As described earlier in this section, the wine and i386-wine packages conflict with one another, and therefore cannot be installed on the same system in the normal way. However, multiple installs can be achieved using mechanisms like chroots/jails, or by building WINE from source (note this does not mean building the port).

They can, as "Console User Interface" applications as mentioned eariler in this section. However, there is an arguably better method for running DOS software: DOSBox. On the other hand, there's little reason not to at least try it. Simply create a new prefix, install the software, and if it does not work delete the prefix.

Yes, installing this version will install the "development" version of WINE. As with the 32- and 64-bit versions, they cannot be installed together with the stable versions unless additional measures are taken.

Note that WINE also has a "Staging" version, which contains the most recent updates. This was at one time available as a FreeBSD port; however, it has since been removed. It can be compiled directly from source however.

Operating system drivers transfer commands between applications and hardware. WINE emulates a Windows® environment, including the drivers, which in turn use FreeBSD's native drivers for this transfer. it is not advisable to install Windows® drivers, as the WINE system is designed to use the host systems drivers. If, for example, a graphics card that benefits from dedicated drivers, install them using the standard FreeBSD methods, not Windows® installers.

A user on the FreeBSD forums suggests this configuration to fix out-of-the-box look of WINE fonts, which can be slightly pixelated.

According to a post in the FreeBSD Forums, adding the following to .config/fontconfig/fonts.conf will add anti-aliasing and make text more readable.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd>"

<fontconfig>

  <!-- antialias all fonts -->
  <match target="font">
    <edit name="antialias" mode="assign"><bool>true</bool></edit>>
    <edit name="hinting" mode="assign"><bool>true</bool></edit>>
    <edit name="hintstyle" mode="assign"><const>hintslight</const></edit>>
    <edit name="rgba" mode="assign"><const>rgb</const></edit>>
  </match>
</fontconfig>

It may, depending on the application being run. As mentioned in the section describing winecfg, some built-in WINE DLLs and other libraries can be overridden by providing a path to an alternate version. Provided the Windows® partition or drive is mounted to the FreeBSD system and accessible to the user, configuring some of these overrides will use native Windows® libraries and may decrease the chance of unexpected behavior.

The first stop in determining compatibiliy should be the WINE AppDB. This is a compilation of reports of programs working (or not) on all supported platforms, although (as previously mentioned), solutions for one platform are often applicable to others.

Perhaps. Many Windows® games rely on DirectX, a proprietary Microsoft graphics layer. However there are projects in the open source community attempting to implement support for this technology.

The dxvk project, which is an attempt to implement DirectX using the FreeBSD-compatible Vulkan graphics sub-system, is one such. Although its primary target is WINE on Linux, some FreeBSD users report compiling and using dxvk.

In addition, work is under way on a wine-proton port. This will bring the work of Valve, developer of the Steam gaming platform, to FreeBSD. Proton is a distribution of WINE designed to allow many Windows® games to run on other operating systems with minimal setup.

There are plenty of places FreeBSD users discuss issues related to WINE that can be searched for solutions: