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I'm trying to install programs through wine so that it's available to all users. Reasons are obvious: save space and I don't like the idea of doing separate multiple installations of a program for multiple users. One installation per machine should be sufficient.

Here's what I've done:

(1) Installing a program to my user account drops the program in [/home/me/.wine/]. I made that program read/write/execute to all users. Programs seem to work from another user account if he/she browses to my home folder, into ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/the-program/program-executable.exe

Not ideal but workable.

(2) I then moved my ~/.wine folder out of my home directory onto a shared partition and created a sym-link to it in my home folder and called it “.wine”. I've effectively replaced my .wine folder with a link to a .wine folder on a shared folder.

It seems to work alright.

My question: Does anyone know a better way to do this? My solution seems a bit crazy and a bit hacky. Any smart people out there think this is a bad idea?

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I would do it the same way you did it... put the binaries in a public location and link to the home dirs for who needs access. I do have my questions however with opening the same Windows program by multiple users at the same time. Not sure how they react to it. Most are not created for multi-user environments. Even though they operate in Linux, I think it could create unwanted behaviour...

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  • "Most are not created for mult-user environments" They should be, if they are targeted to an NT-based system. However Wine, is not. For example, it should map C:\Users\Public to /usr/share/wine, C:\Program Files to /usr/bin/wine etc. That would break old programs though.
    – user877329
    Jan 16, 2016 at 21:10
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    I think you misunderstood what I meant. Linux/unix systems are designed for multiple people to work on at the same time, running the same programs at the same time. Windows NT is multi-user in the sense that multiple users can log on and use the software, however, unless you're on a server version of Windows, this is ONE USER AT A TIME. Try a remote desktop into a Windows station when someone is working on it already. Either one of the connections will be kicked out, unlike with Unix/Linux computers that can easily handle multiple connections at a time.
    – Jakke
    Jan 18, 2016 at 13:24

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