Bordeaux 2.0.0 for Linux Released

The Bordeaux Technology Group released Bordeaux 2.0.0 for Linux today. Bordeaux 2.0.0 marks major progress over older releases. 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 1.1.36, Cabextract, Mozilla Gecko, Unzip, Wget and other support libraries and tools. We have improved support for Microsoft Office 2007 (Word, Excel and PowerPoint) and preliminary support for Internet Explorer 7 in this release, there has also been many small bug fixes and tweaks on the back-end.
The cost of Bordeaux 2.0.0 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

Version 2.0.0 New Features:

• Bundle Wine 1.1.36
• Added Internet Explorer 7 support
• Improved Microsoft Office 2007 support
• Bundle Mozilla Gecko
• New shell based installer
• New Progress Bar
• Updated to the latest Winetricks

About Bordeaux:

The Bordeaux Technology Group is a software services and development company specializing in Windows compatibility software. Users of Linux, BSD, Solaris 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, Solaris or Mac OS X we can help.

Screenshots :

Left 4 Dead 2 (L4D2) in Steam with Bordeaux

Is Cedega Hanging in There?

In one of my past articles I made a bold assessment that it appeared Transgaming might be dropping support for their Cedega Wine software. However it now appears that Cedega might be hanging in there - After more than a year of silence there was finally an update posted in Cedega's "Den" (announcements section). The post promises the certification of two games, Torchlight and Defense Grid: The Awakening, that happen to work well under their "recently" released 7.3.3 engine (The latter of the two pleases me greatly, I had purchased DG on Steam over the holidays and it does not function properly under Wine/CXGames as of yet). Also provided is a very vague "Development Update" that promises better OpenGL performance and mentions that at some point in the near future we should see a more detailed development plan - Alas two weeks later and still nothing.

In the end what does all this mean? Maybe nothing, but then only time will tell. I'm hoping that Transgaming gets around to posting development updates faster than they have been about fixing their application voting system (which has been non-functional for close to two years now). If Transgaming want's to save their Linux product they need to get on the ball - and quick. They are no longer the only big player in the world of commercial "Win-on-Lin" for gaming. Codeweavers has already posted their plans for development in 2010 and since they already support L4D2 (one of the most recently released hit PC titles) Transgaming is going to be hard-pressed to play catch-up.

Now the really Cool thing is if you enter : TOM23 as your deal code, coupon offer you will receive a instant rebate of 20% off the regular price. Yes you read it here first! For a limited time new CodeWeavers CrossOver customers can purchase CX Games for only $29.96 and CX Pro for only $52.46.... If You or a friend, relative etc.. ever wanted to try CrossOver Games or the Pro version this is the time to do it.

Bordeaux 2.0.0 for Solaris and OpenSolaris Released

The Bordeaux Technology Group released Bordeaux 2.0.0 for Solaris today. Bordeaux 2.0.0 marks major progress over older releases. 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 1.1.36, Cabextract, Mozilla Gecko, Unzip, Wget and other support libraries and tools. We have also added preliminary support for Microsoft Office 2007 (Word, Excel and PowerPoint) and Internet Explorer 7 in this release, there has also been many small bug fixes and tweaks on the back-end.
The cost of Bordeaux 2.0.0 is $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.

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, Solaris 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, Solaris or Mac OS X we can help.

Version 2.0.0 New Features:

• Bundle Wine 1.1.36
• Added Internet Explorer 7 support
• Added Microsoft Office 2007 support
• Bundle Mozilla Gecko
• New shell based installer
• New Progress Bar
• Updated to the latest Winetricks

Here is some Screenshots of Bordeaux on OpenSolaris 2009.06

Bordeaux Menu in Applications Menu

The New Install Progress Bar

Internet Explorer 7 on OpenSolaris

Adobe Photoshop 6 with Bordeaux

IrfanView 4.25 with Bordeaux

Apple QuickTime Player 6.5.2 on OpenSolaris

Canonical to bundle CodeWeavers CrossOver?

In a official post on the Ubuntu Forums, user Matthew (a official Canonical employee?) asks users to complete a survey with the applications they would like to see in the upcoming versions of Ubuntu.

Among the applications one can find: Spotify, Pandora, Hulu, Skype, WoW, Picasa, Adobe Photoshop, Apple iTunes, CodeWeavers and a couple more applications.

I'm wondering if Canonical has plans to bundle CodeWeavers CrossOver with forthcoming releases? Most of the applications CodeWeavers already supports and the one or two apps they don't officially support will already run as Unsupported apps in CrossOver now. The only change would be for CodeWeavers to officially support the apps in a upcoming release.

So ask people what Apps/Games they would like to see running on Ubuntu then ask if they would also use Codeweavers..... I suppose if enough people say YES to the CodeWeavers question we just might see a bundle between the two companies.

Here is is the post, and link to the survey :

Please help the Canonical and Ubuntu leadership
We are trying to gather preferences for the apps that users would like to see in upcoming version of Ubuntu. While we all believe in the power of open source applications we are also very keen that users should get to choose the software they want to use. There are some great apps that aren't yet available to Ubuntu users and Canonical would like to know the priority that users would like to see them. This list is indicative not definitive and we would love to also read your suggestions in the free text box.

They are also requesting that anyone who has comments please do so here.

Note: there has been some confusion that I would like to clear up--this is not about applications to be included by default, but merely things that we may attempt to make more easily available for Ubuntu users to install for themselves from official repositories.