pbnjoe: Hi all,

This is an issue that's been plaguing me since I started using Wine to play Windows games. How do you make it so you don't have to reinstall every Windows game you own when you change computers or want to change the directory they're in? I have a feeling I don't know the location of some Wine config file that lists all prefixes, and you may see by my processes that that's the case; please let me know if so.

Setting up and using a new Wine prefix wherein I install a game with its installer works flawlessly for me every time, but as soon as I want to reuse the set up prefix on a different computer or I want to change the location of it, I have issues almost every time. I'll focus on the moving because that's what's really bothering me now.

I decided today that I'd like to have my Wine games be set up in my home folder differently, e.g. instead of ~/.wine-whatever it would be ~/Wine/Whatever.

What am I doing wrong? My process:

1. Move the contents of ~/.wine-whatever into ~/Wine/Whatever
2. Change the appropriate desktop files in ~/.local/share/applications/wine/Programs to point everything to the new location, escaping spaces only when appropriate.
3. Making sure everything is ok in ~/.config/menus
4. Try to run the game through the entry in Whiskermenu (I use XFCE)

Sometimes it works, and sometimes Wine pops up saying it's configuring the prefix, and it does so by setting up a new one in .wine-whatever and blowing away my desktop and menu files! If I had backed those files up before and restore them after their unwarranted deletion, then trying to launch through Whiskermenu gives a useless "Error: File not found" Wine popup, but running the .desktop file directly works...

What am I missing? When I copy the wine prefixes and desktop files to the same location and name on a new computer and try to launch it, wine complains that it can't set up a new wine prefix in the space that I just copied everything into!

My searches online lead to either irrelevant winehq pages or tips on how to move literal wine bottles safely without breaking them.

What a frustrating mess.

rtcvb32: Something I'd consider doing is making a small filesystem and putting the files in that filesystem, and then just mounting it to the directory. I've done this with SquashFS (10+ years ago) and it worked fabulously. As long as you don't need more than 1 wine configuration active at a time. Otherwise having multiple directories with the prefixes/versions would be a better solution so long as you configure them appropriately for the programs you plan on using.

rtcvb32: mksquashfs /usr/location/wine wine.sqfs

mount wine.sqfs /usr/location/wine -t squashfs

As part of the script to load the program it could auto mount and auto-unmount afterwards...

To note I remember doing this as I said 10+ years ago, on a computer and laptop when there was very very limited space, maybe a Gig total. So compressing all the user programs and files (that couldn't be changed because of access limitations) and having it auto-mount like a normal drive during bootup cost almost nothing. Better yet they couldn't be corrupted or infected because it was a read-only filesystem.

pbnjoe: Hmm, I'm not sure I follow. Do you start all your Wine games from the terminal then?

pbnjoe: Ah, OK. But with .desktop files, there's no need to rename folders or browse to the .exe, which are conveniences I'd really like to keep if possible. Thanks for letting me know your process though! :)

pbnjoe: Fair enough! I wasn't disparaging your way :) I may end up doing very similar if things don't work out cleanly for me.

I mostly (in theory) have set-and-forget prefixes of older games that are Gold and higher on winehq or I likely would already be doing it like that.