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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."
There was no real incentive to switch to OS/2 from Windows as the state of the market was then. 10 years later there is, and I don't think the comparision is valid any more.
Yay! Notes 6.5.1 runs wonderfully. That's really the only "Windows" tie-in I have to worry about at work. So with a 2.6.x kernel and CXOffice, I'm pretty much set for all I need to do.
I think there is a nitch for Crossover. While many Linux home users don't feel the need to run Windows applicaitons anymore, there are plenty of businesses that feel they need to run MS Office (some even have it as a requirement to do business with others). I think Crossover is a great way to offer a stepping stone for businesses. As in, they can ditch the expensive Windows Operating systems and change to Linux while their users can still use the applications they already know.
In my mind it gives a middle ground step between being 100% Microsoft and changing to 100% Linux/OSS. As in, individual users are very dynamic and can change all their stuff at once if they so choose. Must businesses take things slower and think about making such drastic changes.
Crossover just gives them a stepping stone that breaks a big change into smaller, easier to swallow, chunks. Also, it breaks up the learning curve, it gives users a chance to learn Linux first, then to learn an Office alternative if they so choose.
Brian
> As in, they can ditch the expensive Windows
> Operating systems and change to Linux while their
> users can still use the applications they already know.
But Office is the most expensive part of the Windows desktop! And so CXOffice doesn't save you that much... If you pay, say, $60 (a year!) for Mandrake (I paid $120), and ~$60 for CXOffice, you're not that far from Windows.
Now OpenOffice is a totally different story... but it doesn't work for me as yet.
Ah, and right, I didn't have to pay for MDK. I chose to.
I could be mistaken, but it looks like the "standard" version is cheaper than the old base version. I suspect that the professional version is a little closer to the old base version, and it still supports multiple users. So, it looks to me like they may have just introduced a lower-end version without the same level of support and the multi-user capabilities.
Again, I could actually be talking from my posterior. I don't remember for sure what the pricing used to be.
The only thing tying me to Windows at the moment is the fact that all our clients use it, and I need to make sure that everything is flawless in that browser too.
I'm going to try this out when I get the time to set up a proper Linux setup, and if it works - you have a switcher. ;)
Well, each person's needs are different. Since you don't need it, you can save your $60. But I still have a lot of uses for Windows software, and Crossover has saved me from having to go boot up my Windows laptop, to wit:
.EXE or use a SETUP.EXE, like f'r'instance Adobe Acrobat for Palm. I can safely execute these programs, let them "install" to my fake_windows directory, then grab the Palm .prc files and manually install them.
- IE 6.0 -- some sites simply won't work with Mozilla. Rather than mess around, I can easily run IE now right on my Linux desktop, view the offending page, and later whip off a scolding message to their webmaster.
- MS Word 2000 -- sometimes I have to save a document in Word format, and I need a way to confirm that Open Office did the right thing. Word 97 Viewer is useful but I feel safer when I can easily edit a document using the native tool.
- Photoshop 6.0 -- works terrifically! I am an enthusiastic GIMP user, but it's nice to have all the best tools for a job, not just some of them.
- Finale 2001 -- Finally, I can view and print my music from Linux! Works like a charm. Think I'll d/l Finale 2004 and see if that works....
- MS Excel 2000 -- for occasional use.
- MS Powerpoint
- Efax Viewer -- I wish they'd send faxes in some more obvious format like jpeg but anyway this works great with crossover.
- H&R Taxcut 2002 - the only thing wrong with it was that it would crash when I clicked "Help". Now if Turbotax worked, I'd be happy as a clam.
- Palm apps that come packaged as
- Little Windows freeware or shareware utilities that do stupid little things and expect you to send $20, like finding all the images inside a DLL or EXE. I can d/l these, try them out, etc., from the convenience of my Linux desktop. Often they have strange glitches but the general functionality is usually intact.
I wish Dreamweaver MX 2004 worked in wine. Maybe Crossover 3.1???
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Well, the kids do their homework with it
I run Photoshop with it
I'm (still) trying to run our proprietary network with it
It's the only Notes client on Linux
It got my Quicken off windows
We have an application that uses it to write spreadsheets in genuine MS format
And it's about 50 bucks.
Damn nice software, as Agent Cooper said.
Actually, many of the silver apps work wonderfully as well. YMMV, but I have found that the majority of the functionality works perfectly in the silver apps, except for maybe a little quirk here and there . Even the bronze apps work well for the most part if you are not using any of the exotic features of the app, and they will sometimes crash for seemingly no reason (but then again, many apps do that on windows too). Although I have not used Access (ever, windows or under crossover), I would suggest downloading the free trial and giving it a shot, you may be suprised.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
Where I work we use MS Project, Rational Rose and StarTeam, all tied closely together. Up until now myself and some other Linux zealots in the company were forced to use Project and Rational Rose from a Windows 2000 Terminal Server machine which was good enough for us and bad load on the server.
:(
:)
But now MS Project really runs under cxoffice, and that's great, although having a native Linux project planning and managing application would be much better. Alas, MrProject is still not good enough for us.
On the other hand, Rational Rose still doesn't install, and we were never able to make native Linux version if Rose run. Maybe somebody had more luck making the thing work?
BTW, StarTeam runs on Linux natively just perfect, perhaps because it's a java application.
___
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Just wait until you find out that
1) MS Office is visibly slower than in its native environment.
2) These apps crash even more often than under Windows.
For me, Word XP under CrossOver becomes unusable after about 10-15 minutes of use (it seems to go into a 30 second CPU-torturing loop after each keystroke by then). Maybe because I use WindowMaker and like to switch desktops.
Also, Visio 2000 won't install at all even though it is supposedly supported. Not to mention any newer versions of Visio.
As long as there is at least one application that does not work *exactly* as it does under Windows, we are talking about poor substitutes. Still better than nothing, though.
OpenOffice 1.1 is not an alternative for any serious user who requires more than a bare minimum of functionality. Try opening a huge Excel spreadsheet with tons of formulas in OpenOffice. If that sounds too challenging, try inserting a chart with, say, 200 data points. Or try opening a Word document which uses the Symbol font.