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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.
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.
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
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.
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
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.
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.
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.
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.
... 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.
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...
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
Yes, and yes.
.) in DX9WINE, which has been integrated into the Wine CVS tree.
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. .
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.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
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.