Last week I reviewed Win4Lin, a solution that makes it possible to run certain versions of Microsoft Windows on Linux. This week CrossOver Office is the next tool I am going to have a look at. Again my main focus will be programs I need to run myself.Now what is CrossOver Office? CrossOver Office is a special, commercial, version of WINE developed by CodeWeavers. It is tuned to run some widely used office applications, like the largest part of Microsoft Office (Word, Excel and PowerPoint), Adobe Photoshop and Intuit Quicken. A complete list of officially supported applications can be found on the CodeWeavers site. Supported applications get a medal, indicating how well they work. Applications with a gold medal should work as well as they do under Windows, silver applications might have some significant bugs, but should be usable, bronze applications install and run, but might have severe bugs. Because WINE implements many important parts of the Windows API, CrossOver Office does not need Microsoft Windows.
CrossOver Office can be purchased through the Codeweavers site. They provide it both as a download and on CD-ROM (though you will have to pay a bit more for the medium costs). What you buy is not only the product, but also 6 months of support. During this time you can download new CrossOver Office versions when they are released, and you will have a higher level of access to the support system.
Installation
The CrossOver Office download is provided as an self extracting shell script, which can be started with sh install-crossover-office-2.1.0.sh. This launches a graphical installer, which is shown in the first screenshot. The installer is self-explaining, and the installation process is really simple. Clicking “Begin Install” installs CrossOver Office to /opt/cxoffice, and adds menu items to both KDE and GNOME.
After the installation the CXSetup tool can be started as a normal user. In GNOME the CXSetup tool was added to the “Other” menu under the name “Office Setup”. CrossOver Office is also added to the menu system in Debian, so Debian users get menu entries in all supported window managers. Users who use neither GNOME, KDE, nor Debian can launch the CXSetup tool by executing /opt/cxoffice/bin/cxsetup.
As you can see in the second screenshot the Office Setup tool is quite easy to use. The first window that is shown after starting Office Setup shows which applications are installed. After clicking the “Install…” button the list of supported applications will show up, and the user can start installing applications. The user can both choose to let the Office Setup look on the application CD-ROM for a setup program or to point to the actual setup program. The installation screen also features some Microsoft fonts that can be installed over the Internet, although recent versions of Microsoft Office include most of these fonts.
Test-driving CrossOver Office
Now it is time to test-drive CrossOver Office. As with my Win4Lin review I am going to have a look at some programs I personally use. First of all we will have a look at one of the most important supported applications: Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office has a gold medal the CrossOver site, so there should be no real problems running Microsoft Office. As you can see in the third screenshot the Microsoft Office installer launches flawlessly. After that Office is installs perfectly, CrossOver Office even simulates a Windows reboot to make Office think the system is rebooted. After the installation CrossOver adds a “Windows Applications” entry to the menu, which contains shortcuts to the Microsoft Office applications.
As you can see in the fourth screenshot Microsoft Word 2000 launches perfectly. I have used Microsoft Word 2000 on CrossOver Office for a few weeks to edit a longer publication, and it works quite well, and very fast. I only experienced two glitches: first of all, sometimes the Word window is not redrawn (or not redrawn correctly), which makes the text in the Word window a bit distorted. The second problem I had running Word under Slackware Linux is that when the Word window is inactive and activated again it sometimes causes to lock up X for a few seconds. As far as I can see running Linux kernel 2.6.x solved the problem. I have no evidence to back this up, but I think this is caused by a threading problem. Other than that Word worked perfectly for me.
During the Microsoft Office installation Internet Explorer 5.0 was also installed. I never use Internet Explorer, but this gives the opportunity to test a program that is supported by Codeweavers with a silver medal. The good news is that it works, the bad news is that it does not work very well. The tool-bar is constantly flickering when something is typed, and frames, input fields, pull-down boxes, etc. are often drawn badly. The fifth screenshot shows what I mean. I do not have any of the other silver applications, so, let’s fire up some unsupported applications…
When I chose to install another application CrossOver setup suddenly started to complain about my fstab settings (oddly it did not do that when I installed Office 2000). I fixed the fstab settings as advised, but it did not help. So, I rather chose to force the installation. The first application I tried was a complete collection of Shakespeare works I bought out of curiosity. It is named “William Shakespeare, The Complete Works on CD-ROM”. The installation did not work and aborted instantly with the message “DDE requires ddeml.dll”. Too bad, no Shakespeare today. I moved on and tried to install “Uitvindingen 3D”, a Dutch encyclopedia about inventions. Just like the Shakespeare CD-ROM the installer fails to load. The only conclusion I can make is that applications that are not officially supported only run in a few cases. And when it runs there are a lot of glitches. For example, I tried to run an older version of DreamWeaver I once bought. It ran, but it was not very usable.
Support
The Codeweavers support system is well thought out. They provide a ticket system, which is publicly accessible. People who buy CrossOver Office can use Level 3 support at the ticket system. When a customer has a problem, a Codeweavers employee is assigned to that customer, and the employee tries to help out the customer. When the problem is solved the ticket is closed. Unfortunately, support requests do not seem to be answered very quickly. At the moment of writing, some tickets are not replied to (by CodeWeavers employees) for more than twenty days. Maybe things have been handled privately, but the tickets are not closed, and this seems to be the case for multiple tickets.
Conclusion
In the end I have very mixed feelings about CrossOver Office. The clear advantage is that it does not require Microsoft Windows. On the other hand only three applications have a gold medal: Microsoft Word 2000, Microsoft Excel 2000 and Microsoft PowerPoint 2000. If you only need to run these applications CrossOver Office is a fair deal, if you are willing to pay $59.95 for it. The silver applications work, and CodeWeavers provide support for these applications. But if you depend on them and want them to work correctly, I would rather advise to have a look at Win4Lin or VMWare if you can, because there might glitches or bugs that make CrossOver Office less attractive. Please note that Microsoft Word/Excel/PowerPoint XP have a silver award, so they are not guaranteed to work as well as Office 2000. If the applications you need to run do not have a gold or silver award it is better to avoid CrossOver Office completely. Some widely used applications do not run with CrossOver Office, for example Autodesk AutoCad 2000, Microsoft Money 2002, Macromedia Fireworks MX, Adobe Illustrator 8.0, Jasc Software PaintShop Pro and Adobe Pagemaker 7.0.
To wrap it up, CrossOver Office is only interesting in very specific situations. Personally I think CodeWeavers should rather focus on offering companies contracts for porting their Windows applications to Linux. They seem to have a lot of experience and a good WINE implementation, which can be used to port Windows applications rapidly. SOHO users are better off looking at Win4Lin or opensource alternatives.
Rating: 5/10
Nice review. Sounds like it works about as well as I’d expect.
But I have a dislike of so many resources in the Linux world going to making Windows programs work under Linux. If people need some specific Windows app, they should run Windows. Best tool for the job, and all.
This was one of the problems that OS/2 Warp had. They claimed they could run Windows apps just as well as Windows. While that may have been true, businesses (and people in general) where smart enough to realize “Why should I just use a compatibilty layer for Windows? We’ll just use Windows.”.
I know in the open source world, people are going to scratch what itches them, and I have no right to define what an itch is. But, for me, I’d rather see developers writing compairible packages (note: Not clones or copies. Apps with a compairiable feature set. I loathe Evolution because they are nothing more than a clone of Outlook) for the Linux platform, rather than spinning wheels trying to make a Windows app run under Linux.
Photoshop runs great as does Quicken as does Endnote 5, which many of us need for bibliography management. Better yet, the applications run at native speed thanks to the 2.6 kernel. People need to understand that Wine is not an emulator. It’s an independent implementation of the Win32 API.
I don’t know what problem you had with dreamweaver, but dreamweaver also runs great. Two of my friends web developers made the switch to Linux late last year thanks to being able to run Dreamweaver MX in Linux. And they have been using it productively for the past three months.
Native applications are ideal, but for people who have invested a lot of time or have a lot of data locked up in a given proprietary format, this is a needed temporary crutch for many. Once agains this brings to light, the evils of proprietary file formats.
Hi
some people need a particular windows app but want to use linux.cross over is for them. is that hard to understand?
native apps are great but they dont work for certain needs. this is just giving them some choice
i dont use cross over at all but i appreciate that someone has the technology to enable people to migrate more smoothly
regards
Jess
If people need some specific Windows app, they should run Windows. Best tool for the job, and all.
Exactly. If I want to run Windows apps, I’ll run Windows, especially when you consider the state that Wine/Crossover is in currently. Wine is a very hit-or-miss affair, and Crossver, well … it works great … with the supported applications …
Native applications are ideal, but for people who have invested a lot of time or have a lot of data locked up in a given proprietary format, this is a needed temporary crutch for many. Once agains this brings to light, the evils of proprietary file formats.
But, what’s the alternative? You run some open source app, then all of a sudden th author gets tired of working on it and quits. Unless somebody else decides to pick up up, you’re still in the same position as you would have been otherwise. Only if you’ve got enough $$ to pay somebody else to continue work on the app will open source do you any good.
While Wine is definately not perfect I’ve had several situations where Wine saved my day, because I needed some kind of Windows tool to do a specific task. Small utils often run perfectly with wine
I’m following Wine development closely and I’m really amazed how many applications run with it compared to a year ago. Give the wine project another year and I think it will run 60% of the apps for windows perfectly.
There are also several subprojects that are really interesting. For example the vst-server project, which allows you to plugin virtual audio instruments and effects to ladspa, so they can be used by native Linux audio applications like Audacity.
Another project is aiming to compile wine dll’s for windows, so you can replace official (possibly buggy and/or insecure) windows dll’s with their opensource counterparts. Isn’t that just great
)
As another reader mentioned: I agree that Codeweavers should focus more on helping companies to port their applications to Linux, instead of trying to run unmodified versions on Linux.
The why bother running windows applicatons on linux discussion could go on forever. But dont forget while the linux desktop is really coming along its really only been a recent thing. So most of the most used applications such as office are not available for it. At the same time there are very compelling reasons to run linux just by itself.
So youre faced with the wanting to run linux but at the same time having your applications only being available for windows. So software like this attempts to solve that problem.
I do think as time goes along more software will be made for linux systems rather than for just others. Of course since the linux community is fairly ardent about everything being free and open its hard to find companies willing to develop products for free and its hard to find developers willing to develop for free. Hence why say the mono project doesnt have 2000 developers on it like microsofts own .net project does.
> If people need some specific Windows app, they should run Windows. Best tool for the job, and all.
I do not agree.
It is like saying if people want to use terminal emulation they should use a DEC VT100: http://www.kde.nl/apps/konsole/en/interview.html
I will tell you one other story. Do you know how Excel became the No1 spreadsheet killing Lotus-1-2-3? It had Import support since forever but from the moment they could also SAVE as 1-2-3, the game was over for Lotus.
The same it should be done by any means for any other OS that wants to eventually compete with Windows: COMPATIBILITY (by any means, even the Wine way).
And that’s how Win95 became so big: good compatibility with MS-DOS. Without it, we would still run MS-DOS because most businesses would refuse to go Windows.
It is about strategy, not about egos.
The same it should be done by any means for any other OS that wants to eventually compete with Windows: COMPATIBILITY (by any means, even the Wine way).
You are EXACTLY right. I’m currenly laughing at stupid EU for forcing MS to ship Windows without a media player, meaning there’s the potential for WMP popularity to slip, thereby brging forth a senario where people might have to install 8 million different players on their machine to keep up with all the damn codecs.
A much better idea would have been to force MS to open up all their file formats and APIs, so then competitors would be able to be 100% compatible with Windows. But, no .. apparently Real (the company) is the only thing that matters here.
Excellent points, Eugenia.
In fact, Joel Spolsky, who worked on Excel’s deleopment, did a wonderful article on this very subject. I am sure people could google for it.
Strategic moves are important in bringing new applications to the market. The reason OpenOffice spends a considerable amount of developer effort in trying to come up with good office filters is that it makes people’s transition to it much more likely.
Darius said:
“Unless somebody else decides to pick up up, you’re still in the same position as you would have been otherwise. Only if you’ve got enough $$ to pay somebody else to continue work on the app will open source do you any good.”
Yes, and strategically speaking, this is a much better position to be in. You can either program it yourself, create a trust fund of interested users and pay for the programming time or an open-source project may even spring of its own accord. Additionally, it becomes much easier to move to a new application if this application can without much effort import your files.
If the source is closed, I would have to buy the whole source to be able to implement file filters. This is incredibly more expensive in terms of developer time. Ask Banco Santander in Spain, the larget Bank there, what they went through due to having much of their internal accounting software in a proprietary format. Absolute hell.
Most costumers are beginning to appreciate these issues and consider them when making purchasing decisions. In fact, to many of them the choice of open file format is much more important than whether the app itself is proprietary or not.
It actually works GREAT for me. I’ve installed MS Office, IE6 (for banking), Lotus Notes, ICQ (trying to figure out a problem for someone), and a couple others. All installed and worked fine. IE is slow, but still works. Office works amazingly well for those times I have to open a Word doc. This is probably the best linux software I ever bought, and blows the minds of Windows techs when I fire up Word (to open their thoughtless .doc format) on my linux box.
This review is unfair. You give a 5 out of 10 to a product designed to run office under linux, with the explanation that it didn’t run a random multimedia app that is known unsupported. That’s like getting pissed off that your car has trouble when you drive it into the ocean.
The reviewer even says that the app installed and ran office nearly perfectly. Sounds like an 8 or 9 out of 10 to me. Unless the extra 4 points was entirely because $60 is considered too high a price. Course, if you can afford the 400-500$ that office costs, $60 probably doesn’t make much more impact.
Anyway, just a quick rant to point out that reviewers should review the product based on what the product is claimed to do instead of what they /wish/ it would do.
Win4lin 90$ + Win 9x licence + integration problems
Crossover 60$ + 0 OS licence + no integrations problems
VMWare 300 $ + WinXX licence + integration problems
What i mean with integration problems is how do you map
the emulator’s file system to your’s?
From what i saw with win4lin & VMWare, you have to load
drivers, rebuild kernel…
Crossover is cheap, runs the most essential apps and installs without any problems…
For other apps you usually have equivalents under linux if not, your best bet is to stay with windows, XP is as good enough for everyday applications. The Win9x days are over.
You can also have a lot of opensource apps for windows.
Matter of tastes. I like linux, windows is fine too but more expensive.
“This review is unfair. You give a 5 out of 10 to a product designed to run office under linux, with the explanation that it didn’t run a random multimedia app that is known unsupported. That’s like getting pissed off that your car has trouble when you drive it into the ocean.”
Sorry, you must have misinterpreted my criteria. There are multiple possibilities:
* Judge the product for what it is promised to do.
* Judge the product for a certain task.
CrossOver Office is presented as I migration tool. My criterium was the second one, the suitability to use CrossOver to do your daily stuff. I am sorry if you don’t agree with that criterium. But I think my conclusion is fair, it clearly states that CrossOver can be a good solution in specific situations, but as an all-rounder it does not perform well (in my humble opinion).
Win4lin 90$ + Win 9x licence + integration problems
Crossover 60$ + 0 OS licence + no integrations problems
VMWare 300 $ + WinXX licence + integration problems
You seem to ignore the fact that most SOHO users already have a Windows license.
By the way, VMWare used to offer a special VMWare version (VMWare Express), that only ran Win9x. The price was actually very attractive, I bought it in Germany for 60 or 70 Euro. Unfortunately they stopped selling VMWare Express.
The singular of criteria is not criterium, but criterion. I thought you may like to know that…
I like CrossOver Office because it integrates well with Linux. I get a pull-down list for .doc and .xls e-mail attachments in Evolution, asking if I want to open them in OO.org, or Word/Excel. If I double click an icon for such a file in Nautilus, it opens the MS Office program. How am I supposed to do that with VMWare or Win4Lin? I also like having Word or Execel on the GNOME desktop, not within a Windows destop, on an application running on the GNOME desktop.
In response to “If people need some specific Windows app, they should run Windows. Best tool for the job, and all.”, yes, but only if that’s all they want to run. I use Linux for almost everything. I’m not going to install Windows, worry about updating it constantly, get a virus scanner, etc. just to drop everything I’m doing and boot into Windows to use MS Office.
Thanks, I think I mixed it up with Dutch. “Criterium” is the singular over here
.
I accidently tested CXoffice 2.0 recently when I tried Xandors 2.0. My main interest was having those specific apps I can’t live without for work: Mainly Outlook, and maybe some others like PCAnywhere. I don’t know about PCA’s medal status, but Outlook is supposed to be supported quit well. And that was *my* main focus.
I Didn’t manage to get Outlook in Offline, which was a no-go as I’m a mobile user. Somehow Outlook couldn’t read or write to the .ost file it just created.
Don’t expect to have drag’n drop support.
Don’t expect to have everything work as bad/well as it would run natively on Windows. Being an Exchange client, the cx setup screwed my ‘rules’ and removed them from the Exchange server, after tagging them all as ‘client-only’ rules.
On a side note, it was kind of funny to upgrade IE5 to IE6 SP1 through Windows Update.
CXOffice seems to ’emulate’ Windows 98, btw. Which says it all about future implemenations. Wine does not have a lot of future, imho.
My point: if you need the best support for Microsoft apps, stick to Windows. After all, that’s that famous lock-in we all know about.
The general idea to learn of: if you want to do something with alternative systems, like Linux based systems, start to try thinking differently: Linux is not Windows ™. It’ another system, another filosphy. Things are done other ways. Don’t try to imitate, but inovate.
Yesterday’s OSNews article on SVG is a nice example, by the way.
/snip
This was one of the problems that OS/2 Warp had. They claimed they could run Windows apps just as well as Windows. While that may have been true, businesses (and people in general) where smart enough to realize “Why should I just use a compatibilty layer for Windows? We’ll just use Windows.”.
/snip
I can’t believe I’m still seeing this claptrap being handed out as gospel truth.
OS/2 was originally co-developed by both IBM & Microsoft. Part of Microsoft’s contribution to the OS/2 codebase was the entire Win16 subsystem. Note, I did not say a compatability layer, but rather THE ENTIRE WIN16 SUSBSYSTEM was a part of OS/2. Thirty-two bit apps coded to run on OS/2 had to target OS/2 natively. This is the source of the problem: The falling out between IBM and Microsoft led Microsoft to implement a new and incompatible 32 bit api called Win32.
Win32 first showed up as the native api for Windows NT 3.1. Windows NT did also support the Win16 and OS/2(text mode only) apis. As such, the market was shown that Windows NT was the logical upgrade path for users running Windows 3.1, WFW 3.11, MS LanManager, OS/2 LanServer and OS/2 workstation (later known by the WARP moniker).
Because Microsoft wanted OS/2 to die, they not only did not license IBM to implement Win32 on OS/2, they also made changes to Windows 3.1 (released as Windows 3.11) that had the effect of making plain old consumer Windows incompatible with IBM’s OS/2 for Windows product.
You see, part of the reason that OS/2 was expensive is that Microsoft got a cut of every box that sold. This covered the price of the Windows License included as part of and inseparable from OS/2.
Now consider that by this time Microsoft had the preload market all but sewn up. That meant a computer buyer would get MS DOS bundled with Windows. If this buyer wanted to run OS/2, That meant buying another Windows license, the one included in OS/2.
To help gain market acceptance, IBM released a product that unbundled (but for compatibility still required) the Win16 sub-system. As I mentioned before, this product was called OS/2 for Windows. It sold for US$49 and was designed to be installed on top of an existing Windows 3.0 or 3.1 system. Microsoft, ever sensitive to any threat to it’s market dominance, made changes to the natively 16 bit OS debuting code that would later show up in Window 95 (32 bit disk access and 32 bit file access).
Later, when Windows 95 was released, the developer base shifted to support Win32 based apps. These apps would for the most part, run on both Windows 95 and Windows NT.
OS/2 NEVER SUPPORTED 32 BIT WINDOWS APPLICATIONS… NEVER… NEVER… NEVER! As 32 bit applications displaced their 16 bit counterparts in the marketplace, the number of Windows apps available to run on OS/2 was corespondingly reduced. OS/2 died because it could not run current 32 bit Windows software, not because it could run legacy 16 bit Windows software.
Learning lessons from history is a powerful thing… provided you learn the right lessons.
best regards
briber
Another project is aiming to compile wine dll’s for windows, so you can replace official (possibly buggy and/or insecure) windows dll’s with their opensource counterparts. Isn’t that just great
)
but actually that doesnt mean the OSS version will buggy or insecure. different code means it will not have those same. (of course if the function like “give_admin_privs” exists, thats a different story) but the code will be different which means it may not suffer those same windows problems.
The problem is that crossover is only for office 2k and not XP.
Openoffice 1.1 beats office 2k so why would anyone want crossover office. I only see 2 reasons:
– need for MS Access
– to lasy to convert vba to java
Um, because you don’t have the space for a Windows partition, or the patience to dual boot? CrossOver is a perfect solution for many of those looking to migrate. For example, Disney needed to run Photoshop in Linux. The rest of their platform was native Linux apps. So what did they do? Payed CrossOver money to make Photoshop work well. Now, they can use their Linux platform, and still have Photoshop. Can you imagine their animators rebooting everytime they needed to touch up the artwork?
One of the things I find annoying about CrossOver is fonts: They are _extremely_ small for screen resolutions of 1024 or high.
Just look at the screenshots and compare desktop icons fonts against CrossOver fonts, it just insane!
Actually the reason Wine (and CrossOver) emulate Win98 by default is simply because that’s easier – apps tend to use fewer hard/undocumented features in that made.
Having said that smart apps detect features by probing for them directly rather than by using the results of GetVersion(), so obviously Wine does implement many, many NT/2K/XP only APIs. There’s absolutely no fundamental reason why we couldn’t switch to win2k mode tomorrow, though some installers in particular would work less well then. Improving our support for NT only apps is an ongoing project in Wine.
Oh. Ok. So this was a review which takes a product that does one thing and judges it for some other purpose. That explains the rating, but it seems like a strange thing to review.
I think tommorrow I am going to go do a review of how effective various spreadsheet programs are as flight simulators. I expect excel 97 to win, but I haven’t tried them all yet.
I understand your reasoning. I just think that it’s flawed. Not that it really has a bearing either way. Just figured I would inquire. No big deal.
Intergrating VMWare with your other system is as easy as integrating a free-standing PC – which is what you are virtualizing. The setup routine also gives you the option of using a private subnet for direct filesystem access.
CrossOver Office was pretty cool when I used it awhile back, but I need to run my company’s app, which is not compatible. But VMWare, while not exactly cheap, does a great job. Depends or the tool you need…
“If people need some specific Windows app, they should run Windows. Best tool for the job, and all.”
I suggest we go look at other factors instead of looking it like this. Because when you state this, you ignore other (possible) factors.
How do you define “best”? What about freedom and price? Freedom as in one who doesn’t want to run Windows because it is non-Free and price because it saves costs. I hear some people thinking “i don’t care for one or another”. Sure, that might not have a meaning for _you_ but for _others_ this influences quality and choice.
Imagine the following: there is this tool which allows you to run 1 (one) Windows application at an acceptable performance for $50, without using Windows. Then there is Windows, which costs $200. You’ll have to use 200 computers. That means you save 150 * 200 = $30.000. Now, guess what Disney chose to? The application was called Adobe Photoshop.
(Sources for this are all over the net, the numbers might differ a bit, but it really went in a few of tens of thousands).
PS: I think with CrossOver Office you get what you pay for since i haven’t seen any claim on their site what is untrue. By supporting CodeWeavers, you also support WINE. For those who really don’t want to spend money: there are other frontends for WINE and with little learning you can integrate Windows applications run through WINE into your GNOME/KDE/XFce4 menu. See http://www.infoanarchy.org/wiki/wiki.pl?WINE for some of these apps.
magine the following: there is this tool which allows you to run 1 (one) Windows application at an acceptable performance for $50, without using Windows. Then there is Windows, which costs $200. You’ll have to use 200 computers. That means you save 150 * 200 = $30.000. Now, guess what Disney chose to? The application was called Adobe Photoshop.
I guess it depends on how many Windows apps you need to run. If it’s only 1 and you prefer Linux otherwise, then I guess Wine/Crossover makes sense. But if it’s half a dozen or more, then you’ve really got to step back and look at the bigger picture – like, how well will the apps run in CO/Wine, if at all?
I assure you that for some, Freedom is too high a price to pay for lack of functionality, lest we all go back to typewriters and snail mail. Not that Freedom ALWAYS has that cost associated with it, but when it does, then you have to decide what’s more important – your ideals or your ability (or lack thereof) to get things done.
A much better idea would have been to force MS to open up all their file formats and APIs, so then competitors would be able to be 100% compatible with Windows. But, no .. apparently Real (the company) is the only thing that matters here.
Actually, a better idea (IMO) would be to require Microsoft to allow 3rd parties to submit their codecs for inclusion with Windows/Media Player, provided they met reasonable requirements (Eg., the codec would have to be a plain vanilla direct show filter, no bloody RealOne Player/Quicktime Player and their associated garbage).
My experience with Crossover has been nothing short of a miracle.
I think the main issue with Win4Lin and VmWare is that for a semi-novice business user (which is what most of my users are)is that toggling between the virtual screen and the main OS screen are a bit too many functions for them to grasp. Crossover allows them to function as one OS, with Icons and and functions directly with Linux.
Here are the 2 biggest things I think standing in the way for Codeweavers:
1) Complete Office support: While it’s nice that the 2K versions of Outlook, Word, Excel, and Powerpoint run on Crossover, the fact that most PC’s now are being loaded with Office 2003 means that to stay somewhat competitive, Codeweavers needs to fully (and yes, I said fully) support Office XP products. The Killer sell for Windows business users would be to have full support for all the tools in Office XP, including Access.
Currently there isn’t really a direct contender with Access. OpenOffice has ways that databases can be tied in, but it’s not integrated like Access is. That’s why it became popular with small business. Easy interface to create databases from.
2) Focus on major applications first.
Yes there are some companies that need their proprietary app to run, but really to sell this product, you have to be able to effectively target the following apps:
Adobe (Acrobat, Illustrator, and until recently Photoshop)
AutoCAD
Great Plains (For those bean counters)
ADP (so we all get paid)
TaxCut
Lotus Notes 6
Palm Desktop
ActiveSync
And I’m sure there are more.
Kudos to them for creating a way for people to pledge money towards development of these apps, but really for this product to take off, it needs to cover a wider range of business applications.
(Heat shields are at maximum…Let the flamage begin
Call me stupid, but every time I tried Wine/VMWare/any other emulator/api alternative implementation, it wasn’t for Office apps at all.
It was for instant messenging. Agreed, we have a few really good IM clients on Linux (Kopete and GAIM come to mind), but _none_ offer even basic VoIP or video features.
Most of my contacts (friends or coworkers) use either MSN Messenger or AIM. There are Linux counterparts (GnomeMeeting), but… I don’t chose my friends/coworkers after what OS and app they use.
So I tried MSN Messenger, AIM and Skype (which provides a really neat VoIP implementation) and… nothing worked. Even VMWare refused tu run them, mainly because the system webcams use to stream video over USB isn’t supported in VMWare.
Should a solution appear, my main machine would be Gentoo’ed in seconds(!).
Oh yeah… and iTunes, too ! 🙂
I can’t see the argument that windows is the ‘perfect’ tool to run windows apps. The fact that I switched to linux in the first place was because its prooven beyond any reasonable doubt to be a more secure and reliable OS! Something that windows clearly is not.
How is windows ‘the perfect tool’ when the OS itself is so bloody buggy, insecure and riddled with all kinds of stuff?
Imagine using pohotoshop and the machine keeps freezing and thus you loose all of your work yet again all because of a cruddy registry, misconfigured .dlls and some plauging virii! Constant rebooting and head pains!
Crossover helps people use windows apps in a secure and more reliable OS! No more BSOD’s, constant rebooting and annoying virii’s.
Crossover helps people switch to linux and use the ‘right tool for the job!
“I guess it depends on how many Windows apps you need to run.”
I agree that could be a factor for some. Even an important one too. Other factors include wether the program runs well, how many programs it supports, how many programs it supports in a good manner, the performance of these applications using -in this example- CrossOver.
“If it’s only 1 and you prefer Linux otherwise, then I guess Wine/Crossover makes sense. But if it’s half a dozen or more, then you’ve really got to step back and look at the bigger picture – like, how well will the apps run in CO/Wine, if at all?”
This review proved -for me- that what’s being stated as supported applications on Codeweavers site is indeed accurate. But hey, if you want to be sure, you ask them before buying. Makes sense to me. Plus you can run a demo too.
As i understand your position as artist a bit, i think that a few factors are important before you chose to migrate, if you still want to, that is. Leaving native apps aside for a moment since we already discussed that…
* Performance (quality, speed) between the various possibilities of layers with which you can chose to run Windows applications from a foreign platform like a *NIX.
* Easy of use between “”
* Supported applications “”
(Especially the first point hasn’t been examined much imo.)
Is this accurate in your situation?
“I assure you that for some […]”
Sure. There’s no need to argue about this since i agree and i already addressed it in my post. For some it matters, for others not. Different priorities, different opinions.
PS: i’m speaking in simple “some, others” rhetoric because i haven’t thought about any numbers or about what most people prefer.
PS2: There are 2 versions of CrossOver. CrossOver Office and CrossOver Plugin.
How is windows ‘the perfect tool’ when the OS itself is so bloody buggy, insecure and riddled with all kinds of stuff?
The simple ansnwer to this is that Windows is not buggy and insecure for those of us who know how to set it up properly. In fact, I’ve been on the 2k/XP kernel for about 4 years now and I can count on one hand the number of times it has gone down involuntarily.
Crossover helps people use windows apps in a secure and more reliable OS! No more BSOD’s, constant rebooting and annoying virii’s.
Wrong. Crossover helps people use a FEW Windows apps in a secure and more reliable (sic) OS.
This review proved -for me- that what’s being stated as supported applications on Codeweavers site is indeed accurate. But hey, if you want to be sure, you ask them before buying. Makes sense to me. Plus you can run a demo too.
Based on past experiences with Crossover, I wouldn’t even attempt to run an app without at least a Silver rating. The only app on there list that I got to run reliably was Forte Agent, something that isn’t really necessary on Linux anyway.
* Performance (quality, speed) between the various possibilities of layers with which you can chose to run Windows applications from a foreign platform like a *NIX.
* Easy of use between “”
* Supported applications “”
Sorry, I dont’ make it what you’re trying to say here … you need to try again
My experience with CrossOver Office has been good. I use it to run Office XP (Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Outlook) on Suse 9.0. Never had a problem with any of them.
Dreamweaver MX seems to work fine, with some minor font drawing issues, and Filemaker 6 works well, for all those looking for a GUI database on Linux.
Based on past experiences with Crossover, I wouldn’t even attempt to run an app without at least a Silver rating. The only app on there list that I got to run reliably was Forte Agent, something that isn’t really necessary on Linux anyway.
What about untested applications? These have less than a Silver rating, yet the possibilities are wide open.
Sorry, I dont’ make it what you’re trying to say here … you need to try again
* Performance (quality, speed)
* Easy of use
* Supported applications
The above 3 compared between the various possibilities of layers (WINE, CorssOver, WineX, Bochs, VMware, Win4lin, etc) which allow you to run Windows applications on a foreign platform (Linux in this example).
to do a stripped down Bochs + crossover/WINE and try to do a windows compatability layer a la Classic and X11.
The only reason to run Windows or a Windows emulator is to run an application that has no Linux/Unix equivalent. In this respect, Crossover Office shares a fundamental deficiency with other tools that rely on video emulation to display on X: lack of adequate support for Direct X. I use both a SunPCi card–an Intel co-processor that lives in a PCI slot in a Sun SPARC desktop machine–and Crossover Office, on a portable Linux machine. The SunPCi card requires Windows to run, while Crossover office does not. Because Solaris and Linux don’t allow applications direct access to the hardware (fortunately), neither runs CD-ROM based software well or at all, and applications that require direct video access either display a black square or update the screen very, very slowly. This is a function of translating video calls to X Window objects. I have used the demo version of VMware, but didn’t try any of the problem-prone program types at the time. There is an alternative adaptation of WINE that purports to do better at this for certain video arcade games, but, being an independent recreation of Windows functionality, one expects WINE and its variants to only work well with specific applications and possibly passably with applications that use the same Windows calls. But, even partial functionality in a stable system is better than complete functionality in an insecure and unstable system (i.e., *real*[tm] Windows).
Dual boot is also not an option for those of us who need to run 24×7 in a true multi-tasking, multi-user environment or who need to run our Windows apps concurrently with our Unix apps. So, for those few Windows-based applications that need 100% functionality, it is necessary to buy a standalone machine and a Microsoft Windows license. For the most part, OpenOffice is an adequate substitute for Microsoft Office, so that alone is not a justification for buying Openoffice: Many of the functions of Quicken can be done with GNU Money, so the only reason to run Quicken is unwillingness to switch. Fortunately, this is one of the supported applications. The real value for products like Crossover Office is in being able to run niche applications that have been developed on Windows only. But, until we convince software vendors to port their products to Unix/Linux, work with Codeweavers to test and support their product on Crossover Office, or use only programming calls that aren’t dependent on low-level hardware access, we will always be faced with having a separate box running Windows.
A much better idea would have been to force MS to open up all their file formats and APIs, so then competitors would be able to be 100% compatible with Windows. But, no .. apparently Real (the company) is the only thing that matters here.
Or better yet, why doesn’t Real stop making the player for Windows and simply provide a Real CODEC for Media-Player? end users would be more inclined to download a 200K CODEC vs. the 7-8MB monstrosity and then forced to register just to get access to the download.
* Performance (quality, speed)
* Easy of use
* Supported applications
Ok, are you asking me to choose one of out the three? And if so, why? I have all three already
The above 3 compared between the various possibilities of layers (WINE, CorssOver, WineX, Bochs, VMware, Win4lin, etc) which allow you to run Windows applications on a foreign platform (Linux in this example).
First of all, I don’t give a rat’s ass about games, so I don’t think WineX is of any interest to me. Second, I don’t consider Win4Lin, VMWare, or anything that requries Windows to run to be an option. If I need to run Windows, I will run it natively. I am not going to fire up Windows everytime I need to run a Windows app that doesn’t run properly in Wine or Crossover.
As for Wine and CO, even the apps that it runs properly, there are glitches still. For example, with Internet Explorer, the toolbars flicker excessively (tried in three different distros) and the GUI looks like it’s running in 16 color mode. Not to mention that the fonts in all Windows apps running under CO are simply horrible. I’m sure there must be a way to fix all of this, but I am simply not patient enough to dick with it for long enough. Well, it’s not that I’m not patient enough – perhaps if I were still in grade school and had nothing better to do …
Or better yet, why doesn’t Real stop making the player for Windows and simply provide a Real CODEC for Media-Player? end users would be more inclined to download a 200K CODEC vs. the 7-8MB monstrosity and then forced to register just to get access to the download.
In this case, I think it would be better to come up with a standard codec that all players could use. This would force companies to come out with very good players, instead of having each company develop their own codec and putting into some shitty player that nobody wants.
I mean, if there was some sort of ‘Real Player Lite’ with just the codec and none of the fat, I’d probably be willing to pay money for it.
AIM client for linux is available at aim.com: http://www.aim.com/get_aim/linux/latest_linux.adp . I don’t have an idea if it supports the features you require; never used it. Also a VoIP application kphone ( http://www.wirlab.net/kphone ) is supposed to work using instant messaging; does it work in your case i have no idea.
Eugenia made the point about file format compatibility : in my case, I’ve been generating excel and word documents at work using OO.org without anyone noticing.
I produce documents with numerous screen shots and Word is a funny affair with all the wrapping policy. With OO.org is all pretty simple and reliable. When a document is meant to be final, I use the acrobat export function to distribute.
So I guess OO.org has reached that compatibility point for most documents.
For me at least, web development.
90+% of web users use IE, there is no way to duplicate this in Linux, sure I have Mozilla, Firefox, Konq, Opera, Dillo, etc. but all of those don’t come close to the bugs that IE has when rendering pages.
It’s a pain to design something that looks/works great in a standards based browser and then see it broken in IE. Much easier to test if you have it installed on the computer you do web development on. I have access to Windows computers but they’re not mine and I don’t have access to them at all times…
Food for thought.
The simple ansnwer to this is that Windows is not buggy and insecure for those of us who know how to set it up properly. In fact, I’ve been on the 2k/XP kernel for about 4 years now and I can count on one hand the number of times it has gone down involuntarily.
Thats total bull. If you are, then your clearly in the .0000001% the reason that virii and trojans float around so damn easily is because of the way windows is built.
And no, not everyone should be an over master mind geek just to use a computer. The fact is crossover satisfis the majority of people by bringing locked in apps to a strong opensource inviroment. I also found that Crossover can run alot of programs already, not just a tiny few as you claim. But as the development continues then so will the list of applications
The timing of this article is rather odd since CodeWeavers is about to release version CrossOver Office 3.0. It will still have the supported applications tested, but add support for new ones. (Read the CodeWeavers discussion mailing list for more info.)
Also, CodeWeavers has definitely recognized the issue with support. Not knowing specifics, I’m guessing that it’s twofold. First, there’s a ton of Linux distros out there and it becomes harder and harder to support them all, especially when the new ones arrive after your product ships. Second, I think they’ve tried to successfully leverage a small staff to support a product that has been quite successful. Either way, the hard part is recognizing the problem. They have and it appears to be on it’s way to being fixed.
Now, as far as Wine being a bad tool.. first, let me refer you to the http://www.winehq.org/site/myths“> . From personal experience, I have three applications at work that will never, ever get ported to native Linux. They are also highly specialized and no one will write a Linux version (PBX programming tools.). However, with Wine there’s a glimmer of hope that they will work.
I use CrossoverOffice and am very happy with it. It does a good job of running Word 97, Excel 97, Powerpoint 97, and Adobe Photoshop 7.0. They are very stabile when run under Linux. Those are the only Windows programs that I wanted to run under Linux and it does great with those. I would not want to use Internet Explorer under Linux and do not care if it doesn’t run it as well or not. I prefer to use the Linux versions of Mozilla Firefox and Ximaian Evolution instead of Internet Explore and Outlook.
I also have VMWare but using it every day would be overkill for most average users. On most days I just do not need to run both Linux and Windows XP at the same time. I use Linux every day but usually go several weeks at a time without using Windows. When I am using Linux and suddenly decide to switch to Windows I just boot up Windows XP in a window. I can then switch back and forth between Linux and Windows in about 2 seconds. On most days I just do not need to run multiple virtual computers with multiple operating systems on a complete virtual network.
CrossOver Office is an inexpensive easy to install product that runs a few popular Windows programs under Linux. VMWare is far more expensive and less easy to install, but if you really want to run Windows and Linux at the same time it will. Both are good solid stabile products. It just depends on what you want to do. I use the Linux version of VMWare by the way, not the Windows version. Crossover Office is so easy to use that I never got to find out what their technical support is like.