Wine Newbee

[Pavel Troller]

> Dear Friends,
> 
> I am new to Linux and Wine. I have just d/l wine and trying to 
> configure it. I would like to know that after loading wine on Linux
> can i get windows like start button and menu ? I want to 
> install Interbase Client on wine. It has normal windows style 
> setup program i.e. setup.exe file. Can somebody tell me how to
> use setup programs with wine and later use them ?
> 
> Thanks 
> 
> R. S. Patil
Hi!
  Welcome on the board of Wine!
  First of all, it is necessary to clarify some misunderstandings.
  The "Wine" word is a recursive acronym, meaning "Wine Is Not Emulator".
It means, that You will not get a standard win-like window manager.
Wine works as a "compatibility layer" between a win app and Linux OS.
It means that, if properly configured, You can start windows binaries
exactly the same way as Linux ones - i.e. by calling them from a shell
prompt by their name or by clicking on their icon on Your favorite
display manager.
  However, it's not trivial for the beginner to configure the system
that way.
  The most easy way to start an application is to start a shell in Your
favorite window manager (KDE/Gnome/WindowMaker/whatever) using some form
of X terminal (konsole/xterm/whatever) and issue a command like
  "wine setup.exe" manually to the shell prompt, provided the setup.exe
binary is present in Your working directory (i.e. You cd'd to the install
directory, obviously on the CDROM, first).
  I know that as a win user, it may be a bit uncomfortable for You, but
it's just the start.
  Of course, to make it working, You have to install wine properly first.
It's possible to run wine in fully "windowsless" system but sometimes it
helps to copy a stripped win installation (at least DLLs, registry and
some more) from a running windows installation to some Linux directory
and to configure wine to use it as a C: drive for emulated programs.
  I think that on the Wine WWW site, there are more detailed instructions
how to set up wine correctly.
  And at the and, be warned: wine is still not complete, fully working
system. Many apps feel uncomfortable on it and refuse to work. And, unluckily,
setup programs using the latest M$ installer engine obviously don't work :-(.
Sometimes it helps to install the program on native win and then copy it
to the Linux directory simulating C: drive (see before) and eventually
edit the registry in wine according to the changes which the installation
has made to original windows. Surely not for the "click'n'run" class of
users :-( but if You're really interested in the problem, You'll surely
make it!
                                 With regards, Pavel Troller