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Playing Nice: Reviews of CrossOver Office, WineX 4
JimLynch writes "One of the more common questions experienced Linux users get asked by those considering migrating from Windows to Linux is, "Will my Windows applications run under Linux?" Thanks to the folks at CodeWeavers, the answer to that is yes--for some applications, anyway." And Dan Dole writes "Linuxlookup.com staff member Rich reviews Cedega (WineX 4.0), give it a 20/20 score & Editors Choice Award.
"The release of Transgaming's newest version of WineX, renamed Cedega, was met with considerable enthusiasm and interest in the Linux community last week. So much so that their server was inaccessible the day of release. Cedega is claimed to be much improved, offering the ability to play recent games released for Windows "seamlessly and transparently" under Linux. They provided me with a copy, and I was curious to see if it lived up to the hype.""
I'm usually critical of WineX, but hopefully it will work well with all of my games so I can get rid of my Winblows box :)
"Will I have to deal with annoying dependency problems that take me hours to install the most basic of programs?"
:(
So far that answer is still yes
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
Alice is a no-brainer, quake engine, OpenGL, pretty straightforward. I have no doubt it would work.
Wake me when you play Far Cry, or Halo, or POP:Sands of Time, Call of Duty - or something from the last year or so. (Ie; something with DirectX 9+ with PS2.0).
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
The LinuxLookup.com review touches upon this point:
The only downside I see is philosophical rather than a problem with Cedega itself. There aren't many Linux versions of popular games available. By making it so easy to run the Windows versions, there may not be much of an incentive to develop for Linux.
Now, not many gaming companies make Linux versions of their games, but suppose Linux gained a significant share of the desktop market. At a certain point, gaming companies will start making Linux versions, whether or not WineX can run the Windows version or not. If only because gamers are more likely to be tech savvy and the same type of people who would probably switch to Linux away from Windows before the less computer literate population does
Where legacy gets a real problem (for moving to Linux) is the small specialist-apps a lot of the SMEs have that only run on Windows. These often are a simple specialist accountancy package and so on. As the Wine API becomes more and more complete in creating a working API - and it does not matter if it is a bit old - the more of these sites can be converted to linux. The more that happens the more apps will be ported to native Linux.
Wine and so on is a LOT more than a simple "Look Ma - Windows on Linux" exercise. Although it does not replace the MS-Windows environment totally - it is not designed to - it enables greater migration to Linux - and the more that happens the less Linux adoption will rely on having to run MS Applications.
Web Sig: Eddy Currents
But you're not necessarily try to get linux to "run all the windows apps."
What you are doing, is trying to get those last few apps that don't exist under linux to run. In my case, that's games, and some DVD authoring stuff which will probably have a linux counterpart soon (I've seen some but the UI is still coming along).
It took me awhile to customize my linux desktop, but I could probably do it again easily enough now, and I'm readying wizards/ISOs to allow others to use a similar desktop.
First of all there are many great Open Source games out there, Frozen Bubble and TORCS come quickly to mind.
Secondly games like Neverwinter Nights and UT2k4 are amazing, not just for the games themselves, but for the mod communities that surround them. Who cares if you can't give Sony $13 or $15 a month to play everquest. Give your money to Bioware and thank them for making a game so open that people have created MMORPG's that can be played freely with their software.
Same with UT. One look at duffer's golf, a complete Golf mod sold me on UT. I'm honestly not that interested in Golf, but if one can be made, and if it's a mod it'll run on windows and Linux, it's just the tip of the iceburg as to what can be done by modding the engine.
These are the companies and the mod communities we should be supporting. Yes there are a few windows games I'd like to play, but I'd rather not give those companies my money, since to them, I'm just another windows user.
Introducing Microsoft Vacuum 1.0 The first Microsoft product that doesn't suck.
3) They (winex) don't contribute back to the wine community any substantial quantity of code
I'm a chainsmokin' alcoholic sociopath, so-ci-o-path
You're thinking logically. Some software developers throw in deliberate restrictions that have no logical grounds whatsoever.
Case in point: Thief: Deadly Shadows. Ion Storm says that you MUST run the game under an account that has full Administrative rights. There is no reason to require that a game run with Administrative rights, and no sane Windows user should be using an account with Administrative tasks for playing a game. The restriction is not a matter of the game needing Administrative access for anything. The game can function just fine under a Power Users account. However, the geniuses at Ion Storm decided that they wanted to lock players into this asinine restriction, so they programmed the game to self-destruct by deleting all of the files in its System directory (the game's System directory, not that of Windows) when a non-Admin tries to run it. There is a workaround -- give non-Admin users read-only access to the files (since the game's config and save data is stored elsewhere) -- but that is an example of a completely illogical and pointless restriction deliberately placed on software by a developer. Having the software discover that it's being run under Linux via Wine and self-destructing in much the same way is not a far stretch.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
No, not if it still runs as administrator.
Running is running. There's been plenty of crappy linux apps that refused to run unless they're root.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
You've got a point on the whole WINE thing. I'm not a big fan of running apps under Wine although I think it's a "neat" idea. Actually, I was a paying Transgaming and Codewavers customer at one time, until I discovered Win4Lin. Now, if I need to run a Windows app under Linux, and for the record, the only one I do run is mofo-ing WebEx, then Win4Lin is the best way to do it. You get to run a full Win98 instance on top of the stability and security of Linux. Why use Win4Lin instead of Wine? It's fast, really fast, since Win98, although not the stablest OS ever, was actually very stingy on resources. Also, pretty much any non-3D app for Windows runs on it. If it crashes, it takes about 5 seconds to restart it. If they took the time to add full 3D support into Win4Lin the whole game thing would also become less of an issue. It's too bad Win4Lin doesn't have an open source alternative to help move along in that direction, but for $89 it's priced comparably to the Crossover product in terms of what people purchase that for.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
Star Trek: Armada, Star Wars: Force Commander, Star Wars: Rebellion. Games are also apps, and all three of these worked fine in 2k but will either crash or be unusable in XP. when my girlfriend upgraded to 2k, the print shop program that came with her printer wouldn't even install yet worked fine in 98.
I'd have better examples but I just have windows for games now, but its pretty well documented that Windows backwards compatibility isn't always so backwards compatible.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
This points out a nice goal. Eventually Wine* will be able to claim better windows compatibility than Windows' latest incarnation has.
It does but in such a way that would keep an individual such as myself away. Now, granted I haven't installed Cedega yet but Hearts of Iron had pointer speed slow down at times. Same thing for Warcraft 3. I had huge issues with Steam and Counter-Strike/Day of Defeat with WineX 3 where I had framerates of 3-7 fps whereas under Windows XP, it averages 60-70 fps. Transgaming's support asks for me to install the latest version and try it. I will eventually.
I'm unfortunately addicted to Hearts of Iron which runs decently enough under WineX 3.
The only reason I can think of for this type of restriction, would be to prevent the use of this game on a public machine, such as an internet cafe, library, school lab, or similar. Perhaps the license packaged with the game does not include public use like this, and requiring administrative privledges is the best way the company could think of to enforce their license.
I saw the headline of this story and immediately thought, someone's going to mention OOo as a replacement.
Have you tried, in a genuine office environment, received an MS Word document, edited it with OOo, exported it back and sent it to your coworker/manager/client?
Of course not. Because the im/export functionality of MS Office documents in OOo is nice, but not perfect. And that's why it's useless. So a looong time ago, I shelled out $55 (now only $40) for crossover office. Never looked back.
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True that. I've actually noticed many sites now have a notice saying "NO we will NOT port this to any other platform"! That's amazing stuff to me. I see an opportunity to "get in on the ground floor" of the commercial Linux software market, while these guys see a bunch of customers who won't quit bugging them. Linux is growing, Mac is growing, Windows is stagnating. Wake up app vendors, because if you don't get portable you're probably toast in a couple of years.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
You definitely get value for your money when you buy that product. I agree that it is definitely worth it.
Every time you play a windows game, do you take the time first to send the game developers an email saying you would like a linux version that is native? If ya'all million gamers out there did that *every time*, just take the minute or two it would take, along with the other people who run these various apps that "need to be run under wine", just MAYBE you could get native linux versions. Snail mail, fax, 1-800 number, whatever. Don't miss a chance, don't do it once, do it every single time you have to use wine or be forced to boot into something you really do NOT want to use. Why put up with it? Really, why do that? You are the customer, tell them what you want! Just politely inform them, "well, today I wanted to run your ..whatever. Too bad I can't run it under my functional and secure OS choice, oh no, I got to use an emulator thing or run an OS I really don't like or trust. That is really going to make me stop and think next time I need a new game, app, whatever, where it comes from". Polite and to the point. Make an impression by the numbers. It just might work.
Heh. That wouldn't work with the machines at the local University's computer lab. They're all logged in with full Administrative access for normal users, and security is handled through "policy settings" (the university's IT department is wholly incompetent).
In any case, it still shows utter developer incompetence. If a dev had a requirement that a standard Linux app -- such as a game -- have full root access, they'd be rightfully lynched. Unfortunately there are quite a few morons who think that it's perfectly acceptable to run their Windows machines with full Admin rights all the time. Stunts like this only encourage that moronic practice.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!