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> If they actually made "MS Office for Linux", and it was actually half-way
> decent, I wonder how many of us may actually buy it. (as in those of us
> for whom OpenOffice does *not* cover all the bases)

You should buy CrossOver Office: it runs Microsoft Office 2000, XP and most components of Office 2003.
http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxoffice/suppo rted_apps/

> Likewise, "Windows Media Player for Linux" would also be useful.

CrossOver Office also supports Windows Media Player (it's version 6.4 but you can install the more recent codecs).

And by buying CrossOver you would actually be supporting Wine development, unlike with Cedega subscriptions.

For $40, you can buy the commercial version of Wine called CrossOver Office. They heavily sponsor and commit to Wine sources. Photoshop has several entries in the compatibility database. Version 7 has a "silver medal", however CS and CS2 are known not to work.

For $40, you can buy the commercial version of Wine called CrossOver Office. They heavily sponsor and commit to Wine sources. Photoshop has several entries in the compatibility database. Version 7 has a "silver medal", however CS and CS2 are known not to work.

Does Adobe allow you to migrate your Photoshop license from Windows to Mac?

Does Adobe allow you to migrate your Photoshop license from Windows to Mac?

(a) Importation into the United States, without the authority of the owner of copyright under this title, of copies or phonorecords of a work that have been acquired outside the United States is an infringement of the exclusive right to distribute copies or phonorecords under section 106, actionable under section 501. This subsection does not apply to-- ....
(2) importation, for the private use of the importer and not for distribution, by any person with respect to no more than one copy or phonorecord of any one work at any one time, or by any person arriving from outside the United States with respect to copies or phonorecords forming part of such person's personal baggage; or ....
(b) In a case where the making of the copies or phonorecords would have constituted an infringement of copyright if this title had been applicable, their importation is prohibited. In a case where the copies or phonorecords were lawfully made, the United States Customs Service has no authority to prevent their importation unless the provisions of section 601 are applicable.

(a) Importation into the United States, without the authority of the owner of copyright under this title, of copies or phonorecords of a work that have been acquired outside the United States is an infringement of the exclusive right to distribute copies or phonorecords under section 106, actionable under section 501. This subsection does not apply to-- ....
(2) importation, for the private use of the importer and not for distribution, by any person with respect to no more than one copy or phonorecord of any one work at any one time, or by any person arriving from outside the United States with respect to copies or phonorecords forming part of such person's personal baggage; or ....
(b) In a case where the making of the copies or phonorecords would have constituted an infringement of copyright if this title had been applicable, their importation is prohibited. In a case where the copies or phonorecords were lawfully made, the United States Customs Service has no authority to prevent their importation unless the provisions of section 601 are applicable.

Ximian was a small outfit and Novell bought them out, maybe they're considering a similar move with CodeWeavers?

In any case, for comparison here's a list of top most wanted apps for Crossover to support next.

http://www.winehq.com/

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

"I'm far more stoked about getting Virtual PC or VMWare for OS X/Intel."

I agree, for the vast majority of cases this will be a better solution than dual-boot.

But in truth I'm more excited about Codeweavers intention to support Intel Macs. I'd much rather just launch the single Windows app I want, and have it running rootless alongside with my OS X apps. Having the entire Windows desktop up there is pointless most of the time.

I use IE in debian using crossover office from Codeweavers. I have to travel now and again for work and some hotels use the same setup where it requires that you use IE to make your connection (and yes, safari works too, but I don't have a mac)

All I have to do is make a connection to google with IE, then I use FF for everything else.

"Thanks for your interest! We don't have a ship date for this yet, or even a beta testing program, but we're hard at work on it and have a working prototype."

I also emailed Transgaming about Cedega, but so far they still have nothing useful to say.

I don't know whether you've thought of it, but you could try Wine or (more stable IMHO) the commercial version CrossOver Office.

But I'll grant you it's probably less trouble to run it like you currently do.

How do you explain how TrollTech makes money with a GPL'd program (Qt and its official frameworks)? Or how CodeWeavers makes money off of CrossOver Office when WINE is Free in both ways? Or how RedHat makes money off of providing a Linux distro + support when there is Fedora Core, their fully Free distro of RedHat?

Old business models die hard, and the new methods are proving to be a success. Even Novell, IBM, Apple, Sun, and others are benefitting financially from Free software.

Here is a link about an unsecessful attempt to run five Windows viruses under Linux:

Running Windows viruses with Wine

It is possible to run some versions of Internet Explorer under Linux. The Codeweavers CrossOver Office version of Wine can run IE 6.0 under Linux.

Some Linux users also do use Codeweaver's CrossOver Office to Word 2000 under Linux or Excel 2000 under Linux. CrossOver Office is a slightly enhanced version of Wine with a more user friendly front end.

As a desktop Linux user, I have never had to worry about viruses, worms or most spyware. I can open my email without the fear of Active-X extensions, attachments, and viruses that most Windows users have. Of course, I do use one of the several free firewalls available for Linux. I don't run unnecessary services which a desktop user would not need and regularly check for security updates. Linux is not perfect, but it is much less vulneable to most of these problems.

Here is a link about an unsecessful attempt to run five Windows viruses under Linux:

Running Windows viruses with Wine

It is possible to run some versions of Internet Explorer under Linux. The Codeweavers CrossOver Office version of Wine can run IE 6.0 under Linux.

Some Linux users also do use Codeweaver's CrossOver Office to Word 2000 under Linux or Excel 2000 under Linux. CrossOver Office is a slightly enhanced version of Wine with a more user friendly front end.

As a desktop Linux user, I have never had to worry about viruses, worms or most spyware. I can open my email without the fear of Active-X extensions, attachments, and viruses that most Windows users have. Of course, I do use one of the several free firewalls available for Linux. I don't run unnecessary services which a desktop user would not need and regularly check for security updates. Linux is not perfect, but it is much less vulneable to most of these problems.

Here is a link about an unsecessful attempt to run five Windows viruses under Linux:

Running Windows viruses with Wine

It is possible to run some versions of Internet Explorer under Linux. The Codeweavers CrossOver Office version of Wine can run IE 6.0 under Linux.

Some Linux users also do use Codeweaver's CrossOver Office to Word 2000 under Linux or Excel 2000 under Linux. CrossOver Office is a slightly enhanced version of Wine with a more user friendly front end.

As a desktop Linux user, I have never had to worry about viruses, worms or most spyware. I can open my email without the fear of Active-X extensions, attachments, and viruses that most Windows users have. Of course, I do use one of the several free firewalls available for Linux. I don't run unnecessary services which a desktop user would not need and regularly check for security updates. Linux is not perfect, but it is much less vulneable to most of these problems.

Also, don't assume that KDE and GNOME are the only options. I personally run Window Maker (with various dockapps), with fspanel, and KeyLaunch, with xtrlock (invoked via keylaunch) as my screen lock. On top of that, I use various shell scripts that I've written over the years.

Desktop systems, especially for certain classes of users, are highly varied. Good luck trying to study them!

I'm the IT Manager at my company (we have about 200 users) and the biggest item holding us back is the lack of a reliable shared calendar. I use Linux as my desktop (you know, eat your own dog food) and with the exception of of a reliable shared calendar I can do everything I need to do on my Linux box. Email, word processing, presentations, and spread sheets. We use Evolution to connect to our exchange server and unfortunately the lack of a reliable shared calendar prevents us from deploying Linux on more of our desktops.

I know that there are products like CrossOver and VmWare that run Window programs on Linux, but that sort of defeats the purpose of moving to Linux in my view.

It is actually possible to run IE under Linux, at least the the Codeweavers CrossoverOffice version of Wine. It really is possible to have a big "E" on your Linux desktop. Of course there are actually better browsers available for Linux. I would not really want to do that but here is info:

Running IE 6.0 under Linux

I don't have any idea if that particular trojan would run on IE under Wine in Linux. But, earlier this year someone tried to make some viruses to run under Wine. He wasn't very sucessful at that. Not a single virus was able to send email and propagate itself. Here is his article about tring to run viruses under Wine on Linux:

Running Windows viruses with Wine

I don't actually visit porn sites very often but have occasionally done that over the years while using Linux. I remember trying to download a few photos once and two of the supposed photos actually ended in .jpg.exe. I was glad that I was not running under Windows and IE at the time. Most likely, they were targeting their Windows using visitors with some kind of trojan, spyware or browser hijacker. Fortunately, Linux browsers do not automatically try to run Windows .EXE files under Wine. Does Windows still allow ActiveX controls and VBScript to enable Windows machines to be taken over automatically? Linux browsers do not support ActiveX and VBScript and they do not allow things like that to happen automatically. Most Linux users also do not run as "root" with administrative priveleges most of the time like most Windows users do on their home computers. Not running as "root" adds additional protection.

The moral of the story is, if you want to visit porn sites, don't do it while running Windows and IE. Use a Mac or Linux for that purpose instead. Visiting porn sites is like the Internet equivalent of a bad neighborhood.

You can install Crossover in Linux and then iTunes runs. As well as a lot of other Windows Applications.

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

But anyway if you switch from MS, you're gonna miss this:

http://photomatt.net/2004/10/15/bizarre-windows-be havior/

If it's merely a Windows app keeping you from switching, it may be worthwhile to buy the $40 crossover office, I believe it supports Quicken.

Porting Office to Linux until there is a real competitive alternative would be insane for Microsoft. Once there is a competitive alternative, they should however, so as not to lose Office sales. Oh, and no, I have tried Open Office, and it is not yet an alternative.

There is a market for Office on Linux otherwise Crossover Office wouldn't exist. Fact is is that CodeWeavers is providing software people are willing to buy. Others are using WINE to run Office in Linux as well. There are people using Linux now that would buy Office.

Each extra Linux Office sale will mean one less Windows (or perhaps Mac) Office sale. No gain for MS. In addition, they will find that their Windows sales dwindle due to less OS license sales.

I just checked online for the prices of Office vs Windows and the cheapest for Office 2003 as an Upgrade is $240, well actually $150 for the Student and Teacher Edition but the cheapest full edition was $400. For Windows the most excpensive was for Microsoft Windows XP Professional w/SP2 and it cost $300 whereas an upgrade cost as little as $100. Now if someone were to switch to Linux but still bought Office that's $400, or if they buy a new computer it very well could come with Office and I doubt the OEM paid half that, maybe for both Windows and for Office. Quite simply if someone were to switch to Linux and MS released a version of Office for it MS might lose a couple of hundred by not selling Windows but there are a lot of people who already use Linux who woud hand over $400 to MS for Office. MS would come out ahead.

I have tried Open Office, and it is not yet an alternative.

I've downloaded OO v2 but haven't installed it yet, which they need to make better! I don't know if I ever will, at least not on this computer. In two or three months I plan on getting a Mac Powerbook and will get iWork with it. Simply I don't see the need to pay $400 for Office, especially when all I may use much is Word.

Microsoft may have a good product going with Office, but to release it on Linux would bring market loss to them.

While MS would loose some of the OS market they would more than make up for it in the Office arena. I've heard a few people say the only reason they stay with Windows is because of Office, well there's Office 2004 for Mac and I've also heard some Linux/Open Source users say they'd get Office as well if it were available. Actually if there weren't a market for it then CrossOver OfficeTM 5.0 Featuring Microsoft Office 2003 wouldn't of been made. I don't have the data to support this but I've heard that Office is the top income producer for MS, not Windows, and if they released it for Linux then they'd sale even more.

Yes, because as we all know, Crossover Office is a magical fairy-tale that does not exist. Why would Vista reserve RAM and a swap file specifically for Excel? Can't Excel malloc and mmap on its own?

• Renewing Subscription. Minimum subscription of 3 months. $5 US per month. So the lowest-cost one-shot is $15.
• Non-renewing subscription. This is $55 for 13 months (12 months + "1 month free").

However, you definitely want to check out the games database first, because while some games may work flawlessly, others won't work at all. No point in paying $15 to be able to play games you're not interested in playing.

Also, if you want to run productivity applications, check out CodeWeavers' CrossOver Office Professional. It runs MS Office, and also has a browser plugin that adds Windows Media Player and QuickTime support to any browser that supports Netscape plugins (on Linux/x86, e.g. Firefox). CodeWeavers is also fairly FOSS-friendly (much more so than TransGaming, IIRC), and is actively involved in the development of Wine.

So, here's a direct link to the demo torrent.

Enjoy!

If you want to run a notepad, minesweeper or solitaire. I've never been able to WINE more complex windows applications than that.

Other people did

While I agree that Wine is sometimes barely useful, the people from CodeWeavers make a really useful release every now and then. It's really stable, if you use the supported applications (check their website, mainly MS Office). The download version is $40.

No hidden agenda, just a satisfied customer.

Hell, if I were Codeweavers, I'd be working really hard on CrossoverOSX. There might even be good money in it!

It would appear that you are not alone...

Um, CrossoverOffice by
http://www.codeweavers.com/ runs a little more than just Minesweeper, and they build on WINE.

In my version, the salesman sells the customer EVERY app he asked for PLUS CrossoverOffice and Cedega, and the customer STILL saves money! That's in addition to getting an OS that comes bundled with thousands of apps, doesn't phone home, and is "default deny" to the Internet's most virulent worms and viruses.

Yeah, I know... I'm preaching to the choir. As an AC, however, I'm obviously not karma whoring.

M$ Project 2000 (CodeWeavers)
CodeWeavers wine Compatibility Database (PR*)

gewg_

My friend, let me introduce you to Cedega and CrossOver Office. So what were you saying about Half-Life 2 and Microsoft Office not working again?

The DVD library problem is a big one, which the movie companies absolutely refuse to cope with. They're understandably scared that people will duplicate their DVD's and share them with friends, and don't like to acknowledge the legitimate uses of it (such as grabbing excerpts for fair use work, changing the "region" on a DVD you bought overseas, or making a backup copy of a treasured release and using that for normal play).

But for MS Office and Quicktime, you can buy Crossover at http://www.codeweavers.com/products/, which costs less than $50 and which runs quite well well by providing commercial support and packaging for the Wine tool. I'm quite pleased with it. It doesn't necessarily support all the funky little add-ons that Office has incorporated, but it's a very stable way to provide MS Office on the desktop for your Windows enamored users who absolutely need to use Excel rather than OpenOffice.

You know, now I'm half-tempted to try using WINE (or a windows emulator, which I know WINE is not) to run Office on my Fedora box, just to piss off Bill. That, and I always wanted to know it it would work ^_^

You could try CrossOver Office by CodeWeavers.

Why should Microsoft build applications for an operating system directly competing with their own?

Because just as MS has a market in applications for Macs which competes with Windows also they can have a market in the unices as well. Office is one of MS's profit drivers (main products) and if they were to port it to the unices they could sale more of it. Sure, if they did more may migrate from Windows to Linux or another Unix but there are a lot of users already using these who may get Office if it were available. If there weren't a market for Office then CodeWeavers' wouldn't be offering CrossOver Office.

I think your talking out of your shit and don't even realise it.

You do know that you can run Office on Linux with only a few problems don't you? and people pay for it. What kind of perspective does that put on you comment that though highley modded comment?

Don't believe me! What's this then, a lie?

They're not even important for most techie types. I'm a developer myself on Linux and I use CodeWeavers' version of Wine to run Office. The following scenario happened today:

• Coworker creates OpenOffice document, exports to doc
• I open it and notice the crappy contents page, wondering if someone used OOo
• I add a chapter and regenerate crappy contents page, which becomes even more messed up
• I give up in disgust and forget about the contents page

Try Crossover Office, works via Wine.

Or you could help to fix or identify the parts of Wine that still need some work (Like Corel did for their port) or you could use winelib like Borland have done.

Currently, support for games under Wine is a little bit mixed but there's a lot of heavy development going into Gaming at the moment so expect things to improve at a rapid rate.

Using Wine to port the game would, in theory, be the fastest way and performance and stability should be very close to a native Linux application. It's also very good for the comunity because it will help Wine come up-to scratch for gaming support allowing more native Windows games to be played on Linux which can only be good for everyone (well unless you want to port to Linux because of lack of competition!)

The guys at codeweavers provide commercial support for applications under Wine, so it may be worth dropping them an Email

Funny you should say that. I've stopped working at a big multinational and started working at a small local company. Both use MS Office 2000. On Windows 2000.

Personally, I don't give a rat's ass for all the new features. I run Office 2000 flawlessly on Crossover Office.

Um, no offense, but gtkPod is like trying to interface with a parallel port with a few bits of wire, some chewing gum, and a 9v battery. You have to be MacGuyver to get it right.

That being said, I have 3 iPods, a third gen, a fourth gen, and a fourth.five gen color, all 20GB. Only the third gen syncs with gtkPod without much error, and it's running an extinct version of the iPod firmware.

I tried interfacing with the newest one, and it completely destroyed the filesystem on the iPod. Don't ask me how, but my attempts to plug it into a Mac and a PC both failed, so I had to flip it over to iPod-harddrive mode, and format the bastard. Luckily I didn't lose anything, but it could have been catastrophic.

iTunes is really the best way to use an iPod. If you've got a problem with that, don't buy one. If you don't have a problem with that, like myself, and many I know, buy one, and be happy. And now that iTunes works with Linux, there's no reason not to use it.

Try http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxoffice/ for that "out of box" experience.

Another obPlug: CodeWeavers will make any software install out-of-the-box without needing any initial downloads.

If you want to link, link to the genuine site, not a cybersquatter.

Photoshop has a silver certification under CrossOver Office, and supposedly runs really well under Cedega

What version? Can WINE run CS or CS2? Last time I tried to install them CS and CS2 said 'you need a newer operating system' or words to that effect because WINE emulates Windows 98.

I was using Codeweavers Crossover Office which only lists Photoshop 7 as compatible.

Photoshop has a silver certification under CrossOver Office, and supposedly runs really well under Cedega

What version? Can WINE run CS or CS2? Last time I tried to install them CS and CS2 said 'you need a newer operating system' or words to that effect because WINE emulates Windows 98.

I was using Codeweavers Crossover Office which only lists Photoshop 7 as compatible.

I know this isn't related to the topic but I noticed when visiting the CodeWeaver website on the front page they had a blurb and link to a press release about Apple's switch to Intels, CodeWeaversTM Expands Developer Services, Enabling Future Windows Application Porting To Mac OS
CodeWeavers' CrossOver Technology, Combined with Apple's Move to Intel x86 Chips, Creates Lucrative New Possibilities for Mid-Tier Windows Developers , yet yesterday one of the topics on /. was CodeWeaver wouldn't be supporting MacTels, No More Codewarrior for Mac OS X .

There's no shortage of other crippled features in the free version either, such as a maximum of 4x for burning CDs.