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Where Do Windows Programs Live?

kekkoudesu edited this page Jul 10, 2023 · 1 revision

Menus

Every Windows program you install shows up in your system's normal menus under Applications → Wine → Programs, regardless of whether you install it with WINE or with Winetricks.

Some programs also install desktop icons.

Program Files

Winetricks installs each program into its own isolated fake windows environment, or wineprefix. It does this to keep the workarounds needed for the various apps from interfering with each other. (Someday, WINE won't need these workarounds, nor Winetricks itself.) All the wineprefixes live in the directory $HOME/.local/share/wineprefixes. If you want programs to go into the default wineprefix, or the one specified by WINEPREFIX, you need to give the --no-isolate option.

Libraries are installed into the default wineprefix, $HOME/.wine, by default. If you set WINEPREFIX to another directory, the libraries go there.

Configuration Files

Apps usually save their configuration files live inside the wineprefix in subdirectories of $WINEPREFIX/drive_c/users/$USERNAME. This is usually just a symlink to your home directory.

If you want to isolate an app so that it doesn't save anything to your home directory, you can try winetricks sandbox. That will remove the symlinks to your home directory. Do this before saving any data, or you'll have to copy old saved data from your home directory into $WINEPREFIX/drive_c/users/$USERNAME.