Wine is missing from the context menu on Ubuntu (SOLVED)

To run Windows applications on Linux, it is usually enough to double-click on them. But it may be that the .exe file will be opened by the archive manager or another application (usually the archive manager).

If you try to select the “Open With Other Application” item in the context menu, then Wine will not be there. Even worse, it is impossible to add a custom command, that is, it is impossible to launch an .exe program with a double click or through the context menu.

First, make sure Wine is installed on your system. To do this, run the command

which wine

If the output contains the path to the executable file, for example, /usr/bin/wine, then this means that Wine is installed.

If nothing is shown in the output, it means that you first need to install the Wine package.

This can be done with the following set of commands:

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo apt update
sudo apt install wine winbind

Windows applications can be launched from the command line using a command similar to the following:

wine /PATH/TO/APPLICATIONS.exe

But this is not very convenient, so let's look at how to add Wine to the context menu in Ubuntu.

On Ubuntu (GNOME 3) Wine is missing from the context menu and it is not possible to add a custom command. To fix, do the following:

sudo ln -s /usr/share/doc/wine/examples/wine.desktop /usr/share/applications/

If you encounter an error that the wine.desktop file is missing, then find it with the following command and edit the above command:

locate wine.desktop

Right-click on the .exe file and select the item called “Open With Other Application”.

Then select “View All Application”.

Click on “Wine Windows Program Loader” and then click on the “Select” button.