Installing dotnet 2.0 on 64 bit machine

Question

I have a speed-reading program I purchased with uses dotnet2. However, dotnet2 doesn't run on 64 bit wine. How would I install dotnet2?

Solution 1

You can have multiple wine prefix on your machine, each running as a separate wine. So you can make a 32 bits prefix and install dotnet2 in it:

This will create a new wineprefix (.wine32 in your home) and configure it as 32 bits:

WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=~/.wine32 winecfg

You can use it this way combined with winetricks to configure WINEARCH, create the prefix and install dotnet 2.0 in one command:

env WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=~/.wine32 winetricks dotnet20

or only:

env WINEPREFIX=~/.wine32 winetricks dotnet20

if you already set the WINEARCH and created the WINEPREFIX with the 1st command above.

Solution 2

just to make it more straightforward to use wine in 32bit mode. Create a file in ~/bin/wine32 with the following content

env WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=~/.wine32 wine $*

Make the file executable to launch wine in 32bit mode using

wine32 my_exe_file_that_needs_32bit.exe

Hope that helps :-)

Comments

[Wayne Len]

Thanks. . . How would you install the program to that prefix?

[laurent]

WINEPREFIX=~/.wine32 wine setupprogram.exe

[jaorizabal]

@laurent how do you uninstall programs in that prefix?

[laurent]

If the program has an uninstall, you can run it the same way. If not... you can remove the directory (or the files) where your program is installed (~/.wine32/drive_c/Program Files/your_program or something similar)

[Ryan]

The first command is wrong, the WINEPREFIX should be ~/.wine32 not ~/.win32, WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=~/.wine32 winecfg

[laurent]

You can give to it the name you want (and use the same name in other commands) but sure, I will make it consistent with the other examples.

[Wayne Len]

@laurent dotnet2.0 is failing to install. It keeps asking if I want to send the report to Microsoft.

[Stephen Angelico]

Rather than making a script in ~/bin (which I think is a security problem anyway), you could make a bash alias in ~/.bashrc. Just take the same line from the script and put it in a line in .bashrc like this: alias wine32='env WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=~/.wine32 wine $*'

[laurent]

Sorry for the long delay (2 years!) but dotnet2.0 is out of support since 2010 so I guess it is normal it doesn't install nicely anymore (support.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/search/…). The process described above should still be valid to install any application in a different wine prefix or architecture.