[Wine] Re: Just saw a great question/idea - Wine & Windows support

[bmullan]

vitamin wrote:
> 
> bmullan wrote:
> > Is it possible for people with dual boot computers, since they already have the windows system files on their hard drive and they are accessible through linux, to somehow make a program that finds these files and uses them in linux when ever you want to use a windows program?
> 
> Of course, that's how most virtual machines can run - using real disk partitions instead of virtual drives.
> 
> Wine can't and won't do that. It requires access to binary registry files that have no documented file format. Besides it's too late to look for all bits and pieces of an application _after_ it's installed. It should be done _during_ the installation.
> 
> And of course you risking Windows system corruption by Wine. There are lots of things Wine don't care about, while Windows does.


Well that's why I said make a copy of the Registry and use it instead of the real one.

I'm quite aware of how VM's work and use Vmware, Virtual Box and Qemu extensively.   However, if there was a way to better accomplish what they do via another route I'd consider it as I'm doing quite a bit with cloud computing (Amazon EC2) right now and can't use VMware because the EC2 hypervisor prohibits use of a 2nd (ditto for Virtual box) ... I have had some success with vbox in just s/w mode (ie no h/w virtualization) and qemu as just software virtualizaton .. although Qemu is a slower than I'd like.