Wine cannot find the FreeType font library

this solved it on 18.04
https://forums.lutris.net/t/solved-wine-missing-freetype-library/2772
sudo apt install libfreetype6:i386

Wine needs the 32bit version of libraries. Probably you have freetype 64 but no 32.

Execute a clean wine space:

env WINEPREFIX=~/.wine32 WINEARCH=win32 notepad

Also check

env WINEPREFIX=~/.wine64 WINEARCH=win64 notepad

I have a system with Ubuntu 16.04 and wine working. if I list my libs it says:

/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu# ll | grep freetype
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root       21 oct  6 09:32 libfreetype.so.6 -> libfreetype.so.6.12.1
-rw-r--r--   1 root root   694800 abr 15  2016 libfreetype.so.6.12.1

And

/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu# ll | grep freetype
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root       21 abr 15  2016 libfreetype.so.6 -> libfreetype.so.6.12.1
-rw-r--r--   1 root root   714364 abr 15  2016 libfreetype.so.6.12.1

Check what do you have in your system

Regards

Even though the correct 32-bit library was installed, I had to completely remove it via synaptic package completely, and reinstall it. Now it's working fine, not sure why it wasn't working on it's own when it was already installed, but it IS working now.

UPDATE:
I found out what caused the problem. I installed a lightscribe labeler package, 4l_1.0-1_i386.deb

This package breaks wine. If you uninstall the package, wine works again. I have an older package for this labeler, 4L-1.0-r6.i586.rpm, which can be converted to .deb using alien. The older package does not cause the font problem with wine. If you you're going to use the lightscribe labeler, don't use the 4l_1.0-1_i386.deb package.

ORIGINAL POST:
The answers above led me to this solution:

1. Open Package Manager
2. In search window type without quotes 'freetype'
3. Right-click on 'libfreetype6:i386' and mark for removal
4. Click Apply. It removes itself and several other dependent packages.
5. Reinstall that same library and all the packages it removed.

After doing this and reinstalling wine, wine worked correctly again.

Background: OS is Linux Mint 18 64bit (based on Ubuntu 16.04). Wine programs unexpectedly started running with no fonts, and were opening in tiny, empty, box-shaped windows. Running wine from terminal showed the 'Wine cannot find the FreeType font library' error. No combination of removing/reinstalling wine was correcting the issue. All indications were that the font libraries were correctly installed.

You'll see other libfreetype libraries in package manager, but if you try to remove those, the package manager wants to remove over 500 packages and says it will break your system. Just removing and reinstalling the libfreetype6:i386 one corrected the problem on my system.