After trying several Windows apps with Wine on Linux, if I haven't misunderstood, I've learned that Wine may differ in compatibility depending on what distribution I'm using. I have seen one application working on a certain distro while on another one it crashes, provided I'm using same Wine version (usually latest one) and installing the same application the normal way. But then if I copy the entire Wine prefix directory where the app is installed from the "good" distro to the "bad" one, and try to run the app directly from the copied directory, it works. I'm still not sure, but maybe Wine installations/builds differ from a distro to another. But the question is, even when the configurer is the same, Gecko, how is it possible that copying a prefix from a distro to another can make an application to work? It's like created prefixes had their own innate "compatibility properties" according to the used distro... This gets me a bit confused, help please. Thank you all.
Really distribution is not that much of a factor. Few things pulseaudio compiz and video card drivers. video card drivers change with hardware. So multi distributions installed on the same hardware(exactly the same hardware). Transferring prefixes normally works perfectly as long as a few few minor things are the same. Same video card drivers. Same pulseaudio or lack there off. And compiz vamoosed. compiz is one of those nasty things. programs can appear to work with compiz but one day out the blue the application will not work at all. Yet you have changed nothing. Yes same distribution same drivers no updates with compiz wine can work one day and not the next. Pulseaudio has a requirement of a change in winecfg for audio from full to emulation. That setting is stored in the wineprefix and you might be forgotten you have done it. This setting difference would explain why coping made a difference. Finally you could have installed something through winetricks to make something work on the other prefix the copy works where the direct install does not. Everything here is part of using wine. Not distribution particular as such. There are reasons why I recommend people record what they did to make applications work. In appdb and equal makes these messes simpler to workout what you are doing different now. Minor differences in what is installed and what is not takes a program from working to completely failed. Sometimes installing more also causes failures.