I run Linux Ubuntu on a hard disc that’s on a caddy and windows on another hard disc caddy. So when I want to run a programme for windows I take out the caddy that has the Linux hard drive and put in a caddy that has the windows hard drive. It is easier than having the aggravation of trying to install wine that wont work with all windows programmes. Though at times I think wine or virtual box could have some advantages. The manuals of how to do it are complex and very off putting. I bought a book called learn Linux in 24 hours but it took a week to read the book. Yet windows is simple. What I need is a small idiots guide just for wine or virtual box and how to use and install windows programmes, nothing else, no codes, no jargon, just simple language.
Yes no worries there plenty of small idiots here! 
Really though, any questions are usually answered promptly and there are many skilled Linux users here who wil be happy to assist you.
Not without being able to give commands or use “jargon” there aren’t
Nobody is going to write what would turn out to be a VERY long “point-and-click” guide to setting up a VM (oops sorry, jargon) without being able to use technical terms, or give commands to add the PPA (oops sorry, jargon), etc.
A point-and-click guide to WINE … yeh, right.
There’s a reason there are no “simple” guides … they are complex subjects
Sorry if this seems like a harsh response … but it is the truth.
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Hi goldtopia
It’s probably me but I’m not sure what you mean by “caddy” do you mean a caddy connected to your PC via usb ?, if so wouldn’t it be simpler just to have both Windows and Linux installed as a dual boot on one internal hard drive or if your PC has more than one IDE channel you can have 2 seperate drives one for Windows and the other for Linux, either way you could select whatever operating system you want to boot into at start up. any system where you’re constantly physically connecting and disconnecting drives will screw up sooner rather than later.
As for wine I’m not really a big fan, I’ve tried it for a few Windows programs and to be honest none of them ran well although that may not apply to all Windows programs running in wine, but that’s my experience, personally I think all programs work better in their own native environment ie Windows programs in Windows and Linux programs in Linux
Graeme
Thats what I thought. I think I’ll stick to the caddies. For those who don’t know what a caddy is. It can only be used on desk top computers. The caddy is specially made to put a hard disk in, so that it can be taken out and replaced with another hard disc on another caddy. You slide the caddy into the front of the computer and the O.S that’s on it windows or linux boots up from that hard drive. There are no other hard drives in the computer. To change the operating system windows or linux you shut down, take out the caddy and slide in another caddy which would have a different operating system, windows or linux. You cant do it Apple Mac because ts a different kind of computer setup. You can have as many caddies as you like, they are particularly useful for programmers who wish to keep everything separate or for people like me who wish to have more than one operating system. I have three caddies, two with linux ubuntu 12:10 and another with Windows XP. I am considering getting another one to put windows eight on.
Well that’s been an education I’ve never heard of that 
Which applications in particular do you want to run?
Which distro are you using?
I’m using Linux Mint. I installed wine without modification. I then added directx using the downloadable redistributable version from MS. Other than that, I haven’t altered WINE’s settings in any way.
Once you installed WINE you need to run the ‘winecfg’ command (as User not root). This will prepare a fake windows file structure in ~/.wine and will download the extra necessary components such as mono and gecko. All windows programs are installed to this fake windows.
Mint added a WINE menu entry, where all installed programs appear and configured itself so that it knows what to do with .exe applications. I merely have to click on Setup.exe or the actual application .exe and off it goes. One or two applications fail to launch from their menu entries but can be successfully launched from their folders using the CLI (I use KDE and from within Dolphin I press F4 and a terminal opens so I can then type ‘wine name.of.app’. It helps to have .wine added as a sidebar entry (doable in both Dolphin and Nautilus/whatever the file mgr is now called) in order to avoid having to reveal hidden files each time you want to go there.
This is, effectively, almost complete transparency between systems and means, for me, that I no longer need to have Windows installed at all (other than in a vm for emergency software installs) as all my favourite games now work directly with WINE.
There are some extra utilities. Mint installs an app called winetricks which can be launched from the command line using ‘winetricks’ (other distros require it be added seperately). This allows for the addition of extra stuff like codecs, directx 9,10 & 11, all the vbrun files, .net, blah blah etc. Installation of extras using this method is reasonably reliable.
There’s a whole lot of stuff online about dll workarounds, which is complicated. However, I’ve no needed any such workarounds yet and if you try a particular application and get stuck, googling for ‘WINE name.of.application’ should return you pages of results where other people have tried and often succeeded in finding solutions. Work on a ‘one solution for each problem you encounter’ basis rather than adding everything in using winetricks and hoping it makes a difference.
You’re not going to bork your system trying to install windows software so my advice would be, try a vanilla install of WINE and proceed leisurely.
And ask if you get stuck.
If you want to run various O.S systems windows XP, windows eight, windows 7, Linux Ubuntu , Linux mint, Linux Zorin, etc. It would be more than a dual boot. You can boot up from any of them using caddies of which each will have a hard disc for a different O.S. Those who use this method I guess would be programmers testing on different operating systems. But its also particularly useful for simple people like myself that like Linux Ubuntu but need to use windows programes that won’t run in linux. You can upgrade desktop computers but laptops are very restricted and not really suited for multiple systems, if it is at all possible.
If you want to run various O.S systems windows XP, windows eight, windows 7, Linux Ubuntu , Linux mint, Linux Zorin, etc. It would be more than a dual boot.
Using caddies is not necessarily the best way of “dual booting”. Having a HDD laying around for every OS is expensive and wasteful.
You can multi boot any number (space permitting) of linux distros (and Windows) as long as there is only one designated distro to manage the boot loader. 
@ goldtopia
Methinks you are misunderstanding how “dual booting” works … you can easily partition a single hard drive then install Windows on one partition and Linux on another, then the bootloader will ask you which you want to boot into at system startup.
There is nothing stopping you doing this on a laptop … indeed most Linux installers will do most of the work for you, by resizing the pre-installed Windows partition, creating a Linux one(s), and installing a bootloader.
There is no need for caddies … or indeed separate hard drives.
Your setup is NOT a dual boot setup … it’s multiple single boot setups.
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Yes, I thought dual boot meant 2.
Though there are additional costs to having caddies, if one hard disc crashes and becomes obsolete there are still the others and a hard disc caddy can be transfered to another computer if the computer dies, though there are not many computers unless its ones own. For a lap, dual booting for multiple systems would be the only way.
Seeing as this seems to be about cabbies I thought I’d chip in with my two pennies.
I’ve been running my linux setup through a caddy+laptop although that’s simply because I happened to have a caddy that I wasn’t using so I figured I’d sling a HD in it and give linux a test (currently Peppermint3)… Its been fun so far!
Although I’ve mostly baulked at attempting to use WINE and just switched to the internal drive. Might give it another poke after salparadise’s explanation.
Yeh, give WINE a shot … it’s easy enough to remove if you don’t like it
BTW, a “caddy” is not the same as a USB HDD “enclosure” … it’s more like a sliding drawer (containing an HDD) that fits into one of the drive bays on a desktop PC … so you can easily swap out the drive without opening the case.
You just have multiple drawers (caddies), and swap them when heeded.
See the pic below … the bit with the lock fits in an external 5.25" drive bay, the caddy (the tray with the handle) just slides into it and locks in place … so you can have multiple caddies with containing different drives and swap them out as needed
As one does, when that happens
Just kidding. I have learnt so much in the last day or so on this forum…more than I would have found useful had I asked most any place else.
I have never seen a caddy and had never thought what their use might be but the last few posts have explained this and taught be stuff I never knew I didn’t know.
Ahh … that moment when you realise you’ve stopped being blind … only to find you’re still in the dark.
Don’t worry … we’re here to help you find the light switch