PlayOnLinux – Run Windows Applications and Games on Linux

Categories Open Source 12 Comments

In our earlier articles on this blog, we used Wine program to install and run windows based applications on Ubuntu and other Red Hat based Linux distributions. There is another open source software available called PlayOnLinux that uses Wine as its base and gives a feature rich functions and a user friendly interface to install and run windows application on Linux. The purpose of this software is to simplify and automates the process of installing and running windows applications on Linux platforms. It has a list of applications where you can automates each installation process as much as you can.

Install PlayOnLinux In Linux
Install PlayOnLinux In Linux

What is PlayOnLinux?

PlayOnLinux (POL) is an open source gaming framework (software) based on Wine, that allows you to easily install any Windows based applications and games on Linux operating systems, via the use of Wine as front-end interface.

What are PlayOnLinux’s features?

The following are the list of some interesting features to know.

  1. PlayOnLinux is license free, no need of Windows License.
  2. PlayOnLinux uses base as Wine
  3. PlayOnLinux is a open source and free software.
  4. PlayOnLinux is written in Bash and Python.

In this article, I will guide you on how to install, setup and use PlayonLinux on RHEL/CentOS/Fedora and Ubuntu/Debian distributions. You can also use these instructions for Xubuntu and Linux Mint.

How to Install PlayOnLinux in Linux Distributions

PlayOnLinux is in Fedora’s software repositories, so you can add the repository and install the PlayonLinux software using the following commands.

For RHEL/CentOS/Fedora

vi /etc/yum.repos.d/playonlinux.repo
[playonlinux]
name=PlayOnLinux Official repository
baseurl=http://rpm.playonlinux.com/fedora/yum/base
enable=1
gpgcheck=0
gpgkey=http://rpm.playonlinux.com/public.gpg
yum install playonlinux

For Debian

With the Squeeze repository

wget -q "http://deb.playonlinux.com/public.gpg" -O- | apt-key add -
wget http://deb.playonlinux.com/playonlinux_squeeze.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/playonlinux.list
apt-get update
apt-get install playonlinux

With the Lenny repository

wget -q "http://deb.playonlinux.com/public.gpg" -O- | apt-key add -
wget http://deb.playonlinux.com/playonlinux_lenny.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/playonlinux.list
apt-get update
apt-get install playonlinux

With the Etch repository

wget -q "http://deb.playonlinux.com/public.gpg" -O- | apt-key add -
wget http://deb.playonlinux.com/playonlinux_etch.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/playonlinux.list
apt-get update
apt-get install playonlinux

For Ubuntu

For the Precise 12.04 version

wget -q "http://deb.playonlinux.com/public.gpg" -O- | sudo apt-key add -
sudo wget http://deb.playonlinux.com/playonlinux_precise.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/playonlinux.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install playonlinux

For the Oneiric 11.10 version

wget -q "http://deb.playonlinux.com/public.gpg" -O- | sudo apt-key add -
sudo wget http://deb.playonlinux.com/playonlinux_oneiric.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/playonlinux.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install playonlinux

For the Natty 11.04 version

wget -q "http://deb.playonlinux.com/public.gpg" -O- | sudo apt-key add -
sudo wget http://deb.playonlinux.com/playonlinux_natty.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/playonlinux.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install playonlinux

For the Maverick 10.10 version

wget -q "http://deb.playonlinux.com/public.gpg" -O- | sudo apt-key add -
sudo wget http://deb.playonlinux.com/playonlinux_maverick.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/playonlinux.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install playonlinux

For the Lucid 10.04 version

wget -q "http://deb.playonlinux.com/public.gpg" -O- | sudo apt-key add -
sudo wget http://deb.playonlinux.com/playonlinux_lucid.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/playonlinux.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install playonlinux

How do I Start PlayOnLinux

Once it’s installed, you can start the PlayOnLinux as normal user from the application menu or use the following command to start it.

# playonlinux
$ playonlinux

Once you start PlayOnLinux, it starts with wizard that automatically download and install required software’s such as Microsoft fonts. Go through the wizard as shown below.

PlayOnLinux Setup Wizard
PlayOnLinux Setup Wizard
PlayOnLinux Setup Wizard 2
PlayOnLinux Setup Wizard 2
PlayOnLinux Installing Microsoft Fonts
PlayOnLinux Installing Microsoft Fonts
PlayOnLinux License Agreement
PlayOnLinux License Agreement
PlayOnLinux Installing Fonts
PlayOnLinux Installing Fonts

How do I Install Applications?

Once it’s done, click on ‘Install‘ button to explore available software’s or search for software’s. PlayonLinux provides some supported games, you can search them using ‘Search’ tab as shown below.

PlayOnLinux Search Applications
PlayOnLinux Search Applications
PlayOnLinux Installing Games
PlayOnLinux Installing Games

This way, you can search and install as many as Windows supported applications and games in your Linux.

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12 thoughts on “PlayOnLinux – Run Windows Applications and Games on Linux”

  1. I tried to install a pc game called Bioshock using playonlinux after 8 hours and a little circle was going around and around and the game wasn’t installed yet.

    Any advice? I have also installed wine and winetricks.

    Reply

  3. I’m running rhel desktop 7.3, I added the repo and when try to install show this error if dependencies, I tried to install it form rpmfind, it require other, and other another and need to search manually all the dependencies … :(, do you know how can I do for resolve for more ease the installation?

    Error: Paquete: wine-core-1.8.6-1.el7.x86_64 (epel)
           Necesita: mesa-libOSMesa(x86-64)
Error: Paquete: playonlinux-4.2.10-fedora0.noarch (playonlinux)
           Necesita: redhat-lsb

    The first mesa-libOSMesa installed without problems but redhat-lsb, ….. is the problem.

    thank you

    Reply

    • Jitendra,

      Try to install these following packages to get rid of such cabextract not found error.

      $ sudo apt-get install gettext cabextract
      Reply

  6. after installing the playonlinux it shows

    [[email protected] ~]# sudo playonlinux

    Looking for python… 2.6.6 – selected

    PlayOnLinux is not supposed to be run as root. Sorry……………

    Can you please help me that ………………………….Thanku

    Reply

  8. Error: Multilib version problems found. This often means that the root
    cause is something else and multilib version checking is just
    pointing out that there is a problem. Eg.:

    1. You have an upgrade for libwayland-server which is missing some
    dependency that another package requires. Yum is trying to
    solve this by installing an older version of libwayland-server of the
    different architecture. If you exclude the bad architecture
    yum will tell you what the root cause is (which package
    requires what). You can try redoing the upgrade with
    –exclude libwayland-server.otherarch … this should give you an error
    message showing the root cause of the problem.

    2. You have multiple architectures of libwayland-server installed, but
    yum can only see an upgrade for one of those arcitectures.
    If you don’t want/need both architectures anymore then you
    can remove the one with the missing update and everything
    will work.

    3. You have duplicate versions of libwayland-server installed already.
    You can use “yum check” to get yum show these errors.

    …you can also use –setopt=protected_multilib=false to remove
    this checking, however this is almost never the correct thing to
    do as something else is very likely to go wrong (often causing
    much more problems).

    Protected multilib versions: libwayland-server-1.0.5-1.fc18.i686 != libwayland-server-1.0.0-1.fc18.x86_64
    Error: Protected multilib versions: fontconfig-2.10.2-2.fc18.i686 != fontconfig-2.10.2-1.fc18.x86_64
    Error: Protected multilib versions: pixman-0.28.0-1.fc18.i686 != pixman-0.26.2-5.fc18.x86_64
    Error: Protected multilib versions: cyrus-sasl-lib-2.1.23-37.fc18.i686 != cyrus-sasl-lib-2.1.23-36.fc18.x86_64
    Error: Protected multilib versions: libwayland-client-1.0.5-1.fc18.i686 != libwayland-client-1.0.0-1.fc18.x86_64
    Error: Protected multilib versions: libjpeg-turbo-1.2.90-1.fc18.i686 != libjpeg-turbo-1.2.1-3.fc18.x86_64
    Error: Protected multilib versions: pulseaudio-libs-2.1-6.fc18.i686 != pulseaudio-libs-2.1-4.fc18.x86_64
    Error: Protected multilib versions: harfbuzz-0.9.12-2.fc18.i686 != harfbuzz-0.9.7-1.fc18.x86_64
    Error: Protected multilib versions: glib2-2.34.2-2.fc18.i686 != glib2-2.34.2-1.fc18.x86_64
    Error: Protected multilib versions: graphite2-1.1.1-4.fc18.i686 != graphite2-1.1.1-3.fc18.x86_64

    Reply

  9. Thanks, Successful Run

    When I run “PlayOnLinux” got Error message

    “playonlinux cannot find curl (from curl)
    you need to install it to continue”

    and I have run the “sudo apt-get install curl” then run it Successful

    sudo apt-get install curl

    Internet Explorer 1 to 8 are Available in PlayonLinux. IE 10 are not available.

    Reply

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