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"Could you install Office on my Mac for me?" "No."
"Come on. Here's my discs and..."
"These discs are for a Windows computer."
"But the guy at the Apple store told me the Mac could run Windows..."
"Yes, if you use Boot Camp, and obtain a licensed copy of Windows, sure. Same as any other computer."
"So, I can't run Office on my Mac?"

Actually you can using CrossOver.

This. Bring Steam on Linux and i'll gladly delete the windows partition.

http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxgames/

It doesn't work for all the games, but many do. And steam is officially supported

Why not? WINE should be able to run virtually any windows software, right?

Not at all, where did you get the idea? Wine runs software if it happens to implement all APIs the software needs. The Windows API is huge and Wine does not implement all of it, by far. It rightly concentrates on progress in the areas that are used by most software. There are application databases if you want to know details about supported software, at http://www.winehq.org/ and http://www.codeweavers.com/ (commercial Wine variant)

Run Codeweavers commercial Wine version if you want guarantees and little hassle. See, e.g. http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/search/?name=microsoft+office

Yes, you can get MS office with support.

TransGaming did some really nasty things back in the days - after all, it was so bad that the WINE devs decided the best thing to do was relicense WINE from BSD to LGPL. While TransGaming is legally in the right since they forked the code prior to the license switch, what they did still doesn't sit well.

Why support them when you can support the WINE guys by buying CodeWeaver's Crossover product? At least CodeWeavers directly supports WINE, and all the patches CodeWeavers make to support new games and apps make it back into WINE for everyone to enjoy?

Even the WINE guys recommend CodeWeavers.

Official Wine support would certainly be a step in the right direction. I played WoW under Wine long ago and I got the impression that while it wasn't officially supported, it wasn't such an unsavory configuration that Blizzard would tell you to bugger off if you asked for support for it. I have no evidence to back this up but, I also got the impression that the desire to play WoW on linux gave the Wine project a very tangible flagship kind of "This Must Work" application. So, while I would love to see native linux clients, official Wine support would still be amazing and, possibly more beneficial to the linux community because of the side effects of having a better Wine.

So support the WINE project and purchase a subscription for Crossover - pro or games, either supports a lot of the Blizzard games. I think a week after StarCraft II came out, Codeweavers came out with a release that officially supported it.

WoW, Eve Online, Steam games, etc are officially supported. And the patches they do to get it to work are rolled back into WINE. It's the easiest and best way to get official support.

And don't confuse CodeWeavers and Crossover with Transgaming and the like. CodeWeavers officially supports the WINE project, rolls patches into WINE, and offers support, like all the other good open-source companies out there. The WINE project recommends them if you want paid support, too.

CrossOver Games alone is $39.95 per year if you want updates. That's as expensive as a Windows partition.

It's cheaper than that to renew

That's not how I understood the upgrade policy. Neither the paragraph about CrossOver Games nor the corresponding paragraph about CrossOver Standard mentions anything about discounts for renewal, unlike the paragraphs about CrossOver Professional.

and I don't see a problem with the cost personally. I use Linux and it's solutions because I feel it is superior choice for my uses, not because it's cheaper.

The article is about being competitive, and with the Windows license becoming a growing part of the price of a PC as hardware prices fall, finding some way to cut that cost becomes important.

Partion wise, it takes far less space than a Windows system and doesn't come with Windows driver problems

Until you try to switch an existing PC to Linux or try using a donated peripheral, and you end up with a paperweight with no Linux driver. Linux isn't without its driver problems, though they're usually of a different nature: a nonexistent driver rather than a defective driver.

However, there is a problem. Myself and a bunch of other people have quite a bit of money and time sunk into windows programs. I've heard all the arguments and have used openoffice myself. It is pretty good! But it doesn't have absolutely 100% compatability with office and I don't have time to play around with that unless it works right with word, excel, etc formats perfectly every single time without a hitch.

So... Why didn't you run Microsoft Office? Microsoft Office 2007 worked out of the box with Ubuntu (Wine is preinstalled on Ubuntu( since 2008, earlier versions of office worked out of the box even earlier with Ubuntu. I fail to understand the problem with office software.

Basically, until there is an easy way to run all windows programs (or nearly all of them) under linux without a lot of hassle and configuration and to where it is a one or two click install people are not going to bother with it.

Have you even investigated Codeweavers? It runs a bit more software (including games) than Wine out of the box, easy to use.

I like Ubuntu 10.04. It is easy to use, well designed (as a consumer grade OS), easy to install programs and many comparable programs to windows. The quality of the software is pretty good. But its gotta run windows programs

The preinstalled wine can run Microsoft office and many other windows applications out of the box, I'm not understanding the problem?

This allows the masses to watch Hulu on their TV through a PS3, Roku or whatever else adds the option. I know that's trivial to computer geeks that have a computer hooked up to their TV already, but the geeks are in the minority.

tepples wrote:

If you're considering buying a Linux HTPC instead of a PS3, you need something that has a library of compatible games.

h4rr4r wrote:

Who said instead of PS3?

As I understood Sepodati's post, it implied that the choice was between a PS3 and a PC.

you would use codeweavers and only do supported ones.

CrossOver Games costs $40 per year, and the list of supported games linked from the CrossOver Games page is a broken link.

This allows the masses to watch Hulu on their TV through a PS3, Roku or whatever else adds the option. I know that's trivial to computer geeks that have a computer hooked up to their TV already, but the geeks are in the minority.

tepples wrote:

If you're considering buying a Linux HTPC instead of a PS3, you need something that has a library of compatible games.

h4rr4r wrote:

Who said instead of PS3?

As I understood Sepodati's post, it implied that the choice was between a PS3 and a PC.

you would use codeweavers and only do supported ones.

CrossOver Games costs $40 per year, and the list of supported games linked from the CrossOver Games page is a broken link.

This allows the masses to watch Hulu on their TV through a PS3, Roku or whatever else adds the option. I know that's trivial to computer geeks that have a computer hooked up to their TV already, but the geeks are in the minority.

tepples wrote:

If you're considering buying a Linux HTPC instead of a PS3, you need something that has a library of compatible games.

h4rr4r wrote:

Who said instead of PS3?

As I understood Sepodati's post, it implied that the choice was between a PS3 and a PC.

you would use codeweavers and only do supported ones.

CrossOver Games costs $40 per year, and the list of supported games linked from the CrossOver Games page is a broken link.

Perhaps they'd just cough up the $40 for Crossover after the people behind it were able to fully support the CS suite. Photoshop is already partially usable. If Microsoft discontinued CS for Mac, it's a safe bet that there are enough users to make it worth the effort to make everything work.

I'd also bet that Photoshop would run in Boot Camp or in a Parallels/VMWare virtual machine...annoying, but an option.

Perhaps they'd just cough up the $40 for Crossover after the people behind it were able to fully support the CS suite. Photoshop is already partially usable. If Microsoft discontinued CS for Mac, it's a safe bet that there are enough users to make it worth the effort to make everything work.

I'd also bet that Photoshop would run in Boot Camp or in a Parallels/VMWare virtual machine...annoying, but an option.

How many years of updates does each come with? Microsoft promises "mainstream support" for each version of Windows until at least two years after the release of the next minor version, but FreelanceWizard says CrossOver updates are sold separately.

FreelanceWizard is wrong. Here's Codeweavers' upgrade policy. CrossOver Standard upgrades are available for 6 months, CrossOver Professional for 12 months, and CrossOver Games comes with 12 months of upgrade too. Mind you it's not as long as Microsoft's but each upgrade does not have to be paid for.

But I doubt many Windows apps exist for which there is not an equivalent OSX or Linux app.

There are plenty of games that aren't ported to Mac OS X

True but many people who play games have a dedicated game console, like Xbox, Playstation, or Nintendo. Even Windows users have them.

Oh and about that "at least two years after the release of the next minor version", in December 1998 I bought a new PC with NT4. I ran Windows Update last in January 2000, just over 2 years later, but when I did it said updates were no longer available. So I called MS support and I was told I would have to order and pay for a CD with the latest update. And that was before Windows 2000 was released. Luckily when I told another slashdotter this he posted the link to download the updates for manual installation, so that's what I did. I spend hours downloading all the updates I could, I didn't have broadband then.

Falcon

Not only games...Autocad, ProEngineer, Photoshop, Cubase, Altium, AvrStudio, AlteraQuartus...etc..

There are alternatives to some of these. "BRL-CAD is a powerful constructive solid geometry solid modeling system". Architosh: "the leading Internet magazine dedicated to Mac CAD and 3D professionals and students worldwide." Pro/ENGINEER runs on Solaris and Red Hat Linux. There's a version of Photoshop for OSX and Photoshop CS 2 runs in CrossOver. For those who do not need all that Photoshop has they can use GIMP, Cinepaint, or Krita. Cubase runs on OSX. For Linux there's the AGNULA Project and other alternatives.

I'm in a rush now so I won't go through the rest of your list but I bet there are alternatives for them as well.

Falcon

Maybe that's where CrossOver comes in.

I switched years ago from MS Windows to Linux then OSX and haven't found a need for Windows software. Then again I haven't played any Windows games. The hardest part is MS Office macros, OO.org does not do macros. But Office can be run in CrossOver, with 2007 being supported.

Falcon

Maybe that's where CrossOver comes in.

I switched years ago from MS Windows to Linux then OSX and haven't found a need for Windows software. Then again I haven't played any Windows games. The hardest part is MS Office macros, OO.org does not do macros. But Office can be run in CrossOver, with 2007 being supported.

Falcon

Anyway I think Valve's position should be to pay someone like Cedega to support Steam on Linux and a core set of titles do too. Cedega can take their cut from any games expressly purchased on the platform.

Better would be to support an outfit like Codeweavers who actually roll changes back into the Wine project.

Find me one company that makes money 'selling GPL' software.

http://www.codeweavers.com/ They also contribute nicely back to Wine.

That applies in everything. Looking at CrossOver money is being made now with Linux and OSX. If CodeWeavers can make money with CrossOver then software vendors should be able to make money creating cross platform software too.

On the other hand, game developers would have a semi-solid set of numbers to go by, so they can assess the size of their potential market. As it is, there really aren't good numbers on Linux adoption

Even with this there still will not be good numbers. First, Canonical is only including the tracking software on OEM installations but I bet most installations are done by users or local gurus. It is not mandatory either. Then there are other Linux distros.

Falcon

They do it is called crossover and it will run you about $40 and it is awesome. http://www.codeweavers.com/

I think Wine needs a usability team. Some kind of gui/tooling to make things easier for newbies to Wine.

That is exactly why Codeweavers makes money. And it is not even that expensive ...

Yeah it's basically me and the Vineyard author working on Wine usability at this point (Hopefully I can get Vineyard more or less finalized for inclusion in Ubuntu 10.10)

I think Wine needs a usability team. Some kind of gui/tooling to make things easier for newbies to Wine.

That is exactly why Codeweavers makes money. And it is not even that expensive ...

>> ubuntu, arguably the most advanced desktop linux, won't play DVDs

Linux won't play DVDs (until you simply install a package) for the same reason Win7 won't play Blu-rays out of the box: Licensing. It has nothing to do with how advanced the OS is.

>> if you are anything more than a flash gamer, linux is out.

No, Linux is only out if you want immediate access to the latest cutting-edge Windows-only game. It's perfectly fine for playing the dozens of games that have native ports (Urban Terror, World of Goo, Nexuiz, Warsow, Second Life, etc.), and many Windows games...

http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxgames
http://appdb.winehq.org/
http://www.cedega.com/

I played EverQuest and World of Warcraft from it for years.

>> the only way to play netflix on linux is by running it in a windows VM.

Just another great reason to boycott NetFlix. Seriously - who doesn't have on-demand movies assailing them from a half-dozen directions nowadays. I spend most of my time catching up on old series via Linux with XBMC or Boxee.

>> no itunes.

It used to work under Wine, but I don't think anyone cares about it anymore since there are multiple alternatives that works natively with Linux (or any OS with a web browser). I use Amarok every day and don't miss iTunes at all.

http://www.fas.org/immuneattack/

Thanks for that, it looks great. Unfortunately it's Windows only for now and it'll take more than that for me to install Windows on my computer. Maybe it can run in Crossover or WINE.

Falcon

There's always Chromium; I run it on Ubuntu. For Windows there's SRWare Iron. I'm not sure which is the preferred build for OSX; perhaps Crossover Chromium. TFA doesn't say whether Chromium is affected. Some comments under TFA state that the effect lasts only until Chrome is restarted, suggesting that the information is stored only in the memory cache.

Chromium is the exact same code as Chrome. Of course it will be affected, unless you patch it out.

And seriously, people, get a grip. It's not like this tells Google what sites you visited. It just stores it on your computer. It has nothing to do with Google wanting your information, that's a complete non sequitur here. Geez.

There's always Chromium; I run it on Ubuntu. For Windows there's SRWare Iron. I'm not sure which is the preferred build for OSX; perhaps Crossover Chromium. TFA doesn't say whether Chromium is affected. Some comments under TFA state that the effect lasts only until Chrome is restarted, suggesting that the information is stored only in the memory cache.

Sorry, but Linux is a pretty DAMM good plataform for hollywood film studios. We've got Autodesk Maya, Softimage XSI and don't forget Blender, Cinepaint, Mentalray. Crap, even disney is using Photoshop over Crossover (wine) to cash-in some money. http://media.codeweavers.com/pub/crossover/case_studies/WaltDisney.pdf http://www.linuxmovies.org/software.html But, for the enthusiast and casual video editing, there is no good option yet. This is also true for music compositors.

Wine and Linux for the client machines should work well for your needs. Ive seen that most games work quite well under Linux+Wine. If Wine isnt enough, possibly CrossOver Games would be better.

Windows prior to Vista doesnt really offer capabilities that you are requesting, as far as I know. And Windows is still expensive...

But on the Linux side, there are a few tools that can do that.

For GNOME, there is GNOME Nanny. Though it seems restricted to time session management and web activities.

A more universal set of tools is available too:

• TimeKpr- Controls login and session times using PAM
• WebContentControl- Despite its name, it does more than control website access. It also includes scripts for controlling application access.
• A new *in-development* GUI called GChildCare is being made to succeed WebContentControl.

Im not sure if there are other tools out there that work. I think Mandriva Linux actually provides integrated support for parental controls similar to GNOME Nanny and TimeKpr. The scripts from WebContentControl would let you block which applications they can run, though that isnt that big of a problem on Linux if they dont have a compiler or root access.

KDE itself has a configurable Kiosk mode, which can help control KDE itself.

At this point, I'm far more interested in Vavle's Mac development that they seem to be doing. I'd love to know if I can finally ditch my Windows partition. I'd love to see Steam and the Source Engine on OS X.

Given their solid Direct3D stance, I'm a little worried... but a gamer can dream, right?

Still, Portal 2. Going to have to play that.

And yet, Crossover (which has an announcement a few articles down) has worked with Steam and Source Engine quite well. Half-Life, Half-Life 2 worked fine way back when I tried it (and bought it) on OS X. It was before OS X 10.5 when I tried it and it worked. I'd be shocked if it wasn't working anymore. Portal wasn't around when I tried it, but I'd guess it works.

Sure it's not native, but it worked well enough to be quite usable.

Officially Supported - http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/name/?app_id=3424

You could try putting up a pledge on the CodeWeavers compatibility database...

http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/search?name=Vegas&company=Sony&search=app

I bought: Crossover Linux. And you know what? It does make closed-source Windows applications pretty darn easy. Everything is kept firmly in your ~ as it should be stability wise. There are many awesome package managers out there and with Ubuntu as an example because that is what I'm familiar with: any commercial developer could create their own PPA for end-users to add as a repository themselves. The issue is making the format for repositories a standard and adopting it across distributions. Perhaps, the package manager should be part of: Linux Standards Base if it already is not?

Sure!

http://www.opensuse.org/
http://www.ubuntu.org/
http://www.winehq.org/
http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxlinux/

Absolutely no WGA getting in your way! ;)

Oops, wrong formatting:
http://www.codeweavers.com/about/general/press/20090724/

"They would have to almost completely change company personality to get out of their rut, much like IBM did when they decided that services, not hardware, were going to be their thing. But IBM had to have it's face shoved into the boiling calderon of death before it realized it had to start over. MS is still a ways from that point."
Interesting press release by CodeWeavers: http://www.codeweavers.com/about/general/press /20090724/

That assumes that the value of the software is the same, value being usability, performance, etc. For netbooks, servers, and small dedicated devices I don't think Microsoft can compete at all.

More netbooks sell with Windows than Linux. When IT staffers were asked "the operating system of choice for IT netbooks is Windows 7". Some are hoping that because of Moblin Linux will regain market share in netbooks. MS IIS comes in second in webservers, behind Apache. While down from it's high IIS still has a market share of 18% in webservers, excluding Apache more than all the others combined. I don't think Microsoft is in any danger of losing it's market share anytime soon.

I'm all for Linux, but it can't completely replace Microsoft just yet.

For most people both Linux and Macs can replace Windows. People just have this "Microsoft software is needed" attitude. Like a lot of other switchers before switching from Windows to first Linux then OSX I evaluated what I wanted to do, the tasks not the software. I then looked to see if there was any software available for Linux and OSX that could do what I wanted. Other than there being no drop-in replacement for Photoshop for Linux the answer was I could get software that would do what I wanted. And with WINE or Crossover Photoshop CS 2 will run on Linux.

Falcon

Can you fix that for me?

Sure, getting me to install it will cost you 50GBP, and of course a additional 25.99GBP for the Crossover license if you don't already have one. The process will take me about several minutes (about the time it takes to install a very large amazing game under crossover).

You could play this http://www.warhammeronline.com/mac/ instead. It was a little laggy for me but has a lot of nice features. You can't use http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxgames/ as it is not working, perhaps due to game guard?

Code Weavers cross over games is based on wine but may produce results. http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxgames/ I see Stracraft is only Bronze. WoW is silver but goes bronze on Lich King, I could see lag in Dalaran as a real problem. Dalaran sucks for me even with a normal install on Osx.

Unless you plan on using Access or (last I checked) good chunks of Office 2007. Their list, of course, is here - Access 2000 is in Bronze, with no future versions after that listed.

It's called progress.

Progress is evolutionary. Progress is guided by the needs of the users. Progress is building upon an established base that you know works. Progress is not a totally new OS with totally new bugs every few years for absolutely no benefit.

Microsoft is the same stuff over and over again, with a different interface to have to learn. It's called an upgrade treadmill for a reason.

The entire idea of "new just because" needs to be re-evaluated and completely trashed

New house, new car, new credit card, new clothes... wait.

this makes absolutely no sense when the same amount of brainpower it takes to mind all the bugs, patches, hangups and general arthritic-jointed nature of all of its software could be used better building something open-source.

I think the OP pretty much nailed it. Welcome to Debian. Wine will save you a reboot for anything you can't live without.

What about CrossOver from Code Weavers for running Office ?:

http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxlinux/

(they help make Wine possible)

After MS Office 2007 SP1 was never compatible to CrossOver I hope SP2 will get that soon. The shop I am working for only uses Microsoft Office 2007. They are trained to use it. OpenOffice will not work, because they would need retraining. But I need to maintain their computers. And it would so much easier to do if I could just switch them over to Linux. I also need the Service Pack, because without it the mailboxes in Outlook 2007 are limited to 2GB. Those people send and receive large Powerpoint presentations on a daily bases. They also keep those mails for reference. Some of their mailboxes are about 4GB and growing.

http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/group/?app_id=5133

I recently put on Ubuntu 9.0.4 on my wife's computer and it's hands down the best release yet.

I'd like to install Ubuntu on my Mac however one of the reasons for doing so is so I can use CinePaint to edit photos but it was removed from Ubuntu. So now unless I can find a way to install CinePaint in Ubuntu I don't think I'll install it.

However, i'm still in no mans land as My scanner, art pad, and games rely on windows xp

Watcom tablets work on Ubuntu. As do scanners. I have an Epson Perfection V500 scanner others have gotten to work on Ubuntu.

I truly wish Adobe would port over photoshop to Linux.

So do I but people have gotten CS2 to run in CrossOver and CS3 in WINE. Others have gotten CS4 to run in Ubuntu, though not perfectly.

If I can't get CinePaint to install I may end up getting Photoshop myself. I want to try CinePaint first though to see if it will do what I want. If I do get PH I'll probably buy it off eBay where older versions can be bought cheap then upgraded.

Falcon

I've had x-sessions freeze so completely that I had to do a hard reset, no ctrl+alt+backspace, no switching to a console login and killing it, completely frozen.

That happened to me a long time ago, it turned out to be a frequent issue, the reason was the fan on the graphics card had stopped spinning.

I will admit to the stability if you use only the supported packages, but who aside from a server admin doesn't go for unsupported packages?

I use a lot of 3rd party software, vmware, google, staroffice, tonnes of games under Crossover games. Still, not had any issues.

And, Windows has the overwhelming advantage it always did : it has an enormous existing software library that still dwarfs that of Linux.

Actually I think Linux has more software it can run than Windows does but Windows has more commercial software. Windows can only run software ported to Windows, Linux can run Linux as well as some Windows software. Even Adobe CS4 and MS Office 2007 runs in Linux though they may be a bitch to get working.

Mac OS X has both beat, it can run Linux and Windows besides OS X software.

Falcon

why pay X amount of dollars for microsoft-windows when you can get Linux for FREE!

A few reasons:

• Some people happen to own a lot of hardware with no Linux driver.
• The unregistered shareware installed on major-label PCs subsidizes the price of an OEM Windows license. Evidence: Sony has experimented with charging PC buyers $50 not to install unregistered shareware.
• Linux users may still have to buy CrossOver to run apps and games that don't work well in vanilla Wine, at least without a lot of fiddling.
• Web developers who run Linux need to test their sites on Windows Internet Explorer, a Windows OS component that's still the majority web browser on PCs.

No need to do so, just use CrossOver Linux and CrossOver Games.

Bundle price: $69.95. It's a bit cheaper than Windows, but are enough apps supported in CrossOver that it's worth the $30 discount compared to genuine Windows Vista Home Premium OEM?

Okay, that's fair. But please consider how it looks to somebody who doesn't have that feedback from the company, who looks only at the list of supported games. I would argue that you'd be better off if you:

• Have one page that lists only supported games. No "this game has been reported to work", just "these are games that we are actively supporting."
• Link to another page that states explicitly, "These games are reported to work. We will endeavour to make them work better, but we make no guarantees."
• Keep the pages up to date. Okay, the "honourable mentions" aren't going to change, unless they're added to the officially supported titles. That's fair. But when the current release is version 7.2, but the support pages only show details for version 7.0, it looks a little bit dubious.

This would be streets better than lumping everything together in one page and forcing people to dig to find out the detailed facts. The argument here is basically, not only do you have to be up front and honest with the customers, you have to be seen to be up front and honest.