Keeping my old programs when upgrading

[Gooly]

Hi I'm a bit new to Linux and a complete newbie to Wine.
I have an old version of Wine running (1.4) and I want to upgrade to the latest stable release.
apt-get tells me that I'm already running the latest version, but that's not true of course. So I think I'll need to do it manually with some install package like .deb
However, I read everywhere that I need to completely uninstall any old version of Wine, and then install the new version.
My question is, is there a way to do this without loosing my current Windows apps, which are already running in Wine? Or do I ened to re-install al the windows applications too?

[dimesio]

If your current version of Wine was installed via your package manager, and the new version will be installed through your package manager, then you shouldn't have to uninstall first; your package manager should take care of that. It's only when going between packaged and self-built versions that you have to manually uninstall.

As for your apps, uninstalling Wine does not remove any wineprefixes, so they will still be installed, and hopefully will still work. However, sometimes apps stop working after an upgrade, and this is more likely to occur when the upgrade is a big jump in versions, such as one stable release to the next. So try your apps after upgrading, but if they don't work, reinstall to a clean wineprefix.

[Gooly]

Thanks dimesio, that's very clear answer
Am I right if I assume that going from the old apt-get way to an install package like .deb (if any available) does not require uninstall, since in both situations I don't build myself?

[update]
Never mind. I have added the Wine repository and now it's upgrading to version 1.6
Thanks again for your concern.

[dimesio]

I don't really understand the distinction you're making between "the old apt-get way" and installing a .deb; I thought the packages apt-get installed were .deb packages. However, I'm on an rpm-based distro, so perhaps I just don't know what I'm talking about. In any case, it can't hurt to uninstall the old package first.

[olivierfrdierick]

Downloading a .deb file and installing it manually is essentially the same as using apt-get to retrieve and install a .deb file from the repositories.
The only difference is that you can download a .deb file for a newer version of a package that is not (yet) available in the repositories.
In both case the package manager will remove older packages if present.