Running Windows Applications on Linux

The perceived inability to run windows applications on Linux is what keeps many individuals from trying Linux. It turns out that it is possible to run many popular Windows applications on Linux PCs using one of several software technologies. Products that will allow Windows applications to run on Linux include:

Cedega from TransGaming Technologies Inc. CrossOver Office for Linux from CodeWeavers Inc. QEMU from Fabrice Bellard VMware from VMware, an EMC companyWin4Lin from Win4Lin Inc. Wine from the Wine Project

Cedega
TransGaming Technologies bills themselves as “the global leader in the development of software portability products for cross-platform gaming”. Their flagship product, Cedega, allows games originally created for Windows to run on Linux, “out-of-the-box”.
Cedega runs on Linux Kernel 2.4 or higher.
Cedega is available on a subscription basis from the TransGaming web site (). TransGaming also offers a 14-day trial of Cedega on their web site.

CrossOver Office
CrossOver Office from CodeWeavers allows many popular Windows applications to run on Linux. The list of applications that CrossOver Office allows to run on Linux is quite extensive and includes applications such as: Microsoft Office, Lotus Notes, Microsoft Project and Visio, and graphics applications such as Macromedia Dreamweaver MX, Flash MX, and Adobe Photoshop, and much more. CrossOver Office also allows individuals to use many Windows Web browser plugins, such as QuickTime and Shockwave. CodeWeavers uses Wine technology in its CrossOver Office Products (see the Wine description later in this article).

CodeWeavers maintains an extensive list of applications that can run on Linux using CrossOver Office with a ranking of how well they run. The list can be accessed on their web site ().
CrossOver Office has been tested on many Linux distributions. The complete list may be found on the CodeWeavers web site.

CrossOver Office is available in two versions, Standard and Professional. The Standard version is intended for home users and Linux enthusiasts, while Professional is more for commercial users and builds on the functionality of Standard by adding enhanced deployability features, as well as the ability to run CrossOver Office in shared mode from a single machine.
A 30-day trial of CrossOver Office is available from CodeWeavers and may be obtained from their web site ().

Putty for Mac

$15.00

Running Recettear on an Intel Mac

Lolieconomics on the Mac. 

So, you have a Mac, but you want to play this game called Recettear. However, you do not want to reboot into Windows or use virtualization software. Crossover/Crossover Games can pretty much do the trick, but you need to reconfigure some settings before you can play the game.

Obtain the game

It won’t do much if you don’t have the game. Purchase a Copy from Impulse or GamerGate. Do not buy from Steam since the game will require you to run Steam and might not work properly within Crossover/Crossover Games. The copies from Impulse and GamerGate are DRM free.
Note that the Impuse client is buggy, so you need to download in Windows.

Obtain a copy of Crossover/Crossover Games

Crossover is a native emulation layer that allows one to install and run windows programs natively without installing Windows or using virtualization software. Any version will work with Recettear. Once Crossover is installed, run it and go to Configure > Install Software. After its installed, install the full version of Recettear. If you download using Windows, copy the Recettear game files to the c_drive folder in your Crossover Bottle. This can be accessed by going to Configure > Manage Bottles, Select the DirectX Bottle > Advanced > Open C: Drive in Finder.

Configure the Bottle

If you ran the program for the first time, you noticed that there is no sound. To fix this, we need to override some DLL files. To do this, go to Configure > Manage Bottles. Select the DirectX Bottle and go to Control Panel Tab. Then launch “Wine Config”

Go to the Libraries tab and add the following:
dmband dmcompos dmime dmloader dmscript dmstyle dmsynth dmusic dmusic32 dswave streamci dsound

Apply these settings and exit out Wine Config. Then, relaunch Wine Config and go to the library tab. Verify if these libraries are in the list. If not, readd them and try again until they are finally on the list.
Lastly, go to the Audio tab. Ignore the alert message about missing registry entries. Then, set the Hardware Acceleration to Emulation and then press OK.
Close the Manage Bottles window.

Run the Game

Finally, go to Programs > Run Command. Then, locate the program file called “recettear.exe” in the folder where you put the game files in the bottle. Click Save Commands to Program Menu so you can access it later. After you saved the command, press “Run” to run the game. Then, you have successfully installed Recettear on your Mac.

Since I have the game up and running, I will start covering it tomorrow. Remember, support the indie developers and buy a copy… don’t pirate!

(Same instructions should work for Crossover under Linux)

Putty for Mac

$15.00

Purchase Bordeaux and help support Wineconf 2010 and FreeBSD

Last month we ran a 50% off sale on Bordeaux and this month we would like to do something a little different and raise some money for a good cause. With your help we would like to help support three very important projects.

• The first project is the Wine Development Fund. Proceeds from the WDF go toward supporting the annual Wine Conference. This year the Wine Conference will be held in Paris, France.
• The second project is freebsdnews.net. freebsdnews is a site about the current happenings in the FreeBSD community.
• The third project is the FreeBSD Foundation. The FreeBSD Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to supporting the FreeBSD Project.

We will donate 50% of all sales over the next month to each of the three projects listed above. Below is how we plan to distribute the funds to each project :

For each Linux and OpenSolaris sale we will donate 50% of sales to the WDF to help fund this years Wine Conference.

For each Mac, FreeBSD and PC-BSD sale we will donate 50% of sales to freebsdnews and then in return Gerard from freebsdnews will donate 10% of the funds he receives to the FreeBSD Foundation.

The remaining 50% covers our expenses and also will be used to hire a new developer to improve our UI for Bordeaux 3.0 (see below).

Here is a screenshot of a mockup of the upcoming Bordeaux 3.0 UI. From the toolbar you can select to see installed, available and unsupported apps. Under Edit there will be preferences with a link to our Cellar Manager. Also after you install an application you will be able to launch it from the Bordeaux UI and uninstall the application with a single mouse click. In the Cellar Manager we plan to add a "New" button, just click new and then create a new cellar. After the new cellar has been created you can then configure it and install applications or games into the newly made cellar.


The 50% donation will begin on Monday August 23st 2010 and run until Sunday October 3rd 2010.

Update 08/25/10

We would like to thank the folks at http://www.ixsystems.com/ for their support of FreeBSD / PC-BSD and for their recent purchase.

Update 09/22/10

We are happy to announce that we have now raised over $500.00 for WineConf 2010 and FreeBSD. :) Any organization, web site, or person who makes a purchase of $100.00 or more will in return be given a link back to your web site, as well as a huge "Thank You"
If for some reason you dont need Bordeaux at this time you can still make a donation via our Donations page.

At this time Bordeaux only cost $20.00 for Linux and *BSD and $25.00 for Mac and OpenSolaris. So with a purchase you will be helping four very important projects including the Bordeaux Project. If you dont currently need to run Windows Applications or Games on your system but you would still like to make a donation you can use our PayPal donation page to donate. All donations made through our donation page will be equally shared between each project.

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The Bordeaux Team

Putty for Mac

$15.00

Direct3D 10 and 11 Is Now Natively Implemented On Linux

Written by Michael Larabel

Its a pity Luca Barbieri or any Mesa / Gallium3D developers are not at Oktoberfest as they are deserving of more than a few Maß of Augustiner. In fact, today a new Gallium3D state tracker was pushed into Mesa and it's perhaps the most interesting state tracker for this open-source graphics driver architecture yet. Its a state tracker that exposes Microsoft's DirectX 10/11 API on Linux! And it's already working and can be hooked into Wine!

Luca Barbieri made a rather significant commit today that adds a state tracker dubbed "d3d1x", which implements the Direct3D 10/11 COM API in Gallium3D. Luca says this is just the initial version, but its already working and can run a few DirectX 10/11 texturing demos on Linux at the moment. This is not a matter of simply translating the Direct3D calls and converting them to OpenGL like how Wine currently handles it, but is natively implemented within Gallium3D and TGSI to speak directly to the underlying graphics driver and hardware. Thanks to Gallium3Ds architecture, this Direct3D support essentially becomes "free" to all Linux drivers with little to no work required.

As said in the commit, "The primary goal is to realize Galliums promise of multiple API support, and provide an API that can be easily implemented with just a very thin wrapper over Gallium, instead of the enormous amount of complex code needed for OpenGL. The secondary goal is to run Windows Direct3D 10/11 games on Linux using Wine."

In regards to Wine taking advantage of this state tracker, no DLLs have been published yet for Wine to hook into this state tracker, but Luca says that should be quite easy to accomplish.

If things could not get any better, "Fglrx and nvidia drivers can also be supported by writing a Gallium driver that talks to them using OpenGL, which is a relatively easy task. Thanks to the great design of Direct3D 10/11 and closeness to Gallium, this approach should not result in detectable overhead, and is the most maintainable way to do it, providing a path to switch to the open Gallium drivers once they are on par with the proprietary ones."

This is incredible news especially as Wine only has limited DirectX 10.0 support and lacks no form of DirectX 11.0 at the moment.

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