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Codeweavers' CrossOver Plugin Reviewed
Grok writes: "CodeWeavers' CrossOver Plugin allows Linux users to use software and browser plugins that where once only avaliable on Windows. Version 1.0 was released in late August 2001 to much media furvor, while the release of version 1.1 arrived without much fanfare. Despite the lack of attention by the news media, the new version of CrossOver is a more exciting release than the orginal. The reason? Microsoft Media Player Support. Finally, every major plugin on the internet, along with several obscure ones, are now supported under Linux. (Full Story)"
As long as you're talking about WMV 7 (not sure about WMV 8, though it may well be supported), and you're not planning to stream, the avifile Win32 codec hacks and MPlayer (I use the latest CVS) seem to work fine. Just make sure to install the codecs before you compile MPlayer and specify --with-win32libdir= as an option to configure. You can also get support for stuff like DivX 5, too. :) Hope this helps.
Linux != x86
The current cvs version of Mozilla works with WMP but not 0.99 . THis is a bug in mozilla. I think that it does work in Netscape.
But I can't understand why anyone would use it to play RealMedia content. Although Real's site has seemingly obfuscated the links to it out of existence, there is both a native RealPlayer8 and beta quality RealOne player for linux, with plugins included.
:) This may very well be where CrossOver truly shines in business, making a friendly desktop more feasible. Though most of us will download a file and use some imperfect converter/importer to load it into another editor, or use wine itself to view the material, a lot of business people want the convenience of viewing it in the browser, and for .doc content and the like, this makes a lot more sense than multimedia does in the browser paradigm...
That said, I can barely see any reason to use Windows Media Player from crossover, as a number of linux players (numerous avifile based programs, xine, and mplayer) can play Traditionally Windows-only (avi/asf/wmv/etc.) media in much more efficient ways. With CrossOver, pretty much everything is done in win32 binary format before being put on the display. Whatever you may say about wine's efficiency, it still is simply not feasible to beat native code. With the semi-native players, most of the time they get away with native codecs, resulting in no win32 code at all. Even in cases where codecs have to be pulled from win32 codecs, as little as possible is done there. The file is demultiplxed, the video stream is passed through the win32 dll, and is only required to provide decoding of frames, and in the case of video, usually in the easiest colorspace for that dll to produce. From there, native code takes over, and, if available, passes the data straight to an Xvideo overlay of the appropriate colorspace, and hardware does some filtering, colorspace conversion, and scaling. Even if hardware can't be used, native methods to do this outperform wine-mode code. The only reason I can see is for the plugin aspect of this implementation. Of course, I have always hated the "plugin" style of viewing content, and have always saved to disk when I could. Same with "embedded" playback in file managers (i.e. Konqueror), I always disable that crap...
Now with QuickTime, you have a pretty good reason to use CrossOver, the best (only way) to view Sorenson codec material is QuickTime's player. Plus you get browser embedding if you like that. A little tip for those who just want standalone player, wine is enough to run the full installation. In fact, if you disable ddraw.dll in your wine config, you get CrossOver level cleanness (i.e. no black all over the screen, no messed up menus, etc).
As far as the office format viewing, I have no clue, I don't have to deal with that much
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
These guys are doing a great service in helping to complete Wine. But they are a commercial entity and need funding. Don't let this become another Linux company that believes in Free software that doesn't make it.
p ort_wine.php
This product only costs $25; that's a small price to pay to get stable interoperability with Windows software on Free operating systems.
From their site: http://www.codeweavers.com/products/crossover/sup
CodeWeavers will use the revenue from the end user version of CrossOver plugin to continue its work on Wine as well as to enhance and improve the Plugin product. We feel that this hybrid model is an excellent model for Free Software companies. We are able to contribute, extend, and help a significant Free project, Wine, while still having some mechanism to help us sustain our efforts.
Thus by purchasing CrossOver Plugin, you will be helping to provide a much needed source of income to a Free Software company that has provided a large range of valuable improvements to one of the most key Free Software Projects - Wine.
You can patch Mozilla 0.9.9 to get WMP plugins to work. This is (sort of) mentioned in the article. The patch is here and the bug report (resolved) is here. And it works fine for me, moreover...
I was able to use the plugin to run a few applications that I just couldn't get to run well under WINE. Trillian being one of them.
You might not agree the plugin is best for Linux in that it lets folks continue with proprietary formats (WMA) and prorietary codecs (Quicktime) but it sure is nice to see WINE come this far. Using this plugin I can honestly say I can surf the web and use the net with all the features I want without needing Windows at all. Codeweavers did a good job here.
'Same speed C but faster'