On 28.12.2025 09:43, Luiz Romário Santana Rios wrote:
I was trying to execute a windows executable with wine. The terminal
output said I had a 64 bit wine installation and I needed to install
the 32 bit wine with the following command:
apt-get install wine32:i386
I was running it in the small dropdown terminal from Dolphin, so I
didn't see the whole output at once, but since this was (as I thought)
a normal operation, just installing a 32 bit version of wine alongside
the 64 bit version, I didn't think much of it and said yes. There were
no warnings besides the usual apt warnings.
Then I noticed a message pop up in the terminal talking about how
applications using phonon will remain with no sound and I just thought
that meant 32 bit applications will have no sound, so I said OK. After
that, I noticed a lot of stuff getting removed and leaving the system
in a broken state and I realized something was wrong. At the end of
it, the terminal disappeared and now many basic Plasma applications
are gone. I haven't closed any applications or logged off yet, so I
don't know the full extent of the damage, but that really got me by
surprise. I know you should always pay attention when running apt, so
this is kinda on me, but I really wouldn't expect a simple operation
like this would break the system, much less one explicitly recommended
by the system itself.
How do I walk back from this?
Search through "/var/log/dpkg.log" or "/var/log/dpkg.log.1" etc.
Look for the records with status "remove" and "purge" and make notes of
package names especially meta-packages, which can install multiple
packages in bulk as their dependencies.
First remove "wine32:i386" and reinstall packages that were removed,
starting with meta-packages.
From my experience with Wine, it is better to install package from
WineHQ official repository.
https://gitlab.winehq.org/wine/wine/-/wikis/Debian-Ubuntu#trixie
I recommend to install "wine-devel" meta-package, which will install all
necessary multi-arch dependencies, to run both 32 and 64 bit
applications inside Wine prefixes.
Packages from WineHQ repository will be installed into "/opt", so they
will be separated from the rest of the system, ensuring there are no
breakage or conflicts with other packages from official Debian repositories.
I don't know anything about "phonon". Maybe someone else will chime in,
if you will still have problems with sound after re-installation.
--
With kindest regards, Alexander.
Debian - The universal operating system
https://www.debian.org
