First of all, thanks to everyone with your input so far. I've now been able to get IE v6.0 up and running as well as a few other less important applications. Which brings me to a few more questions…
Good to hear!
1. Since it is possible to use native DLLs with applications, can one assume that on a dual boot machine with Win98 SE2 and Red Hat v8.0 that it would only be necessary to install the desired application under Windows, then add native DLLs to the Wine config file to get [almost] *any* Windows application to function?
<sigh> If only it were that simple. Firstly, although in theory you can run programs installed in Windows, I've found you get best results by installing software into Wine (especially when using a faked windows setup such as in CrossOver). You can often get better results by mixing and matching native vs builtin DLLs, but this is something of a black art. The wine config file lets you customise these on a per app basis. There are often tips on what mix works best in the apps db.
The situation tends to be complicated by the fact that not all DLLs can be native, and that native and builtin DLLs can have wierd interactions.
2. Each time I launch a program, a black window appears that seems to make up the "shell" (for lack of a better term) for that instance of the application. This window is always somewhere around 800x600 pixels. Is there any way to not show this window and/or get the size to be something else? I am running in 1600x1200 resolution and only using half of the screen is frustrating.
Odd. Sounds like you've got it set into desktop mode, not sure why it would be black. What version of Wine are you using for this? You need to set the window management mode to managed, assuming i've guessed what's up correctly.
3. Is there an easy way within Linux/Wine to determine what native DLLs the application should/could use?
In short, not as far as I'm aware. Finding this out is part luck, part skill - reading crash traces can aid you in figuring out what mix you need.
As time goes by and the builtin dlls improve hopefully it'll become less necessary for things like this.
thanks -mike