[Wine] Re: how to share wine programs between users?

[vitamin]

rkleemann wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I installed Office 2007 under my account, but mostly it is my wife that needs to use it.
> 
> I hadn't realized that installs apply only to the particular user account.
> 
> Isn't there a way to install software such that wine can use it for any user on the system?
> 
> I tried moving my .wine directory to /home/.wine and then symlinking ~/.wine, but that only works for me... if I try it under my wife's account I get an error that wine isn't owned by her. So the .wine directory has to be owned by the user in order for wine to work.
> 
> It would be nice to be able to share applications. Can that be done in any way?
> 
> Thanks
> Ricardo


In short - you can only share binary files read-only between users. You can not share registry. Files that are being modified might get corrupt and it's your call how far you want to go with it.

In this case what you can do is:
1. Start with clean ~/.wine dir (just remove it)
2. Install program under your account, configure it and make sure it works.
3. Move ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Office into a shared place, set appropriate permissions on it.
4. Symlink that directory to ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Office
5. Copy your ~/.wine directory to other user and set correct owevner.

You can try and share more files this way. But please don't share directories like system32 - they are constantly being written to.