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Codeweavers Releases Crossover Office
rleyton writes "Codeweavers have just announced Crossover Office, a Wine derivitive which allows MS-Office 97 & 2000 products as well as Lotus Notes to run without a Windows OS License. If it's as cool as the Crossover plugin product, then it could mean a significant step forward in Wine's progress." NewsForge got hold of a final beta copy a couple of days ago and has a Crossover Office review up already, and DesktopLinux.com has one too. This looks pretty cool, yes.
Now if a PHB tells you can't run Linux, because you need Office - tell him you'll save money by not needing a Windows license, and call still use Office.
This might keep linux in the running for a good long time; Office keeps most of the corporate world from using it.
I'm using it (well, testing it - you never know, the company might go for it)
I have to say it works really well, even Access seemed to work for me (although CodeWeavers say on their site it doesn't)
It was a bit wierd having access to the company's shared calendar after using Evolution for the year that I've worked here.
I don't think I'll use it full-time, but it will be useful occasionally, and I'm sure other people who have to have M$ Office will find it invaluable.
Listening for the sound of the coming rain...
...the very excellent review of CrossOver Office at DesktopLinux.com article actually begins here.
ALL the wine modifications which were introduced with crossover plugin were submitted back to the wine tree
Hetz (Heunique)
Codeweavers offers volume licensing. The price drops below $50 when you purchase 25 or more licenses, which would be the case for a large company converting to Linux.
There are also the other advantages (security, stability) over Windows that Linux offers.
The Windows Media Player EULA already forbids using it without owning a Windows license. Of course, it also refers to WMP as "OS components". Still, it's not that big a stretch to think they'll change the Office EULA to one that requires the software to only be run on Windows itself.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
One thing to note about VMWare is that it could care less about the Windows API, it is just providing an x86 box on top of x86, passing native calls when possible, so it can happen to run windows.
Wine is in no way analogous to vmware except in how end-users tend to use it. VMWare can't be used, for example, to port a windows app to native code (ala winelib).
A comparable project to vmware is plex86 (www.plex86.org). Though it lacks the spit and polish of VMWare, they have had less time to develop and have made great progress in their relatively short life.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Here's what I can't figure out: Office 2000 will run on Win95. That means that to make Office 2000 (or damn near any other product out there that runs on the windows tree) all that needs to be done is support an API that is now almost 7 years old.
-1 (Malinformed)
Sure, it's easy to say how writing an API should take less than 7 years, and easy to say that the Wine Project is failing by missing that target, but it's a moving target. The API changes, and when reverse engineering an API, there are multiple right answers for the limited tests they have the resources to do.
Say a program uses APIs 1-50, but only 25% of them. In order to make that program work, you only need 50 APIs 25% done. Not too bad. And, maybe your solution doesn't collide with other variables too badly. Now, when you take that up to 50%, you might start to get some collisions, realize that, while a certain program functioned using an API before, it was based on two assumptions that were both wrong and happened to cancel each other out.
It's 7 years old (and being extended with every release). It's undocumented (at last check Microsoft denied there were undocumented API features, but the Wine project happened to be documenting them on the way through their implementation).
It's not easy to hit an invisible moving target.
That's all fine and good, except that there's no Windows to be rebooted. Somehwere in the registry or whatever, that program's put an identifier so the next time Windows boots up, it'll run the rest of the installation program, but I don't know where that is. When I try and run the installation program again, it just gives me the same song-and-dance about needing to reboot, so I can never actually get the things installed! This is mostly the case with the "newer" MS products, like the Office 2k line.
What's nice about the Crossover Office thing (aha! this post is on topic) is that they've evidentally got an install procedure that actually WORKS, so that might be the answer I've wanted. Of course, now I'm in a position where I don't need to worry about running those MS programs, so I probably won't get it, but still. :)
Al Qaeda has ninjas!
"This product only makes sense for people who already have a Microsoft Office CD. If you don't, stick with StarOffice or pay Microsoft USD $370 plus tax for the suite. But if you do have Office 97 or 2000 laying around, Codeweaver's Crossover Office will let you fire up Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access in Linux, and even surf the Internet with Explorer, or check your mail with Outlook."
March 26, 2002
At CodeWeavers, we believe strongly in truth in advertising. This section is provided to give you as honest a glimpse as we can provide about our product and what our Beta testers have found.
Tangible things you will get now for your money:
Software, including a fairly easy to use configuration program, that makes it possible to install and run Microsoft Office 97, Microsoft Office 2000, and Lotus Notes.
Documentation explaining how it works and how to use it, including both a nice HTML version and a printable PDF version.
If you purchase the CD version, you will get a shiny CD and printed README file. The CD version also includes complete source code for all free software components.
Tangible things you will get in the future for your money:
We will provide free upgrades to all 1.0.x customers for every 1.0.x release we provide. The 1.0.x series upgrades should resolve most of the limitations described below.
Service you will get for your money:
We will make CrossOver Office live up to our claims of what it will do, and we will make it do so on your machine, and in your environment.
While we will only be providing email support, we track each email carefully and insure that each problem receives attention. We also make sure to facilitate a customer to customer message exchange service so that you can help each other.
Intangible benefit you will get for your money:
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. For a list of what we have done, please [click here].
CodeWeavers will use the revenue from the end user version of CrossOver Office to continue its work on Wine as well as to enhance and improve our products.
What works perfectly:
CrossOver Office should install easily. You should also be able to pick and choose either Office 97/2000 or Lotus Notes, and easily and cleanly install them.
Microsoft Word and Excel should operate very well. We are even able to embed spreadsheets inside of Word documents and vice versa.
What works well:
You should then be able to launch all of the Office apps except for Frontpage and be generally productive with the Office suite.
What sort of works:
Outlook doesn't take you through it's full intro wizard, you have to manually add accounts. Outlook has numerous other bugs.
Powerpoint works fairly well, but has the occassionaly glitch.
Lotus Notes runs fairly well, but it can have display images with managed windows from time to time. It has not been tested as extensively as the other applications, and so it may also have as yet unknown problems.
There are a range of other applications that some testers have reported success with. These include Act! Turbotax, and others. We won't officially support these (yet), but they may work for you.
Font support in CrossOver now uses client side rendering, so we use True Type fonts directly. This makes font display much nicer, which is especially noticeable if you use a 125% or greater magnification. However, we are not yet using font code that is patented by Apple Corporation, and so the font display is not yet as crisp as it can be. We will resolve this problem in the very near future.
What doesn't work:
The office assistant sort of works, but when it's running, things get weird and break badly. It's fun to try, but remember to turn Clippy off when you're done.
Access is buggy, but we haven't explored it carefully. FrontPage and Visio won't run at all. Internet Explorer has lots of bugs.
What we will make work:
We will make every application in the Office suite, as well as Notes work as well as Word and Excel do. We will do that very quickly over the next few weeks, and we will provide you with free upgrades to support that.
In future versions of CrossOver, we will support other popular productivity applications. By the end of 2002, we believe that we will support most popular applications.
Technically yes, license wise - not a chance. Ran into exactly that situation here at work. Had a big terminal server with about 300 users and one copy of Office 2K on it. Long story short - got audited and was forced to buy 299 more copies of office. Thankfully, since we are a college, we can get a copy of Office 2k pro for about $40, so we weren't out anywhere near as much as we could have been.
That said, we should've known better. MS has gone almost completely to a per-user (or per-seat) licensing scheme.
Geek used to be a four letter word. Now it's a six-figure one.
Only the academic version of Office has the registration timebomb.
I said it again and again - the END USER "signs" the EULA when you're running the installer - NOT codeweavers! so if MS really want to sue someone - they can only chase the end user - which got a very slim chances..
And why should MS sue? do I still need a licensed copy of Office? yes. Does MS still makes money by selling me office? yes. So whats the point to sue?
Hetz (Heunique)
You've never heard of DLL hell then? I've watched coworkers spend days trying to recover from the installation of one program breaking another by trying to figure out the magic order in which to install everything.
Hi, I was a tester...
Fonts problems - due to Apple patents, the fonts hintings are off - a simple workaround would be to recompile freetype with fonts hinting on (read the README.UNX inside the freetype package), and copying it to the cxoffice/lib. This should give you same look as in windows.
Access - is pretty problematic right now - its slow. Wait for 1.0.1 (or you can buy crossover office today and get the free upgrade) for the fixes.
Macros/VBA stuff - works perfectly.
Clipboard - you'll need to install an old DLL (mfc42.dll) to the cxoffice/support/dotwine/fake_windows/Windows/ directory and then it will run (will be fixed in 1.0.1).
Excel tables, embedding - works.
ODBC connection - cannot test due to Access running problems (read my first part).
Hetz (Heunique)