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Monday, December 22, 2008

Bordeaux 1.6 Released with improved Application support

Purchase Bordeaux 1.6 for $20.00

Steven Edwards of the Bordeaux Technology Group released Bordeaux 1.6 today. Bordeaux 1.6 comes with added support for Google's Chrome Web Browser, Google Earth, Google Picasa, Trillian and Apple's Safari Web Browser. Additionally, Cellar support has improved; you can now delete and install into an existing Cellar. IE6 now installs java, shockwave and latest flash. There has also been many small bug fixes and tweaks on the backend to improve the speed and reliablity of all the supported applications.

The cost of Bordeaux 1.6 is $20.00. Anyone who has purchased Bordeaux in the past six months is entitled to a free upgrade. Bordeaux comes with six months of upgrades and support and of course a 30-day money back guarantee.

Supported Applications/Games:

  • Microsoft Office 2007
  • Microsoft Office 2003
  • Microsoft Office 2000
  • Microsoft Office Visio 2003
  • Microsoft Office Project 2003
  • Adobe Photoshop CS
  • Adobe Photoshop CS2
  • Google Chrome Browser
  • Google Earth
  • Google Picasa
  • Trillian
  • Apple Safari Browser
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer 6
  • Steam and Steam based Games

About Bordeaux:

The Bordeaux Technology Group is a software services and development company specializing in Windows compatibility software. Users of Linux systems from time to time find themselves in the need to run specialized Windows software. The Bordeaux suite enables access to these programs and data in a seamless and low cost manner without requiring licensing of Microsoft Technology. The Bordeaux Group also provides migration services and support for alternative operating systems specializing in Windows compatibility.

There is a multitude of software developed only for the Windows operating system and even when software vendors port thier applications to another platform, generally it lacks features that the Windows version contains. The only solution these developers face is to have access to both systems for testing which leads to increased infrastructure demands, and wasted project resources. If you are vendor interested in supporting your application on Linux or a software user that needs to run a Windows application on Linux, we can help.

Version 1.6 New Features:

  • Added support for Google Chrome, Earth, Picasa
  • Added support for Trillian
  • Added support for Apple Safari
  • Cellar support has further improvements
  • Updated Winetricks scripts

Bug Fixes:

Fixed broken winetricks download locations

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Shouting 'Free' In a Crowded Internet

From Jeremy White's Blog...........

Last spring, I was frustrated, because it seemed like many Mac users were not aware of CrossOver Mac. CrossOver is so much faster and easier to try than any of the other alternatives, it seems a crime to me that every Mac user doesn't try it first. It's not always the perfect solution, but when it works, it is very sweet.

However, since we believe in Free Software, and provide all of our core work to the free Wine Project, we're not exactly rolling in the marketing dough. So we had lunch with our PR firm to see what we could do with a bit of creativity. We had a lot of ideas, and this scheme of doing a Lameduck Challenge came up just as I had to leave the meeting. The idea was we'd give our software away for free if George Bush could accomplish any of a range of fairly challenging goals.

I circle back later, and discover that our COO and Republican VP of Sales has decided it's a winner, and we're going ahead with it. I had some reservations; I love to make light hearted jokes, but I was not interested in denigrating the office of the President or in offending a lot of Republicans. But after being reassured that a survey of Republicans and Independents did not turn up anyone deeply offended, we pressed ahead.

We announced it with great fanfare...and watched it sink into nowhere. No pickup, no interest, no buzz; a marketing gimmick that no one cared about. We did some follow up work on it, had some fun with it, but again, we got little or no interest.

And then we had the financial market meltdown. Followed by the radical tightening of belts everywhere and plummeting gas prices. Suddenly what had seemed improbable happened - gas cost less now than it did a year ago.

Now we had a choice - no one but a few people had noticed (see 'sunk like a stone', above). We could just pretend it never happened.

But what the heck, a promise is a promise. Besides, no one cared with the first round, so who was going to pay attention this time? We'd give away 10,000 copies maybe, 50,000 tops.

Oh, how wrong we were.

I think that Andrew Lavallee expressed it best in his post on it: CodeWeavers is learning what happens when you scream “Free Software” in a crowded Internet.

So we announced it on Monday, October 27th. We had tested out our system for giving away the software the previous week; we have a rich experience that went through the whole process, got the customer an account and a support entitlement, the whole nine yards. Late Monday night we cut over live to giving away the software, just to shake out the bugs. (It was supposed to start at midnight, Central Time, we actually cut over at about 10:00 pm, 2 hours early).

Our first sign of trouble was that the server load shot up through the roof right then on Monday night. It would not recover for several days. Jeremy Newman worked with it that entire night; we kept tuning and optimizing the whole way, pruning parts of our rich experience down. Each time we'd handle a new jump in the load, we'd get slammed even harder. What was fantastic about it was that the traffic was coming from all over - we were reaching people all across the world, in all different walks of life.

I woke up at 6:30 and checked in with Jer, just as things started to really head south. The last straw came when both Slashdot and Digg picked up on the story; our server simply could not keep up. All of our tuning and trimming and slimming down to a bare bones rich web site just wasn't getting it done.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Running Windows Programs On Ubuntu 8.10 With CrossOver Linux Pro 7.1.0

Running Windows Programs On Ubuntu 8.10 With CrossOver Linux Pro 7.1.0

This guide shows how you can use CrossOver Linux Pro 7.1.0 to run Windows applications on Ubuntu 8.10. CrossOver is based on Wine. It is not available for free, but maybe you are one of the lucky guys that grabbed a CrossOver copy for free a few days ago; otherwise you can install a 30-day trial version to test it.
This document comes without warranty of any kind! I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!

1 Installing CrossOver Linux Pro

Visit the Codeweavers web site and grab a trial version, or log in to your existing Codeweavers account. There's a CrossOver Pro .deb package available for Debian and Ubuntu systems - download that one to your hard drive (e.g. /home/falko/Desktop). The Open with GDebi Package Installer (default) option does not work here for some strange reason, it gives back an error.



















Then open a terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal)...



















... and go to the directory where you've saved CrossOver Pro:
cd /home/falko/Desktop/
You can install it with the following command:
sudo dpkg -i crossover-pro_7.1.0-1_i386.deb
Afterwards, you can delete the .deb file to clean up your system:
rm -f crossover-pro_7.1.0-1_i386.deb

2 Installing Windows Applications

To install Windows applications, go to Applications > CrossOver > Install Windows Software:


















The CrossOver Installation Wizard starts. You can now select to install one of the listed ("supported") applications, or you can select to install unsupported software if your desired Windows application is not listed. Please make sure that you have the installation media of your desired application (CD/DVD, setup.exe file, etc.) at hand because in most cases the wizard will ask for it. In this example I select to install Internet Explorer 6. Because CrossOver can download IE6 directly from the Internet, I don't need any installation media for this example.



















Thursday, October 30, 2008

Internet Explorer 7 status on Wine 1.1.7

About Internet Explorer 7

Windows Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) is a web browser released by Microsoft in October 2006. Internet Explorer 7 is part of a long line of versions of Internet Explorer and is the first major update to the browser in over 5 years. It ships as the default browser in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 and is offered as a replacement for Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Estimates of IE7's global market share place it between approximately 26% and 47%.

Large portions of the underlying architecture, including the rendering engine and security framework, have been significantly reworked. New features include tabbed browsing, page zooming, an integrated search box, a feed reader, better internationalization, and improved support for web standards. Security enhancements include a phishing filter, stronger encryption on Windows Vista, and a "Delete browsing history" button to easily clear private data.

I thought I would see what the status of Internet Explorer 7 is in Wine 1.1.7 so I downloaded the installer from Microsoft and proceeded to try and install the Browser in current Wine. I was pleasantly surprised to get as far as I did, I tweaked my configuration and got the installer to proceed up to the point to where it does it's WGA check, the last step before the actual install.

But there would be no joy today, no matter what I tried I couldn't get the installer to pass the WGA check. So I thought I would try and run Internet Explorer 7 from the install directory that I made. And was once again surprised when the browser actually came to life and started to run. Keep in mind run does not mean function. :)

The browser starts up and gives a error and then crashes, But this is a huge step forward from just a couple months ago when I first tried Internet Explorer 7 and got no where close to this point. But don't worry ill keep a eye on Internet Explorer and if there is any noticeable change in the install or usability ill post it here.





































































 
 
 
 
 
 
 
One way to help support further development on Internet Explorer support is to purchase CrossOver Office and then vote for IE 7 as the app that you would most like to see supported in a future release.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

CodeWeavers software free for download today!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CODEWEAVERS' SOFTWARE FREE FOR DOWNLOAD THANKS TO GEORGE W. BUSH AND FALLING GAS PRICES
Giveaway Triggered in CodeWeaver's Great American Lame Duck Presidential Challenge; "We take full responsibility for global economic collapse," says CEO

SAINT PAUL, Minn. (October 27, 2008) – The catastrophic cratering of the global economy, falling gas prices and President George W. Bush's recent executive activities have indirectly prompted Saint Paul gadfly software developers CodeWeavers, Inc., to provide free software for every American on Oct. 28, company officials reluctantly announced today.

In July, CodeWeavers – whose software lets Mac OS X and Linux users run Windows programs without having to Microsoft for a Windows OS license – launched the Great American Lame Duck Presidential Challenge (codeweavers.com) to encourage President Bush to make the most of his remaining days in office by accomplishing a major economic or political goal by January 20, 2009.

The goals focused on President Bush making specific positive accomplishments in areas such as the economy, home values, the stock market, the war on terror and other key issues. Specifically, one goal called for President Bush to help down bring average gasoline prices in the Twin Cities to $2.79 a gallon.

On Monday, Oct. 14, gas prices in Minneapolis and St. Paul did just that.
"That morning, I was filling my tank at Big Steve's Gas Palace in St. Paul," said Jeremy White, president and CEO of CodeWeavers. "I had just finished my morning corn dog and 64-ounce Dr. Pepper when I looked at the pump and noticed gas was at $2.79. I screamed ‘Woohoo,' then I yelled ‘Oh, crap!' as I realized every American can now have my software for free. Kind of upsets my fourth quarter revenue projections..."

White admits this is not how he foresaw the Challenge unfolding.
"I launched the campaign to inspire President Bush to make the most of his final days in office. Who knew that our Challenge would have this kind of impact on the country?" White said. "On the other hand, who knew that the economy would implode, causing oil demand to drop into the abyss and gas prices to plummet as well. Clearly, investigating Bear Stearns, AIG and those guys is misplaced – CodeWeavers is responsible for this mess. So it's free software for all!"

How to Get the Free Software
On Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2008, any one visiting the CodeWeavers' Web site (www.codeweavers.com) will be given a deal code that will entitle them to one free copy of CodeWeavers' award-winning CrossOver software. Each copy comes complete with support.

"I realize that by giving away all my software, I've caused horrific damage to my company's bottom line," White said. "In fact, our vice president of sales wretched Starbucks all over his shirt when he learned the news. But, I figure, the way the economy is going, in a few months everyone might be out on the streets, wearing potato sacks and standing in line for squirrel soup, so why not?"
White also noted that if other Great American Lame Duck Presidential Challenge goals are met, CodeWeavers will once again provide free software. Goals include:
  • Return the stock market to it's 2008 high
  • Reduce the average price of a gallon of milk to $3.50
  • Create at least one net job in the U.S. this calendar year
  • Return the median home price to its Jan. 1, 2008 level
  • Bring Osama Bin-Laden to justice
About CodeWeavers
Founded in 1996 as a general software consultancy, CodeWeavers today focuses on the development of Wine: the core technology found in all of its CrossOver products. The company's goal is to bring expanded market opportunities for Windows software developers by making it easier, faster and more painless to port Windows software to Mac OS X and Linux. CodeWeavers is recognized as a leader in open-source Windows porting technology, and maintains development offices in Minnesota, the UK and elsewhere around the world. The company is privately held. For more information about CodeWeavers, log on to www.codeweavers.com.


Putty for Mac
Putty for Mac
$15.00

https://winereviews.onfastspring.com/putty-for-mac



Wine 1.1.7 Review First Steps of Direct3D 10 Implementation

I think Wine is one of the most promising and useful applications, especially for those who need to run Windows programs in a Linux environment. A new development release is put up every two weeks or so, and improvements are visible from each version to another.

Wine is the project which makes possible to run games like World of WarCraft, Counter-Strike, Half-Life 2, WarCraft III and so on. And Wine is also the project which makes possible for web developers to test how their web page is viewed under Internet Explorer. Not to mention hundreds of other applications which work very well or well enough with it.

Ever since the first release tagged as 'stable' was put out for the public after 15 years of development, the Wine project continued development and now the latest version is 1.1.7, which brings numerous improvements and additions.

According to the official announcement, one of the highlights for this release is that the first steps were taken to implement the Direct3D technology, which is part of the DirectX API from Microsoft. The open and widespread competitor for Direct3D is OpenGL, the Open Graphics Library.

It's well-known that Wine works awesome with games like WoW, Counter-Strike or Half-Life 2.

A while ago I ran and installed the new Google Chrome web browser through Wine, since a Linux port is not available yet, and the result was very satisfying: with the exception of a little interface slowness, it behaved very well.


For this release, I installed Google Chrome following the tutorial I wrote for 1.1.6. I had to run it as:

wine ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/profiles/USERNAME/Local\ Settings/Application\ Data/Google/Chrome/Application/chrome.exe --new-http --in-process-plugins

And replaced USERNAME with my username. Chrome displayed all the web pages I tried, including this blog, Digg.com, YouTube.com (with the Flash plugin too) and the WineHQ homepage, but scrolling a page is extremely slow and choppy until the web page is completely loaded. I never tested Google Chrome on Windows so I can't compare exactly the behaviour.


I also installed Adobe Flash Player using the browser instead of winetricks. Below are some screenshots running Chrome through Wine. As you can see, Flash is enabled:


Wine provides an application database on their homepage, which classifies applications depending on how well they run and perform: platinum, gold, silver. The nice thing is that each application has detailed information on how to set it up in order to work best, in what conditions it was tested and it also includes user comments. Usually, if a game or application is known to work through Wine but you couldn't set it up, have a look at the comments posted and a solution will surely be provided.

As I already mentioned, one of the most popular games which worked perfectly for me in Wine is World of WarCraft:
World of WarCraft

I was glad to see the mIRC scripts editor does not crash the application anymore, but instead I couldn't make it connect to another network but the default QuakeNet, so you will have to use the /server command. Otherwise, mIRC 6.35 works pretty well, and if you really really need it and can't re-write your scripts for a native Linux client you can use it through Wine. Still, I suggest using a native IRC client like XChat, Konversation or Irssi.


I also tried the last version of Winamp, 5.541, and I installed the Lite version. It works very well, although I did not test it for long. It plays music.


It's true, I don't think Linux needs to run a player like Winamp, when we have powerful and full-featured, native and open-source audio players like Amarok, Banshee, Rhythmbox, Songbird or XMMS. But maybe someone still finds a use for it, or it can help those who just switched from Windows and can't get used to another player.




Monday, October 27, 2008

CrossOver 7.1.0 for Mac and Linux released!

Codeweavers released Crossover 7.1.0 for Linux and Mac systems a couple days back, here is the full change logs for each system. While there practically the same I thought I would post both Change logs so their wouldn't be any confusion on what has changed for each platform.

Changelog for CrossOver Linux:
7.1.0 CrossOver Linux - October 22, 2008
  • Outlook fixes:
    • Restored use of the Rules and Alerts dialog
    • Improved connectivity with Exchange servers
    • Fixed installation of several custom versions of Outlook
    • Improved copy and paste behavior
    • Fixed 'reply all' behavior
    • Improved printing
    • Partial support for signed emails
    • Fixed some address autocompleteion in Outlook 2007
    • Fixed ability to create new contacts, appointments & tasks
    • 2003 & 2007 now exit cleanly on the Mac
    • Can now open recurring Calendar Items
  • Application installation changes:
    • Many more versions of Office 2007 (including Enterprise editions) now install properly.
    • Office 2003 Service Pack 3 now installs.
    • Office 2003 one-shot updates now apply.
    • Several more versions of Office 2003 now install.
    • MS Office language packs now install
    • Visio 2003 sp3 now installs.
  • Other fixes:
    • Office 97 now works better.
    • PowerPoint 2003 slide preview improved.
    • Bidirectional text behavior is improved.
    • Access 2002 reporting is improved.
    • Improved Java behavior.
    • Use the native FreeType library on Leopard systems.
    • On Linux, add the ability to generate Debian bottle packages.
    • Fixed a CrossOver installation error specific to Estonian locales.
    • Fixed: Word 2003: Can't open Word doc, Out of Memory
    • Pull-down menus now appear more than once (WordArt)
    • Can now open Project 2007 files with Project 2003 (with the add-on installed)
    • Rotating text boxes now works in the proper direction
Changelog for CrossOver Mac:
7.1.0 CrossOver Mac - October 22, 2008
  • Outlook fixes:
    • Restored use of the Rules and Alerts dialog
    • Improved connectivity with Exchange servers
    • Fixed installation of several custom versions of Outlook
    • Improved copy and paste behavior
    • Fixed 'reply all' behavior
    • Improved printing
    • Partial support for signed emails
    • Fixed some address autocompleteion in Outlook 2007
    • Fixed ability to create new contacts, appointments & tasks
    • 2003 & 2007 now exit cleanly on the Mac
    • Can now open recurring Calendar Items
  • Application installation changes:
    • Many more versions of Office 2007 (including Enterprise editions) now install properly.
    • Office 2003 Service Pack 3 now installs.
    • Office 2003 one-shot updates now apply.
    • Several more versions of Office 2003 now install.
    • MS Office language packs now install
    • Visio 2003 sp3 now installs.
  • Other fixes:
    • Office 97 now works better.
    • PowerPoint 2003 slide preview improved.
    • Bidirectional text behavior is improved.
    • Access 2002 reporting is improved.
    • Improved Java behavior.
    • Use the native FreeType library on Leopard systems.
    • On Linux, add the ability to generate Debian bottle packages.
    • Fixed a CrossOver installation error specific to Estonian locales.
    • Fixed: Word 2003: Can't open Word doc, Out of Memory
    • Pull-down menus now appear more than once (WordArt)
    • Can now open Project 2007 files with Project 2003 (with the add-on installed)
    • Rotating text boxes now works in the proper direction


Putty for Mac
Putty for Mac
$15.00

https://winereviews.onfastspring.com/putty-for-mac



Monday, October 20, 2008

Running Google Chrome Under Wine 1.1.6 in Debian

Google Chrome is an open-source web browser from Google, currently available only for the Windows platform. It aims to have a minimal and easy to use interface. Chrome uses the WebKit rendering engine, which was developed from KHTML, and it is used in various browsers like Konqueror on KDE4 or Safari (on Mac OS X).


First of all, install Wine 1.1.6. I created two guides for installing the last Wine release, here (from the WineHQ APT repository) and here (compiling from source). Don't worry if the tutorials are for 1.1.5 and 1.1.4 respectively, they will work for a later Wine version too.

I only tried it with Wine setup as Windows XP in winecfg.

Also, install the cabextract package as root:

apt-get install cabextract

Get the last version of winetricks using this command:

wget http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks

Make the winetricks script executable, then install the packages below by issuing the following commands:

chmod 755 winetricks
./winetricks msxml3 corefonts flash winxp riched20 riched30

Next, download Google Chrome from here. You can use this command in your terminal:

wget http://dl.google.com/chrome/install/149.30/chrome_installer.exe

To run it, use:

wine chrome_installer.exe

Chrome should start the first time, and you will be able to see it as in the screenshots below:


Close it, then run it using the following command:

wine ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/profiles/YOUR_USERNAME/Local\ Settings/Application\ Data/Google/Chrome/Application/chrome.exe

Make sure to pay attention to any case-sensitive characters if that's the case, and also replace YOUR_USERNAME.


Edit: I saw suggestions to run chrome.exe with the arguments --new-http and --in-process-plugins, although it seemed to work fine for me without the need of those.

For a complete list of Chrome command-line arguments, go here. They are listed from the Google Chrome source file src/chrome/common/chrome_switches.cc and are briefly explained.

How it behaves
It looks very, very good in my opinion, but the interface is extremely slow. I guess until the Linux port will be ready, Google Chrome through Wine is useful only to have a preview of it, or eventually test how it displays web pages.


My impression was the one which Firefox gave me when I first used it, back at version 1.0 (1.0.4 if I recall correctly): simple interface, clean, with only the basic options which one needs, but powerful in the same time.

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Wine 1.0.1 Released

The Wine maintenance release 1.0.1 is now available. This is a maintenance release from the 1.0 stable branch. It contains only translation updates and small bug fixes The source is available now. Binary packages are in the process of being built, and will appear soon at their respective download locations

Bugs fixed in 1.0.1:

5031 First Encounter Assault Recon (FEAR) SP Demo Crashes on Start
6650 MSTSC (Remote Desktop) crashes
9775 Syberia 2, Max Payne 1 & 2 - Screenshots and thumbnails broken
9777 Silencer doesn't fully connect to lobby server.
10132 bad cyrillic font rendering
10229 Serious Sam TSE 1.07 - network connection fails
11198 C & C Tiberian Sun reporsts comctl32.dll is an older version on winver higher then 98
11494 Speed Commander 12 does not install
11640 Unable to use multiplayer in Sins of a Solar Empire: unknown address family
11766 Heap corruption in crypt32 during Sandra benchmark?
11936 window size is too small in the "vc2008 redist installer" and "Firefox 3" [dogfood]
11950 TheBat! 3.99.1 show white squares not icons under wine after 0.9.56
12005 Regression in pressure sensitivity with wizardpen tablet driver and Photoshop 7
12302 Lord of the Rings: Shadows of Angmar unplayable due to high lag
12305 Firefox 3 beta 4 font problem: colon displayed as 0038 unicode glyph-missing glyph [dogfood]
12740 Wine tries to execute non-executable data (regression against 0.9.59)
12879 Cluster size not supported for large NFS mounts?
13227 100% CPU Usage with notepad - with dtrace output
13599 Can't install Autocad 2005
13601 can't compile wine with Xcode 3.1 or iPhone SDK
13713 Hema Album Software Advanced won't start, it crashes and has to be killed.
13748 Last Chaos aborts after clicking 'start' in 0.9.57 and later
13765 ZENcast 2.01.01 Installer Fails to Start
13882 psiops crashes while starting (XStreamlok)
14006 at least one locale missing: eo - (breaks .NET internationalization)
14019 systray icon not displayed in dual screen
14040 Microsoft Virtual Earth 3D beta inner installer aborts when reading registry
14053 Winamp 5.53 fails to start due to a loader crash
14188 utorrent - it disconnects fast leaching peers with Error 10022
14356 alt.binz does not run anymore

Monday, August 18, 2008

Review of CrossOver Linux 7.0.2

CrossOver Linux 7.0.2 overview:

This section is for those new to CrossOver Linux. If you already know what CrossOver is and want to find out what's new in version 7.0.2, skip down to the next section.

CodeWeavers' CrossOver Linux is a software framework that emulates the Microsoft Windows 98, 2000 and XP application programming interfaces (APIs) on GNU/Linux. This allows Windows programs to run on GNU/Linux without having to run a virtual instance of the operating system e.g. a virtual machine. CrossOver was originally designed to bring Microsoft Office and Intuit Quicken to GNU/Linux, but many more programs have been tested and are known to work with CrossOver to some degree at this time.

CrossOver Linux is based on the free software Wine API emulator, and adds only commercial support and proprietary installation tools to help with configuration. So in essence, CrossOver is no more capable than recent builds of Wine, but it does have a number of extras that add a great deal of value through convenience. Despite its basis in free software, CrossOver Linux is governed by a proprietary license that prohibits sharing.

What's new in CrossOver Linux 7.0:

Version 7.0 Changelog:

New application support:
Office 2007 (Including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook)
Photoshop CS and CS2
Added support for the "Compatibility Pack for the 2007 Office system"
so that Office 2003 can open Office 2007 documents

Bug fixes:

Greatly improved online banking integration in Quicken 2007 and 2008
Greatly improved Outlook behavior, particularly with Exchange servers
Fixed service pack support for several versions of Office
Improved IE support in win2000 and winxp bottles (though win98 is still better)
Improved support for modern Linux distributions (especially Ubuntu)
Fixed a seriously horrible interaction with the Logitech Control Center
documents from Office 2007

This version also includes countless Wine fixes and synchronizes with Wine 1.0. Many small bugs should be fixed, and unsupported application behavior should be greatly improved.
CrossOver Linux is capable of running a range of Windows software, but CodeWeavers will support the following applications:
  • Microsoft Office 2007, 2003, XP, 2000 and 97
    • Microsoft Word
    • Microsoft Excel
    • Microsoft PowerPoint
    • Microsoft Outlook
    • Microsoft Access *1
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer 6
  • Microsoft Project
  • Adobe Photoshop
  • Microsoft Visio
  • Lotus Notes 5.0 and 6.5.1
  • Quicken
  • FrameMaker
  • Various Web Browser Plugins
    • QuickTime
    • Shockwave Director
    • Windows Media Player 6.4
  • and more...
*1 - Microsoft Access supported in Office 2000 only.

CrossOver Linux 7.0.2 is available in two flavors: Standard ($40) and Professional ($70). If you purchase the Professional licence you can renew your single user licence for only ($35) in the future. Both Standard and Professional support the same applications, but Professional edition has a few enterprise-centric features and 1 year of level 2 support, where as the Standard version comes with 6 months of level 3 support (limited/installation). The Professional edition also offers two multi-user installation modes. In the managed multi-user mode, the root user installs applications to be used by all other users in the system who cannot install their own. In the private multi-user mode, individual users on the system can install and manage their own applications.

Testing results:

All applications, supported and unsupported, are available from under a "Windows Applications" sub-menu under the GNOME and KDE menu. They also show up in the right-click context menu when you click on a file that is associated with a Windows application that has been installed.


For this review I installed Microsoft Office 2007 on my Gentoo system, the install has a bug in it and when it reaches about 75% it then hangs and takes about 10 minutes to complete. If you install Office 2007 don't be alarmed if the install takes a little while to complete. The good news is this bug will be fixed in the next release and the install should be much quicker.


Microsoft Office 2007 Word on Linux with CrossOver Linux.

Here is also a screen shot of IE 6 running in CrossOver Linux.

If you ever uninstall CrossOver Linux, you have the option to save all its bottles with the applications you installed intact. This is useful if you decide to move from the Standard to the Professional version or do a re-install of CrossOver Linux.

Conclusion:

CrossOver Linux has some advantages over running virtualization software. For one, it saves you the cost of a Windows license. Also, CrossOver Linux is better suited to utilize the graphics infrastructure on your computer which allows you to play 3-D games. On the down side, it doesn't support all native Windows applications as a virtual machine would. Yet CrossOver Linux 7.0.2 remains an ideal solution for people who need to run the most popular Windows applications.

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

CrossOver Mac Professional 7 Review

For Mac users stuck in a Windows-dominated office, there is hope. Virtualization software such as Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion let you run the Windows operating system and Windows-only programs on a Mac, but the install process is complex and time-consuming, and the programs can slow down even a speedy Mac. As an alternative, Codeweavers CrossOver Mac Professional 7.0.2 uses just the Windows application programming interface (API) to run Windows apps on your Mac, without the Windows OS.

CrossOver is a kind of “translator of a translator” and relies on an open source program called Wine. When you install and run Windows apps, Wine is actually translating the API calls that allow a Windows program to run, such as “pull up this dialog box” or “save this file.” CrossOver hides the clunky interface of the open-source Wine software behind a more Mac-like interface.
CrossOver is an ingenious idea for a program that can save time and costs less than buying a separate copy of Windows.

Performance issues


Still, before you dream of storming the beach in Call of Duty 4 or running the latest Windows version of Adobe Photoshop (because, say, your company has a Windows-only site license), be aware that CrossOver supports only a handful of commercial applications, many of them from Microsoft; otherwise, it’s hit or miss.
CrossOver supports several games, including Half-Life 2: Episode 2 and Counter-Strike, which both ran like they were on their native platform and without any major glitches. Unfortunately, a vast majority of the latest PC games, such as Crysis and Call of Duty 4—a major reason you might want to buy CrossOver—are not fully supported yet. For example, Crysis seemed like it would install, but did not. For productivity tools, CrossOver fully supports Microsoft Office 2000 apps, and also supports more recent software—including Office 2003, Quicken, and Lotus Notes—but with known bugs.

The Pro version of CrossOver ($60) we used for testing includes two distinct versions of the program, one for productivity and one for games. The Standard version ($40) does not support games. This is a little confusing—I would prefer one app that ran both applications and games in a Pro version instead of having two icons on my Dock.

For supported apps, installation works great. For example, if you insert the installation disc for Adobe Photoshop CS2, CrossOver launches automatically and prompts you to install it. The installation takes place using the Windows API. CrossOver also adds newly installed programs to the Mac Applications folder, and you can launch them from the Dock. When you print, CrossOver uses your Mac print driver. In daily use for fully supported apps, CrossOver worked like a charm: it rarely got in the way of running Windows software and it’s easy to use when you know the program is fully supported.

Testing results

The latest 7.0.2 version adds support for Microsoft Office 2007—compelling as long as you’re not already using Office 2008 for the Mac, released in January. Some companies have a standard desktop that requires everyone to run the approved Office version (likely for Windows). So if Mac users can install CrossOver, they can run Office 2007 in a matter of minutes.

With CrossOver Mac Professional, you can run Windows apps, but without ever touching an actual Windows operating system disc.
In tests, Word 2007 worked just fine for typing up documents. However, many features—the clip organizer, charts, and mail merges, for example—did not work. Both Excel and Outlook crashed a few times on my MacBook Pro. However, I did run Outlook 2007 for long periods—marking incoming e-mails with urgency flags, viewing a task list, and setting up my day-to-day schedule—without problems. Codeweavers says it is currently tweaking Wine for full Office 2007 compatibility and acknowledges that CrossOver support for Office 2007 is still a bit rough around the edges.

For officially unsupported apps, Codeweavers hosts a forum where users can report their experiences in testing software and award color-coded badges to indicate the program’s level of support. For example, you can find out if Quicken 2008 runs well (e.g., gold), has some minor or major issues (e.g., silver or bronze), or will not run at all (e.g., “Not known to work”). (Visio 2003 might work, while Quickbooks likely won’t.) CodeWeavers oversees the forums for user advocates who test Windows programs, but does not provide a standard testing methodology or distinguish test results by hardware specifications. It also provides some Wine testing scripts.

I would strongly prefer that CrossOver maintain a database of supported commercial software and, when I attempt an install, present an alert box with information about whether the program will work. This would save me a trip to the Web site. For example, I tried to install Adobe Photoshop CS3 before checking the support forums. During the installation, CrossOver merely acted as if it were waiting for the installation to complete. It never did, so I had to quit CrossOver and, eventually, had to reboot entirely. A simple alert that CS3 apps will definitely not work, or showing the related “gold” and “silver” rankings, would have helped immensely. CodeWeavers says it is working on more alerts for the next release.

CodeWeavers does offer exceptional e-mail- and telephone-based tech support. For one problem—running the unsupported version of Adobe Photoshop CS3 for Windows—tech support responded in three hours and provided a concise answer: the application is not supported at all. For another problem—printing to a PDF file in Word—the support was much more helpful, providing a clear solution (use the CUPS-PDF driver and print to PDF) in the same time period.




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Tuesday, July 29, 2008

CrossOver Games 7.1.0 Released

From CodeWeavers Announce:

I am happy to announce that we have now released version 7.1.0 of CrossOver Games, for both the Mac and for Linux.

This new version is largely an incremental improvement; it fixes a range of bugs in a number of games. It also includes a full merge with the Wine 1.0 code base, so this is now a 'post Wine 1.0' version of CrossOver Games.

A full change log is included, below.

If you are an existing CrossOver customer with an active support entitlement, you can visit our web site to download this latest version: Also I want to remind folks that with CrossOver Games, we're really trying do much more rapid releases. So, although we've tested this carefully and feel pretty good about it, if you have a working configuration, you might just want to skip this one. Or at the very least, archive your bottles before you upgrade.

At any rate, thanks for all of your support, and I hope you enjoy
gaming with CrossOver!

Cheers,

Jeremy

---

* CrossOver Games 7.1.0

The gamma control should behave better now. It doesn't change the gamma
on Macs to blue on application exit any longer

The death screen in Team Fortress 2 on radeon cards should be fixed now.
Also the G-Man intro is fixed on those cards

Reflective(environment-mapped) surfaces in Portal work now on Macs with
Geforce 8 cards

The Final Fantasy XI benchmark should run again. This was broken since
CrossOver Games 7.0.

Civilization 4 leader faces should render now on Macs

Fixed a texturing bug on the earth on the Civ4 main screen.

Half Life 2 should run again

Flickering objects in Guild Wars should be fixed

A bug causing crashes on certain CS:S and TF2 MOTDs is fixed

A few regressions in unsupported applications are fixed

Many Wine updates, including a full merge from the Wine 1.0
release.

Monday, July 21, 2008

Defective CDs in CrossOver Games

This is a news update from Codeweavers site about a defect in CX Games for Mac.

It has come to our attention that the CDs supplied with the retail version of CrossOver Games in BestBuy are defective. Customers attempting to install and run CrossOver Games will receive an error message when they try to install Windows software under the product. We apologize for this problem, and will do everything possible to make our customers whole. Fortunately, there is a simple workaround to rectify this error. Please follow these instructions...

The problem

The retail CD version of CrossOver Games sold at BestBuy contains a defective file. CXGames will install fine. However, when the user attempts to install Windows software under CrossOver, or create a bottle (a self-contained virtual Windows environment), the program will return an error message of "Bottle creation failed..." followed by a long, arcane error condition dump (see this screen capture below). This precludes the program's operation, since Windows software cannot be installed. ```Please note``` that this problem only exists on the CD contained in the retail version of CrossOver Games. The CD in the retail version of CrossOver Mac is not defective.



The workaround

Customers who have purchased CrossOver Games can solve this problem by the following simple steps:
  1. Register your CrossOver Games purchase by following the instructions on your registration card. This will create an account on our system, and validate you as a customer.
  2. Download and install the free trial version of CrossOver Games by downloading it from here: http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxgames/download_trial/
  3. Install the trial version
  4. Unlock the trial version using your email address and password
Once you have unlocked the trial, your program will behave normally.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

CrossOver Games Mac Review at Channelflip

Hello,


Today we have the final installment in our Mac Gaming 101 mini-series - I hope you’ve found it useful! Today I’m looking at CodeWeavers’ CrossOver Games (based on the Wine project) which was brought out at the end of March, and which seems like a damn good solution for those of you looking to play Windows games on your Mac. And don’t forget that while we’ve been focussing on the Mac side of things, all CrossOver products are also available for Linux. Check out the full range here at CodeWeavers.

Since this was filmed, CodeWeavers brought out version 7.0 of CrossOver which incorporates a few changes to some of the details given in the episode. First up, CrossOver Games now comes with 6 months of support rather than 12. CodeWeavers tell me the 12 months was an introductory offer, and that they plan to upgrade CrossOver Games more frequently than other products, so even in the 6 month window you will still get a good few upgrades.
They’ve also now streamed the Mac version of CrossOver Office into CrossOver Mac Standard and CrossOver Mac Pro (which is to do with what’s included in the CrossOver package, not to do with the kind of Mac you have!) CrossOver Games is included in the latter, so if you use a lot of other Windows software, check out that one too.






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Thursday, July 3, 2008

Everyone please update your RSS feed

It's been three weeks since we moved to the new site and there are still well over 550 subscribers to the old RSS feed here. In the near future, most likely around the first of August this feed will be permanently removed. So I would like to ask everyone to take 1 minute and update their news feed. The new feed has all the current news from http://www.wine-reviews.net/


Grab this Headline Animator


Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Spreading the word about CrossOver

I just noticed the folks over at CodeWeavers are having a get the word out campaign. If your a proud customer of theirs and would like to help them spread the word about the great products that they have, this would be a good time to do it. Ive personally used their products ever since CrossOver Plugin 1.0 first shipped and have always been satisfied with the product and support that I've received over the years.

Here's a quote and a link to the original post at their site.
Friends of CodeWeavers, unite! First of all, thank you very much for your support. We greatly appreciate everyone who has purchased a copy of CrossOver, or has worked hard as an Advocate to ensure that CrossOver continues to improve and run the apps that you need. Beyond that, though, we also really value those of you who help spread the word about CrossOver. Your favorable comments, both in person and on the Web, are absolutely some of the most powerful things you can do for us. Here are four ways that you can help us us build even more buzz...

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

CrossOver Office 7 Linux and Macintosh Released

The following is the release announcement from Jeremy White of CodeWeavers (CrossOver):
Hi Folks,

I am pleased to announce that we have shipped CrossOver 7 for both
Macintosh and Linux. New in Version 7 is support for
Microsoft Office 2007, dramatically improved support for Outlook 2003
and Internet Explorer 6, and a broad range of improvements that should
bring improvements to all Windows applications.

For our Linux customers, it also brings expanded support for most
Adobe programs, with Photoshop CS and CS2 working particularly well.

For our Macintosh customers, this release also brings a change in our
product mix. We are now providing "CrossOver Mac Standard" and
"CrossOver Mac Professional". The new Standard product will mirror
the Linux Standard product, in that it will be a lower priced product
with more basic support and no multiple user support. The new
CrossOver Mac Professional product replaces the existing CrossOver Mac
product. It continues to have our best support, support for multiple users,
and, CrossOver Mac Pro continues to come with a complimentary copy of CrossOver Games.

If you have purchased CrossOver Mac in the past, you have been automatically
upgraded to a CrossOver Mac Pro license.

Finally, another major benefit of 7.0 is that it includes many of the
elements of Wine 1.0, which was also released today. This is a major
milestone for us, and for the Wine project. Our many years of work,
and your many years of supporting our work, have enabled us to
help bring Wine to this milestone. I am very proud to have been
part of this, and very grateful for all the support of
our customers, advocates, and fellow Wine developers.

If you are an existing CrossOver customer with an active support entitlement,
you can visit our web site to download this latest version:
www.codeweavers.com
You will need to log in with the email and password that you used when
purchasing CrossOver. Please write to info@codeweavers.com if you need
help with this process.

Thanks again for all your support, and I hope that you enjoy CrossOver 7!

Cheers,

Jeremy White
CEO
CodeWeavers

---
Version 7.0 Changelog:

New application support:
Office 2007 (Including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook)
Photoshop CS and CS2
Added support for the "Compatibility Pack for the 2007 Office system"
so that Office 2003 can open Office 2007 documents

Bug fixes:
Greatly improved online banking integration in Quicken 2007 and 2008
Greatly improved Outlook behavior, particularly with Exchange servers
Fixed service pack support for several versions of Office
Improved IE support in win2000 and winxp bottles (though win98 is
still better)
Improved support for modern Linux distributions (especially Ubuntu)
Fixed a seriously horrible interaction with the Logitech Control Center
documents from Office 2007

This version also includes countless Wine fixes and synchronizes with Wine 1.0.
Many small bugs should be fixed, and unsupported application behavior should be greatly
improved.


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CrossOver Office Mac Version 7.0.0 Review

INTRODUCTION:

In our last installment we reviewed CrossOver Games for the Mac. This week we will take a look at the current version of CrossOver Mac. CrossOver Mac is one of the successor products to the CrossOver Office suite.

CrossOver which was once original for Linux, now allows you to run Windows applications such as Microsoft Office, Intuit Quicken and Quickbooks on your Mac.

As stated in part one, CrossOver is based on the Wine project and as such shares some of its technical limitations and abilities. Wine is a compatibility layer for non-windows systems allowing them to run Windows applications.

to a limited degree. Due to the highly complex nature of the software, third party vendors such as CodeWeavers package Wine to create a product for the end user. In part three we will go in to more detail about the internals of Wine and why it imposes limitations on the products built around it but for now, lets take a look at CrossOver 7 for Mac and the applications that it supports.

CodeWeavers has just released CrossOver 7 Mac which now provides support for Office 2007 based applications. As this is new to CrossOver not all 2007 based applications work well at this time, right now only Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Outlook 2007 are known to work and are supported. Prior versions of Office 2003 applications are much better supported, including support for Project 2003 and Visio 2003.

INSTALLING:

Installation of CrossOver for Mac is nearly identical to the steps outlined in the CrossOver Games review. After downloading you should be left with the file crossover-7.0.0.dmg, simply double click on this to start the installer which will then allow you to drag the CrossOver.app to your Applications folder. This should open the Applications folder Window Simply double click CrossOver to launch the application which will take you to the CrossOver welcome screen. From this point you can now either insert a Windows based application in your Optical Drive or start the CrossOver Software Installer.

As per the last article the steps for installing any application supported or unsupported are mostly the same so I will skip to the pretty screenshots and my notes



Microsoft 2007 install:



There are some parts of the install where it looks like no processing is going on, take a break and come back. Time varies between 10-20 minutes upon hitting the 75% mark.

Word 2007:



There is a warning about the normal.dot document template on start up. Not fatal but annoying none the less. Word 2007 is a little slow drawing.

Excel 2007:



The speed is a little slow like in Word 2007 but pretty good overall.

Outlook 2007:



Exchange, RPC over HTTP works good, POP/IMAP not so good unless you install IE.

Powerpoint 2003/2007, usable but a little slow....
Access 2003/2007 - Does not work, don't even try it. I hacked around with it for a while and got it to come up with the ability to have read only access to databases by installing the MDAC and JET drivers manually. It's really not worth the trouble at this time.

Project 2003:



Project 2003 - Works perfect in my limited test.

Visio 2003 - Drawing performance suffers at this time on CrossOver Mac. My inside sources tell me this is to be fixed in 7.2 with a new DIB engine.

Photoshop CS2:



Photoshop CS/CS2 - Works perfect, while mac users already have Photoshop, the Windows version might come in handy if you have plug-ins that are Windows only.

IE6: Works well enough, some minor glitches such as occasionally having to hit enter twice to naviagate to a URL but its pretty rare. CodeWeavers needs to get on the ball and figure out if there is a way to support IE7.

IE6 and Install:



OTHER FEATURES:

Because CrossOver Mac and CrossOver Games for the Mac share the same basic tools and tweaking steps, I will forgo the TWEAKING and UNSUPPORTED STUFF sections and focus on other features and information that will help to make either version of CrossOver more pleasant to work with.



Dock Integration:

I really like the integration that CrossOver provides with the Mac OS desktop. The menu and dock integration is quite nice and makes it feel quite seamless. CrossOver -> Revel in Finder -> Browse for the correct icon for your application and drag it to the Dock. Now any time you want to start your application, you can do this directly without having to start the CrossOver application and browsing through the CrossOver menus.

Multiple user support/What the heck are bottles?



Because CrossOver does a thin layer of Windows emulation to trick the applications in to thinking they are being installed on a native Windows system, a fake Windows environment representing a C drive is created. This environment is really just a folder in the file system typically located at

/Users/USERNAME/Library/Application Support/CrossOver/Bottles/BOTTLENAME/dosdevices/c:

You should rarely if ever need to access or even be aware of this, as CrossOver maps the Documents, Desktop and Downloads locations the Windows applications expect to those folders located in your user account. However there are certain instances where the logic behind bottles does need to be explored. If for instance you have multiple users that need to share a single install of a Windows Application across multiple accounts. CrossOver provides you with the ability to do what's called Publishing a bottle where the bottle is shared across multiple user accounts. Each user then maintains a shared copy of the managed_bottle which is linked to the main managed_bottle in the main user account. Consult the documentation for more information.

/Users/USERNAME/Library/Application Support/CrossOver/Bottles/managed_ie/dosdevices/c:



Running a command from a terminal:



Vary rarely you may run in to the situation where you need to run a command from a terminal window. I've found with some unsupported applications I need to change some command line options or view debug output. When this situation arises CrossOver gives you the ability to start a terminal with the CrossOver environment already configured. Simply go to the CrossOver menu -> Programs -> Run Command -> select the right bottle -> Open Shell

CONCLUSION:

If your application is among those supported then I highly recommend CrossOver Mac. Its a good light weight alternative to the VM based solutions of Parallels Desktop and VMware fusion. I believe CrossOver Mac is worth the current price of $59.95 even with the hiccups I have encountered. And even if your favorite application isn't currently supported I think there is value in buying the software to contribute to future Wine development. Unfortunately not everything is supported but newer applications are being added all the time. From my discussions with the CrossOver team, they have informed me that a future release will add support for Quicken 2007 and Quickbooks 2006 and 2007.

Even if your application does not work perfectly, the CodeWeavers support staff are very helpful and they maintain an application support database that might help with any problems you encounter.


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