There's applications to do this on Windows too. Using Sandboxie you can create a sandbox on the file system to isolate files (for sketchup for example) in the same way you can use a Wine prefix to isolate a single application.
Of course this doesn't cover all uses, but in my experience Windows tools exist to provide most features you can use Wine for. The difference is having to download 20 apps for 20 things and writing 20 scripts to automate everything versus downloading wine and just writing 20 scripts.
Re:Wine 5.0
by technofiend on Monday January 27, 2020 @09:07AM
(#22159298)
It bears mention that sandboxie is now free and transitioning to open source. So hopefully the original poster doesn't also have to uninstall and reinstall it due to cloudy things.
"now does cloudy things" has really made my day, thanks. Unfortunately, a lot of modern software does cloudy things, Windows 10 and MS Office included.
Re:Wine 5.0
by diegoperini on Monday January 27, 2020 @11:34AM
(#22160876)
I love IntelliJ approach to these cloudy things. They know developers are smart enough to remove whatever smart thing they can come up with, so instead, they do the obvious and kindly step back.
I apologize for removing their registry entry on Windows for Rider and I promise I will pay for the product when I am financially confident enough to do so. :)
By the way, $WINEPREFIX can also be used to make sure you don't wreck your entire Wine setup with a single typo. Just make sure all your serious use of Wine is done with a specific, non-default prefix and you're set.