wine users - Mar 2007 - Planning first Linux/Wine install

I'm planning my first Linux/Wine install.  Is there any advantage to
having a Windows (say W2K) partition to install Win apps to, when the
plan is to run them under Wine/Linux?

I do have a licensed copy of W2K, so I could do that if it were an
advantage (e.g., is it easier to install difficult or unruly win apps
under windows first?).

Any other suggestions (I'm planning out my partition sizes on a blank
73GB SCSI HD now).

Actually, I did install Linux successfully once about 7 years ago, but
I didn't use it.  I'm giving up on OS/2 after 13 years, and don't
really want to rely on W2K, though I may need to use MS Office and a
few other win apps on occasion.

Thanks
APSW

anandpursahibwale@yahoo.com wrote:
> I'm planning my first Linux/Wine install.  Is there any advantage to
> having a Windows (say W2K) partition to install Win apps to, when the
> plan is to run them under Wine/Linux?
Not really.  Wine doesn't use local DLLs unless overrides are set.
> I do have a licensed copy of W2K, so I could do that if it were an
> advantage (e.g., is it easier to install difficult or unruly win apps
> under windows first?).
Only if the installers fail but in most cases you also need the
registry entries.
> Any other suggestions (I'm planning out my partition sizes on a blank
> 73GB SCSI HD now).
Since Wine is installed in your home directory there really is no
difference to a normal Linux install unless you want to dual-boot Win2K
and Linux.  There is a security advantage to installing Windows apps
under a separate account in a different home directory but it depends
on how paranoid you are.  I would never install IE in my normal home
folder for instance.  For IE or Office you may want to use an emulator
like QEMU or VMWare to host a Win2K install in a virtual file system.
The guest OS filesystem would then be stored in a single large file
that you can simply overwrite from a backup when some virus turns it
into a pr0n spam server.
> Actually, I did install Linux successfully once about 7 years ago, but
> I didn't use it.  I'm giving up on OS/2 after 13 years, and
don't
> really want to rely on W2K, though I may need to use MS Office and a
> few other win apps on occasion.
>
> Thanks
> APSW
Don't forget to try out FOSS alternatives to your Win apps.  It will
eliminate a lot of legacy overhead.

On Wed, 25 Oct 2006 16:06:52 -0700, anandpursahibwale wrote:
> I'm planning my first Linux/Wine install.  Is there any advantage to
> having a Windows (say W2K) partition to install Win apps to, when the plan
> is to run them under Wine/Linux?
 Yeah. Once in a while you may hit a weird installer that doesn't work
at all under Wine. If that happens and you really need that app, a second
partition with Windows can be pretty handy. And if the app itself doesn't
work under Wine you can use actual Windows.
 If you're planning on any gaming or heavy-duty hardware usage under
Windows, then a separate partition and dual-boot setup is best. If you're
just going to use it to install things for Wine and maybe run a couple of
other apps that Wine dislikes, then you might be better off skipping the
partition method and just installing a Windows image under Qemu. With the
accelerator kernel-module, qemu runs almost native speed, and you avoid
all that nasty mucking about with rebooting.
> Any other suggestions (I'm planning out my partition sizes on a blank
73GB
> SCSI HD now).
 Umm. Let's see. Absolutely make a separate home folder partition --
it's
handy if you want to wipe your system and switch distros, so you don't
lose your settings and data. A couple gigs for /usr/local might be
nice, too, since things you compile yourself will end up there, saving
you from recompiling it in the wipe scenario. It's not a bad idea to
leave some unpartitioned space at the end for later, too. You can mount a
partition anywhere inside the file system, so if your /home/foo/music
folder gets full, you can make a partition and move the files in there,
then mount it permanently at /home/foo/music by adding it to /etc/fstab.

 Put your swap space on a fast part of the drive. You can test by it by
booting a livecd, partitioning it into segments of 5 gigs or whatever,
then using "hdparm -t /dev/hda##" to test speeds on each
"##" partition of
the drive "hda". I spend a few minutes doing that with any new drive
--
it's not a big boost, but it helps. (hda would be primary master, and the
numbers are 1-4 for any primary partitions, 5 and up for the logical
partitions)
 The fastest part is generally at one end of the drive, though
which end it is depends on how the manufacturer set up the drive's
controller to map the real physical disk to the generic LBA interface.
Most seem to map the edge of the disk (fastest spinning part) to the start
of the drive, but I had one that did the opposite.

 
>  I'm giving up on OS/2 after 13 years, and don't really want to
rely on W2K,
 Ah, OS/2, we hardly knew ye. I'm an Amiga refugee, myself. :) Welcome
aboard!

Another wrinkle in my planning:  I have a favorite personal financial
management program (i.e, checkbook plus) that I've been using under
OS/2's Win3.1 capability for the past 13 years.  Because it does the
job I need, and it has 13 years of data, and did not export
satisfactorily to Quicken 98, I would like to continue using it.  It is
a straight Win 3.1 program and it would not install under Win98 or
Win2K.

Can Wine run Win 3.1 programs without a DOS/win3.1 partition, and how
would it install (especially given that it won't install under
Win98/Win2K)?

Thanks for indulging me my attachments to legacy software!

anandpursahibwale@yahoo.com wrote:
> I'm planning my first Linux/Wine install.  Is there any advantage to
> having a Windows (say W2K) partition to install Win apps to, when the
> plan is to run them under Wine/Linux?
>
> I do have a licensed copy of W2K, so I could do that if it were an
> advantage (e.g., is it easier to install difficult or unruly win apps
> under windows first?).