Basic wine questions and dual-booting

[dandruff(lake)]

I just installed Wine, but I am not sure how to use it. Since I dual-boot(windows vista, ubuntu), should I try to use wine to access the programs from my windows partition, or just install them on the linux partition and then use wine?
I am worried that I may mess up windows by doing something on linux and vice versa. Is that possible? How about if I am using Wine and I attempt to access windows files from Linux(I did try this, but I don't know if it actually accessed anything)? Is it possible to modify files on my windows partition from my linux partition(with or without wine)? If I have a virus on my windows partition, could it spread to my linux partition?

[Hiko]

should I try to use wine to access the programs from my windows partition, or just install them on the linux partition and then use wine?

wine is a api or interface that allows programs to run on Linux by interpreting their request for resources and such to Linux from Windows. So, to run some Windows program in Linux, you can use wine. As far as what applications run, I would recommend you check out the WineApp Database.

I am worried that I may mess up windows by doing something on linux and vice versa. Is that possible?

The only way you can mess up either OS is by accessing the files on those individual partitions. If you do not have windows partition mounted while you are in linux then you can't mess it up, per say. Same is true if you are in windows dealing with Linux. If you delete those partitions however, you can lose everything.

How about if I am using Wine and I attempt to access windows files from Linux(I did try this, but I don't know if it actually accessed anything)? Is it possible to modify files on my windows partition from my linux partition(with or without wine)? If I have a virus on my windows partition, could it spread to my linux partition?

There is an easy way to mount Windows partitions in Linux and access your files using ntfs3g. I can't remember how to do that in Ubuntu but a search should get you some results.
Mahalo,
Edward

[dandruff(lake)]

Thanks for the answers. I think I have been mounting the windows partition accidentally. When I right click on it, it has an option to mount this volume. Then if I open it, and close it, and right click on it again, it asks me if I want to unmount the volume. I have clicked on folders, opened them, all sorts of stuff. I hope I haven't deleted anything. Don't think I would have. I have tried to open things from the windows partition using wine(I think I have). Hopefully I didn't mess up any of my windows files. Windows appears to be acting normally, so presumably I did not mess up anything.

[steveh5200]

Back to your original question. You will have to install the apps you want to run under wine again. I am no expert at Wine but even if you installed Windows on a second partition and booted from it you would still need to re-install, you couldn't simply click on the .exe file and run it.

The reason for this is window program installations usually scatter crap everywhere. Some programs copy .dll's to the system32 directory, they write to the registry during installation and may also have .ini files that are created as part of the install process. It is durn near impossible to copy a Windows program directly from one system to another for this reason. Unless wine is using some serious voodoo you are going to have the same issue there. On that note you could probably mount the windows volume and use the same data files once you have your programs running in wine..

Steve H.

[dandruff(lake)]

Thanks Steve. Now I am running a single boot Ubuntu system. I am not running Windows now. And I think I will take a break from Windows apps for a while too.