To run certain Windows programs in WINE you need to this workaround: echo 0|sudo tee /proc/sys/kernel/yama/ptrace_scope According to the support websites, this is due to a bug in the Ubuntu kernel that prevents ptrace and WINE playing well together. Using the above command you set the ptrace to 0 which according the research I've done(don't ask me which websites, I have seem a lot of them), ptrace has to do with the interactions between programs. The 0 setting is more permissive than the 1. I have to assume that there was a good reason Ubuntu wanted the ptrace=1 so this leads me back to the short form of the question. Are there any risks involved in setting ptrace=0. Lower security? problems debugging? any others that I haven't thought of??? P.S. for anybody reading this that wonders what the bug causes, the Windows programs will fail to open at all, in the System Monitor you will see many instances of the program trying to open and then they will eventually all quit and if you run the progam for the terminal you will get an error that tells you that the maximum number of program instances has been reached.