What is the difference between Wine, Wineskin, Winery and Wine Bottler, and how do I get Wine to *ACTUALLY* work in Mountain Lion?

Ok, so this is my first post here and I am admittedly terrible at forums. Someone might say, "This was addressed in the ___________ thread by __________! Go read it!" --- that may be so but I've spent enough hours trying to google this problem into submission to no avail based on what is apparently working for others, so I would like a chance to get specific answers to specific questions that aren't from Mar 2011, etc.


So first of all, I'm confused by all the various Wine programs/apps/whatevers. I've seen Wine, Wineskin, Winery, Wine Bottler, and at this point I wouldn't be surprised if there are even more than that. What's the difference between all of these and how do they work with one another? What do I actually need to get windows programs working?


All of my google searches have led me to people giving out fish, but no one giving out fishing lessons. I'm not a pro at mac and windows and all that, but I'm a fairly bright individual who gets VERY frustrated, very quickly, when I don't understand the why and how of something I'm attempting.


I've also found "answers" where the person attempting to help starts off helpful enough, but degrades into the most archaic of techno-babble after about 5-6 sentences. On the other hand, I've watched tutorials on youtube where the poster decides to skip (apparently crucial) sections of the tutorial, and mutters such gems as: "... you might wanna have to run Wine first before you can do anything, cuz I think it has to configure it and set up a bunch of stuff"


O.o


A happy medium between techno-babble and the most basic of explanations would be ideal for me, and I'd imagine for others as well.


Here is a summarized history of my relationship with Wine:


Diablo II - I downloaded this awesome thing which ended up being... uh... I guess Diablo II in a Wineskin "wrapper". I'm not sure, all I know is that it's a D2 icon, and if I go to 'show package contents', it's got C drive, Program Files, et cetera inside of it. I double click it, it launches D2, and it works like a dream. <3


'Vanilla Install' - That's what I heard someone call it. It was the command/terminal style install using xquartz and xcode found at http://www.davidbaumgold.com/tutorials/wine-mac/. I followed every instruction to the letter, and got all the way to '$ sudo port install wine', at which point it started going smoothly, free from the possible error he described regarding the installation of xcode, and then just failed after I left the room to use the restroom and came back. Please don't ask me to repeat what the error was, because honestly, after reading more things on the interwebs, I'm confused as to why it's even necessary to go through all of that, so I'd rather not try that route again anyways, rendering the error message quite possibly irrelevant.


Wine + Wine Bottler - So I decided to try to seek out an easier method, as I know that one must exist that doesn't involve command lines. I found a video tutorial at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0BBkISOcEA, and oh man would it be great if that method had actually worked. Again, I followed all instructions provided to procure my free fish, and at the point in the video where he declares that "xquarts or x11 will open" - it doesn't open. Nothing opens. I was trying to install Star Sonata, btw.


So here I am, thoroughly worn out, frustrated at all the random places Wine is installed on my mac now, and just want someone to explain it all, from top down, without getting toooooooo technical on me. I know that might be asking a lot...

MacBook, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.1)

Posted on Sep 9, 2012 12:54 PM

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2 replies

Oct 22, 2012 3:24 PM in response to peedoubleyou

## I know that the poster has already found a solution, but the following is a possible answer for others that have similar issues.


For Winebottler, just go to their website and download it. Run the program. Choose .wine as your prefix (best choice) or whatever suits you best. You'll need a functional X11. If you can't use the one that comes with your mac, download the latest one from the website.


If your issue is one with Winebottler's Wine not running correctly due to X11, then you have a pretty ugly problem, although a simple upgrade is the best solution (Upgrade XQuartz.app).


http://www.davidbaumgold.com/tutorials/wine-mac/#part-1


The above website is the easiest way to get REAL wine on your computer. First of all, Wineskin WInery, etc. are NOT WINE. They are 3rd party apps that may use Wine or may have originally part of Wine, but they are no longer up to date with Wine. WineBottler is currently up to date with the stable releases of Wine (but not the maintenence releases).


For the website tutorial and to run Wine on your mac without using a thrid party app, you will need to know a few things.

First, you will need to know basic control of the command line. That means, sudo (you must know the administrator password to your computer), and the forms of cd (change directory).

Second, you will need Xcode. Download 4.2 (stable) or whatever other versions you want, but beware: It is over 1 GB, and you will need time for it to work.

Third, you will need to get MacPorts and configure it. The tutorial should have this data.


When you download wine (use sudo port install wine-devel for the latest development release of wine), it will first download a lot of dependencies. This will take a while. After that, it will download wine itself.


After obtaining wine, to run a program, open the terminal.app window.

cd desktop/XYZ/ZYZ\ WRQ

The above will first enter the desktop, then folder XYZ, then folder ZYZ WRQ. From here,

wine th11e.exe

Or whatever executable you are trying to open. (Using Subterranean Animism as my example).


It should, in theory, run the program. Watch the terminal for errors. If there is an X11 problem, then it's not wine acting up. If the app crashes or has other issues, check the Wine Application Database to see if your app is compatible with wine.


If you have any further questions or other things, feel free to reply; I may or may not get back to you, but there's a good chance that someone will come in eventually. Otherwise, the Wine Wiki should have some information.

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What is the difference between Wine, Wineskin, Winery and Wine Bottler, and how do I get Wine to *ACTUALLY* work in Mountain Lion?

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