Install Wine on Kubuntu

I'm a totally new user of Linux and just installed 32-bit Kubuntu on a Virtualbox VM to start learning it. I want to install Wine and see how some Windows programs that I still depend on would run. The whole repository and apt-get thing is still very new to me so after trying the advise from various sites and posts to install Wine I gave up. It says that Wine was installed but I can't find it anywhere in the list of programs, nor is there a menu to run an .exe with Wine, so obviously it wasn't installed. Being so new to Linux in general I have no idea what the problem might be.

Can you advise me how to install it and/or what steps to take to diagnose the problem?

EDIT: I tried using the repository, searching for wine and installing it, but nothing gets installed even though it says it's installed. I tried the solutions in the suggested answer, but that doesn't work.

It says that Wine was installed but I can't find it anywhere in the list of programs, nor is there a menu to run an .exe with Wine, so obviously it wasn't installed.

Type in command line

wine --version

If it shows an error you are correct but it is likely to show you a version. "wine" is not a program you run by itself so it does not have a icon to start it from. You need to tell wine it needs to start something. So from command like you would use it like this

wine "c:\program files\internet explorer\iexplore.exe"

and it would start internet explorer. Some more on this on Wine HQ and on our Ubuntu help

There is a 2nd part to wine called "play on linux". It is a set of tools to automate setting up software for using it with wine. So also install play on linux. From the link:

Why use PlayOnLinux?

• GUI; no need for the command line interface (CLI).


• Hides the complexity of Wine.


• Uses "virtual drives" (see notes below).


• Some applications are "supported" (e.g. Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, Microsoft Office, Spore); PlayOnLinux automates their installation.


• You can manually install "unsupported" applications.

The automated install is done by using scripts users made and are proven to work with specific versions numbers of wine.

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Installation for play on linux:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:noobslab/apps
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install playonlinux
sudo apt-get remove playonlinux

Play on linux does have an icon you can start and will show you a whole lot of software (though most are probably games (hence the name ;) ))