wine users - Jul 2006 - New user is confused by some configuration issues

I find the documentation very confusing about how to install native
DLLs,  which native DLLs to install and where to put them. Some of the
advice is contradictory.

I have wine 0.9.17 on Ubuntu 6.06
I see in the system32 a number of DLLs are installed.
Are these the only copy of the builtin DLLs that wine has?
Because the documentation says that when installing native DLLs, they
should best go into the system and/or system32 directory, in which case
some of the wine builtin DLLs would be overridden. If they are
over-ridden, then why would it be necessary to use winecfg to instruct
wine to use a native DLL?

Actually the documentation refers only to the system directory but I
assume that the system32 directory would be the right place, if that is
the home of the native DLL in its native environment: am I correct?

Next question: somewhere in a howto on the website, there is a hint the
wine is much better at Windows 98 APIs than NT APIs, so the suggestion
was to use Win 98 native DLLs. Yet the default Windows emulation is
Windows 2000, and it is much easier for me to find Win XP DLLs. So what
should I do?

Is there a tutorial somewhere based on a real example, showing how to
find which native DLLs make all the difference between success and
failure? 

regards,

Tim

I find the documentation very confusing about how to install native
DLLs,  which native DLLs to install and where to put them. Some of the
advice is contradictory.

I have wine 0.9.17 on Ubuntu 6.06
I see in the system32 a number of DLLs are installed.
Are these the only copy of the builtin DLLs that wine has?
Because the documentation says that when installing native DLLs, they
should best go into the system and/or system32 directory, in which case
some of the wine builtin DLLs would be overridden. If they are
over-ridden, then why would it be necessary to use winecfg to instruct
wine to use a native DLL?

Actually the documentation refers only to the system directory but I
assume that the system32 directory would be the right place, if that is
the home of the native DLL in its native environment: am I correct?

Next question: somewhere in a howto on the website, there is a hint the
wine is much better at Windows 98 APIs than NT APIs, so the suggestion
was to use Win 98 native DLLs. Yet the default Windows emulation is
Windows 2000, and it is much easier for me to find Win XP DLLs. So what
should I do?

Is there a tutorial somewhere based on a real example, showing how to
find which native DLLs make all the difference between success and
failure? 

regards,

Tim

Tim Richardson <te.richardson@gmail.com> wrote:
> I find the documentation very confusing about how to install native
> DLLs,  which native DLLs to install and where to put them. Some of the
> advice is contradictory.
How: Put them either into windows\system32 or into the applications
directory. Add an appropriate override in winecfg. Which: It depends.
> I have wine 0.9.17 on Ubuntu 6.06
> I see in the system32 a number of DLLs are installed.
> Are these the only copy of the builtin DLLs that wine has?
No. They are merely fakes to satisfy programs which look for the DLLs by
looking for the files.
> Next question: somewhere in a howto on the website, there is a hint the
> wine is much better at Windows 98 APIs than NT APIs, so the suggestion
> was to use Win 98 native DLLs. Yet the default Windows emulation is
> Windows 2000, and it is much easier for me to find Win XP DLLs. So what
> should I do?
I'd guess this hint is outdated. There is a reason the default is the
default.
> Is there a tutorial somewhere based on a real example, showing how to
> find which native DLLs make all the difference between success and
> failure? 
An easy way is to look at the error messages and replace the
corresponding DLL. Of course sometimes this is not so easy.
appdb.winehq.org contains a lot of wisdom on individual programs.

Daniel