Macworld 2010 - CrossOver Mac

Jack Phinney from CodeWeavers demonstrates CrossOver Mac, which allows Mac users to run Windows apps (such as Internet Explorer or Microsoft Outlook) without having to install Windows.

Putty for Mac

$15.00

Wine 1.2-rc1 Released

The Wine development release 1.2-rc1 is now available.
This is the first release candidate for Wine 1.2. It marks the beginning of the code freeze period. Please give this release a good testing to help us make 1.2 as good as possible.
Whats new in this release:

• Many new toolbar icons.
• Support for alpha blending in image lists.
• Much more complete shader assembler.
• Support for Arabic font shaping and joining.
• A number of fixes for video rendering.
• Font antialiasing configuration through fontconfig.
• Improved handling of desktop link files.
• Various 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 1.2-rc1:

4654 ebasePro 2.12 doesn't start properly--missing plugin
4805 Direct music loader release
5616 Wanted: testing framework for bundled Winelib programs
6341 WEB.DE Messenger crashes
6533 Type mismatch 13 Error shows up in a VB-App.
7594 Wine window scrolling is broken
7797 Knight Rider runs extremely slowly
7950 DirectX strange render window cutoff in Candytron both Party and Final version
8287 Custom toolbar skin makes Irfan View 4.00 crash at start up
9263 Guild Wars terribly slow
9958 OleLoadPicturePath() should initialize COM apartment on its own if not previously done.
10583 Fonts: Subpixel hinting, No RGB or BGR
11892 GdipCreateBitmapFromFile & GdipCreateBitmapFromStream give upside down bitmap
11896 Civilization4.exe crashes because of unimplemented functions in msvcp71
12590 Yahoo widget engine 4.5, blank box, not being able to do anything
12869 Rollcage Stage II demo crashes
13278 Qtracker crashes
13579 Adobe Acrobat Standard 7 -- using menus on first startup causes X to freeze
14079 Dungeon Siege installation impossible
14195 EINTR in WS_select
14262 Wordview bullet in doc is not the same
14710 OleLoadPicturePath loads image in windows but not in wine, could cause access violation in some circumstances
14861 SetDIBits crashes with overlapping src/dst rectangles on the same bitmap
14891 Bitmaps with offset bits do not display correctly
15329 Unable to install Sony Picture Utility, Failed to load DLL Localesetting
15928 EasyPlot doesn't work
15969 Unsigned v1.2.1.93 installer crashes near the end of installation on first run
16602 Citrix ICA16 Client installer crashes after extraction
17058 Crayon Physics Deluxe - fullscreen doesn't work properly
17113 Electronic dictionary application
17166 Implement BiDi mirroring
17712 Installshield doesn't like spaces in uninstall shortcuts
17811 T-Online Browser: Bitmaps invisible (GdipCloneBitmapAreaI is a stub)
17860 Microsoft Office 2007 crashes on specific powerpoint file in gdi32/enhmetafile
18059 Unity Indie Trial exits because attrib.exe is missing
18291 Quicktime uninstaller shortcut fails
18625 Everest Poker startup text slightly off-centre
18757 Album software Foto de Klijne crashes on startup
18982 Word 2007 tab stop selection is invisible
18993 Shadows and selection circles z-fight in World of Warcraft
19234 Emperor fails to change resolution or be fullscreen
19848 Arma 2: Crash on startup
19877 Zeta Minibrowser crashes (because of stubbed CreateHardLinkW)
20204 enhanced metafile retrieval fails and crashes clipboard test
20210 Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 Expansions: Crashes to desktop while loading.
20533 Random black artifacts while playing The Settlers - 10th Anniversary - Demo
20676 winedbg minidumps can not be loaded by WinDbg
21287 Miranda appearance is broken in many ways
21376 The Bat! - Access Violations on attachement view
21443 CryptSignHash() fails when CryptCreateHash() ALG_ID is set to CALG_SSL3_SHAMD5
21829 Kurso3 hangs in the end of install
21978 Gestan does not install
22114 Supreme Commander 2: User interfaces flickers and some UI elements are missing
22140 Unexpected bold font in CDBurnerXP Pro 3
22162 Knights of the Old Republic: Cursor Doesn't Show
22211 HTML-Kit Tools trial exits silently while displaying its splash screen
22252 Rhiannon installer hangs: possibly caused by a regression
22272 CDBurnerXP crashes if a data disc is inserted
22284 Osmos: mouse pointer disappears in the menus
22290 PlayOnline viewer can't be resized in windowed mode
22334 Hearts of Iron III - missing texture on initial window
22353 Application written in VB6 crashes when setting the .colwidth property of a msflexgrid
22356 Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II - weapons flicker
22435 Wine un-highlights selected text when right button is clicked
22443 AutoCAD 2008: Icons have pinky background in "filter applied" drop down menu
22444 AutoCAD 2008: No icons in drop down menu
22453 Office 2007 text is not visibily highlighted
22455 Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic does not start
22457 Disabled toolbar icons are black
22463 mouse cursor display broken
22535 King's Bounty Armored Princess graphics glitches
22543 winedbg crashes on startup in combination with crysis
22601 .NET Framework 2.0 installer displays crash dialog, fails with "function failed" error message
22624 multithread app using GDI and directx may cause deadlock
22625 No card selector available for GL vendor 3 and card vendor 8086
22632 Blitzkrieg game crashes when using 'Save' option
22646 Modern Warfare 2: Fog and smoke rendered incorrectly
22650 Time of Defiance login attempt results in WSAIoctl unsupported WS_IOCTL cmd (9800000c)
22653 Serif WebPlus X2 does not install
22657 3DMark 2001se - Car Chase - High Detail shows black screen
22666 wine64: does not create a proper WINEPREFIX when -O0 is used, breaks winetest
22676 Total Commander icons do not appear in the task bar
22694 Spiceworks crashes during install
22699 Swapchain_blit enhancement introduces y-axis inversion
22704 Dungeon Keeper 2 shows X-cursor
22709 crypt32 doesn't support wildcard certificates with alternate name extension
22717 duplicate symbols in ldt.c ... bad inline asm
22735 Resize of PlayOnline viewer's window makes it's content upside down
22746 CDBurnerXP 3.0.x uses a wrong/invisible cursor on its mode selection screen
22750 ControlSpy message parameters listboxes don't have frames
22755 Installer program of "de rouck" freezes
22758 MS Office 2007: riched20 assertion failure in CDKey registration screen
22792 VLC Media Player crashes on first run

Run Microsoft Windows Applications and Games on Mac, Linux or ChromeOS save up to 20% off  CodeWeavers CrossOver+ today.

Bordeaux 2.0.4 on Mac Screenshot tour

This is a Bordeaux on Mac 10.6 Screenshot tour. This tour will show you how easy it is to install Bordeaux on your Mac and start installing Windows Applications and Games. Bordeaux has a single dependency on GTK-Framework once the GTK-Framework is installed Bordeaux will install and run on your Mac.

After your purchase of Bordeaux download the installer to your desktop. Then download the GTK-Framework to your desktop. Once this is done the install process is ready to begin.

Double click the GTK-Framework package to begin the install.

After you complete the GTK-Framework install you can now Install Bordeaux.

After the install is complete Bordeaux will be listed in your Application Menu.

Select the Bordeaux Application Installer to start Bordeaux. You can also configure Wine and install un-supported apps with the tools we provide.

Bordeaux GUI on Apple Mac 10.6

Select your application of choice, and the installation will begin.

Bordeaux also runs on Linux, FreeBSD, PC-BSD and OpenSolaris. The cost of Bordeaux at this time is only $25.00 for Mac and OpenSolaris and $20.00 for Linux and BSD.

Putty for Mac

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Review Codeweavers Crossover Mac 9.0

When you absolutely must run a Windows application on your Mac, you've got three options. Boot Camp will get you up and running with a proper full Windows installation, supplying all the raw power your hardware can muster and giving your programs 100% compatibility, at least in theory. This is Windows were talking about, after all.

Next comes virtualisation – using applications such as Parallels Desktop and VMWare Fusion – which enables you to run your Windows installation on top of OS X, sacrificing a little grunt for the convenience of running everything in one bordered desktop.

And then theres Crossover. Its basically a Mac port of Linuxs Wine, a compatibility layer for Windows apps; its so close, in fact, that it maintains Wine's terminology, employing Bottles to contain virtual system settings and instructions pertaining to your individual installed apps.
Unlike the other two options, Crossover doesnt need a full copy of Windows or the expensive licence that goes with it. It employs intricate emulators of all of Windows key functions to run apps completely independently of Microsofts operating system.

Still a way to go
Crossover has had its detractors over the years, and for good reason; here we are at version 9, and its only just catching up with some of the more major Windows applications on the market.
Theres a huge list of programs – 700 or so – that CodeWeavers rates as Gold, and even this designation merely signifies that the application mostly runs as expected. This number does cover many of the applications that make it most useful.

Internet Explorer is there, for instance, which makes testing web designs with the worlds most popular browser relatively straightforward. Legacy versions of Media Player are also supported, which is a cheeky way of playing WMV video.


Windows Media Player works well enough in Crossover.

Putty for Mac

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CXGames 9.0 A Hands on Review

Back on October of last year I did a comparison of Cedega and CXGames. As of yesterday Codeweavers launched their CXGames 9.0. If we had heard any news or updates from Cedega in the last five months this would be an updated comparison, but since Cedega has not changed I simply am going to be reviewing the newly released CXGames.

The first thing you will notice when using CXGames 9.0 if you had used past versions is that the GUI has under gone a refreshing change.

Application Installer:

Bottle Manager:One of the key things you will notice when installing a game is that there are now "profiles" built in for games. Officially supported games have a profile as well currently a handful of other games. Similar to how Cedega works people can now submit the Wine settings they use to successfully run a game to Codeweavers so others can replicate these settings with a single click from the installer. With the number of users Codeweavers has accumulated over the years I have no doubt that we will soon see profiles for the multitude of gold and silver rated unsupported applications listed in the Codeweaver's data base.

CodeWeavers Launches CrossOver Games 9.0 for Linux and Mac

SAINT PAUL, Minn. (May 12, 2010) – Despite the massive distraction of this weekend's theatrical release of Iron Man 2, CodeWeavers, Inc., a leading developer of software products that turn Mac OS X and Linux into Windows-compatible operating systems, today announces it has completed the development of CrossOver Games 9.0 for both Mac and Linux.
CrossOver Games allows Windows games to be used on Mac and Linux PCs without the need for a Windows operating system license.
Available beginning today for download at www.codeweavers.com, CrossOver Games 9.0:

• supports the new Steam UI; and,
• StarCraft 2 (beta) and StarTrek Online; and
• enables users to install games from a single screen and a single click on CodeWeavers' compatibility center.

Historically, CodeWeavers programmers complete a software upgrade with a straight 96-hour burn fueled by Red Bull, Twizzlers and vending machine pretzels. The release of CrossOver Games 9.0 marks the first time CodeWeavers launched a new version of its software amidst the release of a blockbuster summer film, which typically grinds production to a halt as CodeWeavers programmers camp outside the theater for three days to secure the best seats on opening night.
"It's corporate policy that we schedule our software releases during weak spots in the movie calendar. Early Fall. Late Winter. Like, when a Meryl Streep film comes out," said Jeremy White, CodeWeavers chief executive officer. "What can I say? I screwed up. I got confused. I forgot about Iron Man 2.
"Hence the anomaly for this week's release of CrossOver Games 9.0, which also enables gamers to download installation 'recipes' directly from the CodeWeavers online Compatibility Database, located at C4.codeweavers.com," White added. "If another CrossOver Games user figures out how to use CrossOver to install a Windows-compatible game, he can upload this installation recipe to our database. For gamers using windows, that means they can switch to Mac or Linux without much worry.
"Our programmers were enraged at the scheduling conflict, though many snuck out late Friday afternoon to catch – spoiler alert here – Iron Man take down Whiplash," White said.
To ensure programmers continued working Saturday and Sunday without break, White created a makeshift "electric whip" to emulate Mickey Rourke's character's weapon of choice.
"Essentially, it was 48 strands of 28-inch stripped coax cables sewn into the fingers of an Ace Hardware work glove," White said. "I walked around cubes in our office screaming 'full Steam ahead, minions!' in a mediocre Russian accent while swinging the whip. It worked, more or less."
"At around 9 a.m. Sunday morning while quietly writing code at my desk, White's whip snagged me just below the groin on my left leg," said Jon Parshall, chief operating officer at CodeWeavers.
"Ugh. Fourteen stitches plus the pitiful sight of a grown man writhing on the floor in his own pool of blood," White said. "Hopefully sales of CrossOver Games 9.0 will help pay his medical bills."
CrossOver Games 9.0 is download-only and can be purchased for $39.95 at www.codeweavers.com.
About CodeWeavers
Founded in 1996 as a general software consultancy, CodeWeavers 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 Linux. CodeWeavers is recognized as a leader in open-source Windows porting technology, and maintains development offices in Minnesota, the United Kingdom and elsewhere around the world. The company is privately held. For more information about CodeWeavers, log on to www.codeweavers.com.

Putty for Mac

$15.00

Bordeaux 2.0.4 for Linux Released

The Bordeaux Technology Group released Bordeaux 2.0.4 for Linux today. Bordeaux 2.0.4 is a maintenance release that fixes a number of small bugs. With this release we have changed the Bordeux UI from a GTKDialog to a GTKWindow, the "OK" button has also been re-named to "Install". We have upgraded our Wine bundle from 1.1.36 to 1.1.41, updated to the latest winetricks release, added support for the new Steam UI, and changed the progress bar back to Zenity.
The Bordeaux UI changes come from our working agreement with StormOS.
With version 2.0.0 and onward we bundle our own Wine build and many tools and libraries that Wine depends upon. With this release we bundle Wine 1.1.41, Cabextract, Mozilla Gecko, Unzip, Wget and other support libraries and tools.
The cost of Bordeaux 2.0.4 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 97
• Microsoft Office Visio 2003
• Microsoft Office Project 2003
• Adobe Photoshop 6
• Adobe Image Ready 3
• Adobe Photoshop 7
• Adobe Image Ready 7
• Adobe Photoshop CS
• Adobe Photoshop CS2
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 7
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 6
• Steam and Steam based Games
• Apple QuickTime 6.5.2 Player
• IrfaView 4.25 (Image files only)
• Winetricks support

About Bordeaux:
The Bordeaux Technology Group is a software services and development company specializing in Windows compatibility software. Users of Linux, BSD, OpenSolaris and Mac 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 their 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, BSD, Solaris or Mac OS X or a software user that needs to run a Windows application on Linux, BSD, OpenSolaris or Mac OS X we can help.
Version 2.0.4 New Features:

• Bundle Wine 1.1.41
• Support the new Steam UI
• Many small fixes to the UI
• Fixes to wine menu builder
• The Bordeux UI is now a GTKWindow
• Progress Bar now uses Zenity
• Updated to the latest Winetricks

Putty for Mac

$15.00

Crossover Games

I own an Imac so that means my gaming choices are limited. Since Apple has switched to Intel chips, it is possible for most games to be ported via a wrapper program that mimics a Windows environment. Yes, of course if gaming is that important to a computer user they could use the Bootcamp program and then load in Windows. And I've thought about doing that, and I may still become a bootcamper. However right now, I don't want to drop upwards of $200 for the Windows system.

On Massively, a commentator mentioned that he/she played Lord of the Rings Online via a wrapper program called Crossover Games. That idea intrigued me so I looked into the software. The Crossover suite of programs are offered by CodeWeavers. These programs mimic Windows using a wrapper based on the open source Wine project.

Crossover games is the "official" version of the Wine opensource project. It is affordable at $39.95 (the fee supports the Wine opensource programmers) and the installation is simple. What isn't simple is getting the subsequent windows games to work properly. Since this option is rather arcane no matter how easy Codeweavers has made it, you will probably need to know a little something about programming to get anything working.

To use Crossover Games, the user must create a mini-windows shell called a bottle. You can pick which flavor of windows you want this bottle to mimic (vista, winxp, 98, 2000). A bottle must be created for each game you want to play. Then you can load the games into the bottle via disc or downloads. Theoretically, it should be easy.

However I could get nothing to work with it. The LOTR instructions were easy however the program doesn't recognize the official game install file. I tried to download the free to play Uru Online. The installation progress was successful. However the site registration is no longer available so I can't log in to the program. As a lark I also tried to install Blue Mars. However there was an error that had something to do with the install aware program. I was at wit's end and wondered if I could use the software for anything. Finally I managed to see the program in action with the game Wizard 101(review later). And I can say that Crossover works very well for what it is.

This solution is very ad hoc and is in no way a substitute for Mac Bootcamp. But if you can't afford to spring for the Windows software at the moment, this program will do for the time being. I recommend it.

 

 Run Microsoft Windows Applications and Games on Mac, Linux or ChromeOS save up to 20% off  CodeWeavers CrossOver+ today.

Why there is a Market for Linux Games

Linux users are starved for quality games - there is no doubting that. Bring up the topic of a Linux port on most gaming forums and you will typically see responses about the market share of the operating system, that Linux users are cheap (thus why they use a free operating system) or there are too many package formats to support (which really is a non-issue). I'm not even going to bother trying to argue the point of market share, we all know Windows is a large majority and Linux is the under dog - lets leave it at that.

Lets stop and think about something for a moment - nowhere near all of those Windows users are gamers. In fact with the world we live in that is so heavily populated with consoles I would be surprised if even half of the people using Windows are the type that go out and purchase the latest and greatest PC games (or even play casually). Linux users on the other hand are typically a more tech savvy bunch and tech savvy people more often than not tend to gravitate towards being gamers.

Alright - enough speculation and assumptions, lets look at some cold hard numbers. Two recent games that had successful Linux ports would be 2DBoy's World of Goo and Frictional Game's enumbra Series. 2DBoy reported that since they released their Linux port of the game 10% of their total game sales have been for the Linux platform. Frictional Games reports a similair statistic - in fact 12% of their sales for the Penumbra series up to this point are for the Linux operating system.

Still need more convincing? If you have not been made aware of it yet as of my posting this there are still two days left to participate in the Humble Indie Bundle experiment. The Humble Indie Bundle offers your five games (including World of Goo and the first of the Penumbra series) at what ever cost you can afford. All five of the games are fully cross-platform (Windows, OSX, Linux) and when you make your donation you are asked to mark which operating system you are purchasing the games for. Take a look at the following statistics up until this point from the donations they have received:


Judging by that pie chart Linux users appear to make up almost 25% of the donations and their average donation amount is almost double that of the average Windows user donation. This means that of the 571,048$ donated thus far 142,762$ is from Linux users. But remember Linux users are cheap and their is no money in Linux game market - right.

Games that already exist on only the Windows platform need ports as well. In fact there is so much demand for some of these games to run on Linux that Codeweavers has a business commercially supporting many of these titles on the Linux operating system (it's not perfect - but for now it works).

Putty for Mac

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Wine 1.1.44 vs Vista Benchmarks

Dan Kegel has been running some DirectX and OpenGL benchmarks on Ubuntu + Wine and Windows Vista, Here is the results of Dans recent benchmark test.

Yagmarkdata now has data from five different benchmarks: 3dmark 2000, 2001, 2006 and heaven2_opengl, d3d9, and running on a semi-whimpy e8400 dual core box with an nvidia gt 220 card, on both Vista and Ubuntu+Wine.

First, the good news:

the OpenGL version of the Heaven benchmark achieved 99% of the expected framerate on Wine, not bad, and it looks good, too. The 3dmark* demos look good in general.

And now the bad news:

in general, Wine's D3D version achieves only half to three-quarters the performance of Vista's. The Heaven D3D benchmark doesn't look right in quite a few ways (and one regression is very recent), requires more video ram than on Windows, and hangs at the end. 3dmark2001 has a strange water problem in the nature test at 30 seconds. 3dmark06 lacks shadows in the firefly forest.

Run Microsoft Windows Applications and Games on Mac, Linux or ChromeOS save up to 20% off  CodeWeavers CrossOver+ today.

Wine 1.2 Release plans

Wine 1.2 release plans were sent to the wine-devel mailing list from Alexandre Julliard the Wine project leader. Here is the release plans and Alexandres email to wine-devel.

Folks,

The 64-bit support is now more or less complete, and we have most of the fancy new icons, so it's time to think about the next stable release.

Unless some major problems come up, 1.1.44 will be the last of the 1.1.x series. The next release will be 1.2-rc1, which will mark the beginning of the code freeze. This should result in a 1.2 final sometime in June.

As usual the code freeze will become more and more drastic as we get closer to release, so if you have major changes to make, now is pretty much the last minute.

I'd encourage everyone to look through the list of nominated 1.2 bugs, and also to check the regression reports for anything that might be in your area. We should strive to have as few regressions from 1.0 as possible, so regressions fixes will have priority during code freeze. And of course changes that don't impact the code, like translations or test fixes, can go in until quite late.

--
Alexandre Julliard

Bordeaux 2.0.4 for Mac Released

The Bordeaux Technology Group released Bordeaux 2.0.4 for Mac today. Bordeaux 2.0.4 for Mac is a final build and is considered stable. With this final release we can only support Snow Leopard 10.6.x and higher systems. We have changed the progress dialog to a CocoaDialog, (AppleScript Dialog is in the works) Wine bundle updated to 1.1.41, updated to the most current winetricks release, More fixes to the Bordeaux UI, there has also been many small bug fixes in this release.

The Bordeaux UI changes come from our working agreement with StormOS.

With version 2.0.4 and onward we bundle our own Wine build and many tools and libraries that Wine depends upon. With this release we bundle Wine 1.1.41, Cabextract, Mozilla Gecko, Unzip, Wget and other support libraries and tools.

The cost of Bordeaux 2.0.4 for Mac is $20.00.(On 05/17/2010 the price will be increased to $25.00) 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.

Please read our Mac readme file before you use Bordeaux.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

• Intel Apple Mac (Mac Pro, Mac Mini, iMac, Macbook, Macbook Pro and Macbook Air)
• Mac OS X Snow Leopard OS-X 10.6 or later is required to install this package.
• Gtk-Framework-2.14 2.14 Download

2.0.4 application support :

• Microsoft Office 2007 Applications (Word, Excel, Powerpnt)
• Microsoft Office 2003 Applications (Word, Excel, Powerpnt)
• Microsoft Office 2000 Applications (Word, Excel, Powerpnt)
• Microsoft Visio 2003
• Microsoft Project 2003
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 7
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 6
• IrfanView 4.25

2.0.4 New Features :

• Updated to Wine version 1.1.41
• Better support for IE 7
• Even more fixes to .app Bundle support
• Fixes to Icon support
• libpng and libjpg fixes
• Fixed allot of bugs in the Bordeaux UI
• Synced to newest winetricks release
• Many other small bug fixes

Some recent Screenshots :

Bordeaux User Interface on OS-X Snow Leopard.

Bordeax Starting the Internet Explorer 7 Install.

Internet Explorer 7 running on OS-X Snow Leopard.

Microsoft Office 2003 Install.

Microsoft Office 2003 Install has Completed.

Microsoft Word 2003 on OS-X Snow Leopard.

Microsoft Excel 2003 on OS-X Snow Leopard.

About Bordeaux:

The Bordeaux Technology Group is a software services and development company specializing in Windows compatibility software. Users of Linux, BSD, OpenSolaris and Mac 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 their 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, BSD, OpenSolaris or Mac OS X or a software user that needs to run a Windows application on Linux, BSD, OpenSolaris or Mac OS X we can help.
We use PayPal as our preferred payment provider, with PayPal you do not need an account to make a transaction simply select to pay via credit card, its very simple and fast.

Putty for Mac

$15.00

Bordeaux 2.0.4 for FreeBSD and PC-BSD Released

The Bordeaux Technology Group released Bordeaux 2.0.4 for FreeBSD and PC-BSD today. Bordeaux 2.0.4 is a maintenance release that fixes a number of small bugs. With this release we have changed the Bordeux UI from a GTKDialog to a GTKWindow, the "OK" button has also been re-named to "Install". We have upgraded our Wine bundle from 1.1.36 to 1.1.41, updated to the latest winetricks release, added support for the new Steam UI, and changed the progress bar back to Zenity.
The Bordeaux UI changes come from our working agreement with StormOS.

With version 2.0.0 and onward we bundle our own Wine build and many tools and libraries that Wine depends upon. With this release we bundle Wine 1.1.41, Cabextract, Mozilla Gecko, Unzip, Wget and other support libraries and tools.

The cost of Bordeaux 2.0.4 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 97
• Microsoft Office Visio 2003
• Microsoft Office Project 2003
• Adobe Photoshop 6
• Adobe Image Ready 3
• Adobe Photoshop 7
• Adobe Image Ready 7
• Adobe Photoshop CS
• Adobe Photoshop CS2
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 7
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 6
• Steam and Steam based Games
• Apple QuickTime 6.5.2 Player
• IrfaView 4.25 (Image files only)
• Winetricks support

About Bordeaux:

The Bordeaux Technology Group is a software services and development company specializing in Windows compatibility software. Users of Linux, BSD, OpenSolaris and Mac 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 their 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, BSD, OpenSolaris or Mac OS X or a software user that needs to run a Windows application on Linux, BSD, OpenSolaris or Mac OS X we can help.

Version 2.0.4 New Features:

• Bundle Wine 1.1.41
• Support the new Steam UI
• Many small fixes to the UI
• Support for PC-BSD 7 and 8
• The Bordeux UI is now a GTKWindow
• Progress Bar now uses Zenity
• Updated to the latest Winetricks

Update 05/05/2010 :
I have been asked to add some screenshots of Bordeaux 2.04 on PC-BSD. Bordeaux runs the same on FreeBSD 8 as it does on PC-BSD.
 

Putty for Mac

$15.00

Some WINE with your Starcraft 2?

It finally happened. I have a Starcraft2 closed beta key! What feels like decades ago now I had applied for a Starcraft2 beta key on Battle.net and had all but given up hope after many months of waiting when a friend was kind enough to give me one of his invite passes. I entered the key into my account and was thoroughly excited when I saw the beta appear in my downloads. I was clicking through the website as quick as I could so I could get the game downloading, when reality came crashing down on top of me as I hit the downloads page and was asked to choose between a Windows and an OSX client.

What is a Linux user to do? With the recent release of Ubuntu 10.04 I had removed Windows 7 from my hardrive as it had not been booted into in over a month and was simply taking up storage space. My first thought was to simply reinstall Windows 7, giving it just enough space to boot and install Starcraft. Then I thought about the fact that I almost never reboot my system and that having to restart just to play Starcraft would be a real kill joy (and a time waster).

I run all of my source engine games on Linux via CXGames however upon looking at their entry for Starcraft II I had little faith that it would work under Crossover. Not quite ready to give up hope yet I headed over to the WINE AppDB entry for SC2, lo-and-behold it had a gold rating! Browsing through the page you will find a wonderful HOWTO for recompiling WINE from git with a custom patch for SC2. Always one to jump in with both feet first I promptly uninstalled my current WINE version from my system and began downloading/compiling a patch version of 1.1.43 Twenty minutes later (I have a fairly good processor) I had the patched version of WINE built and installed. I then proceeded to download the beta client and get it installing under WINE
 

(I also followed the directions here that contains some extra tweaks for running the beta under WINE, it also installs SC2 to it's own WINE prefix).

Run Microsoft Windows Applications and Games on Mac, Linux or ChromeOS save up to 20% off  CodeWeavers CrossOver+ today.

Codeweavers CrossOver Mac Run Windows apps minus Windows

By Cliff Joseph

Like many Mac users, I use Apples Boot Camp to switch between the Mac OS and Windows as required. However, I also usevirtualization tools - Parallels Desktop and VMWare Fusion - which have the added convenience of allowing you to run Mac and Windows programs side-by-side.

Codeweavers CrossOver: run PC games on a Mac

The only drawback with virtualization technology is that it cant provide the same performance as running Windows software natively, as Boot Camp does. This is especially important when it comes to demanding programs such as 3D games. And, of course, the dual-boot and virtualisation approaches both require you to install a full copy of Windows.

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Codeweavers CrossOver now provides a third alternative for running Windows software on a Mac – and one that doesnt require a copy of Windows. CrossOver is actually a paid-for version of the open-source Wine project, which provides technical support and a new graphical interface in return for the £26 licence fee.

There are two versions of CrossOver available. CrossOver Mac is designed for running general productivity apps such as Microsoft Office, while CrossOver Games focuses on running entertainment software.

There are separate versions of general apps (left) and games

I asked Codeweavers for more detailed information about the differences between the two versions, and its illuminating response was: “CrossOver Mac runs Windows applications while CrossOver Games runs Windows games."

Regardless of finer technical details, the two versions work in a very similar fashion. To install the program you simply download the CrossOver disk image file from the Codeweavers web site, open it, and then drag and drop the CrossOver application onto your hard disk.

Prime CrossOver with the name of the app you want to install

When you launch CrossOver it presents you with a simple Welcome screen that prompts you to insert the installer disk for the Windows program that you want to install. Its also possible to install software that youve downloaded from the Internet as long as youve got the full installer required for that piece of software.

Rather than simply copying the program files onto your Macs hard disk, CrossOver creates a "bottle" – a file that Codeweavers describes as a "virtual Windows environment" – and then installs the program into it. The bottle contains elements – such as a virtual Windows registry – that, in effect, fool the program into thinking that its running on Windows.

This approach can be very effective – but only if CrossOver is compatible with the specific Windows programs that you want to use. Codeweavers maintains a compatibility database that rates hundreds of Windows apps according to a rather convoluted system of "medals". For instance, my copy of Microsoft Publisher 2003 gets a gold medal rating, which means that it should run well enough for everyday use.

Check for app compatibility first

However, Word 2003 and Excel 2003 only get a silver medal - more or less OK, but there may be occasional bugs - while the more recent Microsoft Office 2007 just gets a bronze. The database also lists a large number of programs as "untested" or "known not to work".
I tested the Office 2003 and Office 2007 suites, and those programs did run well – more smoothly, in fact, than using either Parallels or Fusion. CrossOver even makes Windows programs look a bit more Mac-like by adding a new title bar complete with the Macs candy-coloured control buttons.

Windows apps get it little of the OS X look & feel

However, the situation wasn’t quite so rosy when I tried CrossOver Games. I normally test PCs by checking their performance with Far Cry 2, but that falls into the doesnt work category. My current favourite game is Dragon Age: Origins - it gets a silver medal for compatibility, but I repeatedly got an error message when attempting to install it from disk. I found a fellow sufferer on the Codeweaver support forums who had encountered the same error message, but theres no word of a solution yet.
Another old favourite is Guild Wars, which also gets a silver rating. This installed easily and was quite playable on a MacBook, although the frame rate under CrossOver was only about half of what we got when running the same game under Boot Camp.

Full Steam ahead with CrossOver Games 9.0 beta

From Jeremy White's Blog :
Software guys are often accused of wanting to spend too much time polishing their beloved programs. I'm very guilty of that myself, and that's doubly hard because of our work on Wine. While Wine is amazing, it's not perfect, so there is a challenging balance in deciding that we've made enough progress to justify a release. Of course, if you let us software guys decide, we'll take forever and never ship anything.

Luckily for our gaming customers, Valve has forced our hand. That is, they have released an entirely rewritten version of Steam today. And, unfortunately, it does not work at all in our existing CrossOver Games releases. And since Steam is a large part of what our customers use CrossOver Games for, we've been forced to rush out a release to provide that support. We've been in a mad scramble this past month; Wine did not run the new GUI at all. We finally fixed it last week, just in time for the production launch by Valve.

So I am happy to announce that we're making a beta version of our CrossOver Games 9.0 release available today. We're feeling pretty good about it; it runs the new Steam GUI, and quite a few games work very nicely. However, we really haven't had much time to test it or shake out any problems. So we really recommend it only for customers that need to use the new Steam GUI.
We hope to ship the 'real' 9.0 very quickly; if you're not using Steam, please give us a bit more time for that picky polish .

Cheers,
Jeremy

CodeWeavers Releases Crossover Office 9.0.1 for MAC and Linux

SAINT PAUL, Minn. (April 23, 2010) -- CodeWeavers, Inc., a leading developer of software products that turn Mac OS X and Linux into Windows-compatible operating systems, today announced the release of CrossOver 9.0.1 for both Mac and Linux. CrossOver allows Windows software to be used on Mac and Linux PCs without the need for a Windows operating system license.

About CodeWeavers
Founded in 1996 as a general software consultancy, CodeWeavers 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 Linux. CodeWeavers is recognized as a leader in open-source Windows porting technology, and maintains development offices in Minnesota, the United Kingdom and elsewhere around the world. The company is privately held. For more information about CodeWeavers, log on to www.codeweavers.com.

Change Log For CrossOver Linux

9.0.1 CrossOver Linux

• CrossOver Changes:
  • Certain bottles never stopped initializing; now they start up properly.
  • Renamed downloaded installer files so that you can tell what they are
  • Fixed demo registration on Mandriva 2010
  • Fixed a bug with accessing very old CrossOver bottles
  • Fixed auto-opening of c4p files (previously the file-type association was broken.)
  • A few minor cosmetic and behavior changes in the CrossOver Installer.
• Application support improvements:
  • Fixed file importation of .qif files into Quicken 2010
  • Fixed serious performance problems for certain large Quicken datafiles
  • Fixed an Outlook during connection to an Exchange server
  • Fixed an Outlook 2003 printing crash
  • Fixed a variety of other Outlook freezes and crashes
  • Improved Office 2003 service pack installation
  • Fixed a crash in Access 2000; this app should be usable again.
  • Fixed HTML editing in Outlook 2003
  • Fixed a crash in IE7 when 'help' was selected
  • Fixed printing in IE7
  • Fixed a crash associated with the JVM in IE6
  • Fixed a crash in Visio 2003 and 2007
  • Fixed server connections in Architecture 7.5 (requires reinstall)

Change Log For CrossOver Mac

9.0.1 CrossOver Mac

• CrossOver Changes:
  • Certain bottles never stopped initializing; now they start up properly.
  • Renamed downloaded installer files so that you can tell what they are
  • Fixed a bug with accessing very old CrossOver bottles
  • Fixed handling of custom c4p files on OSX Tiger
  • Fixed auto-opening of c4p files (previously the file-type association was broken.)
  • A few minor cosmetic and behavior changes in the CrossOver Installer.
• Application support improvements:
  • Fixed file importation of .qif files into Quicken 2010
  • Fixed serious performance problems for certain large Quicken datafiles
  • Fixed an Outlook during connection to an Exchange server
  • Fixed an Outlook 2003 printing crash
  • Fixed a variety of other Outlook freezes and crashes
  • Improved Office 2003 service pack installation
  • Fixed a crash in Access 2000; this app should be usable again.
  • Fixed HTML editing in Outlook 2003
  • Fixed a crash in IE7 when 'help' was selected
  • Fixed printing in IE7
  • Fixed a crash associated with the JVM in IE6
  • Fixed a crash in Visio 2003 and 2007
  • Fixed server connections in Architecture 7.5 (requires reinstall)

CodeWeavers Releases Crossover Office 9.0.1 for MAC and Linux

SAINT PAUL, Minn. (April 23, 2010) -- CodeWeavers, Inc., a leading developer of software products that turn Mac OS X and Linux into Windows-compatible operating systems, today announced the release of CrossOver 9.0.1 for both Mac and Linux. CrossOver allows Windows software to be used on Mac and Linux PCs without the need for a Windows operating system license.

About CodeWeavers
Founded in 1996 as a general software consultancy, CodeWeavers 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 Linux. CodeWeavers is recognized as a leader in open-source Windows porting technology, and maintains development offices in Minnesota, the United Kingdom and elsewhere around the world. The company is privately held. For more information about CodeWeavers, log on to www.codeweavers.com.

Change Log For CrossOver Linux

9.0.1 CrossOver Linux

• CrossOver Changes:
  • Certain bottles never stopped initializing; now they start up properly.
  • Renamed downloaded installer files so that you can tell what they are
  • Fixed demo registration on Mandriva 2010
  • Fixed a bug with accessing very old CrossOver bottles
  • Fixed auto-opening of c4p files (previously the file-type association was broken.)
  • A few minor cosmetic and behavior changes in the CrossOver Installer.
• Application support improvements:
  • Fixed file importation of .qif files into Quicken 2010
  • Fixed serious performance problems for certain large Quicken datafiles
  • Fixed an Outlook during connection to an Exchange server
  • Fixed an Outlook 2003 printing crash
  • Fixed a variety of other Outlook freezes and crashes
  • Improved Office 2003 service pack installation
  • Fixed a crash in Access 2000; this app should be usable again.
  • Fixed HTML editing in Outlook 2003
  • Fixed a crash in IE7 when 'help' was selected
  • Fixed printing in IE7
  • Fixed a crash associated with the JVM in IE6
  • Fixed a crash in Visio 2003 and 2007
  • Fixed server connections in Architecture 7.5 (requires reinstall)

Change Log For CrossOver Mac

9.0.1 CrossOver Mac

• CrossOver Changes:
  • Certain bottles never stopped initializing; now they start up properly.
  • Renamed downloaded installer files so that you can tell what they are
  • Fixed a bug with accessing very old CrossOver bottles
  • Fixed handling of custom c4p files on OSX Tiger
  • Fixed auto-opening of c4p files (previously the file-type association was broken.)
  • A few minor cosmetic and behavior changes in the CrossOver Installer.
• Application support improvements:
  • Fixed file importation of .qif files into Quicken 2010
  • Fixed serious performance problems for certain large Quicken datafiles
  • Fixed an Outlook during connection to an Exchange server
  • Fixed an Outlook 2003 printing crash
  • Fixed a variety of other Outlook freezes and crashes
  • Improved Office 2003 service pack installation
  • Fixed a crash in Access 2000; this app should be usable again.
  • Fixed HTML editing in Outlook 2003
  • Fixed a crash in IE7 when 'help' was selected
  • Fixed printing in IE7
  • Fixed a crash associated with the JVM in IE6
  • Fixed a crash in Visio 2003 and 2007
  • Fixed server connections in Architecture 7.5 (requires reinstall)

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