Registry Migration : Get Windows Applications to Work on a Linux system

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Registry files are databases of configurations for applications using the Windows kernel. The centralized approach to registry databases makes it difficult for users to hunt down individual registry entries of applications, and then back them up or transfer them to another machine. The particular locations of the registry entries of applications can be found in the documentation of the applications, where available, or on FAQs or troubleshooting websites that involve modifying the registry values. The Find tool in Regedit, an application in Windows for editing registry entries, also works for hunting down the registry entries of particular programs. However, these registry entries tend to be scattered around different locations of the database, and there may be a number of registry entries, making it a troublesome process to find and use individual registry entries.

An easier, but wasteful, approach is to transfer all the registry values; the entire registry database from a Windows installation to the WINE platform on a Linux machine. Transferring registry entries across operating systems is a simple trick to make some Windows based applications work on a Linux machine. This is not a sure-fire trick to make every Windows application work on a Linux system, but is usually a good idea when applications don’t seem to run well on WINE. What we will be doing is to export the registry entries from a Windows machine, saving the file, then importing the registry entries on a Linux machine. There are some pre-requisites for this operation though.

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