[Wine] New to Linux and Wine, need to know a few things

[Martin Gregorie]

On Mon, 2012-01-09 at 16:40 -0600, semint wrote:
> But I have no clue how Wine works. What I would do is keep Windows
> where it's at right now, and free one of the three hard drives in my
> PC and install Mint 12 there. So if I do it that way, can I run the
> Windows apps from the current Windows installation, or will I have to
> install another Windows in a VM environment within Linux and run them
> from there? That would be a deal breaker because I wouldn't buy
> another copy of Windows to be able to run Wine.
> 
That's easy enough. You can leave Windows where it is and install Linux
on a different drive. Mint uses the GRUB bootloader, which can be set up
to run Windows. Once the Mint installation is complete and running you
can configure it to boot Windows as well by logging in as root (or
becoming root with the "su -" command) and editing /boot/grub/grub.conf

Read and/or print off the GRUB documentation before you start because,
unless the Mint install offers to include Windows as a bootable OS, you
won't be able to use Windows until you've amended the GRUB
configuration.

I can't remember how to boot Windows from GRUB offhand because I last
set that up several years ago and don't have dual boot box running right
now, but I do know that Windows must be chain loaded - that will mean
something once you've read the GRUB documentation.

Another tip: by default all current Linux distros hide the GRUB boot
screen, which you need to see in order to choose which OS to boot. To
make this visible, become root and edit /boot/grub/grub.conf:

- comment out the 'hiddenmenu' statement by putting a '#' in front
  of it.

- add 'timeout=5' on the line after '# hiddenmenu'. On booting, this
  causes the GRUB menu to appear for 5 seconds, which gives you time
  to select which OS you want to boot. If you do nothing, the default
  OS boots after 5 seconds. The 'default=0' statement controls this:
  menu items are numbered from zero, which it the top of the list.

  If 5 seconds is wrong for you, just change the 'timeout' value. 
  It sets the delay time in seconds.

Its best to add the Windows boot line to the end of the list because
Mint updates that install a new kernel will add the new kernel's boot
line to the front of the list. By leaving the 'default' line unchanged
you'll always boot into the latest Mint version by default.


Martin