FreeBSD Wine Configuration

Wine is free and open-source software that provides a compatibility layer, which allows users to run applications made for Microsoft windows on BSD and Linux distributions. Its name, “Wine”, is actually a backronym for “Wine Is Not an Emulator”. This is because Wine doesn’t really utilize any virtualization or emulation techniques to run applications.

This tutorial will illustrate how to install and configure Wine on FreeBSD 12.0.

Installing Wine on FreeBSD

We will use the FreeBSD ports repository to get the latest packages for Wine, both for stable and development versions. If you’re using the 32-bit version of FreeBSD, just put the commands below to install Wine stable:

For Wine development (32 bit):

For Wine experimental (32 bit):

However, if you’re using the 64-bit version of FreeBSD, download the i386 packages for Wine that allows 32-bit packages to run on 64-bit operating systems.

For Wine stable (64 bit):

For Wine Development (64 bit):

For wine experimental (64 bit):

Building Wine with chroot

First, add all the relevant i386 files into the chroot folder.

To build Wine on FreeBSD, we’ll use chroot as follows:

Then, append the mount points for the relevant directories:

Then, issue the commands below to start idconfig:

Then, head over to any directory and extract the package:

Binary Image Activation

You can make configurations to the FreeBSD kernel so that every time a Windows binary file is opened, it is launched in Wine. This allows you to keep windows binaries like any other binaries on FreeBSD.

With root access, issue the command below:

It is important to remember that Wine cannot detect the presence of infected windows applications, so make sure you’re getting the windows applications from official sources.

In conclusion

With Wine, you can run pretty much any Windows application, including video games. You’ll likely encounter some bugs and compatibility issues in your experience with Wine, especially when you work with heavier applications.