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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 :)
I'm forced to wonder if an application developer could put enough logic in their code to prevent it's running under Wine. It'd be an interesting attempt to prevent 'unauthorized' distribution of their product if they only authorize it's use under Windows.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
... and now cedega. Gotta say, it's pretty painless on gentoo.
/usr/portage/distfiles, ran the emerge, then done.
:D
Per the ebuild instructions, I registered w/ transgaming, ponied up my 20 bucks (or whatever), downloaded the file, copied it into
I was playing American McGee's Alice 20 minutes after starting my first "run a Windows(tm) game on linux" adventure. Even impressed the Mrs.
Cedega is claimed to be much improved, offering the ability to play recent games released for Windows "seamlessly and transparently" under Linux.
So they crash most of the time?
"I think everyone is an agnostic but just doesn't know" - Frazz
I once kinda got solitair to work on Mandrake...does that count?
- Your stupidity got you into this mess, why can't it get you out? -Will Rogers
"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.
1) They don't accept debit cards & thats all I have.
;)
2) They don't charge in . I'm sure my bank will charge me extra, for converting to a foreign currency.
Tell then I'm stuck with normal wine & half-life....well thats not too bad
Pick an application and you can get a more definate answer.
So you are a troll, and with qualifiers, the answer is yes.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
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.
This isn't true, it's never been true, and it likely will never be true.
Of course, the best answer, I think, is "try it an see." Without source code to see how tightly integrated a program is with Win, it is very hard to tell. When you do the experiment, sometimes you get a pleasant surprise.
I recently finally migrated my main office workstation to Linux, and am dual booting since there are a few things I still need Winders for. One such, I thought, was a program called MoluCAD by New River Kinematics, a molecule drawing program that I really, really need.
The other day, I tried it with wine, and BOOM! It worked!! Yeah.
It's important, too, to document when a program does not work.
Computational Chemistry products and services.
How do we expect to be able to say YES to "Will my windows application work under linux" when we cant say 100% YES to "Will my windows application from 1995 work on windows XP?"
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
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.
I've tried cedega as well, and I must say I'm a little bit surprised on how well it works, at least with Debian Sid & new nvidia drivers. Configuration is a snap (just tell them the mount points & drive letters of your windos partitions), and you are pretty much ready to go. One less excuse to boot to Windows - and for many, the last excuse.
.iso's first... ;-)
Now what we need is a good daemontools-like utility that can mount non-iso images without converting to
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
holy crap.. im sorry i messed that one up, heres the fixed version...
Review of Cedega (WineX 4.0)
Category
Linux Software / Applications
Product name
Cedega
Version
4.0 (WineX)
Manufacturer name
TransGaming
Provided by
TransGaming
Price
N/A
Review by
Rich
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.
Cedega is available as an rpm, deb or tgz file. Point2Play is a graphical front end to Cedega and available in the same formats. Point2play comes bundled with all dependencies, a very nice touch, and includes the font installer program (also available as a separate download).
I was installing on Slackware 10, so I downloaded the tgz files. A simple #installpkg for Point2play was all that was needed. Point2play retrieves and installs Cedega for you. It also downloads and installs Microsoft Core Fonts with the click of a button.
Testing
The first thing I noticed was a tab titled "System Tests". There are four tests that help to determine if your system is ready to run Cedega.
"Test for Hardware 3D Graphics Acceleration" tests to see if your graphics card is capable of running 3D-intense games and if it has been set up correctly. I clicked, the familiar glxgears box opened, then I was greeted with two green graphs. They gave me an OK for OpenGL Direct Rendering and for 3D rendering speed.
"Test for Sound Support" plays a sound, then asks you if you heard it. You are informed that Cedega uses the OSS audio device and told to consult your distribution's documentation if you didn't hear one. Thankfully, I did.
"Test if POSIX threads (pthreads) are Required" gave me a confusing pop up box. It said "You are running a distribution of Linux on which Cedega requires the usage of pthreads on (ie. Very recent glibc). Unfortunately the maximum stack size on your distribution is not large enough for some games, and therefore you might have issues." I am then told, "When using Cedega 3.2 or newer, you may not need to use pthreads which can help avoid these problems." I admit ignorance here. I am baffled by the wording. I am being told Cedega requires pthreads, but with version 4.0 I may not need to use them, which can help avoid problems. My yellow graph boiled it down for me, saying "Some Games Might Have Problems".
"Test CD/DVD Drive" checks the accessibility of the CD-ROM devices and if they are capable of supporting Copy Protected games. I got the green light showing my cdrom was available. The documentation is outstanding and will be a great help if yours isn't.
Background
Since I don't dual boot and lack free time, I haven't run Windows games in years. I have been happy with the standard Linux games, including Ksokoban, Kbounce, Ktron and of course Tuxracer and Tuxkart. Recent additions such as Frozen Bubble and the updated SuperTux have a modern feel. I haven't had much experience with Linux ports such as UT2004. I like that Cedega was giving me the opportunity to try out some modern games.
Half-Life Uplink
My first try was the demo of Half-Life Uplink, downloaded from the Nvidia site. I fired up Point2Play and clicked Install. A box opens asking for the path to the executable, the program title, the Cedega version to use, and two check boxes (big EXE and Run Directory). I found the path, named the program, left the default Cedega as my choice and clicked both boxes. Big EXE supports games packed as one large executable. Run Directory sets the current working directory to the game executable directory. You also have the option to mount an
We already have Neverwinter Nights (and expansions), Quake 1-3, UT2004 (and no doubt all the sequels, because the UT engine supports Linux so well), we're getting Doom 3. Why do you need Windows compatibility? Sure, maybe you can't play your crappy licensed EA games, but all the really serious game developers have seen the light, and activly develop for Linux.
The only Windows games I'm going to want to run are Duke Nukem Forever and Half Life 2. Oh, wait... they don't exist...
--Jon
Cleanstick.org: Dumb weblog about nothing
i have linux installed in my notebook. It is a rather old one, but still suitable for my needs.
I dont want to run win98 on it, much less pay $$$ for a windows xp upgrade.
All i need at work is a browser, ssh, sapgui and lotus notes.
I use wine daily at work to run lotus notes on it. it works flawlessly. actually, most of the time i forget that im "using" wine, as i have a icon shortcut that launches notes directly.
i dont know if wine will ever be "popular", but it is very useful for my needs, and i thank the developers for that
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
I don't see this as ever likely happening. Mainly because it would be a classic case of "cutting off one's nose to spite one's face". Why go out of your way to piss off a potential customer base? All most commerical developers really care about about is that their software isn't pirated and they get paid for their efforts. Regardless of whether the app is designed to run on Windows or not, folks would still be expected to pony up a licensing fee. Just because you can now run MS Office on your Linux box relatively painlessly doesn't mean you get a free ride from the folks at the BSA.
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
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."
When was the last time that you tried it? I spent last night playing City of Heroes on it. While there are some UI issues (it has a real problem of registering mouseclicks on certain menu options, though it will eventually get them), the game ran at pretty much the same framerate as it does under Windows XP.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
I've played Armada under XP.
About a month after XP was released an update came out that specifically addressed compatibility with older apps, have you used it?
And do you know about the compatibility options? Checking a box makes the environment anything from 95,98,ME,XP.
I play a ton of old games, and have had no problem getting anything working under XP. I dont doubt there are some crappy old incompatible apps, but I don't know of any.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
This points out a nice goal. Eventually Wine* will be able to claim better windows compatibility than Windows' latest incarnation has.
I don't really see your point. Your asking for guarantees you don't even get with regular Windows.
I purchased a license to Crossover Office several months ago. At first, I figured it'd run rather slow and wouldn't be good enough for production. I paid anyways just to try and support the programmers.
I installed Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop. Microsoft Office is practically transparent as to how fast it runs. It loads up very fast and runs very smooth. As far as Photoshop, it runs pretty good as well. There are little bugs with the different windows and the toolboxes, but it works. for the most part.
For production, I dont think Adobe Photoshop is ready yet (version 7 by the way). Office I think is more than ready. I also installed IE so I could preview websites I'm working on in IE natively without having to go to another windows computer. On top of that, I installed the Quicktime plugin and I watch trailers from Apple.com with no lag.
I give Crossover Office a 10/10. Well worth every penny I spent.
The greatest experience we can have is the mysterious.
- Albert Einstein
I'll think you'll find that was the slashdotting they recieved.
RegardselFarto
So WineX puts some kind of software layer between the application and Linux? I hope game performance dosnt take a hit.
.dll, let's call it msfile.dll.
No that's not quite how it works. Applications contain calls to functions, something like OpenFile("C:\some\filename").
The code that implements OpenFile() would normally be in a Windows
WineX creates a Linux version of the msfile.dll, so the the application runs the Linux code instead of Windows code.
The speed could be faster or slower, depending on how good the WineX code for msfile.dll is versus the Windows code.
[In the example above, msfile.dll and OpenFile() are made-up examples to illustrate the principle of different implementations of the same API.]
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.
In the article, the author gives an example of an application that doesn't work properly under WineX ... GAIM. Well, WTF... why the hell would anyone running WineX try to run Win2k GAIM when the app is native to *nix anyway? Just a thought.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
I apologize for not keeping up with the requests, we never could withstand a thrashing from Slashdot. Perhaps it's time for me to look into a different CMS with fewer bottlenecks. So, if anyone in community/other site owners would like to share their solutions with me, I'd like to hear from you. Reached me at ty @ linuxlookup.com
So much so that their server was inaccessible the day of release And now, thanks to Slashdot, inaccessible again!
I thought Win4Lin did emulate hardware. From their site they say that Win4Lin "provides a complete virtual PC environment for the Windows operating systems." Elsewhere it says that they provide a virtual network card. I may be wrong, however, since as I said I have never run the program.
Something comparable would be more like if FreeDOS could be made to run in userspace on Linux and then used it to run Win98.
DOSEMU sounds like what you are describing, and I know people have been successful running Windows 3.1 on it. No Windows 95 and above, though.
The real selling point about Win4Lin over VmWare is that, like WINE, it uses your local filesystem so there no disk image file. Now, I think (think) that the latest VmWare allows this too but I haven't tried it.
Yes, this is a convenient feature. Maybe the QEMU guys can implement it eventually. Right now it is still a fairly new program.
When you lose something irreplaceable, you don't mourn for the thing you lost, you mourn for yourself. - Harpo Marx
No, it just got Slashdotted. :P
Unfortunately I've read some horrible stories on their own website (in the support section and new forums) about people having a bad time getting their already-working games working under Cedega. In fact, I've read an unfortunately large number of posts saying that they've downgraded to WineX because of the number of bugs. I'm not sure whether the editor noticed this but those facts certainly don't merit a 20/20 in my book...
The only difference between genius and stupidity is genius has its limits.
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.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
Win4Lin does not emulate the hardware (including mainly the CPU, as it's the hardest) but instead it maps Windows (or DOS) calls to Linux kernel calls. That's why it's blazingly fast.
What's the difference? I can't get Windows applications to *work* with windows. Sure... they load and run for a while... but they inevitably crash. A program that *works* doesn't *crash*.
I suspect that before we can get Windows applications to work under any emulator that runs on a non-Windows o/s, we must first get the Windows application to *work* under Windows.
But that's just one man's opinion.
I the case of the games you mention - the fact that they don't work with XP is in truth a FEATURE and not a bug.
Saving anyone from experiencing Force Commander is a saintly act.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
Hmmm...
.cxoffice dir and some other related paths and after I tried to reinstall it from my Mandrake 10 Power Pack (retail), I decided to once again try WINE. Can I say "Wine is NOT Exemplary"?
/var/lib or other path that wine is expecting to find it in?"
.dll placements that I am EXTREMELY suspicious as to why this was done. Maybe in the old days, Lotus realized it was too easy to just take the wretched 28-floppy install of SmartSuite for windows 3.1 and w95 and copy the final image from disk to CD or to slave the source as a target disk and then copy the contents over. That is what I did when my machine would crash. I'd go to my backup disk and recover.
I am a Lotus SmartSuite fan and am deeply disappointed that there is not enough demand for IBM and Lotus to port it natively (nevermind the IP matters/excuses)
Growing weary of some "invalid license" rubbish from Crossdresser after I simply deleted my
I struck upon an idea:
"What if I graft my 'win' folder created by the Win4Lin install and place it in the
So, after running WINE and seeing where the config files want to find windoze98, I renamed the WINE-created folder and placed my folder that I have repeatedly used with mainly successful recoveries and reinstalls since 2000 or 2001.
The Lotus SmartSuite installer behaved very normally except for the EULA page and except for the "x" boxes being less than crisp. The features selections went fine, and the the install seemed at the end to hange and wait forever, doing the same in Crossdresser, but not in W4L or native windoze98.
SmartSuite DID install, but the result was a horrid, detestable, crying shame. There are soooo many convolusions of
However, it no longer is so simple, thanks to the damned mainly-anti-piracy registry. I honestly feel the registry is mainly to confound and confute app-snagging pirates. BTW, I PAID for my SmartSuite disks...
ANyway, Unless Lotus, IBM, & CodeWeavers get together and work this out, a LOT of IBM customers who probably would switch to Linux and want to drag along their year 2000, 2001, or 2002 SmartSuite investment will be furious-- furious at themselves for NOT generating demand, and furious that IBM wasn't proctive.
SmartSuite, if upgraded to 2004 standards, could trounce StarOffice and OpenOffice--if, iff, ifff you like Lotus Approach, the end-user, non-developer, non-geek WYSIWYG relational database front end, and if you like Lotus WordPro and Lotus 1-2-3. I do. Hence, I keep upgrading Win4Lin or figuring out a way to make my paid-for copy fo Win4Lin work across upgrades.
The complications with this upgrade hell between KDE, the Kernels and Mandrake and NeTraverse are making me VERY interested in finding out more about loopback or Linux-inside-Linux distros so I could avoid thinking about "which kernel, gcc, libthis.so, libthat.so, kde or whatever" anymore.
I can imagine the hell companies must be going through when they upgrade kernels and find out the one they chose was premature, and not supported by NeTraverse or that they should have been more connected to NeTraverse before choosing a kernel...
David Syes
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"