thanks everybody for your help. I don't see the point of wasting our time with this. 1) I'm not using the latest version of Wine 2) Linux version of FASM (commandline only) runs flawlessly would've been nice to be able to use the actual IDE, but it's of small importance indeed. -- to the Developers: -- if this is indeed a glitch in how Wine gives apps access to files, you might want to check out FASM's source code to see where the problem might come from. thanks for your time, and thanks for a great piece of software. if anyone has any more suggestions, I'll try -- otherwise it's all good still.