulators:/Wine:/Debian/xUbuntu_19.04 ./" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/wine-obs.list

sudo apt update

  • Ubuntu 18.04 or Linux Mint 19.* (and other Linux distributions based on this Ubuntu version, like Pop!_OS 18.04, etc.):
wget -O- -q https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Emulators:/Wine:/Debian/xUbuntu_18.04/Release.key | sudo apt-key add -    

echo "deb http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Emulators:/Wine:/Debian/xUbuntu_18.04 ./" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/wine-obs.list

sudo apt update

  • Ubuntu 16.04 or Linux Mint 18.*:
wget -O- -q https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Emulators:/Wine:/Debian/xUbuntu_16.04/Release.key | sudo apt-key add -    

echo "deb http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Emulators:/Wine:/Debian/xUbuntu_16.04 ./" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/wine-obs.list

sudo apt update

  • Debian 10 (Buster):
wget -O- -q https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Emulators:/Wine:/Debian/Debian_10/Release.key | sudo apt-key add -    

echo "deb http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Emulators:/Wine:/Debian/Debian_10 ./" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/wine-obs.list

sudo apt update

These commands download and add the repository key, then add the Wine OBS repository to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/wine-obs.list, and then update the software sources.

Later edit: For Ubuntu 20.10, 20.04 and 19.10 (and other Linux distributions based on these Ubuntu versions, like Pop!_OS 20.10, 20.04 or 19.10, etc.), don't add the OBS Wine repository, but the main Wine repository. That's because libfaudio is available in the official Ubuntu 20.10, 20.04 and 19.10 repositories anyway, and also, using the Wine OBS repository will actually cause dependency issues on this Ubuntu version:

  • Ubuntu 19.10:
wget -nc https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/winehq.key

sudo apt-key add winehq.key

echo "deb https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/ eoan main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/wine.list

sudo apt update

  • Ubuntu 20.04 / Linux Mint 20:
wget -nc https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/winehq.key

sudo apt-key add winehq.key

echo "deb https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/ focal main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/wine.list

sudo apt update

  • Ubuntu 20.10:
wget -nc https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/winehq.key

sudo apt-key add winehq.key

echo "deb https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/ groovy main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/wine.list

sudo apt update

Now you can install Wine Staging, Development or Stable on Ubuntu (and Linux Mint, Pop!_OS, etc.) or Debian using:


  • Wine Staging:
sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-staging

  • Wine Development:
sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-devel

  • Wine Stable:
sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-stable
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