CrossOver Office 5 and Wine 0.9 Released

Jeremy White writes "I am happy to report that we have shipped version 5 of CrossOver Office. The most user visible changes are support for Office 2003 and 'bottles' which lets you deploy Windows applications more easily than ever. But under the hood, this release includes all of the major work that went into the 0.9 release of Wine, which also shipped today and is now officially in Beta."

Comments

Congrads to Codeweavers and the WineHG Team!

[rovitotv]

This release is an important milestone for both teams and goes one step forward in allowing Linux (MacOS users soon) to run any Windows program perfectly.

Re:Congrads to Codeweavers and the WineHG Team!

[Anonymous Coward]

I would rather see important apps ported to Linux. If there is so much demand for Wine/Crossover, then surely there is demand for the apps natively on linux? Ask your vendors where they are.

Re:Congrads to Codeweavers and the WineHG Team!

[saur2004]

Actually I can understand not wanting to bear the cost of two lines of developement. I wouldnt mind if they simply came out and officially said they would support users trying to run under wine.

Re:Congrads to Codeweavers and the WineHG Team!

[tomhudson]

one step forward in allowing Linux (MacOS users soon) toto run any Windows program perfectly.

WTF? Even WIndows can't run Windows programs perfectly. One of the big problems of mimicing Windows is getting all the bugs to work "right" (what a concept).

I think I'll dress my computer up celebrate Hallowe'en - I'll put a Windows Install CD on top of it (as opposed to when I want to punish it, I put the install cd in the CD tray and threaten to close the tray)

Then I'll tell it "quit yer Wine-ing"

Re:Congrads to Codeweavers and the WineHG Team!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's beta! It's much beta than running that Windows thingy. I tell ya.

Re:Congrads to Codeweavers and the WineHG Team!

[syphax]

Yes, please call Microsoft and see what they say.

I think Wine is a Good Thing, and I think porting FLOSS applications to Windows is a Good Thing. Both approaches provide a conduit for gradual transition away from proprietary operating systems, and that is a Good Thing.

Of course, developing true cross-platform applications is the best, but that's not always so easy with regard to legacy applications.

Re:Congrads to Codeweavers and the WineHG Team!

[Agarax]

Not to mention if the program is written in something like Visual Basic and porting to Linux would be difficult at best.

Re:Congrads to Codeweavers and the WineHG Team!

[trygstad]

"Ask your vendors where they are."

Done that.

Answer 1: Bought off by Microsoft; there used to be Wordperfect and Coreldraw for Linux. Where are they now? Microsoft "invested" $50 million in Corel and dropped Photodraw 2 (a great product and a real threat to CorelDraw), for which Corel sold off Corel Linux and dropped all Linux development efforts. ($50 million? just chump change to Microsoft.)

Answer 2: Not answering up; IBM, an alleged supporter of Open Source Software, has consistantly failed to answer calls to either port their Lotus SmartSuite package to Linux, or to pony up to pay for OpenOffice.org import filters for the SmartSuite apps.

Re:Congrads to Codeweavers and the WineHG Team!

[DrXym]

WINE does help with porting. The winelib and various tools mean it's possible to port a lot of Win32 code, compiling it with gcc, linking to winelib and run it natively on Linux. The (large) flies in the ointment is that a lot of code uses ATL or MFC which may or may not compile on Linux or may or may not be legal to compile on non-MS platforms.

It would be a useful companion project to WINE & MingW to see open source versions of ATL & MFC. I would guess that this would be a fraught process since the source for both is easy to come by.

Re:Congrads to Codeweavers and the WineHG Team!

[Anonymous Coward]

>Yes, please call Microsoft and see what they say.

You are absolutely right of course, in my parent this is exactly what I meant. MS-Office runs on BSDish MacOSX, if demand were sufficiently high it would be available for Linux. MS are in it for the money, they wouldnt release it for free, and they wouldnt release the source, but I presume they could and would release it for Redhat and/or Suse. Same goes for other software application vendors.

Most people use CrossOver for MS-Office's current version. Legacy apps are legacy apps, there is no guarantee they will run on Windows' current version either, and that is a different usage of Wine. No less important, but I am guessing not nearly as widespread.

And that is not even to start mentioning things like AutoCAD, ProEngineer, etc. If you're old enough to remember you'll remember things like AutoCAD started out on UNIX, not windows. Demand and supply.

Re:Congrads to Codeweavers and the WineHG Team!

[Anonymous Coward]

You are absolutely right!!!!

Re:Congrads to Codeweavers and the WineHG Team!

[nystire]

I believe that this one has already been anticipated:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1530733,00.as p/

and shouldn't that be "congrats" instead of "congrads"? :p

Re:Congrads to Codeweavers and the WineHG Team!

[Waffle Iron]

You are absolutely right of course, in my parent this is exactly what I meant. MS-Office runs on BSDish MacOSX, if demand were sufficiently high it would be available for Linux.

Apple is Microsoft's designated antitrust deflector. Demand for office on other platforms has little or nothing to do with it. They put up with this one token 3rd-party platform as a necessary evil to ward off accusations of monopoly status.

For any other case, their shrewd strategy is to keep people herded inside their OS ecosystem. That means they will write few or no user apps for other platforms, even if the ported product would be profitible in and of itself.

Re:Congrads to Codeweavers and the WineHG Team!

[mattyrobinson69]

There is a VB replacement for linux, called gambas (google it). the syntax is very, very similar, whilst being slightly more consistant than vb, so it would take some changes, but not like porting vb > perl or vb > c

Re:Congrads to Codeweavers and the WineHG Team!

[Agarax]

I dont write VB.

I use programs that are written in VB.

Re:Congrads to Codeweavers and the WineHG Team!

[Anonymous Coward]

But if they (like Adobe) would reap the benefits of Wine, surely they could spare maybe 10 developpers to work on Wine or some other compatibility program? I think that would be fair and could make Wine even better. Sort of how Novell pays developpers to work on Open Office, because it serves their interests as well.

Re:Congrads to Codeweavers and the WineHG Team!

[Anonymous Coward]

lol

Re:Congrads to Codeweavers and the WineHG Team!

[Associate]

I was under the impression that IBM stopped development of Lotus SS to focus on Notes and Domino. I can't find any relevant text, but that's what I heard.

Re:Congrads to Codeweavers and the WineHG Team!

[trygstad]

Not looking for any further development--it does everything I want to just fine, and really fast, thanks--I just want a Linux port. I've been told that SmartSuite is actually more locked into use of Windows APIs than even MS Office, which is why this may not be possible. If they are never going to do anything more with SmartSuite, then the OpenOffice.org import filters would be a natural extension as a way to 1) support Open Source Software and 2) look after their long-time loyal end users like me. But I'll try Wordpro on Wine. If it works, it may be Linux on the desktop for me anyway.

Re:Congrads to Codeweavers and the WineHG Team!

[mattyrobinson69]

i was just pointing out that vb programs can be ported to linux without rewriting them from scratch

RPM?

[baldass_newbie]

Finally, CrossOver Office Professional has the ability to create an RPM package out of a bottle. This service allows you to create a bottle on one system, package it up, reinstall it on many additional machines, or simply upload it to the server holding your RPMs thus automating the installation of the Windows applications. This is by far the easiest way to deploy a set of Windows applications on a large network.

What about .TGZs or .DEBs?

Re:RPM?

[rovitotv]

In the past you have been able to tar the cxoffice and
".cxoffice" directory and move the entire installation to another machine. I am not sure what it means to make an RPM package out of a bottle but if I was installing cxoffice on several different machines I would tarball the cxoffice directories and copy to the other machines. Done.

Re:RPM?

[Dr. Spork]

Yeah, and you know what else kills me: you don't actually get any wine from these "bottles" - that just makes me want to complain and complain about all the other things they don't do.

But then some kind person smacks me and I realize that instead of complaining I should take note that what's shaping up here is a system for running Windows apps that's better than Windows itself! There is no Windows box that lets you run IE5 and IE6 side by side, and this is actually a rather practical thing to do if you're a developer. Also, I'll make a bet that Wine will do a better and more consistent job of running old Windows binaries than will Vista when it's finally released. This really is going to make an important difference for the future of consumer Linux and OSX.

Re:RPM?

[nother_nix_hacker]

What about .TGZs or .DEBs?

rpm2tgz for Slackers and alien for ...er... Debbers.

Re:RPM?

[rincebrain]

I, too, am curious about this.

Re:RPM?

[Mr. Underbridge]

rpm2tgz for Slackers and alien for ...er... Debbers.

Seriously. Anyone using either of those distros who wasn't familiar with that little tidbit...well, let's just say we should all pitch in and get them some copies of Mandrivel. Maybe Linspire.

Re:RPM?

[IANAAC]

What about .TGZs or .DEBs?

Had you actually chosen to purchase, you'd know that all those formats are available.

Re:RPM?

[/ASCII]

There is no Windows box that lets you run IE5 and IE6 side by side, and this is actually a rather practical thing to do if you're a developer.

Sure there is. When I was doing web development a few years ago, we has a 'wayback machine' that had Win95, Win98 and WinME and various versions of IE from 3.0 upward, all using VMware. Granted, this seems less resource intensive and easier to set up, but it has been _possible_ to do this for a long time.

Re:RPM?

[fean]

Actually, for the record, you can run IE 4, 5.0, 5.5, 6.0, 6.eolas, and 7 all on one box....

check out QuirksMode Multiple IE

Re:RPM?

[shadwolf]

See rpm2tgz or alien. I'd much rather see the project spend the time & effort pursuing compatability rather than make more packages...

Re:RPM?

[dastrike]

and alien for ...er... Debbers.

Alien is not exactly the ultimate solution for installing RPMs on a DEB system. Lots of bad things can happen, it is not uncommon for the resulting package to have to be forcibly installed (which is never a good thing since it can cause consistency issues with the package management) due to e.g. conflicting files that are already provided by other packages. Basically alien is a hack job to get a package of a foreign format installed.

Re:RPM?

[fgouget]

> > Finally, CrossOver Office Professional has the ability to create an RPM
> > package out of a bottle.
[...]
> What about .TGZs or .DEBs?

Tgz are supported too.
Just click on the 'Archive' button in the bottle manager. This will create a '.cxarchive' file which you can simply rename to '.tgz' if that's what you prefer. Then to install that file, click on the 'Restore archived bottle' button, browse to select the archive and that's it!

Alternately, on the command line you would do:
      ~/cxoffice/bin/cxbottle --bottle mybottle --tar mybottle.tar.gz
and then, possibly on another computer:
      ~/cxoffice/bin/cxbottle --restore mybottle.tar.gz --install

And voila, all that bottle's Windows applications are ready for use, complete with KDE / Gnome menus and file associations.

Re:RPM?

[fgouget]

> In the past you have been able to tar the cxoffice and ".cxoffice" directory
> and move the entire installation to another machine.
[...]

This still works and much better than ever before.
You probably remember that when you simply tarred and restored the .cxoffice directory from one machine to the other you were losing the menus and file associations. Then you had to go into CrossOver Setup and manually recreate each of them.
Now all you have to do is run the following command and all the KDE / Gnome menus, file associations and browser plugins will be recreated:

~/cxoffice/bin/cxbottle --bottle win98 --install

The point of turning a bottle into an RPM is that there are tools that will automatically 'push' RPM packages to a bunch of machines. Big companies usually use such tools. So now all they have to do is generate an RPM, upload it to their server, and what you did above for one machine will happen automatically for their 200, 400 or more desktop computers.

Re:RPM?

[Decaff]

"There is no Windows box that lets you run IE5 and IE6 side by side."
  Sure there is. It's called VMWare. Or Microsoft Virtual PC if you prefer.

Having to emulate an entire PC is obviously not the same as running the two applications side by side on the same operating system.

Re:RPM?

[IntergalacticWalrus]

Not to mention VMWare is a lot more costly than Crossover Office.

Re:RPM?

[moranar]

There is no Windows box that lets you run IE5 and IE6 side by side, and this is actually a rather practical thing to do if you're a developer.

Are you sure?

Re:RPM?

[bioglaze]

I think (s)he meant running IE5 and IE6 side by side without any emulator, which probably is impossible.

Re:RPM?

[p0windah]

I'm running windows 2000 with IE5.01, IE5.5 and IE6 side by side right now.

Re:RPM?

[Nailer]

Because the people interested in deployment systems typically use either Red Hat or Suse.

Debian's popular at ISPs and Unis. Not corporates.

Hmm

[brad-x]

I was hoping Outlook 2003 would be among the Office 2003 applications supported, as it's one of the most popular. Oh well. Nice to see WINE advancing as a platform though. Keep up the good work!

Re:Hmm

[nonmaskable]

Me too. Outlook 2003 was the single most important thing I was waiting for in this release! I'll buy 5.0 to help support the work, but I am very disappointed.

Re:Hmm

[JohnnyBigodes]

Outlook 2003, as in contrast to Outlook Express, is actually decent software. Don't mix both up.

Re:Hmm

[jeremy_white]

Yeah, we wanted to as well. Sadly, it needs wire compatible DCOM in order to work properly, and we just weren't going to get that done. We decided it was a mistake to hold up the whole release just for Outlook. We're going to go after Outlook next and hope to have it out 'soon'. Cheers, Jeremy

Re:Hmm

[maotx]

I'm still waiting for reliable serial support. I was the lead in implementing the OS and software on an embedded system to use in a critical[1] environment and was going to use GNU/Linux as opposed to MS Windows. The required software was a Windows only application and with a little tweaking ran fine and stable under Wine. However, the COM ports would not work. They could receive data but not transmit. A search on Google revealed others with similar problems and potential patches but with a strict deadline and a critical environment I was forced to switch to Windows 2000. I complained to the software vendor for Windows lock-in for such a simple application and vowed to make it work on a spare board I have hanging around. All I need is time and a little incentive. A beta release might just be incentive enough.

[1] I know I know. Don't use alpha software for critical applications....We were still in the design stage and if I could get the basics to work I would have had the time to tweak out the bugs.

Re:Hmm

[justsomebody]

Really? Where?

In my case, Outlook (2000 and 2003, not Express) problems account for 93% of my computer problems I have to solve. Other is accounted mostly to Explorer. Outlook Express is actualy having far less problems. Every folder in OE is separate file, while the pro version has one pst file for everything. Which means 2GB file limit is reached far sooner. Maybe Outlook solved that problem, maybe not. But 2000 never will. So considering the expense of moving to newer version, which would demand puting XP on every machine, it was far cheaper to go with 2000 which doesn't require buying anything, abandon Outlook and move to Lotus Notes (damn you IBM, for not putting Linux version) with some proprietary add-ons.

Every machine (for now) where I succed to change user to Thunderbird and Firefox means one more machine that requires regular checks only.

Having more problems != more decent

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Jeremy, I will be looking to see if this is on your site, but while you're here...

Is there something of list of "We've tried these programs and they do not work, though they should"? E.g. I have an oldish copy of MS Wine Guide and that works, except I get a lot of errors and stalling then bobming out when it tries to play an animaation on selecting a picture. Nothning is played. As far as I could tell, it doesn't have any really odd dependencies (like Outlook), but it doesn't really work.

Ta.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Screw Lookout2003. Use something that doesn't get your system pwn3d in a matter of seconds. For POP/IMAP, use Thunderbird. Or if your lame-ass company still uses MSExchange or Notes as an email server, use Evolution.

Re:Hmm

[Progman3K]

Sorry for coming in late to the party!

Congratulations to you, Jeremy, Alexandre and the rest of the team.

About Bottles; I've been following Wine's exploits since about 1998. Though Linux as a platform and Wine as a project were both at humble beginnings at that time, I felt that these tools would become the most powerful and efficient ways of computing eventually because they are both better at managing chaos than Windows-whatever-version will EVER be.

I think it shows through in the development model.
Gentlemen, I salute you.

Re:Hmm

[brad-x]

That's great news!

Re:Hmm

[NutscrapeSucks]

> it needs wire compatible DCOM in order to work properly

Does that mean you've decided to use the Open Group's DCE/RPC stack?

Thanks Wine!

[tpgp]

From the linked article:

I look forward to the day when we can say with some confidence that Linux is nearly completely Windows compatible.

heh - how many qualifications can you have in one sentence?

Seriously - thanks to the codeweavers guys (for contributing to wine) and especially to the wine/winelib projects for offering an upgrade path that doesn't mean cutting windows from your system in one step.

What I'd like to see...

[/ASCII]

What I'd like to see in Wine is a version that uses GTK for painting, so that Wine apps would integrate nicely with GTK apps. Right now, Wine apps look like something the cat dragged in. As I understand it, work is underway to implement Windows themeing, but that is not what I's like to see, since it still wouldn't make Wine apps look like other X apps. Oh well. Maybe someone will implement a Windows theme that uses GTK for performing drawing operations, that should at least improve the situation a bit.

Re:What I'd like to see...

[meringuoid]

Right now, Wine apps look like something the cat dragged in

Do your bit for Windows compatibility!

"Right now, Wine apps look like something the type dragged in".

Re:What I'd like to see...

[IamTheRealMike]

Yes, theming support is being added to Wine, and a GTK+ bridge is planned (but nobody started it yet).

Crossover uses a different (nicer, I think) colour scheme which is more reminiscent of Windows XP or 2000.

Re:What I'd like to see...

[Mad Merlin]

Using GTK for Wine would be totally opposite to it's goals. While it might be nice for some things, it means that it's no longer possible to have exact Windows compatibility -- you'll be putting more and more hacks in to make things work, rather than actually reimplementing the Win32 API, like they have thus far. Overall, it might make 30% of applications look nicer, but it might break the other 70%, what do you think is more important?

Re:What I'd like to see...

[/ASCII]

You're saying that it is impossible to implement one API as a wrapper around another. That is bogus. There are versions of both QT and GTK that are wrappers around the Windows API. I know that the windows API calls are lower-level than QT, but it is _not_ impossible to make wrappers in that direction either. Quite the opposite, if Wine had been based on GTK, I suspect it would have had less bugs by now, not more.

Re:What I'd like to see...

[alexhs]

since it still wouldn't make Wine apps look like other X apps.

What is the X app look ? AFAIK, there is no such thing.
There are at least a dozen of toolkits (like gtk, qt, gnustep, wxwidgets, tcl/tk...), each one with its own look.
A true X app looks like... what ? xfig ?

Re:What I'd like to see...

[/ASCII]

Since I mentioned the GTK toolkit something like four times in my original post, it should be bleeding obvious what toolkit I'd prefer they used. Thanks for pointing out the obvious, though.

Re:What I'd like to see...

[Mad Merlin]

No, it's not impossible, it's just a losing battle. Windows programs have to be *Windows* compatible, not *Wine* compatible, thus Wine tries to do everything *exactly* like Windows does. That's not feasible if you're mapping to Qt or GTK, because they're drastically different toolkits compared to Win32.

Re:What I'd like to see...

[/ASCII]

You are ignoring the fact that there are pretty high quality wrappers in the other direction. Both QT and GTK apps run just fine under Windows. GTK programs have weird, ugly open/save dialogs, and a few GTK widgets don't actually rely on the native widget, but overall they work much _better_ than Windows programs work in Wine.

Re:What I'd like to see...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah dude, but they're COMPILED to run on Windows. Wine supports a compilation compatible layer, but it's not much use for non-open-source code.

Re:What I'd like to see...

[/ASCII]

Is that really an issue? Usually implementing an ABI isn't that much harder than implementing an API. But I don't know, maybe the Gimp for Windows developers had to cheat and add all sorts of hacks to the gimp sourcecode to make it work on Windows...

Re:What I'd like to see...

[Mad Merlin]

Qt is designed from the ground up as a multiplatform library, GTK is similar, Win32 is not. You have the source for GTK/Qt and the vast majority of programs that use them, you don't have the source for either Win32 or most Win32 programs. Like I said before, it's not impossible to do, but it's a losing battle. Especially when Microsoft is scared stiff of people running Windows programs perfectly in Wine, but they can't break their own APIs, because that would hurt both them and Wine equally, but if Wine does some things radically different (like using GTK), they can easily break their APIs in such a way that it only breaks Wine, and you can be certain that they would, given the chance. There have been several attempts to get Wine using GTK, but it's non-trivial (on the order of getting full DX9 support working, according to a conversation on #winehackers), and also not particularly important, especially when compared to actually getting more programs working. It also means that Wine would depend on GTK, which is another big problem. It might be something that has more work put into it when Wine can run 95%+ Windows programs without breaking a sweat, before then, it's a waste of time, IMO.

Re:What I'd like to see...

[WhiteWolf666]

Once themeing is supported, you can start with a static theme, like:

XP Bluecurve
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/4279121/

or
XP Plastik
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/8066296/

I'm sure GTK and QT engines will come. Question is, if they build a GTK engine, will it work with the QT->GTK theme? :)

Re:What I'd like to see...

[DrXym]

Using GTK for painting is not opposite to its goals at all. In fact Windows XP ships with a theme engine called uxtheme.dll which is called by Win32, the new common controls, and of course apps like Java and Firefox. It has methods such as DrawThemeBackground, DrawThemeEdge and so on. Why shouldn't it be hooked up to GTK and its own engine? If the WINE implementation called the GTK (or QT) theme engine, it would mean that any app using uxtheme.dll to draw a button would immediately gain a native appearance without any modifications.

Now obviously uxtheme.dll is XP specific, so to disable it you set WINE up to mimic Windows 98 or whatever. Then the native look and feel goes away completely. Perhaps internally WINE could still call uxtheme.dll but the calls would be handled in a legacy or "classic" style rather than passing through to GTK.

Re:What I'd like to see...

[Anonymous Coward]

There are no such wrappers. Qt and GTK run under Microsoft Windows the exact same way they do under the X Window System -- they handle their own drawing and signal processing. They do not wrap the Windows widgets. A QPushButton is still a QPushButton, not a wrapper around the button type in Windows. They use a theme to make them look like Windows widgets, but they are not native Windows widgets.

Yes, the very lowest level of toolkit needs to access Windows calls to handle Windows events and window management. But, and here's the important but, they do the same thing for X11 events and window management!

Re:What I'd like to see...

[fgouget]

> What I'd like to see in Wine is a version that uses GTK for painting,
> so that Wine apps would integrate nicely with GTK apps.

While Wine won't use Gtk for painting any time soon due to technical problems, over the summer a lot of progress as made on supporting theming. So with some more work on theming support plus some glue to slurp the Gtk theme you would essentially achieve the same result.

Re:What I'd like to see...

[gbutler69]

Hmmm.... > cat myfile Hello World! c:\type myfile Hello World! > cat myfile yourfile theirfile Hello World! Goodbye World! Windows Sucks! c:\type myfile yourfile theirfile Hellow World! Ooops...Looks like "type" IS NOT a substitute for "cat"....Thank you for playing!

Re:What I'd like to see...

[gbutler69]

** CRUD! Forgot to preview the first time... Hmmm....

> cat myfile
Hello World!

c:\type myfile
Hello World!

> cat myfile yourfile theirfile
Hello World!
Goodbye World!
Windows Sucks!

c:\type myfile yourfile theirfile
Hellow World!

Ooops...Looks like "type" IS NOT a substitute for "cat"....Thank you for playing!

Re:What I'd like to see...

[Mad Merlin]

Partial implementation of uxtheme.dll is done, and yes it can be used when it is done, but (correct me if I'm wrong), it only affects the look of applications, not the behaviour. GTK behaves differently than Win32 does. Win32 can do all sorts of crazy things that GTK can't do, and the converse applies too. The fact remains that Wine has to be able to do all those crazy things, so you're either going to a) have a GTK looking app that doesn't behave like a GTK app (more feasible, using uxtheme), or b) have a GTK looking and behaving app (very unfeasible, almost certainly requires per app tweaks, and ideally the source for each app, plus major changes to Wine and/or GTK).

Basically, you can make it look like GTK, but you can't make it GTK. Perhaps that's what you want, but using GTK to do it is the wrong way to do it.

Re:What I'd like to see...

[DrXym]

Basically, you can make it look like GTK, but you can't make it GTK

True, but that's the same for Firefox, OpenOffice and Java too. Firefox and OpenOffice look like a GTK / Aqua / XP application but they're not. Java Swing apps only look like a GTK / Aqua / XP application but they're not.

But at the end of the day, the look is the most distinctive cue. The differences in the "feel" of XP and GTK are minimal. In fact, I can't think of a substantial difference between the two. They have similar widgets, similar mousing behaviour, similar keyboard navigation. You might have to ensure the double-click speed was the same, and some of the metrics for scroll bars and such like but nothing major I can think of.

Re:What I'd like to see...

[/ASCII]

Not so. It's pretty easy to notice when one doesn't correspond to the other. Just try using a GTK or QT application with a strange theme. QT apps will almost always look right, in my limited experience, while the last time I tried, GTK still got a few things wrong. MFC as also a set of wrapper classes arounf the low-level Windows Widgetset.

Re:What I'd like to see...

[TummyX]

You have the source for GTK/Qt and the vast majority of programs that use them, you don't have the source for either Win32 or most Win32 programs.


Um hello? Are't we talking about WINE here? You know, the source rewrite of Win32 wrapped over POSIX apis? The source code is there.

There's absolutely no reason why WIN32 applications run under WINE can't be made to look like GTK apps (as long as the apps use COMCTL rather than their own custom controls like quicktime win32 or opera win32 does

Re:What I'd like to see...

[Mad Merlin]

If you read any of my many comments in this thread, I agreed and said that using uxtheme to change the look of applications (exactly like Windows does) is a viable method for achieving applications that *look* like GTK applications. What isn't viable, and what was originally suggested, is to use GTK in Wine to get that effect. I've explained several times already in this thread why using GTK in Wine is a bad idea.

Re:What I'd like to see...

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you think is most important? Screwing KDE users by making yet another app use GTK even though it seems to do well without it, that's what's impotrant. Duh!

Re:What I'd like to see...

[pantherace]

Actually, according to what I've heard, they did have to. Mostly due to the way windows handles threading and window focus.

Though, I've not looked into it myself.

Re:What I'd like to see...

[Clockwurk]

I'm replying to this to set a marker so I can find the parent post again later.

Re:What I'd like to see...

[zsau]

Firefox doesn't look all that much like Gtk+, really. The menus are totally off, for instance; and scrollbars can't emulate the Gtk+ theme properly (for instance, if you have the up and down scroll things together in Gtk+, Firefox and Mozilla-based apps in general ignore this). Also, contrast Firefox's tabs with the tabs of a Gtk+ application.

Also, there are fairly significant differences in feel. Unless there's been some recent change, Firefox uses a Windows-style file chooser instead of a Gtk-like one (I'll admit I have a suspicion this has been fixed, but I can't test it now).

Another difference I can think of is setting keyboard shortcuts. In its default config, Gtk+ lets you set them simply by hovering over the menu item and typing what you want as a shortcut for that (Gnome disables this though). Firefox behaves as Windows does regardless of your Gtk+ settings.

There's also subtler differences that you notice if you almost exclusively use Gtk+ apps and then have to use a Windows one. The way menus work on Windows is particularly frustrating: They keep closing on me for reasons I can't understand. (I also notice just now---I'm using Windows---that wheelscrolling in text boxes is different. In Gtk+, if you reach the bottom, it stops scrolling. In Windows, if you reach the bottom, the entire window the text box is in scrolls. The wheelscroll jump is bigger, too.)

Still, I recognise that Wine is never going to be able to change the behavior of Windows apps to emulate Gtk+, even in the unlikely event that it can emulate the look of Gtk+.

Re:What I'd like to see...

[mibus]

Also, there are fairly significant differences in feel. ...
Still, I recognise that Wine is never going to be able to change the behavior of Windows apps to emulate Gtk+, even in the unlikely event that it can emulate the look of Gtk+.

It is entirely possible to wrap enough of Win32 around chunks of Gtk to make it look native - Like what the latest Java Swing does. It won't be able to change the "feel", no, but for 90% of apps it's "close enough" that 90% of users won't notice.

Perfect or not, it would be an improvement (IMHO) and I'm looking forward to it.

Re:What I'd like to see...

[Anonymous Coward]

This discussion is made all the more surreal because the reason taht opera/win32 uses custom controls is because it uses QT!

Re:What I'd like to see...

[Demanufacture]

I know that this guy has been working on this for some time.

Re:What I'd like to see...

[John Allsup]

What you'd need to do is to reimplement GTK and Wine's underlying drawing architectures to use something common. Modifying Win32 to use GTK widgets is rather nontrivial unless I'm very much mistaken. Right now the common denominator is X, and theming and policy isn't implemented at that level.

And the Hallowe'en Edition

[tomhudson]

The Hallowe'en Edition:

CrossDresser Office 5 and DrinkLotsOfWine 0.9 Released

Just don't post the pictures, please. We've got enough with the goat guy and tubgirl.

Re:And the Hallowe'en Edition

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear mods:

On-topic attempt at humor + not funny != "Offtopic"

Thank you,
This Anonymous Coward Is Smarter Than You

Re:And the Hallowe'en Edition

[tomhudson]

Geez, I HATE it when I have to explain a joke,

1. It's Hallowe'en in less than a week.
2. Crossover office allows linux to run Windows Apps. In other words, your linux box is now "cross-dressing", giving the appearance (at least to the App) of being a Windows box. As long as it can "pass", everyone's happy. Its only in the unfortunate event that the Windows app looks too closely "beneath the skirts" and tries to use functionality that isn't available that things get ug-ly.
3. When it's finally able to completely function as a Windows host, we'll then be able to call it Transgender Office instead of Crossdresser Office.

Self Promotion, the right way

[IAmTheDave]

Finally, a product announcement on Slashdot that just comes right out and says "hey, we're pimping a new product/release."

Bottles are terrific!

[erroneus]

One of the problems that I have found most annoying about Wine is the fact that everything always seemed to require so much tweaking and tuning and adjusting, not to mention manually sorting out DLLs that need to be copied and all of that stuff. The problem I hated the most was the installation! I'm not a genius and I don't have the time and patience I once did for this sort of thing. It's cool as hell when it works though. And such was my experience when I first installed MSIE6 on my FedoraCore4 laptop. I went to a website (follow this link here) that provided a script that performed the whole installation in one step... well almost one step -- I needed to install a cab extraction utility first... and I already had the RPM for Wine installed at the time. But my point was that it was SO simple and direct.

I don't really care to use MSIE... but I can if I really need to. :) And I didn't know it was a "bottle" at the time but now I realize it must be because it created its own "Windows" install in the process.

I feel like eventually, just about any application will have some sort of bottle available for installation. This is a terrific development and a huge hurdle when it comes to deployment of Linux on the desktop where we still have those "legacy Windows apps" that we can't do without.

Re:Bottles are terrific!

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the problems that I have found most annoying about Wine is the fact that everything always seemed to require so much tweaking and tuning and adjusting, not to mention manually sorting out DLLs that need to be copied and all of that stuff.

Thats what Crossover Office is for - it is wine - only with no fiddling about.

If your kernel has support for misc binaries (as a module or otherwise), you can run Windows apps using Crossover from any shell or other program, they execute and just work like any other program.

I haven't touched any wine configuration or anything and I am currently running most of Office 2000 (including embedded IE), Photoshop and a few games just fine.

Re:Bottles are terrific!

[Bert64]

Hopefully once apple transition to x86 and there`s a good selection of x86/OSX apps available, someone will implement the OSX APIs on top of linux.. So that we can run OSX programs in much the same way wine works, tho it should be easier to implement apple`s api.

WoW for Wine?

[Roofus]

Does anybody have some links and/or tips on getting World of Warcraft working for Wine? I've managed to get the install done, but the app freezes when I try to start it up.

This was on an older version, so maybe I'll give 0.9 a shot tonight....

Re:WoW for Wine?

[Mad Merlin]

WoW has been working on and off lately, sometimes new patches break things, things usually get fixed again pretty quickly though, you might find this thread useful.

Re:WoW for Wine?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've run into a similar problem. Make sure you use the -opengl option when running the exe, otherwise it will probably be totally borked. Even using the opengl renderer, I can usually get about 15 seconds of actual playtime in before it locks up. I haven't figured out what's doing it yet, though.

Re:WoW for Wine?

[guaigean]

Yep, skip Wine, go to Cedega. WoW a supported app, and although Cedega (WineX), by Transgaming, is based on Wine, they have made adjustments geared more towards gaming apps. Runs smoothly, and occasionally hiccups when they release a new patch. Transgaming

Re:WoW for Wine?

[mopomi]

Yes. Point your web browser here:

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-246098-postda ys-0-postorder-asc-start-0.html?sid=8b7707c9b98f82 504047ca1a6888802d

It's mostly up to date. . . There was a recent hotfix that broke things, but the work around is posted in the discussion.

Works fine for me (with the fixes). I run at 1920x1200 with a little slow-down compared with XP, but not so much that it matters.

Re:WoW for Wine?

[bioglaze]

I couldn't get WoW working for CVS Cedega (read many forums, tried everything), but when i installed Wine (20050930) and 2 dlls (mfc42 and msvcp60) it started instantly to work (OpenGL works right, DX works, but with glitches). I have to patch the game manually. I didn't even have to install Mozilla & ActiveX. I don't own an account and haven't tried running it for a long time, though. Targeting doesn't work, but there exists a fix. I'm using AthlonXP 2400+, 512 MiB, GF FX 5900XT and Ubuntu Breezy.

Office 97/Wni98?

[julesh]

For example, Microsoft Office 2003 only works on Windows versions 2000 or later, whereas Microsoft Office 97 runs best in a bottle that emulates Windows 98.

I've had no problem running office 97 on Microsoft's Win2K or XP. Is this a problem with Wine's implementation of those platforms, or a problem with Office I haven't encountered?

Re:Office 97/Wni98?

[rincebrain]

I think they were saying not that it won't run, but that it runs better in the native environment.

Presumably, this is a problem neither you nor I have run into. :)

Re:Wine

[Anonymous Coward]

But luckily, wine is free (as in beer).

Heartfelt!

[buswolley]

Which one is it moderators? Is this a heart-felt comment, probably from one of the coders themselves, or is this simply the karma-sucking pitiful comment it looks like?

Re:Heartfelt!

[rovitotv]

Unfortunately I am not a coder for Codeweavers or the WINE project (if you notice I didn't spell their website correctly). I am a big fan of codeweavers because I have to use Office at work it is actually mandated. By running CXOffice I am following the rules but I can still run Linux it really pisses off the network admins :-). This is actually a heart felt comment.

Re:Heartfelt!

[buswolley]

and interesting.. thanks. Well I'm off to take my midterm.

That's great and all but...

[Anonymous Coward]

It still doesn't work that great as a general platform for running Windows applications. I mean I use it sometimes when I'm forced to but most applications still just don't work right or even at all.

I guess the Codeweavers/Transgaming WINE's are fine for specific applications but rarely do they run what I need them to and even when they do run applications they are buggy as hell (graphics glitches and nasty crashes or broken UI).

To be completely honest, WINE barely works better than it did back in the early/mid 90's when I first used it.

Direct link to a torrent of the demo

[jeremy_white]

Hmm. Our new ISP isn't doing as well as we'd have liked; our servers are humming along at a very mild load limit, but we seem to be throttled out of the ISP (seems like it always takes one /. post to iron out the kinks at an ISP :-/).

So, here's a direct link to the demo torrent.

Enjoy!

Re:Wine

[Anonymous Coward]

Could be a Red Dwarf misquote...

"bottles" could be a big, BIG deal

[starseeker]

As far as I can tell, what they are calling "bottles" is simply storing a "per application" Windows environment. Hopefully this will be implemented in Wine too, because it has tremendous possibilities. Configuration tweaks needed for each application can be bundled with its windows environment, conflicting applications that even a real Windows box couldn't run on the same machine could be made to work... amazing. Instead of hunting for an install CD for a 10 year old application, you could could just copy and paste the virtual Windows environment to another machine or off of a backup CD. No fuss, no missing install keys - it would all be there.

This might someday make Wine not just a way to migrate from Windows to Linux but a way to keep alive old Windows programs that have had all source code and other relevent information lost. Take the old Windows box, copy the binaries over to a Linux wine install, copy over whatever files and settings the application needs when you test it, make a copy of the old Windows hard drive in case you missed something, and you now have not just an old application stuck on a single unmaintainable machine but a "program in a box" scenario. Much worse than having a properly maintained program of course, but a way to keep vital software working much longer than would otherwise be possible. (Yes, I know - disk image mirrors and other proper backups and record storage can also be a big help, but things like that don't always go as planned.)

Re:"bottles" could be a big, BIG deal

[vdboor]

As far as I can tell, what they are calling "bottles" is simply storing a "per application" Windows environment. Hopefully this will be implemented in Wine too, because it has tremendous possibilities.

Actually, this is in Wine already. It's called $WINEPREFIX, and can be used like: WINEPREFIX=$HOME/.ies4linux/ie5 wine "C:\\Program\ Files\\Internet\ Explorer\\IEXPLORE.EXE" $@

Re:"bottles" could be a big, BIG deal

[goaty_the_flying_sho]

God, I wish they implemented this feature in Windows!

Perfect Timing!!

[karlandtanya]

I downloaded the previous version last night. ...
over my 21.6k dialup. ...

Officially Beta

[Jekler]

Meh, I have a very sour taste in my mouth from the time where "beta" has started to mean "release version". I dislike how things "officially" go to beta... then they officially enter the "beta 2" stage. Then release candidate 1, 2... then preview release... It's just a shame that every damn stage of development warrants an announcement and celebration, as opposed to opening the champagne when you actually hit production. That and the fact that every application has a few hundred version numbers. If AOL did nothing else right, I at least like their 1.0, 2.0, 3.0... versioning

Of course developers should celebrate internally on their progress. But along this path and there will be an announcement everytime we change a line of code.

"Hey everyone, my app has just entered pre-pre-pre-alpha! That is to say, I finished typing the include lines!"

I like that OSS makes so much progress, but I think it would be a benefit to us if they, publicly, treated it like any other application.

Re:Officially Beta

[Punboy]

No, no, no. Preview release = alpha. Preview releases should never come before beta.

You been workin' at Microsoft there sonny?

Re:Officially Beta

[Stevyn]

I remember back in the day 2.5 was the first to offer the "www"

I agree with you though. I'm sick of seeing beta referred to anything other than a testing version. Why has it become the publics' job to test software? Google puts everything in beta. Now yahoo puts their crap in beta since they figure people must think it means something cool or "very cutting edge technology." Don't worry, hopefully it's just a fad and in a few years programs will go back to integer numbering. Although 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 3.1, 3.11, NT 3.1, NT 4, 95, 98, 2000, Millennium, XP Home, XP Pro, Server 2003, and Vista (and I'm sure I forgot a few) is the worst versioning system ever thought of.

Re:Officially Beta

[Anonymous Coward]

So what? "Preview release" and "alpha" are misused so often that neither of them really has any significant meaning until they're applied by a project.

Re:Officially Beta

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you spell "Open source"? Come on, it's easy! say with me:
O-P-E-N-S-O-U-R-C-E
I told you it was easy.

Now seriously. Open source doesn't mean you get it for free. You're supposed to help improve it. Maybe you don't want to (in that case who cares about you) but others *do* want.

So, if you don't like betas, alphas, rc, previews, etc, then... simply ignore them!

Re:Officially Beta

[digidave]

Considering that Wine has been around for somewhere around twelve years, going beta *is* a big step for it. It's almost as impressive as if Duke Nukem Forever went into beta.

Re:Officially Beta

[WhiteWolf666]

I'm guessing Wine will follow the Mozilla path.

How long did it take Mozilla to get to 1.0? How long did it spend in alpha, then beta?

Beta means that the project is starting to look like a finished product, or, at least the developers have figured out the basic 'specs' for the finished product. Don't knock it; OpenSource projects generally have a pretty high quality 1.0, while many companies (MS *ahem*, AOL *ahem*) release CRAP for version 1.0

Re:Officially Beta

[Anonymous Coward]

Although 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 3.1, 3.11, NT 3.1, NT 4, 95, 98, 2000, Millennium, XP Home, XP Pro, Server 2003, and Vista (and I'm sure I forgot a few) is the worst versioning system ever thought of.

The best is 5, 6, 7, 2, 2.9, 3, 4.0, III, 4.1, V, 4.2, V.2, 4.3, V.4, 4.4, 386.0.1, V.4.2, 0.9.

Re:Officially Beta

[xgamer04]

It's just a shame that every damn stage of development warrants an announcement and celebration

So people shouldn't be proud of what they accomplish? I hope you never have kids. I'd hate to be there when you're pissed off that little Jekler Jr. only learned how to read "see spot run" and can't read War and Peace yet.

I can also be somewhat confident in asserting that learning the vocabulary to read War and Peace is nothing compared to reimplementing the entire API of a closed source operating system known for its weirdness.

Re:Officially Beta

[Jekler]

Of course people should be proud of what they accomplish. But the pride can be internal. A father has pride in his kids when they learn to walk, but he doesn't call CNN.

AMD64 compatibility?

[currivan]

Is it possible to run Wine in 64-bit mode on an Athlon64?

Last time I tried to do that I wasted hours trying to get around compile errors (missing processor-specific assembly), and never found a way to get it running. Do I have to boot in 32-bit emulation mode and use the normal binaries?

Re:AMD64 compatibility?

[digitalderbs]

I've had wine and Crossover office 4.2 run on 64-bit debian. It won't run natively in 64-bit mode, but it runs seemlessly as a 32-bit binary under chroot (or dchroot). You won't even notice that it's running in 32-bit mode.

Check out this HOW-TO from debian AMD64 on setting up a 32-bit chroot environment.

Re:AMD64 compatibility?

[Taladar]

I don't know about Wine but Cedega runs fine on my 64 bit Gentoo but I guess it uses the 32bit emulation libraries I have installed for the few binary apps I have installed (like Opera and the windows-codec-compatible 32bit mplayer version).

Re:AMD64 compatibility?

[WhiteWolf666]

Compile? I have NO idea how to compile Wine on a 64-bit system. I cannot get it to work.

I've spent a LONG time trying to do so, and I've not been able to find anyone to point me in the right direction.

That being said, the 32-bit binaries work brilliantly on any 'modern' 64-bit linux. I suspect this doesn't include debian ;-)

I only really run SuSE, but the latest 32-bit Wine installs without a hichup, and everything works exactly as it would under a 32-bit install (I'm using a 64-bit kernel).

I'm not sure how other distributions do it, but SuSE installs the 64-bit libraries alongside the 32-bit ones, points 64-bit apps at lib64, and everything 32-bit seems to work perfectly. I've heard you can acheive the same effect using a chroot 32-bit install on a 64-bit debian, but I've never tried.

Re:AMD64 compatibility?

[WhiteWolf666]

And I'm a complete idiot.

WWN covers this very topic:
http://www.winehq.com/site/?issue=199

How to compile 32-bit wine on a 64-bit system, specifically for SuSE! /me should check fuckinggoogleit.com

No more regressions?

[m50d]

I've always been disappointed when upgrading wine - some things will be fixed, but other things that were working perfectly well with the older version will now be broken. Does the change in versioning mark an end to that? Here's hoping...

Re:No more regressions?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this is exactly what is happenig here.

In previous releases the basic architecture was in a very fluid state. The "beta" stage is meant to tell you that the developers consider the basic infrastructure is in place, and that they want your help to find out the quirks and to polish the details.

There are reasons

[Tony]

The reason there are official "beta" and "pre-pre-pre-Alpha" releases is because it informs the community of the intended audience. The "pre-pre-pre-Alpha" phase is for interested developers. The "beta" phase indicates it's not ready for your production data, but if you are an interested user, you can help the project by searching for bugs.

Also, these milestones give the community a chance to judge how long it will be before the "official" 1.0 release. In the case of Wine, this is a decade in the making, and is a very, very, VERY big deal. So, it might only be a year before we see an official 1.0 version of Wine.

Commercial companies have learned that internal Beta releases do not find all the bugs, and so they have emulated the free software community by releasing early, releasing often. I feel this has helped products like MS-Windows become stronger products. They don't get all the benefits of open source, but they do get some.

In any case, if you are not interested in anything but the 1.0 release, that's fine; meanwhile, those of us who like the Wine project, and like to test and debug important projects know it's a fine time to jump in and help. Our participation will hopefully make your 1.0 experience a pleasant one.

Re:There are reasons

[Jekler]

I still use the beta versions and a lot of other pre-release versions of OSS, I think it's more of a perception thing. The versioning systems really aren't much of an indicator of progress, I see plenty of projects which go from version 0.1 to 0.9 in 6 months, then spend half a decade with 0.9 Beta 2.xxxx versions.

It's not that the software isn't usable, likeable, functional or anything like that. It's that the versioning is misleading. That Wine has reached 0.9 Beta doesn't tell us anything because there could still be a few dozen versions before it gets to 1.0. Even when it gets to version 1.0, it could likely be 1.0 beta 1, beta 2, rc1, rc2, etc.

I've got nothing against the software itself. I'm using Flock 0.5pre right now (although the actual version information also says it's 0.4.9, so even THEY aren't sure what version they're releasing)

It's not about the software and how it works, it's about this versioning system and announcements everytime a program makes it to a new arbitrary double-type number.

Adobe products?

[OneSeventeen]

I'll reserve my judgement for when I find out if the Adobe Creative Suite (preferrably version 2) will run on it. Personally I don't need to run Office 2003, OpenOffice.org works just fine (crashes less on windows too). Adobe products are the only software I've found worth running that don't already run on linux. Hopefully someone will team up with Adobe and find some form of a solution. (preferrably ignoring microsoft products, if I wanted to run Microsoft products I'd install windows)

Re:Adobe products?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I'll reserve my judgement for when I find out if the Adobe Creative Suite (preferrably version 2) will run on it.

CS 2 barely runs on Windows as it is. If you can, I'd hold off on CS 2 and stick with CS 1, at least until some of the daily, easily reproducible crashes and huge memory leaks are taken care of.

Re:Adobe products?

[imemyself]

I would agree. I see no reason to work so much on Office 2k3(especially things like Word, Excel and Powerpoint). There are Linux apps that do those sorts of things reasonably well. I think it would be better to concentrate on getting apps(like the Adobe stuff) that don't have equiavalents that work reasonably well in Linux. I would rather see more effort go into getting Macromedia stuff(like Contribute, Dreamweaver, etc) and Adobe stuff working than MS office apps which have native Linux equivalents that work nearly as good if not better than the MS apps. OOo is a lot closer to MS Office than GIMP is to Photoshop or Nvu/Bluefish/Quanta is to Dreamweaver.

Re:Adobe products?

[Bert64]

Well then wait for OSX on x86, most adobe products are available for mac too...
And i wonder how long before something like wine, but allowing OSX apps to run under linux will become available.

Autocad Support

[mdproctor]

Any one know if support for the latest Autocad has been added and if it hasn't what are the difficult areas there. I imagine CAD studios on win32, already being semi-technical with a history of cad applications workign on unix, are a sweet spot for conversion.

Re:Autocad Support

[brighton]

Yes, we're a 40-employee engineering office in South Florida and are highly anticipating a move from Win2k Pro to some kind of LTSP-based setup. Unfortunately, AutoCAD support is minimal and the biggest encumberance to this kind of migration. I'm watching wine developments closely and have been getting very excited about its recent development

Quickbooks?

[nlinecomputers]

Does it have support for Quickbooks? That is my make or break app for dropping Windows all together. I've tried it in the past but menus would get mucked up and you can't run the updater which is required if you are going to download tax tables.

Tried to check out site for info but it's slashdotted.

Re:Quickbooks?

[jeremy_white]

Well, we use CrossOver to run Quickbooks 2000, and versions up through 2004 are officially supported.

However, that support is fairly new, so we don't tend to recommend that people move all their books solely to CrossOver; that would be crazy (okay, so we're crazy [grin]).

And yes, the server is slow. We're working on it. The server is up; if you wait 15-20 seconds, the pages do come up. Just takes it a bit.

Cheers,

Jeremy

Re:Quickbooks?

[nlinecomputers]

Thanks. What about the two issued I mentioned? The icons tend to get mucked up and you can only click on them if you know what they are from memory. And how to you update? My version is 2002(about to be dropped - damn greedy Intuit pigs) and the update program is seperate from QB. I never could get it to work.

Re:Quickbooks?

[JourneymanMereel]

What about Quicken? I tried to get Quicken Deluxe 2003 to work in wine once, but utterly failed. I've since upgraded to Quicken Deluxe 2005. If I could get that to run in Wine, I'd be a happy person.

Alternately, if I could find an open source alternative, I'd also be happy. GnuCash doesn't cut it... I need something that works almost identically to Quicken (account, categories, budgeting, etc) and also does online updates (the one step update stuff).

Re:Quickbooks?

[jeremy_white]

The icon issue was fixed back before 4.2 shipped; have you tested since then?

Updates I'm not so sure about; we just did it via the online tool and it worked, but we haven't tested (or triaged anyway) all the versions to make sure they all worked.

Cheers,

Jeremy

Re:Quickbooks?

[nlinecomputers]

Thanks. Once the slashdotting slows down abit I'll take another look. :-)

utterly slashdotted?

[cypherz]

I started downloading the new release about 5 minutes before this story left the mysterious future... when it did, my download speed went down to 2.8 KB/s.

I other news: My boss is getting serious about rolling out Linux desktops here. He asked me today for a "prototype" for his desk. Crossover Office is gonna be a big part of our company's desktop transition.
We only have about 150 - 200 desktop users, and our M$ tithe is still about 40 or 50 kilodollars per year. Getting off the upgrade treadmill is going to be sooo cool!

Re:whatever

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sick of people complaining about WINE. Why don't you go do something productive with your life rather than making a post on Slashdot that nobody cares about and, in the long run, won't change anything? Obviously there are plenty of people who don't think WINE is a waste of time and effort, and it is not your place to tell them what their opinions should be.

Access 2003 support? Runtime?

[bflong]

I'm trying to find out if access 2003, or at least the 2003 runtime, is working. The codeweavers site seems to be experiancing, um, difficulties.

Great functionality AND great name!

[Ungrounded Lightning]

I'm floored.

Re:whatever

[x3v0]

If you use Linux as your desktop, it is friggin' annoying and impractical to have to reboot into Windows just to run an app. For instance, I use CrossOver to run Photoshop. Sure, Linux has the Gimp, but I've been using Photoshop for years and I don't want to have to learn a new graphics program. If I had to reboot into Windows everytime I wanted to use Photoshop, I would probably end up using Windows more than Linux :/ In short, CrossOver saves me from going having to run back to Windows. And that's a good thing.

How hard are they to create?

[BerntB]

How hard is it to make bottles?

I'd like to use eMule without having to boot Windows, so I can watch Rome and Weeds. (*) (-: Yes, yes, no need to tell me that it would have been less embarassing to admit to d/l animal p.rn, or something! :-)

I would prefer not to have to learn anything about the registry.

(*)Is there a season 2 of Weeds coming?

Re:How hard are they to create?

[Jagasian]

Why not just use amule, which is a great Linux eMule clone?

Re:How hard are they to create?

[Anonymous Coward]

(*)Is there a season 2 of Weeds coming?

Perhaps not if everyone downloads it from eMule.

Re:How hard are they to create?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd watch it on TV if it was shown on TV in my country.

But the system tray is fixed!

[Halo-]

Luckily, I don't need (or want) Outlook in my life. I do however need Lotus Notes. I've been using the Codeweavers version for years to get this, and love it. The only major drawback was that the "new mail" notification popped up in its own window and stole focus. (Very annoying)

This latest version fixed it! It's right in the system tray where it belongs! Yay!

I can't thank the development team enough. Crossover Office is crucial for getting my work done everyday, and is the only software I have ever seen the need to pay money for. (Corporate site licenses cover the MS and Lotus stuff I run under Crossover, but Crossover I buy myself)

Thanks again, and keep up the good work.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Version numbers

[sasdrtx]

I'm not sure who's in charge of version numbers in this universe, but 99.9a-b13g.1% of them are extremely crappy at it.

WINE could be the biggest reason...

[macserv]

... that Intel-based Macs are a good idea. Now that there's an x86 processor in their boxen, Apple could do for WINE what it did for X11: integrate it well with the OS, and ship it as part of Mac OS X. Double-click an app, and it just runs.

The "bottles" concept makes it even better, and could work well with Mac OS X's existing heuristics for bundling and resource handling.

Re:WINE could be the biggest reason...

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt it. Apple would rather have no compatibility at all than have beta software providing compatibility.

Re:WINE could be the biggest reason...

[WhiteWolf666]

Apple will probably pick it up when Codeweavers has already finished it.

Codeweavers has already announced a Wine for OS X x86 product. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple decided to start contributing to the main wine tree.

Re:WINE could be the biggest reason...

[blindseer]

I don't think we will see Wine for OSX being bundled with machines from Apple any time soon. The primary reason is because it would be a support nightmare. People will be calling in asking why their obscure application is not working. X11 is not as much of a problem since the people using that are more tech oriented and are more likely to know what they are doing before even installing X11.

There are a number of legal and political hurdles as well. Microsoft might get the idea of causing Apple some headaches if this happened. Software developers might get confused about how serious Apple is in keeping it's own API and not becoming just another clone manufacturer.

Let's not forget that WINE still is not out of beta yet. WINE may get bundled with new Macs but it won't happen until there is more polish on the code. I would imagine that once Apple gets their Intel based computers out the door someone will get WINE running on day two.

Problems in XP, none in wine

[gatzke]

I did a recent XP update and office 97 preview view started crapping out on me for large presentations, like office was completely hung. Well-hung you might say.

Wine continued to work just fine. So now I have to do my ppt development on linux and ship it to a XP laptop for presentations...

What does Beta mean ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I really don't understand this. Looking at the status page, it shows that only 63% of the API is implemented. From what I've seen, it goes up 1% every 6 months. Even the "core" is not completely implemented. But yet it's a "beta" release ?

What does "beta" mean ? Am I missing something here ?

Re:What does Beta mean ?

[jatencio]

On average, Windows applications do not utilize the full Windows API. So, as long as Wine implements the part of the API that most applications use, then all is good. I think this release means that if one takes an average windows application, most likely it is going to work is someway. Of course, if one has an obscure application that hardly anyone uses, AND it calls parts of the API that are not implemented, I suspect that application will still fail in some way; however, I think that this case is rare. Thus, if you have an obscure application that fails, this is the time to let the Wine team know about it so that case can be handled effectively, i.e. implement that part of the API that is lacking.

Re:What does Beta mean ?

[WhiteWolf666]

Well, the problem with Win32 is that much of it is unknown territory :) It's difficult to implement something that is completely undocumented while being quite as huge as Win32.

Also, certain things are unimplementable, but also don't work in modern Windows anyways. VxDs, for example, often break in XP. Multi-user support doesn't make much sense, given that each Wine 'install' (/home//.wine/) is single user.

The amount of implemented 'stuff', however, is quite telling, especially considering that the latest and greatest Office suite (2003) runs on Wine now.

Also, notice the update date on the status page? August 16, 2005 . . . . I know that the Direct3D stuff has come a LONG way; the status page lists d3d8 as 10% done, while in reality, d3d9 is almost there. Especially true with the gaming 'stuff', but also for general cases, support is app driven. 'X' app breaks because 'Y' function isn't implemented yet. So someone picks it up. Combined with a few general architechtural changes (like the Installshield stuff), you get 90% app support. Remaining work is completed on an as-needed basis. The flip-side of this process is that you get up to speed on new stuff coming down the MS pipeline.

To your second question. "Beta". What does it mean?

Beta means 'feature freeze'. Wine, as a Win32 API implementation for Unix, is useful now. You can run IE, Office 2003, Google Earth, Picasa, Photoshop, and a boatload of other popular apps. (Quickbooks, etc. . .). In order to keep it working for that stuff, it makes sense to stop generating new implementations, and work out as many of the bugs as possible. Thus, nothing to revolutionary will be accepted into the tree between now (beta) and 1.0 (release). Patches between now and then will focus on making sure existing functionality works properly. Once 1.0 happens, new features can be implemented on an as-needed basis.

So far, in 'alpha', the Wine developers were not afraid to break major parts of the API. Often, a snapshot would be almost unusable, or break dozens of applications. This is necessary when certain sections of the code had to be ripped out and reimplemented.

Now that Wine is getting more and more functional/useful, this development methdology will have to change. With release, it'll be safe for Linux distributions to list support for certain Windows applications using the free implementation of Wine. That'll be quite a coup if you think about it. 'Includes Wine 1.0, support for Office 2003, Internet Explorer 6, Adobe Photoshop CS, etc, etc. . .'

I imagine the Wine 1.0 tree will continue to receive bug/security updates along side newer versions.

The end vision of the Wine project is not emulation layer. The end vision of the Wine project is a fully functional UNIX app API, alongside things like QT/KDE, or GTK2/Gnome. Moving out of the haphazard alpha state of the project is a necessary step in its maturity.

Re:whatever

[svendog]

There is a mod to the GIMP (gimpshop found here ) that remaps the menus to match those of Photoshop so the learning curve for GIMP is not really that bad at all; i.e. there really would not be that much to "learn".

DirectX

[bmgz]

Has anybody successfully ported DirectX to Linux/Wine? I would think this would open up an array of multimedia apps and games...

Re:DirectX

[WhiteWolf666]

Yes, and yes.

Commercial?

Go to www.transgaming.com

World of Warcraft, Half-Life 2, City of Heroes, and many other games work properly under Cedega, Transgaming's version of Rewine (the BSD wine).

Wine?

Yes.

Wine main has quite a few DirectX features properly implemented, and Oliver Steiver (sp?) is implementing many Direct3D 9 features (like pixel shaders, etc. . .) in DX9WINE, which has been integrated into the Wine CVS tree.

So yes, its been done, and yes, a lot of stuff works. Cedega gives me my gaming fix in Linux. I've currently got Eve Online, Secondlife, Half Life 2, Age of Wonders, World of Warcraft, and some other titles I don't play much installed. Works great.

Re:DirectX

[shutdown -p now]

I've currently got Eve Online, Secondlife, Half Life 2, Age of Wonders, World of Warcraft, and some other titles I don't play much installed.

Out of this list, the game I am specifically interested in is Age of Wonders. I assume you mean the original game here, not one of the sequels? If so, how did you make it run? It never worked for me under Cedega (would just start to a blank screen and hang); latest Wine improves it to the point that main menu works and you can actually start playing a campaign, but it breaks when it comes to character creation screen for me.

On a side note, I've never got either AoW2 or AoW:SM work either, despite following all the steps in the HOWTO available online for some time (admittedly, since it is very much a hack, I did not expect it to work reliably in the first place).

Wheres a complete guide

[Ken-Ken]

Anyone know where there is a guide that can show me how to setup a complete system from choosing a linux distro to getting some simple programs up and running, plus being able to access the interent via dialup and also a good isp for dialup in the portland OR area.

Re:Wheres a complete guide

[WhiteWolf666]

Download SuSE 10.0, the 'evaluation' edition, from Novell's site.

There are no limitations on the evaluation edition except that some generally unused packages do not come with it.

Open up the first disk, and open up the admin/install guide PDF, and the user guide PDF.

The SuSE documentation is phenomenal. Seriously. Everything you could possibly want to know (as a beginning to medium knowledge user) is there.

If you can afford it, I'd recommend buying it. It's only $30-$40 at your local store, and the books that come with it are really great.

Re:Wheres a complete guide

[Ken-Ken]

Also, is there a way to make it look like Windows XP, and also run windows programs. I might try and set someone up with this setup and have no had time to research it.

Re:Wheres a complete guide

[xgamer04]

If you had asked about a site that explains how to set up Wine or something, I might be inclined to help you. Since you're using this thread to basically admit you don't want to do any research and want have people do it for you, I'm going to have to say no, I can't help you. And no, there is no such thing as the holy grail you are seeking. (and yes, I'm using holy grail sarcastically)

Re:WoW for Wine? Anyone Using SuSE?

[Anlace]

Is anyone using Cedega/TransGaming successfully on SuSE 9.3 or SuSE 10?

I would dearly love to get rid of Window$ completely but have this little WoW addiction keeps me coming back!

Peace,
Gail

Where are the vendors?

[nurb432]

They are busy supporting their money making market, their windows users.

1% of their users that want a linux native version wont get many companies to allocate the resources. its just not cost effective.

Re:Where are the vendors?

[xgamer04]

1% is not an accurate figure. For many applications, 1% is probbaly pretty close, but for others, there is a much greater percentage of people who would like a linux version (I think nVidia is a case of this happening). If it's not "cost effective" to port to Linux (or whatever), then why are apps slowly getting ported? id and Epic seem to think it's worthwhile to release clients for their games.

Re:Where are the vendors?

[nurb432]

I was speaking in generalities, not specifics.

Of course there are *some* apps that are worth the time for them, but i still believe that for most, the $ return just isnt there yet.

In 5 years? Who knows. But not today.

Re:Adobe products? Macromedia too?

[Anlace]

I agree, I've tried CrossOver and ended up dual-booting Windows/SuSE just to get work done with PhotoShop CS, Dreamweaver 8, and Flash 8. I use these programs regularly in my work, so I don't necessarily have the time or patience to learn something as completely different from PhotoShop as Gimp is and although Quanta is as close to Dreamweaver as anything else, there's no time for learning curve.

I've devoted time to the CrossOver beta program in the past to do my bit to help in the development process but also had to essentially abandon that too because of time retraints. I plan on returning to the beta program soon to check out these new developments. Is there yet hope that something other than MS programs will function well in CrossOver?

Peace,
Gail

Even better

[etnoy]

...and I've just finished compiling it on my Gentoo box :(

Not all suppliers are equal.

[Damek]

Whether a need will be met depends on the perceived benefits to the potential suppliers.

Sure, within the Linux community, there's a fair amount of demand, and the money to be made is apparently significant enough to CodeWeavers for them to do the work in supplying.

However, most of the apps people need to run are going to come from the big companies like Microsoft, Adobe, etc. The money to be made from porting their software directly to Linux is simply not significant enough for them to bother doing the work.

Metatheme

[Anonymous Coward]

Metatheme is starting to support windows themes, with metatheme it may be possible to make the apps all look quite similar... also lots of gtk themes have been ported to windows themes you just need to have a look for them

Re:WoW for Wine? Anyone Using SuSE?

[siplus]

When the game went retail, I ran WoW under SuSE 9.3 with Cedega 4.2 It worked perfectly after i fixed the resolution (defaulted to 800x600, looked shitty). Only problem: looting was buggy. 11 months later and Cedega 5.0 almost out, I assume it works perfectly. I'm currently running it on my pbook with OS X 10.4, otherwise i would have kept up with the linux-cedega development

Re:WoW for Wine? Anyone Using SuSE?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, WoW up and running under the newest 4.4x Cedega and OpenSuSE 10. Required a little bit of tweaking to get it right... Had to install Mozilla and then the mozilla Active X plugin before it would patch. Had to place a line in the Cedega config file to offset it's memory by a tad before I could interact with NPCs or objects. Had to specifiy the -opengl command line switch for hardware rendering. With hardware rendering on however, any change to the video settings crashes the app (log in without the -opengl to change video settings, and with the switch to actually play). None of that is any big deal.

Still having an issue where ground circles aren't appearing, but there's a fix for that as well that I'll be trying this evening.

By the way, under the version of wine right before this, I got Ventrilo working as well as DvDShrink, these were the three apps that were keeping me on windows. I'm a happy, happy camper.

Have you used crossover

[gatzke]

Pay the $40 for the professional packaging of crossover. You get so much and it is super easy to set up and install.

You get a nice gui that leads you through installation. A lot of software is available online (fonts, plugins, wordviewer, etc), so the script automagically downloads and installs it for you. For office, you have to install just like anything else on windows.

It even gets the right mime-types so mozilla opens word attachments in crossover office.

Well worth $40. I have not had to do any strange dll / intall hacks.

Re:whatever

[nystire]

That would depend on whether or not he uses filters, and if so how much he has invested in them. The GIMP can't use all photoshop filters.

wine haiku

[Anonymous Coward]

version oh point nine
each release getting closer
asymptotic'ly

Never going to happen.

[The Bubble]

Apple could do for WINE what it did for X11: integrate it well with the OS, and ship it as part of Mac OS X.

This will never happen, and I don't really think it should. Don't misunderstand me, Apple guys will be running Wine on their macs, and probably are now with the aid of x86 emulators; but Apple will never bundle Windows application support with its OS.

Why? Apple isn't just an OS developer; it isn't just a PC manufacturer; it is all about experience, and this sort of lofty pride is both its greatest success and its most obvious flaw.

Apple applications are held to a strict code of UI behavior: coding a commercial GUI application for OSX means following a specific set of guidelines that govern menu locations, widget behavior, and the like. If Apple were to attempt to grandfather in the entire universe of Windows applications through a simple api translation layer, it would break that model, and loose the focus on user experience that has earned them such a dedicated and vocal user base.

Re:Never going to happen.

[Zobeid]

But haven't Apple already done practically the same thing by supporting Java apps as "first class citizens" in Mac OS X? Many of these programs are not particularly Mac-like, but the ability to run them transparently is still considered a selling point.

Re:Never going to happen.

[errordactyl]

Apple applications are held to a strict code of UI behavior: coding a commercial GUI application for OSX

But this doesn't preclude the possibility of running windows apps in OS X. It could be similar to old Mac OS 9 applications running in blue box.

Re:Never going to happen.

[neildiamond]

Yes and Apple was never going to go away from PPC either.

Re:Never going to happen.

[macserv]

Apple has already broken their convention several times, for the greater good of the OS, specifically for compatability with other systems.

Apple allowed (and still allows) Mac OS 9 (Classic) applications to run with their original Platinum interface, with no interoperability with other Mac OS X apps.

They allow Java applications to run with any theme applied, without forcing an Aqua look.

Apple's X11 allows X apps to run with an Aqua-esque appearance through Apple's QuartzWM, but X apps certainly do not function like Cocoa-based apps.

Windows apps would be yet one more exception. A bundled WINE layer wouldn't be perfect, but it would allow Macs to run Windows apps, without Windows, and without Microsoft. Yeah, I think Apple will be interested in such an endeavor.

umm.. this is nothing revolutionary

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 2000 and Windows XP already do this with the compatibility tab in an executable file's property dialog (Microsoft also has a standalone application that you can use to do very fine-tuned compatibility tweaks, emulating different versions of Windows, sizes of memory and such). And tbt, even OS/2 had a similar feature dating back to version 2.1 where you could tweak virtual machine settings for the DOS box that DOS and Windows applications would run under.

Not that it's not a nice feature to have, but certainly not something that's exactly innovative.

Anyone seen Fedora RPMS?

[leighklotz]

Anyone seen FC RPMS of Wine 0.9? The binary download page seems to have only the 20050524 release for the RH/Fedora distributions, though SUSE and Mandrake have the 0.9.

Crossover office working well for me

[BarneyRubble]

I'm surprised by all the negative comments about wine/crossover office. I switched to Linux as my main desktop a few months back and have just recently deleted my windows partition. I use crossover everyday to work on office docs
to share with my colleagues and it has performed superbly. Crossover office/wine is a real asset to linux and allows
many more people to make the switch to linux.

Re:What is this?

[colinrichardday]

I believe he meant John Edward, the Crossing Over guy.

Re:What is this?

[khelms]

Oops. Dang, that was probably the only typo on Slashdot today too!

Re:What is this?

[colinrichardday]

I thought that your post may have been negatively moderated because the moderators believed that you meant John Kerry's running mate.

Time for a personal anecdote!

[agraupe]

This version of WINE seems very nice compared to others I've used. Whereas older versions segfaulted and did nothing useful, even after hours of fiddling with things, this version installed painlessly (even from source!) and got a random program running (Imagetool, if anyone is interested). This proves that it is both more user-friendly, and able to handle mostly-unknown programs correctly (i.e. doesn't rely on tweaks to get individual programs running). This is truly a step forward for Linux on the desktop, and I have to offer my sincere congratulations to the dev team of WINE. I hope it only gets better from here (Guild Wars, please!).

Re:Time for a personal anecdote!

[xgamer04]

Whereas older versions segfaulted and did nothing useful, even after hours of fiddling with things, this version installed painlessly (even from source!) and got a random program running (Imagetool, if anyone is interested). This proves that it is both more user-friendly, and able to handle mostly-unknown programs correctly (i.e. doesn't rely on tweaks to get individual programs running).

Sorry, but no. Being able to install Wine from source and get a random app running does not "prove" anything except the fact that you were able to get Wine installed from source and get a random app running. I was able to get an older (development) version of Wine to compile and run some programs. Does that prove you wrong? Of course not! Anecdotes don't "prove" anything.

Also, "relying on tweaks to get individual programs running" is not an experience unique to Wine. I have to tweak individual programs or settings to get Windows apps running in Windows sometimes (the same could be said for any OS).

Re:Time for a personal anecdote!

[agraupe]

I suppose my anecdote does not prove anything, but it does at least illustrate that WINE does not resort to tweaks *in code* to get applications running. I have no doubt that, here and there, settings need to be tweaked, but this shows that API compatibility is acheived by reimplementation on a broad scale, as opposed to coding the features required by a single app. Also, notice that my example relies on contrast; whereas older versions of wine didn't work for me, this one did. I'm not saying it will work for everyone, but merely that it is an improvement over older versions. I hope that clears up any misunderstanding.

The opendarwin community are doing this...

[ChunderDownunder]

Darwine

They were working on emulating x86 on PPC but there were discussions about implementing the display technology in Quartz instead of X11 too.

Wine 1.0

[Pablo El Vagabundo]

I think that if the Wine Version 1.0 release is stable and a nice release there will be some good feedback from linux aware companies.

And I think we might start seeing feedback from companies with instructions and support for running their applications on Wine v1.0.

Once there is enough interest in the products on Linux I think you will see more being ported.

At the moment it can be a pain to get things running in linux from some companies even if they have a linux binary.

Try getting the new Deluxe version of Neverwinter Nights installed/running in linux. I just gave up and went back to dual booting..

Pablo

Re:whatever

[Bert64]

Maybe if people would follow standards, we would have the freedom to choose what app to run and our lives would be much easier.
Unfortunately, microsoft and other companies like to create their own proprietary formats and protocols, forcing you to use their software, which results in people trying to minimise the amount of software they're forced to use.