Using wine under linux, I want to start up a Windows desktop which doesn't run any program. I then want to interact with that desktop's Start menu, desktop icons, etc.
I know that I can run a specific Windows executable in a desktop by doing this ...
wine explorer /desktop some_executable.exe
However, if I leave some_executable.exe off, then the empty Windows desktop simply opens and then closes a few seconds later.
Is there any way to use wine to simply start an empty Windows desktop that remains on the screen?
Thank you in advance.
2 Answers
I realize now that I can do the following:
- run
winecfg, and under the "Graphics" tab, specifyEmulate a virtual desktop - then run
winetricks explorer
This causes a virtual Windows desktop to be opened with explorer running. I can iconify explorer, and I can then run any wine-installed programs via that virtual Windows desktop.
This seems to be stable enough for my purposes.
WINE is not designed to create a stable Windows Desktop.
It provides a Linux system the limited ability to run some Windows-specific apps, but the Desktop is not one of them.
To do what you want, the well-accepted solution is to add desktop virtualization to your Linux system, using the Linux system as a virtualization host, if your hardware is capable (see for details).
Do cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep lm to confirm you have a 64-bit processor (required).
If so, then do cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep -h "svm | vmx" to see if that CPU is virtualization-capable.
There are many virtualization host apps.
