World of Warcraft functionality on Wine Wine is a free software application which aims to allow - like operating systems on the x86 architecture to execute programs written for Microsoft Windows . Introduction . This article primarily talks about setting up Wine for running the MS Windows version of World of Warcraft . Wine also runs on Macintosh computers with x86 CPUs under Mac OS X , but since Blizz ard makes a Mac OS X native World of Warcraft client , running it under Wine is unnecessary . World of Warcraft had a client for Linux while it was in the beta phase of development , but it was later dropped and never officially released . Currently , WoW is run on Linux by use of Windows . Given that the World of Warcraft client is no longer officially developed to work in Linux , the installation of it on Linux is a somewhat more involved process than on Windows , which it is streamlined to install more easily on . However , with some careful research , and a bit of patience , it ' s very possible to do so . Alternatively a streamlined process of installation and Windows installation conversion is available via Play On Linux . While this guide will only cover the Wine compatibility layer , WoW is fully compatible with Crossover . Preparation . Before you begin the installation , you should run the following simple command , which will check whether your video card driver has DRI enabled , which allows WoW to run much faster ( you may need to install package mesa - utils or equivalent for your distribution ) : Which should return a line similar to this : If this line says " No " , it means that the graphics data will be handled in software rather than directly by the graphics hardware , thus significantly reducing speed at which WoW will run . Thankfully if you are using relatively recent hardware , enabling DRI is usually just a configuration issue . For more information about enabling DRI , refer to the information from your distribution ' s support guides on graphic card driver installation . For extended personal help , forums and chatrooms are usually a good bet . Just tell them what the Make and Model of your graphic card is and they will be able to point you in the right direction . As always , remember that search engines are your friend . Installing Wine . Usually , installing the latest development version of Wine is the best option . However , sometimes Wine suffers from regression and some older version might perform better . If you are having trouble with one version , try another . Distribution - specific methods . Different GNU / Linux distributions use different methods of installing software , which oftentimes makes it hard to make easy installation options available for all distributions , especially for large and complex projects like Wine . Luckily a lot of energy has been put into making the distribution native installation methods available for a large variety of popular distributions . Please see http : / / www . winehq . org / site / download and follow the installation directions for your particular distribution . Compiling Wine . If you were unable to install Wine with a method found on that site , or if you are an experienced user wanting more control over the installation , then you may want to look into compiling Wine from source code . See the WineHQ wiki for information : http : / / wiki . winehq . org / Recommended _ Packages Installing WoW . It is only required to use one of these methods . If you have a preference , or one approach doesn ' t work for you , then try another . Method 1 : Download the client . The simplest way to install the latest version of the full client is to get it from the Battle . net Dashboard . Simply run the installer , follow the prompts , and you ' ll end up with a fully patched , ready - to - play game . Method 2 : Use a pre - existing Windows installation . If you ' re migrating to Linux from Windows and don ' t want to reinstall and repatch your client , it is possible to copy your existing installation to Linux . To copy your installation from Windows , simply copy your " World of Warcraft " directory from Windows to somewhere on your Linux partition . Please note that because Wine can easily break a Windows installation , it is not recommended to try to access WoW without copying it to your Linux partition . Method 3 : Using installation CDs . This method requires you to monitor the installation in order to switch CDs , but is usually faster than downloading the game and can be done without an internet connection . Insert disc 1 in the CD / DVD drive , and do the following ( replace / media / cdrom with wherever you mount your CDs ) : Some dialogs during installation may appear blank or garbled , and the installer may even hang for up to 5 minutes at 100 % CPU , while appearing to be doing nothing . Simply wait and click next when possible . " Note : If the text is too small , and it annoys you : Please install msttcorefonts per instruction of your distribution . " As the installer runs , you will be prompted to change discs . If the installer repeatedly asks for the same disc , try unmounting the disc before ejecting , then insert the next disc . If you have problems ejecting CDs in wine try : Start winecfg , then select Drives , and click auto detect drives Your CD drive should be assigned a letter , like " X : / media / cdrom " Now you can use that letter to eject the CD from Wine with : You should now be able to eject the CD normally . You may need to repeat this process for each disc . No Installer . exe ? This may primarily be a Fuse problem , but may appear on other systems not using Fuse as well . Run the following command from a terminal : Note that your CD drive may not be / dev / cdrom ! Check by running the command codice _ 1 without arguments and look for a reasonable device ( cd # , sr # , etc . . . ) Problems mounting the DVD ( collectors edition for [ Vanilla ] and [ TBC ] and standard for [ WotLK ] ) . The issues might be related to either a defective ( auto - ) mount for the Hybrid Disks used ( ISO 9660 and HFS + ) or defective ( auto - ) mount without UDF support . For the Hybrid disks please refer to the specific documentation available on the internet . However the most likely cause is the missing UDF support when mounting the disc . In case it is mounted please unmount it then use the following line to mount it again with UDF support : Playing . Start from the Desktop Icon . Double click the icon you find on your Desktop titled World of Warcraft , this will start the launcher . If you have never used something requiring HTML rendering with Wine you will be prompted to download and install the Gecko rendering engine , you should do this as it will enable the WoW Launcher to display news . Start from the Terminal . Starting from the terminal is simple , just enter : Or , dive right into the game with : Menu icon . You can make a Gnome menu entry by doing the following commands in a terminal ( you will need superuser / root rights ) : Add this to the text editor window , which should have appeared after the third command , change LAUNCHER in the Exec = line to command used to run Wow , and save : Remember that you should also edit the Exec = line to reflect your WoW installation path , if you ' ve installed to a special location . Post - 3 . 3 . 0 runtime error . Update to the most recent version of Wine or run : 4 . 2 Launcher . exe hangs on " Downloading updated toolset . . . " . On Fedora 14 , run winetricks in the console by itself . When the winetricks window pops up with its options , choose " install game " , and pick the wow trial client . Supported versions of World of Warcraft on Wine . What expansions / versions of " World of Warcraft " are supported on Wine ? Do specific expansions have specific problems or work - arounds needed ?