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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."
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.
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.
.TGZs or .DEBs?
What about
The opposite of progress is congress
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!
// -- http://www.BRAD-X.com/ --
From the linked article:
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.
My pics.
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.
Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
Finally, a product announcement on Slashdot that just comes right out and says "hey, we're pimping a new product/release."
Excuse my speling.
Making The Bar Project
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.
:) 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 don't really care to use MSIE... but I can if I really need to.
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.
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....
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?
So, here's a direct link to the demo torrent.
Enjoy!
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.)
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
I downloaded the previous version last night. ... ...
over my 21.6k dialup.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
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?
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...
I am trolling
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.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
No, no, no. Preview release = alpha. Preview releases should never come before beta.
You been workin' at Microsoft there sonny?
If you like what I've said here, and want to read more, go to http://www.krillrblog.com
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.
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)
"Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed." -C.S. Lewis
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.
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.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
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!
This sig kills fascists.
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.
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.
Why is it so hot? Where am I going? What am I doing in this handbasket?
I'm floored.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
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.
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?
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
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 based on user account deletion
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.
Most people don't even think inside the box.
... 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.
and interesting.. thanks. Well I'm off to take my midterm.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
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...
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.
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.
.). 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.
.'
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. .
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.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
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".
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.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
Has anybody successfully ported DirectX to Linux/Wine? I would think this would open up an array of multimedia apps and games...
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.
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
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.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
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
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
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
...and I've just finished compiling it on my Gentoo box :(
Quantum hacker.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I believe he meant John Edward, the Crossing Over guy.
Oops. Dang, that was probably the only typo on Slashdot today too!
I thought that your post may have been negatively moderated because the moderators believed that you meant John Kerry's running mate.
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!).
They were working on emulating x86 on PPC but there were discussions about implementing the display technology in Quartz instead of X11 too.
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.
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
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.
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
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.
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