Theoretically speaking: (do not consider this a guide) If I were to emulate what Windows works like, I'd probably have: a) One user who owns the global wineprefix and everything inside it is only writable by this user (except userdir inside the "documents and settings" equivalent) b) Each other user has their own wineprefixes (owner the other user, possibly created by some setuid script) which have dosdevices and drive_c mount binded to ones in global wineprefix folders and system.reg hardlinked to the global system.reg. Users would have their own user.reg and userdef.reg. c) Some means of making sure only one user at a time can start Wine as the user who owns wineprefix. Program installation would usually require changing uid to that other user and running program installer. If registry files are separated so that system.reg contains *only* global keys that users aren't supposed to modify, it might work. Quite a lot of work though, you'd probably get by easier by just buying a Windows. Still note this is highly speculative and theoretical and probably will not work as is. :) (Someone could fork a project for that kind of stuff though if they happen to have enough scientific curiosity)