Those using 64-bit (who isn't these days) would have run into trouble trying to get wine installed in this environment on Precise/Maya and it ends up wanting to remove a stack of important stuff.

There has been much discussed about this on forums and nobody seems to have a clean answer, so I had a go myself.

The problem

When wine is installed it depends on wine1.4-amd64 which in turn depends on the 32-bit (wine1.4-i386). That's where things start getting messy:

• wine1.4-i386 recommends gettext:i386
• gettext:i386 depends on gettext-base:i386
• gettext-base:i386 conflicts with gettext-base (amd64)

The workaround

In order to install wine it has to be installed without the gettext:i386 recommends which can't be done directly. Start by installing wine without recommends:

# apt-get --no-install-recommends install wine

That gets a basic wine install in. Next fire up a package manager of some sort (I use aptitude):

• Select and put on Auto all Recommends for wine1.4
• Select and put on Auto all Recommends for wine1.4-amd64
• Select and put on Auto all Recommends for wine1.4-i386, except gettext

After installing that your wine should be working.