Calling them “prefixes” is about the total of the confusion. Call them “instances” or even just “boxes” and it’s suddenly clear what they do.
(The only reason I’m not using “sandbox” is because they don’t really provide sandboxing from a security point of view, only a kind of separate instance with its own configuration but with access to everything via the Z drive)
Once you figure out what using a different “wine prefix” only really means a separate “Windows” with it’s own config there’s nothing confusing about it.
DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Oh I know what prefixes are. Configuring them is the bitch part
Aceticon@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I just use Lutris, which generally does most of that work for me.
DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Same. However some mod programs that rely on Windows prerequisites like C++ and .NETb don’t have that (which is where my frustrations were stemming from)
Aceticon@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
Ah.
I have so far avoided that specific pit, but that’s because for maybe decades now and still whilst using Windows as my main I’ve avoid proprietary solutions (except for games) and went for Open Source ones instead, which has yielded the benefit that since I moved over to Linux for good a few months ago, I have yet to be faced with needing something I used to use in Windows and not finding a Linux native version.
I’m sure I’ll end up in the same kind of situation you describe.
By the way, have you tried “Bottles”? From what I’ve heard (but did not test myself yet) it might help there and it’s not specifically for games.