[Wine] Re: Planning first Linux/Wine install

[anandpursahibwale at yahoo.com]

jhansonxi at gmail.com wrote:
> anandpursahibwale at yahoo.com wrote:
> > I'm planning my first Linux/Wine install.  Is there any advantage to
> > having a Windows (say W2K) partition to install Win apps to, when the
> > plan is to run them under Wine/Linux?
>
> Not really.  Wine doesn't use local DLLs unless overrides are set.
>
> > I do have a licensed copy of W2K, so I could do that if it were an
> > advantage (e.g., is it easier to install difficult or unruly win apps
> > under windows first?).
>
> Only if the installers fail but in most cases you also need the
> registry entries.

That's what I suspected, which I might go ahead with the Win partition
until I'm comfortable with the installation of the programs I decide to
continue using under Wine

>
> > Any other suggestions (I'm planning out my partition sizes on a blank
> > 73GB SCSI HD now).
>
> Since Wine is installed in your home directory there really is no
> difference to a normal Linux install unless you want to dual-boot Win2K
> and Linux.  There is a security advantage to installing Windows apps
> under a separate account in a different home directory but it depends
> on how paranoid you are.  I would never install IE in my normal home
> folder for instance.  For IE or Office you may want to use an emulator
> like QEMU or VMWare to host a Win2K install in a virtual file system.
> The guest OS filesystem would then be stored in a single large file
> that you can simply overwrite from a backup when some virus turns it
> into a pr0n spam server.

I may start with the Win 2K  installation and move on to trying QEMU or
VMWare as I get up the Linux learning curve.

>
> Don't forget to try out FOSS alternatives to your Win apps.  It will
> eliminate a lot of legacy overhead.

I'm looking forward to that, but in the past, I have some experience
with StarOffice under OS/2 and the compatibility thing for formats with
severe formatting features was quite good enough when editing and
returning work from home items back to the office.

Thanks for the suggestions.