In fact it's a bit of a nightmare. Everything I try to run wants to install into the home folder's wine directory and if doesn't exist it create the default setup. Th environment variable is ignored or comes in error. Example: (wine: cannot find 'WINEPREFIX=/home/wine') wine WINEPREFIX=/home/wine /home/default/.cache/winetricks/Xvid-1.2.2-07062009.exe Example: (installs to default home directory. GRRRR) wine /home/default/.cache/winetricks/Xvid-1.2.2-07062009.exe Winetricks can use WINEPREFIX and with it's 'prefix' attribute it only likes profiles based from the home folder of the users, which it creates in .local offshoot. Talk about lame.