Dual boot solves everything?

Mike Hearn m.hearn at signal.qinetiq.com
Mon Nov 18 11:01:28 CST 2002


        First of all, thanks to everyone with your input so far.  I've
        now been able to get IE v6.0 up and running as well as a few
        other less important applications.  Which brings me to a few
        more questions…

Good to hear!

        1. Since it is possible to use native DLLs with applications,
        can one assume that on a dual boot machine with Win98 SE2 and
        Red Hat v8.0 that it would only be necessary to install the
        desired application under Windows, then add native DLLs to the
        Wine config file to get [almost] *any* Windows application to
        function?

<sigh> If only it were that simple. Firstly, although in theory you can
run programs installed in Windows, I've found you get best results by
installing software into Wine (especially when using a faked windows
setup such as in CrossOver). You can often get better results by mixing
and matching native vs builtin DLLs, but this is something of a black
art. The wine config file lets you customise these on a per app basis.
There are often tips on what mix works best in the apps db.

The situation tends to be complicated by the fact that not all DLLs can
be native, and that native and builtin DLLs can have wierd interactions.

        2. Each time I launch a program, a black window appears that
        seems to make up the "shell" (for lack of a better term) for
        that instance of the application.  This window is always
        somewhere around 800x600 pixels.  Is there any way to not show
        this window and/or get the size to be something else?  I am
        running in 1600x1200 resolution and only using half of the
        screen is frustrating.

Odd. Sounds like you've got it set into desktop mode, not sure why it
would be black. What version of Wine are you using for this? You need to
set the window management mode to managed, assuming i've guessed what's
up correctly.

        3. Is there an easy way within Linux/Wine to determine what
        native DLLs the application should/could use?
        
In short, not as far as I'm aware. Finding this out is part luck, part
skill - reading crash traces can aid you in figuring out what mix you
need.

As time goes by and the builtin dlls improve hopefully it'll become less
necessary for things like this.

thanks -mike




More information about the wine-devel mailing list