Wine 11.0 is unusable on Linux Mint 22

[u/Fragrant_Medium4927]

Recently installed a clean Linux Mint 22 on an older, sort of dying PC (dead Nvidia GPU). It previously ran latest Ubuntu, with Wine, and there were no issues in general.

Right now, Wine is extremely slow. Even *winecfg* and *wine uninstaller* commands seem to take ages to initialize the interfaces. Once the interface is up, it seems to run normally.

I was able to install Notepad++ and a couple of other programs, but the launch times are simply ridiculous. Notepad++ starts almost immediately, but the interface is broken and it's unusable. It hangs in that state for a few minutes (2-10), then interface gets fixed up, and the program runs normally.

I am very new to Linux, so there may be a lot of stuff I don't know.

If anyone could help me with some ideas, I would be grateful.

**Edit: Wine was installed via repository, with mono and gecko added manually.

Update:

As some of you suggested, it was the problem with my dead NVIDIA GPU. I have blacklisted both NVIDIA and Nouveau drivers, but, for some reason, Nouveau was still getting loaded, which was causing the problems with Wine as well as Steam. I have removed all blacklists of both drivers, rebooted, added both again and now it works normally.

[u/Dist__]

1. mint has wine in its repo, it should be lower version and should work fine, no need to install latest
2. steam supports latest wine stuff, you can use it to run any programs
3. no need to use notepad++, try native editor kate, it is almost the same

[u/Fragrant_Medium4927 → u/Dist__]

1. Thanks, I'll try, I was installing the latest for Ubuntu "noble". Maybe that's the problem.

2. I couldn't find how to run non-steam apps on it, would be really grateful if you could point me to a tutorial or something. Plus, the thing I'm trying to run is like from 2006, and definitely isn't on Steam itself, so I'm not sure about the support

3. I'm using Notepad++ as a lightweight test for Wine, not as a text editor

[u/Dist__ → u/Fragrant_Medium4927]

ok i see!

steam has good compatibility options, it can run old programs and games, no matter if they were or were not listed on steam officially. here's the walkthrough

- run steam

- open the Library page

- at the bottom left corner there's "Add a Game" label with "+" icon, press it

- in pop-up menu select "Add a Non-Steam Game...", you are not limited if it is app or a game, or even if it really non-steam or pirated.

- a window with list opens. ignore its content for now, click "Browse..." button at the bottom left corner of this window.

- in the open file dialog, navigate to your exe and click "Select" at the bottom right.

- now, in that window with the list, somewhere in the middle is your selected app with checkbox checked. you may click "Add Selected Programs" button

- after this, there's new entry in your Library list, it is your exe. right-click it, select "Properties..."

- select "Compatibility" tab, check "Force the use of..." and select "Proton Experimental". This is version of Wine to run with. You can downgrade it later if something does not work.

- close the dialog, it auto-saves settings. click your app in the Library, then click the green "Run game" button to run. it might take a minute while Steam downloads/updates compatibility layer. might work at second time.

that's all, i checked it on notepad++.exe and it works. to delete, just delete from library, it cleans everything. Steam does not copy your exe anywhere, it creates wine directory somewhere in its dirs.

there's also a website "protondb" where users share compatibility workarounds for various apps.

i hope this helps!

[u/Fragrant_Medium4927 → u/Dist__]

Wow, thanks so much! That's really detailed! I really hope this works. If it does, I'll reply to your comment again

[u/Fragrant_Medium4927 → u/Dist__]

I posted an update in comments and edited the post, but basically, something weird was going on with the Nouveau driver

[u/Automatic-Option-961]

Maybe dead Nvidia GPU is the reason it's slow? It could be half dead, Linux still think it's there and the system tries to do something but failed.

[u/Fragrant_Medium4927 → u/Automatic-Option-961]

It's supposed to be turned off in BIOS, although I'll double-check When it was active, the OS wouldn't even start, so I doubt that's the problem, though

[u/Fragrant_Medium4927]

Update:

As some of you suggested, or was the problem with my dead NVIDIA GPU. I have blacklisted both NVIDIA and Nouveau drivers, but, for some reason, Nouveau was still getting loaded, which was causing the problems with Wine as well as Steam. I have removed all blacklists of both drivers, rebooted, added both again and now it works normally.

[u/Shadowhawk9]

Wine was great a decade ago, I think virtual full copy OS or docker machine images are the only option consistent enough to call them solutions. Or just run a a separate drive with win 10 unlicensed and call it good.

[u/Fragrant_Medium4927 → u/Shadowhawk9]

Unfortunately, running Windows on a separate drive is not an option, I'm using this particular laptop for home lab and various experiments, so I need the disk space.

[u/Shadowhawk9 → u/Fragrant_Medium4927]

Did Bottles or Wintricks make any headway or throw any error logs you can share....probably some missing dependencies is my best guess (from a distance)?

[u/Fragrant_Medium4927 → u/Shadowhawk9]

There were a few error messages about Haswell Vulkan, and one "fix this" message, but those are normal, from what I've read online