Slashdot Mirror
Wine Runs Word 2000 And Excel 2000
LLurex writes: "There's a short comment and screenshot on Ian Schmidt's Wine Page about everyone's favourite Windoze Emulator finally running Excel2000 and Word2000 (imho the only really good applications Microsoft ever published)! No more lame excuses, time to switch OS ..." The screenshot of Excel looks pretty much, well, like a screenshot of Excel. With this, two of the most persistent reasons not to run Linux appear to be fading; of course, what's to stop Microsoft from releasing versions that won't work under Wine, ever? That could be a good reason to stick with GNUmeric and pico.
Oh my Jesus, I've been Slashdotted. :-)
Now then, lemme trot out my standard response to this claim, usually made by embittered former OS/2 users.
Microsoft does not control their own platform anymore. Their installed base is spread across 5+ Win32 implementations, including 95/95OSR2/98/98SE/NT351/NT4/2000. Office *has to* run on every single one of those, because many home and business customers don't upgrade their OS much if ever. This plays right into Wine's hands, since Office cannot use any new whizbang features on new MS OSes. They are being slowly strangled to death by their very own market share - it's a beautiful thing, and it goes along with ESR's arguments about DOJ being fun but unnecessary.
Hey, let's be fair here. Microsoft is good at screwing competitors, but pre-IBM Lotus was good at screwing itself. Back when 1-2-3 was a DOS and CP/M product, I was working for a Unix boxmaker that was trying to break into the desktop market. Naturally they wanted 1-2-3. Lotus said 1-2-3 needed a lot of low level system hacks to run efficiently -- hacks you can't do on a system with distinct process spaces, such as Unix. Of course, they changed their tune when GUIs started to replace text apps, but that was a little late in the day...
When I was a consultant, I had a client whose main app was DOS WordPerfect with a ton of file management and database plugins. Naturally he kept running agains the 640K barrier. And he had other apps like this that took forever to start up and shut down.
There used to be all kinds of complicated solutions to this problem, but lacking the I-Hate-Bill gene, I went for the one that was simplest and cheapest: Windows 95. The DOS box provided all the address space he needed, and then some, and he could run any number of then at once. There were backward compatibility issues (some of his apps assumed that his printer port was a physical device, not a link to a printing system), but none that didn't have a corresponding Windows tweak. Of course the tweak was often poorly documented....
__________
Word 2000 still has nothing on LaTeX, IMO.
In your O and a bunch of others' as well! A huge advantage of the TeX family over the Office family is that arbitrary programs[*] can create valid TeX input, without actually having TeX. My reporting scripts can emit LaTeX on systems that don't have LaTeX, and then email the file to systems that do. Machines with half a meg of RAM can still originate beautiful text. Plus all the other obvious advantages.
[*] Okay, maybe not all arbitrary programs. Only those which can output text. :-)
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
I would have to agree with just about everything you've said. Everywhere people are praising Microsoft Word and hoping it will come to Linux.
As a Linux user (and programmer) who has to use NT at work, and occasionally MS Word for specifications, proposals, etc. - I hate having to use Word. There are tons of little features that you never use, and it sometimes haunts you.
Lots of operations depend on the position of the mouse over an area where even moving 1 pixel changes the mouse cursor and the operation. I am very often frustrated trying to get things done (obviously I'd be better with it if I used it everyday, but that's not the point)
Granted, many of these problems are Word's fault, but I think trying to support so many features in a WYSIWYG editor will yield exactly these results. LaTeX is looking better everyday.
Doesn't the Microsoft Office EULA specify that you may only license the software if you own a legitimate license for any of their Windows 9x - NT - 2000 software? Or is this just MSIE?
If so, it would have been nice for the DOJ to cover this .. then again, they may have..
And just as the Classic Failed Project is the one that tries to develop a word processor to compete with Word, the widely useful thing that few have really seriously tried to do is to construct a "multiplexing data access tool" like MS Access.
Access may suck bad as a data repository, and MySQL and PostgreSQL may have it well-beat in that arena. But you can use Access with those DBMSes, thus obviating that demerit. What they don't offer, and nothing else does, either, is a tool that provides pretty/flexible ways of:
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Why? Because my clients need a rock-soild, easy to use, fast, compliant, stable, free browser for our Internet/Intranet applications. That's IE 5.
Until then I will need to run Windows to test my development work. If Wine really runs IE5--then I'm done with dual boot/VMWare/etc. kludges.
Now hiring experienced client- & server-side developers
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
A) Let's see. Gnumeric & Pico vs. Excel and Word. Do you people actually produce documents any more complex than a OSS API doc? (Which could be printed on a napkin in a lot of cases!)
B) The whole "windoze" thing bothers me. No one has convinced me that Linux is better than NT4, and when I look at my 3D graphics benchmarks, I prove to myself that NT4 is in fact better. So it troubles me that article authors get away with using "windoze." Of course it is to be expected of unwashed masses, but those posting articles should be held to a higher level, don't you think? And I doubt it will fly too well if I start refering to it as "LinSux" from now on, would it?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Why run Office 2k when you have a perfectly good application in Star Office? Use an Open-source program for an open-source operating system...
...contrary to your leadin...
--
Infuriate left and right
I'll admit that I just got the latest CVS of Wine yesterday and gave Excel 2000 a shot, though.
The EULA doesn't state that you may not use it on NON-MS systems, it merely says that you may not license it (despite the fact that you spent $500 to "license" it, and the media and docs) without "owning" a license to any one of their Windows operating systems.
Second, when used in its most loose context, this licensing practice might just be considered bundling the software in such a way that gives microsoft a competitive edge over their "competitors" (abuse of its monopoly)
Before there was WINE or anything of the like, this provision was not necessary because it was not possible to run Office on anything but windows -- it was implied that windows was required because it was windows software (Not to mention it was *also* expressed on the packaging). Now that there is WINE, an open source implementation of the Windows API, Microsoft must eliminate the possibility that they might lose money to a competing product (Windows/WINE).
Microsoft has created Office as a product separate of Windows. But when it is possible (as proven by WINE) to create an implementation of Windows, requiring the "original" is inappropriate.
c'mon guys! I thought you were better than this... WINE is NOT an emulator!
W.I.N.E actually stands for "Wine Is Not an Emulator". Look it up @ winehq.org. (yes, it's true... a virtual black hole of sorts. But hey, what's in a name, right?)
WINE is actually a win32 support layer. If you want an emulator, then get VMWARE.
--Cr@ckwhore
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
Jenni of Jennicam fame uses Pico. She seems like a pretty self-respecting geek.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Take a look at the prototype of the new documentation page here.
Take a look at the items at the bottom of the Wine 1.0 todo list here.
Take a look at the plans for revamping the apps database here. BTW, we need help. Wanna quit complaining and give us a hand?
However, I do have to agree in one important point - many Wine users have a tendency to get an app up, and then that gets reported to Slashdot. But, the reality is, it doesn't work well, so everyone stampedes to try Wine, and gets disappointed. The key thing we're trying to get to with the new apps db is *honest* and verifiable app reports.
If that is the case, then why does Office overwrite .DLL files that were originally installed as part of the operating system?
I'll post one when I get home from work. Had I known I was gonna be Slashdotted I would've included one :)
Exactly my point.
In case you're wondering I do have a licensed copy of windows to run on this machine, I just chose not to install it. However, I did not bother to install it to a fat partition and copy it from there; I used another windows machine. So technically I am probably violating the EULA, even though I have a licensed copy of those DLLs for the machine I installed them on.
IMO, this is one of the best arguments for Free software -- figuring out what you're supposedlly allowed to do with a piece of non-free software gets to be like figuring the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
There is an excellent status report on Wine chronicled here
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Digital Philosopher. Looking for work.
Uhhh...actually I do, which is why I don't bother screwing around trying to run crappy MS apps on Linux when there are better Open Source programs available.
Got Rhinos?
It's not embittered, it's, ah, mmmm...never mind.
Their installed base is spread across 5+ Win32 implementations, including 95/95OSR2/98/98SE/NT351/NT4/2000. Office *has to* run on every single one of those, because many home and business customers don't upgrade their OS much if ever.
Updates to the system libraries are a standard event for many Microsoft products, not just Office. Put in one change that uses the system level (ring 0) in an unusual way, and you end up with Wine chasing after compatability for another year. It just has to be a non-obvious and flakey looking implementation of a 'standard' system call that could have been done on the application level (ring 3), but isn't and is for a specific program. Since they have the source, they can build specific versions of each program for each target WinXX version.
Since they're rumored(?) to be moving to 'subscription licencing', they could put it in the TCP/IP stack, and then we'd have quite a bit of work to duplicate.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
A lot of books are produced entirely with *NIX. ;)
>>>>>>>
I know, I here TEX is really cool. I was just being a jackass
All OSs have strengths for different environments. If, like me, all you ever need is ssh and a browser, then Debian GNU/Linux
is better than NT4. I wish I could run IE, but even without it I prefer Linux for responsiveness and lack of "surprises".
>>>>>>>>
Good for you, but I have to tell you that WinNT is a good deal more responsive than Linux, and I do think it has something along the lines of SSH. But hey, if you're happy, more power to ya!
For games it depends on the game. Benchmarks be damned, I'd rather run Quake on Unix (Linux or BSD).
>>>>>>>
Well, for games, stability isn't a big issue since the game will go down long before the OS will. I wouldn't have a problem if Linux was just a little slower (though given the piece of junk that is Windows, it shouldn't be!) but often the Windows version retains playable fps at a higher res.
For CAD it depends on the app. Some aren't even available for NT.
>>>>>>
For 3D editing, which is what I was talking about, NT cannot be beat. Linux's situation will improve when Maya comes out, (and also the the WildCat 4420 gets Linux drivers which it will soon), but NT still dominates from the tools point of view.
For video editing, depends on the app, NT is probably first choice, or for super high-end, maybe IRIX or something obscure.
>>>>>>>>>>>
If you're doing realtime video editing, check out BeOS. Though PersonalStudio won't do anything for ya if you need Premiere caliber videos, but it can often do more on less hardware than a lot of NT programs.
This debate isn't one which can be answered definitively, any more than you can answer a car debate definitively. I like VWs
for personality. Some Japenese cars get better milage. Some American cars get style or raw horsepower/dollar bonuses. You
get the picture.
>>>>>>>>>
For the midrange, Mitsubishi Ecclipses are undoutedly the most sexy. For the high end, nothing beats an XK8. That IS the truth.
"...I prove to myself that NT4 is in fact better"
Then you're right. NT4 is best for you, hands down. You must be very happy, you've found your "soul operating system".
>>>>>>
Not at all, I think NT is far from my "soul operating system." Linux is farther still, and BeOS, though I love it, is still not there yet. With a couple of tweeks, BeOS could get there (me being a media/graphics person) but its not there yet.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I don't see any Word screenshots ... not that I have any reason to doubt the WINE developers, but it sure would be nice to be able to show the NT bigots in my acquaintance, just to rub salt in their wounds a little ...
Heck, check those scrollbars on that screenshot of Excel. I don't think anyone on the Linux side of things is going to be rubbing salt into any NT user's wounds any time now.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Yeah, great, Office 2000 works... but what about Microsoft Bob? My shell's shell needs a shell! BTW, Ian, AZ and GNO/ME made my //gs useful up until the day my 20mhz Zip kicked the bucket a few years ago. Thanks!
Yeah, right.
"WTF happened to the passwd file?!!"
"I thought it would look better in 12-point Times..."
"Free your mind and your ass will follow"
Okay. Let's posit the following:
Keep in mind that this isn't Joe's fault, it's just that MS has done an exceptional job of making it look like there are no alternatives, therefore Joe Average knows MS and that's all.
Therefore, Wine is key to getting people to give Linux a shot in two ways:
I might also add another advantage not specifically related to Joe: A company's systems people can slip a few Linux boxes (configured with fvwm95, Wine and Office) on a few desks, and no one notices the difference until they realize the system hasn't crashed for no damn reason at all for a while :)
So now, Joe Average is willing to consider and possibly even uses Linux, although he may still be running Office on it just because he knows how to use it.
So far, so good. The first side of the sword slices at Redmond nicely.
Now for the other side of the sword.
Unless there is a consistent effort on development of native Linux applications, all that's going to be accomplished here is that MS will gain a foothold in the Linux world and can make our lives miserable.
I know, I know. Development's going on right now, even as we speak. But how many of us look the other way at the limitations of StarOffice or WordPerfect just because we get a warm fuzzy from the fact that it's all MS-free?
If Linux's acceptance comes to hinge on Microsoft software (an oxymoron if ever I heard one, but if the above holds true, not impossible at all), that gives MS an unacceptable wedge over the future path of Linux development -- after all, if we fail to address the needs of MS application users (as defined by the programmers at MS), they can take their apps back to a Windows box.
In my more paranoid moments, I think that this is the reason that Wine hasn't had an encounter with Microsoft's legal division - Wine does, not by design but by result - extend the potential embrace of Microsoft.
What to do, then? Wine is necessary in order to wean current MS users from their digital crack, but at the same time, opens up a whole new playground for MS to lurk in.
I'm not going to propose an answer here, because I don't know what it is. But it's not often that I'm both heartened and chilled by the same piece of news.
You're only as young as the last time you changed your mind -- Timothy Leary
VMWare doesn't allow hardware accelerated graphics. So, if you have a voodoo X and want to run a game like Baldur's Gate II....you cannot! I would love to use VMWare IF it had support for things like OpenGL and stuff.....my real reason for Windows is games. And WINE is making excellent progress in that department....games are currently just running slow. But, that can be fixed....at least they 'run'.
Interesting... however one of the things Wine says it will NEVER implement is vxd support. So any M$ product that requires access of a vxd, even trivially, could have pretty bad implications for Wine.
There's another dynamic at work here: 3rd party Windows applications. If MS gets too wacky with their system/API updates, it will break 3rd party apps, often in non-obvious ways. This has happened several times in the past with things like the MFC shared library - customer and 3rd party outcry has always forced MS to release an "update" that restores the original behavior.
Add in the fact that many large companies using Windows have at least one piece of custom in-house software. If that software's broken by any tomfoolery, MS again looks bad, and this time in front of a potentially huge corporate customer.
Um, duh, MacOS isn't one of their own trademarked Windows[tm] versions.
There are many groups at Microsoft. The numbers of the departments vary, but are generally along the lines of "Systems," "Applications," and "Tools;" they move the language guys around between Languages, Apps, Tools, and Internet, depending on the prevailing wind.
Inside the groups are Business Units, or BU's. Each product is its own BU, where it makes its own strategic decisions about how and what to develop. Of course there's the Windows platform strategy, since it's had more than 50% of the OS market for the last ten years. Of course it's good business sense to capture the MacOS market or the Linux market, if they look like they'll get significant market share.
There are a lot of cynical borgesque statements floating around. Some are true, some are false. One commonly touted one, Windows ain't done 'til Lotus won't run is false ... in fact, Philippe Kahn of Borland (having already made several portable OS/2+Windows apps) even told the Windows-inexperienced Lotus flacks to stop whining and write some real code.
If a new version of Windows wouldn't run an app that had marketshare, then they'd lose that upgrade market. They had to go to great lengths to fix bugs while maintaining backward compatibility. Windows 3.1 had to create 'apphacks,' which were a list of 3.0 bugfixes that Windows would undo for certain best-selling applications, including Lotus 1-2-3W. If they fixed the bug, Lotus would crash even more than usual. About 1000 applications were analyzed.
[
Excel is truely the only decent app they've written.
Tell that to the guy who just called my helpdesk wondering why his Excel document is no longer recognized as such after trying to drop a Word document into it and crashing...
*knock*knock* Hello, Microsoft? Do the words "temp file" mean anything to you? No? Try "do not write the document to disk in a state that you cannot read back". What's that? You'll get it right next time? Oh goody! Can I pay now?
"Free your mind and your ass will follow"
Those of us who dont have 4 digit uids have more compromises to make, I guess :-)
Compromises? Nah. It's just educating the clueless that there's more to life than just Microsoft Word.
I was recently looking for a new job, back in the June-August timeframe. Surprisingly, once I pointed out the fact that there were all these other readable versions of my resume online, a lot of people had no problems accepting text or html.
The really disturbing part is people would see my resume online, which has links to all these versions, and still would call me and ask for a Word copy.
I just made the conscious decision that I didn't want to deal with anyone who couldn't handle ASCII, and I ended up still dealing with everyone who called me and asked about a Word version.
(And the UID is a fluke... I found out about "that slashdot thing" and decided to register about a week later, so I could customize my content.)
--
It's pretty pathetic when karma can drop when you do nothing
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
There is no excuse in the modern world for a program to have to manage "visuals" or "colormaps". And it is horrible that you have to write many pages of code in Xlib (and allocate many tens of thousands of structures to enumerate every font) to make code that will reliably locate and use the "Helvetica" font on any X machine.
I really propose the entire graphics system be scrapped (and emulated in Xlib). Replace it with a new gc that contains a window id, make it act as though it is True Color always (use server local allocation of colors on old hardware), and replace the entire font system with one where you find the font Helvetica by sending the damn string "Helvetica" to the server! (and of course make it antialias and make it draw UTF-8 encoded text!)
It mentions that Office 2000 can be run under WINE, but it only specifically mentions Word 2000 and Excel 2000. What about Outlook, Power Point, and Access, etc? Do those work as well?
Doesn't the Microsoft Office EULA specify that you may only license the software if you own a legitimate license for any of their Windows 9x - NT - 2000 software?
Sounds like the sort of thing they'd include in their license, yeah, but so what? Why on Earth would you own a copy of Office (for Windows) if you didn't already have a Windows system to run it on? Hopefully they didn't word the license to prevent you from running it on non-Windows systems, because it probably never occurred to them that anybody would. That will change.
No, no, no. It ain't ME babe,
It ain't ME you're looking for.
-- Alastair
of course, what's to stop Microsoft from releasing versions that won't work under Wine,
ever?
What, indeed?
I mean, Microsoft would never sink so low as to add code to their software to prevent it from running someplace they didn't want it, would they? Such as, oh, Windows x.yy terminating with an error message when run under DR-DOS?
Or, turning things around a bit, "Windows isn't done until Lotus won't run."
No, it could never ever happen.
--
It's pretty pathetic when karma can drop when you do nothing
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
Who wants to edit text and/or spreadshits? I want to run "Need For Speed - Porsche Unleashed" under Linux. Have to wait until Wine compates with DirectX 7... :(
"Do you people actually..."
A lot of books are produced entirely with *NIX.
All OSs have strengths for different environments. If, like me, all you ever need is ssh and a browser, then Debian GNU/Linux is better than NT4. I wish I could run IE, but even without it I prefer Linux for responsiveness and lack of "surprises".
If, like a lot of people I know, you run proprietary applications that don't exist for Unix, then NT is the clear choice. No argument is possible.
For games it depends on the game. Benchmarks be damned, I'd rather run Quake on Unix (Linux or BSD).
For CAD it depends on the app. Some aren't even available for NT.
For video editing, depends on the app, NT is probably first choice, or for super high-end, maybe IRIX or something obscure.
For medical data manipulation, it depends entirely on the application, but I suspect Unix comes out a little ahead for stability.
This debate isn't one which can be answered definitively, any more than you can answer a car debate definitively. I like VWs for personality. Some Japenese cars get better milage. Some American cars get style or raw horsepower/dollar bonuses. You get the picture.
"...I prove to myself that NT4 is in fact better"
Then you're right. NT4 is best for you, hands down. You must be very happy, you've found your "soul operating system".
Wine is not an emulator. The acronym is true because it DOES NOT EMULATE. If it did, you could run the binaries on computers that are not x86. Wine is a set of routines that allows you to load windows executables into memory, which has nothing to do with emulation. In addition to this, it points windows environment features to systematic equivalents on the host machine, which is still not emulation.
The whole concept of using it as a porting framework came a while after wine came out. The idea being that if you can do it in real time, you can just use libraries that do it head off, which is a pretty simple (conceptually) thing to do too.
Eh...
WinE IS an emulator. It doesn't emulate machine instructions, true, since they are Intel instructions, anyway, but its library certainly does emulate the results of windoze API calls.
I've actually found Access to be pretty much crap. Don't get me wrong, Access has got its unique uses for throwing together a trivial database in 5 minutes and what not, but for much beyond that it's pretty much horrendous. I've found the form building to be especially horrible [and support for 3rd party databases basically non-existent]. Much the same for reporting. It's fine if all you need to do is print up a simple select statement, but when you start adding any real complexity you're basically SOL.
Though I know most users don't have access to the tools, I can honestly tell you that I can develop just about anything in Delphi and a decent SQL backend faster than I can with Access. I don't really see a large market for Access in and of itself, the way it is now. In my opinion, its limited success is due mostly to the fact that it comes _bundled_ with many systems; the manager, or whomever, doesn't need to run out and buy overpriced software for an application that'll only get a couple hours of use.
That being said, I do think Linux needs an application that _actually_ does the above well. Kylix (Delphi) will certainly be a huge boon for professionals when and if it comes out. Hell, even such an application targeted more at _end users_ for Windows would be nice.....
oh well, g'night
This is excellent, being that so many people rely on Microsoft Office applications, and cant use anything else. Being that these applications well probably never be ported to Linux (unless Microsoft gets broken up, possibly) its great that now they can be run under Wine. However I seriously question the stability, my experience with Wine has always been never do anything that can really hurt me if the application crashes. Still, this is wonderful progress.
Linux: Because a PC is a terrible thing to waste.
James Brents
However, KOffice was just released yesterday, and while it may not entirely meet up to the feature set of MS Office, it may be "Good Enough".
Well, since a large part of the WINE effort consists is finding out just what those undocumented API's are, I'm not sure what you need explained. If the Office apps used only documented API calls, they would have been running long ago.
I don't see any Word screenshots ... not that I have any reason to doubt the WINE developers, but it sure would be nice to be able to show the NT bigots in my acquaintance, just to rub salt in their wounds a little ...
...
Not that I enjoy that sort of thing. Oh, what the heck, yes I do.
So, anyone got screenshots? Might be nice to get a big one with KDE or some other Linux-specific background props around it too
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
MS products run on all those versions of Windows, but that doesn't mean that they can't detect what version they're on. There are all kinds of "if WIN95...else if WIN98...chunks of code.
If they could discover a subtle way to detect most (not even all) of the time when they are on Wine, they wouldn't even need to create an "if WINE" branch. They would probably be able to find ways of getting it to go down the wrong Windows branch on occasion, instead of going down the branch of whichever Windows WINE emulates. That would result in strange, irreproducible crashers that would create FUD around Wine.
This would be a lot more devastating than just preventing it from working at all. It would cast serious doubts on Wine's reliability without making MS look guilty of anything. Even looking at the source code, you wouldn't see any "if WINE" case statements, so it would be hard to pin anything on MS.
I think WINE should go forward as a way to run Win32 apps from vendors other than MS. Other ISVs would love to have the additional revenue stream.
At the same time, I think there have to be some serious open source competitors to the MS-Office apps. Those are important enough that they need to run well natively, and not be hampered by the tradeoffs of an emulator. At the same time, we don't want MS to have another revenue stream from the Linux market.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
Try doing some serious layout work in Word 2000 and Word 97 [which allegedly use the same file format] and watch as things jump all over the place. or better yet, try saving into Word 6 format from Word 97 and watch as all your graphica are scrolled 1/3 to the right, and have r and g on one side, and b on the other. There are Linux suites now which are nearly as compatible with Word as Word is. And that's the best you can ask for. WPO2K does a shitty job [I've trested all five], StarOffice 5.2 does a good one [they're rewritten the import filters from 5.1]. But I do agree with you about the choice. Who the hell says I have to use open source software with an Open Source OS?
According to http://www.zdnet.com /zd nn/stories/news/0,4586,2644039,00.html, the next release of Office (Office 10) will only work on Win98 or later.
It appears to me that this is yet another way of trying to make people upgrade. At work, we still use win95 (with a few NT, Win2K, & Linux desktops) as the standard desktop. I can't see management forking over the cash required to upgrade all the PCs just to run Office 10. IMHO, if MS does this, it would be a perfect opportunity for Sun & StarOffice to come in and pick up a lot of ex-Office customers and very well cause Office and OS sales to slow down even further.the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
What's the point of switching from Windows to Linux if Linux runs SLOWER?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Then Linux users have no right to call it Windoze! The Amiga users can do it, the Amiga can whip anything for graphics speed (in terms of equivilant hardware of course.) But Win32 GDI beats X, and DirectX, D3D, and Windows NV OpenGL whips the hell out of SDL and Mesa, and Linux NV OpenGL.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I've not used Delphi; between it being somewhat pricey, non-ubiquitous, and such, it hasn't been an option. The company I work for got worried a couple years ago over the financial condition of Borland, and basically "nixed" the use of any of Borland's tools for new work. (There used to be quite a lot of Paradox systems.)
If Delphi can't become ubiquitous, it's not too likely to become of great importance, whether renamed to Kylix or not :-).
I keep debating whether or not I should get a copy of Corel Office Deluxe so I can try out Paradox for Linux; it ought to be an option as well.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
I thought there was a version of M$ office for macOS systems also. Obviously you don't need a license for Windows if you are running it on a mac.
As with most Microsoft software packages, the version for Macintosh systems is an almost completely separate (and much cleaner) codebase. Yes, IE5 for Mac is about as good as Mozilla. Yes, Office2K for Mac eats Office2K for Windows for lunch. Yes, Microsoft will lose market share because the licenses say "you may not run this on a free OS."
Will I retire or break 10K?
Actually, I think it *was* resolved back when it was a serious theological question--though I forget the answer.
hawk
Not to mention an OS where you can log in remotely and its like your in front of the machine without a hideous lag of 'move mouse'...'wait for screen to catch up'...'click on icon'...'wait for screen to repaint new window'...'move mouse'...
Remote graphical login is now in the hands of lowly Windows 9x users with Back Orifice 2000, released by CDC under GNU GPL. If Back Orifice 2000 is a digital crime tool, then so is PCAnywhere.
Will I retire or break 10K?
What do you mean "responsive"? If you want true "real time" response, NT sucks. It's designed around a "human time" response; getting it to respond under 100 milliseconds without a dual CPU is as close to impossible as you can get.
For the midrange, Mitsubishi Ecclipses are undoutedly the most sexy. For the high end, nothing beats an XK8. That IS the truth.
Liar. For the midrange, anything will do, the best is probably a Toyota Corolla. For the high end, the absolute best is a 4WD Porsche Turbo. THAT is the truth.
I think NT is far from my "soul operating system." Linux is farther still, and BeOS, though I love it, is still not there yet.
I do a lot of server work. This means going from one machine to the other, all the time. I can't do this with an eNTirely shitty computer that depends on a built-in GUI. Native Telnet is a MUST for servers, unles you can walk faster than bits do from one console to the other. Or else, you must have a fat stock option with the Tivoli Co.
THE main reason is all Unix GUIs suck arse compared to Win/Mac
This is why UNIX systems and similar systems come with development tools: so you can write your own GUI if need be. Have you tried GNOME or KDE lately?
Will I retire or break 10K?
gnumeric still isn't ready for prime time. It's closer to complete, and it's nice that I can now resized cells and have this remembered, and use light borders (necessary on an 80 name gradesheet), but it segfaults just too often to use. I've *never* seen an excel this unstable (but then again, the last excel I used was 4.x :), and it even makes staroffice 5.2 look stable . . .
VxDs are not supported on NT or Windows 2000. They are an anachronism from Win9x's DOS core.
It's silly to say that somehow there's no reason to have Windows now that WINE runs Office. First off, how are you supposed to install Office without Windows? Secondly, WINE is a complete pain in the arse to set up and get running - average users, i.e., the kind that use office suites, are not going to do that. In fact, I'd much rather boot into Windows to use those applications than twiddle with WINE myself.
Admittedly, it's been a long time since I've tried WINE, but I doubt the process for installation and setup has varied drastically. WINE is a good project, and I think good things will come out of it eventually for end users, but not for another year or so, most likely.
-lx
Because my clients need a rock-soild[sic], easy to use, fast, compliant, stable, free browser for our Internet/Intranet applications. That's IE 5.
IE 5 is only "rock-solid, etc." if you run it on a Macintosh system. Mozilla is already somewhat more compliant than IE 5 for Windows and has nearly surpassed it in the stability department. Plus, it's both free and Free.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Excel2000 and Word2000 (imho the only really good applications Microsoft ever published)
Ok Ok, I'll give Excel credit...it still beats the spreadsheet in StarOffice, but WORD??? No Microsoft product manages to increase my stress level more than Word! Even BSODs in Win98 don't compare! Word is fucking evil! I constantly switch it to the Australian dictionary. After typing a paragraph it switches back to the US dictionary. So I switch it back. So it changes back again. Then there's the painful graphic positioning process...and the little effort where by if you drag a graphic past the bottom of the screen the scroll at first moves at a snails pace, then suddenly jumps all over the document. Then there's that FUCKED UP LITTLE PAPER CLIP that there appears to be no option to disable...you have to uninstall the software using the CD.
-"I still believe in revolution; I just don't capitalize it anymore." - srini!
Isn't that where OS/2 failed? If we want programs for Linux, the best thing to do is to petition companies to release them. Otherwise, companies just say, "Well, we'll only release a Windows product because Linux can run it anyway." Then you end up with more Windows products selling, and less Linux products. Remember, the Windows versions probably won't support all the features available on Linux.
--
The World is Yours.
> You run several thousand Windows applications? Impressive.
Lessee. Assume a mere 5 minutes per application on the average, and that "several" thousand is at least "three" thousand.He's a busy man.
Also, assume $50 per application on average.He's a rich man. Or rather, he was a rich man.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
This is sick and wrong. Very much so. Why not just post links to goatse.cx and call that an article? I feel dirty dual booting my Mac, I can't imagine how I'd feel actually running MS software inside a Linux GUI.
I do not have a signature
Verily, the lack of video game support is one of the main reasons that the world has not yet converted entirely to Linux.
:o)
Got Rhinos?
I don't think so.
The point was that Access:
It may do so fairly badly. That does not deny that it does so.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Everything works in Windows too. It all depends on what you're using. The vast majority of people in the desktop market use office suites, file managers (the ones bundled with the DE), web browsers, and the GUI itself. In each of these every-so-imporant catagories, Linux falls flat. The two good office suites (StarOffice and WP Office 2000) pale in comparison to their Windows counterparts. StarOffice has a hideos interface that would get laughed at if it was in a professional program, and WP Office 2K is slower (and sometimes less stable) than the equivilant version on Windows. WP8 (which I think doesn't use WINE) is stable on Linux, but the interface makes one gag (motif.) The file manager in KDE2 takes forever to start up and flickers like hell after it does. The web browser situation in Linux is pretty sad. Mozilla is still unusable (bloated, slow, and buggy) Netscape 4.x is slow and ocassionally unstable, and Opera 4 is still in beta. KDE2 itself is slower than NT4's GUI or Win2K's GUI (if you turn of the alpha menus.) Not to mention the fact that games and 3D still run significantly slower on Linux than on Windows.
/. cracks it up to be. Its great for a lot of people, but for the average desktop user (which is where it is getting aimed at these days) it still has a long way to go. Criticism isn't a bad thing. Its helpful. It lets you know what you need to work on. It amazes me how blind the herd of Linux users are to the faults of their own OS. They get all riled up when Linux3D does benchmarks showing that Linux is only a little slower than Windows, but doesn't even notice when BeNews (Linux3D's BeOS equivilant) does benchmarks that show BeOS trouncing Windows significantly. That proves that Windows is not some magical fortress of fast 3D and with smart coding, an OS (even Linux!) can be faster than it! Go over to the BeNews message boards sometime. Sure it has its shares of zealots and over-optimists, but in general they seem to know that BeOS has faults. Just this morning several people pointed out the poor developer support from Be and the work it needs in the UI and App Kits.
I'm not trolling here, I'm simply pointing out that Linux isn't as great as everybody at
Blind devotion to an OS doesn't get you anywhere. It ultimately serves to kill that OS because nobody has the balls to point out what sucks aobut it.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Excellent; they've got an editor with your name written all over it!
:)
I used to know all the keys in TP5.0; they're the same, and I'm only 22...
I *love* rectangular cut-and-paste! That's why I tried to edit stuff in "The Draw" in the first place!
I type in shell script with 'cat'. If it's really complicated, well, I use pico!
Heh.
(a) paste them with cat (Unix: just cat and paste!)
(b) run pico as 'pico -w' (just alias it to 'pico -wb', actually...)
(c) use bash. Oh man do I hate tcsh; and we can't change it, either. At least I'm writing a simple shell for Operating Systems; I implemented pipes tonight!
(d) '/bin/vi' vs. '/usr/bin/pico'? Too scary for me...
(e) That code you sent me was demented. Now I have to replace the typedefs... TELL me no-one writes unions like that!
(f) Go to my SID and tell me what my demented code does, and why, and how. Bonus points if you find that it actually might do something else. (hey, what do I know?)
(g) I had to edit a passwd file once in vi on a hosed system. Yuck! Deleting the end of a line is seriously broken; I'm just going to shut up about "HJKL", too. Now I probably would just use sed; it's easier.
later...
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Has anyone else noticed how bad the fonts look in that screenshot? Yikes! Looks like Windows 2.0.
Still an area where X lags behinds windows, both the font renderer and the lack of anti-aliasing.
Alex Bischoff
---
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
It's been a year or so since I ugpraded, but I've been running Win32 Lotus Notes on it and it's pretty usable with the occaisional crash -- not enough that I'm checking the updates page on a regular basis, you see.
One problem I've found with getting programs to run under WINE is you have to raid a windows box's system directory to snitch the DLLs you need (e.g. the DLLs OLE subsystem). That's not exactly fair game.
I'd be very interested to know if they got Office to run under WINE with no MS intellectual property other than what might be copied to the hard disk by the Office 2K installer.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
1) MacOS X
2) Classic Environment
3) VirtualPC for MacOS 9
4) Windows NT 4.0
5) LinuxOne Lite (name? You know what I'm talking about.)
6) WINE
7) Word 2000
Or you can wait for the official port, which should be out soon. At least in theory.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
I love the Wine project, and this is great news, but it really isn't there yet. But don't take my word for it, try out some apps, and see what works and what doesn't!
On the plus side, Photoshop 3.0 works almost flawlessly on my machine, and I've gotten an already installed version of Internet Explorer 4.0 to work once. Also, audio player applications (not media player!) seem to work fairly well.
On the minus side, Explorer doesn't work, and Internet Explorer's network installer won't install. A few programs that require or use networking in their install don't work, (web browsers tend to work) and a *lot* of apps (old and new) are pretty broken.
Incidentally, I'm all for using the "WABI approach" in developing wine: if it works for the most popular apps, it'll probably work for a lot of others. So let's see if we can get Explorer, Internet Explorer, and Media Player working, and get the core Microsoft stuff covered! After that we can start worrying about optimization...
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
50% of the time! Wow, they've already exceeded its performance under windows!
I haven't bought or used Micros~1's, eh, products for over half a decade (and therefore haven't got their licensing booklets handy), but it used to be common knowledge that they didn't allow their apps to be run under anything but their own trademarked Windows[tm] versions. True/False/Escape?
Btw, I don't really understand why some people are so eager to support the other monopoly Micros~1 has, especially when supported commercial or open-source alternatives do exist.
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
I'm glad that we have Excel2k and Word2k running on Wine, at least to the point where we can get a screenshot. That's a huge step foreward. But how stable is it beyond that? Can we run Excel2k and be 99% sure that it won't crash on us?
fearbush.com
Finding God in a Dog
Try it out; I've used Quicken 5 on wine, and it's emulated almost perfectly. I don't know if wine will handle the installation correctly, but it should run Quicken.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
> but I'd rather run them under Windows 2000, as well as several thousand other Windows applications
;) For those who only need to use one or two specific applications, for whatever reason, not having to dual boot or not having to own a dedicated computer is rather helpful.
You run several thousand Windows applications? Impressive.
---
Excel looks so ugly in comparission of the beautiful Gnumeric spreadsheet!
They still have a better general purpose spreadsheet though.
Anyways, congrats to the Wine team!
Word and Excel are good apps, esp. because of the incompatibility in all office products import/export features. I've NEVER seen an import that worked all the time, especially when using some really advanced features of the product.
Of course, then there's the other 'lost app'. One to which there is no comperable version available for Linux (at least not what that I've found).
MS Project.
Being a manager, I can probably get away with Star Office for a lot of stuff. Hell, most of my stuff is in e-mail anyway. What I really need is a decent project-management package. Something with good task management, GANTT chart support, and maybe even some workload capabilities.
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
I think Wine is very cool, and I like what I saw of the screenshots, but why not use a tried a true virtual machine system like VMWare. There you can run *any* Windows app (or OS/2 app or BEOS app or DOS app or any i86-enabled OS's app) that you want. With Wine you can run *one* type of software only - Windows. The only advantage I see to Wine seems to be the price. With VMWare you need to license VMWare and own full versions of the Operating Systems you want to run. I use VMWare for both Linux and Win2K/NT and it's great. Let's not forget this option...!
Polymorphism -- It's what you make of it.
I work in the Marketing Department. Most used MS-Office App around here is PowerPoint. Between internal presentations, partner/big sales demos, and trade-show talks PowerPoint is *heavily* used.
The other one is Outlook. We recently switched over because 1) the task and meeting scheduling features make everyone's life easier (Marketing folk are always in meetings) and 2) any new hires are used to using Outlook.
Excel and Word are used pretty heavily, but the PowerPoint presentations are generally more important.
I can spell. I just can't type.
The latest wine runs diablo 2 without the slightest fault. Including sound and so on. I am a necromancer level 12 (got the game yesterday!)
(Need to use the no cd binary from http://www.gamecopyworld.com and wine --winver nt40)
Is that a good enough game support for you? I love it.
Moritz
You should try GnuCash - you can import & export .qif files, which means that you can later hand off everything in an easily imported format. I guess the only problem is that you have to do a .qif for each acount - I could be wrong on this since I've only played around with it a bit. Since Quicken just hosed my loans accounts I'll maybe look at it a bit closer... Good thing I've got backups. Have to say though that this is the first time in 4+ years that I've lost anything, which is pretty good.
Yes- I admit I paid up for VMware...However it was worth a couple of hundred bucks to not have to worry about "what version of CVS wine do I need to run what version of this office suite OR when can wine support this tax manager OR what parts of this program work and what parts do not work". At least with VMware I can keep all of those nasty
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.