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Jeremy White And Mad Penguin On CrossOver Office 3
SilentBob4 writes "Today, a review of CrossOver Office 3 (written by Preston St. Pierre) as well as an interview with the founder of CodeWeavers Inc., Jeremy White (written by Adam Doxtater) have been published for mass consumption. It looks like CrossOver Office/Wine has come a long way since the dark ages of Linux science. Congratulations to the developers on both teams on a job well done. The interview with Jeremy is better than any I have seen recently."
Argh! Multi-user support is no longer in the standard version of Crossover Office. I'm tired of people assuming that home users don't run multiple user accounts.
That's true, and I certainly wasn't intending to minimize that. My post was specifically referring to the value adds that give people a reason to buy their product instead of using the free version of wine.
They not only contribute, they employ full-time the Wine maintainer! Anyone who disses on Codeweavers for being "proprietary" is either a troll, or doesn't have a good handle on the facts. (probably both)
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For those of you who might not be familiar with what Wine actually is, let me clarify. Even though some of us enjoy a sip of wine every now and then, this is not what we are talking about today. We are referring to a package that allows Windows applications to run on Linux... outside of an emulator. Wine uses an open source Windows API (application programming interface) to allow modified Win32 binaries to run in a UNIX/Linux environment, completely free of Windows. Think of it not as an emulator, but more of a compatibility layer, or translator if you will. The status of the Wine project can be found here.
CodeWeavers is at the head of the pack in Wine development and deservedly so. They produce the most well packaged, capable distributions of Wine available. As Jeremy has stated, development is in the hands of their customer base and supporters. Whatever the customer wants the customer gets, and so it should rightfully be. Mr. White knows his business. You can see which applications are getting all of the attention at the CodeWeavers Top List page, and it's actually pretty interesting to see what apps are getting pushed to the top. Take a look.
Well, enough of the small talk, let's carry on with the interview. Enjoy!
Mad Penguin: First of all, I'd like to thank you for taking the time to sit down with us today to answer a few questions. I guess the first thing I'd like to know is more personal than anything... why Linux? What was the motivational factor(s) behind developing software to run Windows applications on Linux?
Jeremy White: Well, it's a fairly long story. I've always been a geek. I've loved programming on computers since I was 11 and had to sneak into the Radio Shack to do it, and I've also always loved computer games. Early in my career, I grew quite proficient at communications and networking programming. I was working on a project for a customer that had a Solaris system. But, they were across town, and I had to drive over there to work on it, and I couldn't afford a Sun of my own. So, instead, I installed and starting developing against Linux (circa 94 I'd say), and then just migrating the code once it was done.
So that's when I fell in love with Linux, and when we started having at least one Linux box around all the time.
Now fast forward to about 1997. One day, at lunch, I'm talking to a few new hires (young kids) that had never played the original Combat cartridge in an Atari 2600. This struck me as horrible
cultural illiteracy on their part, and so I set off to find an Atari 2600 emulator to correct this horrible flaw in their education. Along the way, I stumbled across the Wine project, and thought that it was the most audacious project I'd seen in a long time. I thought then (as I think now) that if Linux could become a truly Windows compatible operating system, it would allow for an explosion in new computing choices, and I'd get to feel like that kid at Radio Shack again.
Further, in 1996, I had founded CodeWeavers so I could do work I considered meaningful, challenging, and fun, and although we did some fun projects, I was really looking for a mission. Of course, I had a day job (and a young kid), so I couldn't really do much with Wine then. But I kept dreaming, and then one day, it being the 90s and all, I decided to pursue a business built around Wine and helping people port Windows software to Linux. I successfully landed some venture capital, asked a bunch of the Wine developers to come on board, and that's really how we got started on this mission.
MP: I'm interested in learning how quickly CodeWeavers evolved into the full-blown business it is today. How long did it take you to realize that it had become an actual business and would require your undivided attention? What was the one even that made you sit back, take a deep breath, and think “whoa I am in over my head”?
JW: I think I've actually answered that one a bit in the previous question; the truth is that CodeWeavers s
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This was my first experience with CrossOver Office of any version, and I was not disappointed. The people at CodeWeavers and at the Wine project really know what they are doing, and combined, produce a very useful program. Easily worth the measly forty bucks they charge for it, CrossOver Office provides an easy way for regular users to easily install and use many Windows products on Linux.
CrossOver Office is an excellent program based on the Wine project. This program optimizes Wine and allows users to easily run Windows programs on a Linux/UNIX environment. CrossOver Office handles many popular Windows programs such as Microsoft Office, but it also allows for the advanced user to attempt installs of programs that are not officially supported by CrossOver Office.
Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API running atop the GNU/Linux environment. There is no emulation involved with this process, allowing the Windows programs to run at regular speeds regardless of the fact that they are not on their native environment. The fact that Wine is not an emulator also means that it is completely legal and not infringing on Microsoft's copyrights. Wine is released under the GNU Lesser General Public License.
When I first received CrossOver Office from Mad Penguin for review, I was thrilled. This was a piece of software that I had heard much about, but never had a chance to experience first hand. A big round of applause to CodeWeavers for getting us the copy to evaluate.
The Install
The install of CrossOver Office was simplistic. Everything went right. I accepted the default configuration options for almost every part of the surprisingly short installation, and it just worked. Kudos to CodeWeavers.
Editors note: For those of you who might be veterans to the CrossOver experience, the installation of the product hasn't changed much over time. To give credit where credit is due, it's hard to improve on perfection. All the end user is responsible for is to tell the installer where to place the program files, after which it gives you a chance to configure it, install Windows packages, etc. I can't find anything to improve upon or refine here. The Loki installer has been used by many and for good reason... -- Adam
L to R: Installing CrossOver, The install/remove software window
Using CrossOver Office
The way CrossOver Office lets you install programs is a bit different than I'm used to. Here, you select the product you wish to install and CrossOver Office either downloads the install files, takes them from cd, or asks you where they are (if the former two fail). On the other hand, I'm used to selecting the install files I want, and continuing from there. This may not sound very different, but there is one key difference, which is why (I believe) CodeWeavers chose to do it this way: With a list of products to install, the regular user knows what products will work and what he/she can install. The other way, users may install unsupported software, and encounter errors. CrossOver Office does, of course, allow advanced users to install unsupported software, but the important part is that they have made the process easy to use without sacrificing usability.
I installed a few simple applications, such as Adobe Acrobat Reader, Internet Explorer, and Windows Media Player, which all downloaded and installed without problems. After that, I decided to move onwards to some larger programs. I installed Office XP, Counter-Strike, and Knight Online. Both Counter-Strike and Knight Online are unsupported programs, but they both worked. Office XP worked too, but that is only to be expected; after all, Microsoft Office is CrossOver Office's flagship.
Using Windows Programs
Programs installed through CrossOver Office were added to the K menu under "Windows Applications" and were easily copied to other locations as I liked. Internet Explorer, while not my browser of choice, was quite snappy and quick to load. There seemed to be no major performance problems with Co
> When CodeWeavers convinced the Wine developers to
> switch to LGPL, they also convinced them to assign
> the copyrights to CodeWeavers.
This is totally incorrect. Each and every Wine developper retains full copyright to his work. Thus CodeWeavers is not in a privileged position and must respect the LGPL exactly like all other Wine contributors.
it's all about the license.
:)
Wine switched to the LGPL license, so transgaming can no longer use wine's code without any worrries about what will happen.
If you google for ReWind, you'll find that most of transgaming's code is going in there. and perhaps some of the people who code for wine also submit their changes to ReWind, which transgaming can use.
Also, transgaming provides all their code via CVS, with the one exception of the code that handles anti-piracy mesaures. -- Translation: You can grab transgaming's winex and a no-cd crack and play your game. And of course you can play any game that doesn't require the CD or doesn't use anti-piracy checks to see if the CD was copied.
Many wine folks have a sore spot for transgaming as they never did give back their DirectX code.. but many more are taking initiative and actually improving wine. Games are good with wine
I'm working on a masters' thesis right now and have just used Word XP in Red Hat 9 for nearly seven hours straight, with styles, tables, graphics, footnotes, etc.
Two days ago, I spent nearly 12 hours straight in Word XP working on a complex document, with revision marks, for use in a publication.
1) I don't find it to be slower than in its native environment (PIII-900, 512MB RAM)
2) It has not crashed on me since I installed it several months ago (neither has Photoshop 6)
I'm sorry you haven't had the same experience!
STOP . AMERICA . NOW