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New Crossover Release With Improved Compatibility
solanum writes "On March 2nd Crossover 9.0 was released. CrossOver 9 features a new user interface that focuses on making installation of Windows software quicker and easier than previous versions. Another new feature is CrossOver's ability to download installation 'recipes' directly from CodeWeavers online Compatibility Database. 'If another CrossOver user has figured out how to use CrossOver to install a Windows application, they can upload that installation recipe to our database,' said Jeremy White, CodeWeavers chief executive officer. 'As we go forward, and build this online storehouse, CrossOver will begin to automatically install that same application for other users. This enables us to move closer to a world where CrossOver will begin to run the majority of Windows apps, and not just an officially supported subset. In other words, our diabolical plot for world domination is going exactly as planned,' he added. Early reviews and comments are positive, and my own experience is that many more Windows applications work in this new version than previously."
CompatAbility? :)
Any word on photoshop? lightroom?
So you are all set then. I mean EVERY application out there is a .NET application, so no need to look around any further. And clearly .NET is FAR more platform compatible then java... you know the language that has been multi platform since its inception, and did not have to be ported by a separate team of developers just to get it to work on other platforms, since M$ only was interested in their platform. I am glad you did some reading and know something, even if you did all your reading on M$ sites. At least it proves you can read.
User interface and easy installation aren't really that important to me... What is important to me is that it can actually run the applications, and can continue to do so. With a recent Wine upgrade, suddenly Age of Mythology couldn't run anymore, and when reverting back to an older version of Wine it works again.
And when I reported that bug to the appDB, they didn't add it because I gave the Wine version number in a wrong format (while they could easily have converted it to the right format).
Well, too bad for them if they don't even want to fix such a bug. I'll keep using the superior older version then. I'm not going through the pain to submit it again if that's the kind of people that processes my bug report.
I hope they check user-reported installation recipes, or people are going to find their instructions freshly packaged with Botnet 9.0 too...
I know I will be modded to Oblivion. But thanks I have Mono, open source, Cross platform and .Net Framework (and IMO better than Java). I don't have to muck around with my applications to be compatible with other OS.
I'm not going to mod you, but I will respond. Cross-platform initiatives like Mono and Java take a shot at addressing the realm that Crossover handles, but they are far from a working or complete solution. Here's why:
Many applications - specifically, many of the ones that are important enough to make a person choose an operating system - are not written in Mono or Java. The reason why is worthy of discussion, but that doesn't affect the fact that this is the case. These applications include the obvious set: the Microsoft Office suite, Photoshop, AutoCAD, ArcGIS, mainstream games, et cetera. Linux as a platform could be desired (by the users) or applied to increase productivity, but the criticality of these applications prohibits it from being even considered.
Now, Windows virtualization has done wonders for allowing such software to be usable in a Linux environment, but there are both integration and performance issues with that solution. Furthermore, it can be difficult for a nth-degree-removed user to justify to management why they still need a Windows license but want to go out of their way not to run Windows.
On the other side, even cross-platform languages like Mono and Java still can have platform dependencies written into them. Many applications need or use functionality beyond that which is provided in the .NET Runtime API and resort to native interface calls. Poor programming can result in hard-coded filesystem specifics (like path separators). Cross-platform-aware vendors may write Windows- and Linux-specific parts of their larger codebase, but others will not. Point being, an application is not cross-platform merely on virtue of being written in a cross-platform language.
Be it issues with language or issues with general compatibility, there is a need to run Windows applications in a Linux environment that is not really solvable without a compatibility layer like Crossover. Until (if ever) vendors actually make a point of releasing cross-platform builds (or platform-specific builds for all mainstream platforms), Crossover provides a low-cost functional solution to a real user and industry need, and with it removes a roadblock that can, for many, completely disqualify non-Windows operating systems as a platform choice.
Still wont run the only apps I need to ditch windows.
Sony Vegas and a couple other video editing apps.
there is NOTHING under linux that is usable outside very simple home movies. I'd pay 2X the price for Vegas retail if I could get it for Linux.
And yes, I have tried everything for linux video editing, they all either completely suck or are half done, or are designed for home users... OpenShot is nice for home use, sucks for editing a 1 hour TV episode with tons of composting and CG.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Consider it donation to Wine.
I personally find that it offers better usability -less configuration- than Wine.
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Yeah, I never understood the hatred towards CodeWeavers. They are the epitome of open-source business - they fund and support the foundation project (wine) by hiring devs and contributing piles of patches back. Unlike say, TransGaming which forked Wine ages ago.
Personally I have subs for both Linux and MacOS - it seems yearly they have these great specials, and I renew my support then. I think I only paid $35 this year because they had a 50% off special ($35/yr support for each product), and then got a bonus 6 months for being an existing customer, and then they gave me another year because this release took so long.
Heck, it's a great way to play Valve's games on MacOS (at least until Steam comes to native OS X).
I've been using CX Games on and off for almost 2 years now. The product is great if you are running a 32 bit version of Linux. However, if you are running a 64 bit distribution, you WILL have problems. My hardware is relatively modern (dual Xeons, 16G RAM, 9600GT video). The issues you WILL have on a 64 bit system if you try to play a Windows game are continuous random crashes due to running out of memory. I think CodeWeavers has good support as far as they can go. Their problem is that they are basically a 're-seller' of WINE and don't have control over that 'product'. I'm not going to bother submitting links into their support forums on this issue, if challenged I will link to the post where they admit that it just won't work right and there's nothing they can do about it.
BTW, I also use Crossover & MS Office under Trusted Solaris and I think it's a vast improvement over the previous solution (Star Office). I'm not a big fan of Microsoft but when the application (word processing, spreadsheets, presentations) opens 3 times faster and is more responsive and reliable, I take notice.
I think the OP is a Troll. But you bring up a good point. Java is available since 95. All the major vendors who wants to support cross platform as gone with this route or provided their own way of compatability. Crossover and other things are just there for very niche applications where vendors do not want to provide cross platform compatability. Still to use these things people need to muck around (as the OP put it) too many setup configs. This makes crossover and likes to never become a mainstream applications.
That's weird. I have no trouble using Wine on 64-bit Mac OS X (both with the 32-bit and 64-bit kernels; not that running the fully 64-bit kernel matters, as the 32-bit kernel still supports 64-bit processes.)
Wine is open source. They can change anything they want. CodeWeavers already does lots of wine development.
Good that you brought this up. I have given up on wine ages ago, since I am satisfied with the 2-3 .net apps out there.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
AOE II is the one app I have so far been completely unable to get running in VMs (VirtualBox: It crashes out on new game, VMWare: It can't even start Parallels: Unplayable slow + App itself brings processor to a boil) or the OS X .app of Wine - or the previous version of CrossOver in fact.
Looks like it's time to try again...
Not to mention, that the majority of games, are specifically compiled to binary and often tweaked beyond that to perform well on a specific platform. Most of the Microsoft Office suite in particular is tied deeply to COM/VBA. All of which doesn't have a Mono equivalent. As a developer I like Mono a lot, but that's a far cry from the majority of already written applications being available. And involving games, many of which already written to target Windows only. I would love to see Crossover and Valve get together to support something that looks like a native Steam application, or is a native steam application, perhaps funded via Valve w/ Crossover. That could be a huge boon to have even a large subset of apps available to Linux.
I personally won't install any apps (beyond windows' own) with DRM included (ie games). I've had it mess with my CD/DVD authoring software which is far more important to me. Though, I've been considering an additional OS install just for games.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
I wouldn't say that... Parallels and VMWare Fusion on Mac is very popular, and increased the focus on DirectX compatibility for games. If crossover runs them pretty much natively on the Mac (or Linux) there's plenty of people that will go that route. It's also less expensive than either of the former (though only slightly for the crossover pro versions).
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
I have to agree with this... I've bought crossover a couple of times, not running linux on my desktop currently, but WINE is probably one of the most needed segments, and if they can support the base, and have a pretty UI on top, more power to them.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Heck, it's a great way to play Valve's games on MacOS (at least until Steam comes to native OS X).
I've really been wondering if Steam is going to be completely native, or if they'll just offer a reskinned version which includes some kind of embedded version of WINE. I played Portal and Half Life Ep 2 on a mac using Codeweavers, and it wasn't bad. I can see Steam just supporting that sort of configuration rather than trying to port completely native versions of all their games.
"Compatable" is a misspelled word. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/compatibility
I picked up CX Games a few years back during that "freebie" promotion they had, but I had a few issues. I have never been able to correctly "uninstall" a windows program. I just have to completely nuke the bottle. And it ran Guild Wars beautifully when I was running 32-bit ubuntu, but on 64-bit linux mint, not so much. :P
I've considered giving them another go (after all, it's been a couple of years) but I hit the biggest problem. I can't find any real feature comparison between the versions! What does Pro offer that Games doesn't, and vice versa? Is one a superset of the other or do I have to buy both if I want to use both games and apps?
Why do you have such a problem with them reselling their own work? Why don't you do some digging and find out where most of Wine development comes from? You are just another clueless user ranting about shit you know little about. Codeweavers represent much of the moving force behind Wine. Alexandre Julliard works for Codeweavers. Why don't you go figure out what he does for Wine.
The relationship between Codeweavers and Wine is like the relationship between Linux and Redhat. You shouldn't hate Redhat for reselling Linux.
"Users of a certain proprietary software can now make eachother get Windows viruses on GNU/Linux and Mac OS X"
It is indeed possible that they'll use winelib (like the linux version of Picasa). But I doubt it, they've just switched their Steam to webkit.
Well I'm not so much questioning whether the Steam client will be done through WINE. A lot of the client is done with HTML anyway, so I don't think that's too interesting of a question. I was more wondering whether they'd support games like Portal and Half Life on Mac, but using WINE instead of trying to port them.
Sounds to me, based on their description, like they've taken PlayOnLinux and rebranded it with (hopefully) substantial refinements.
PlayOnLinux is a frontend installer for both WINE and Windows applications - specifically games, as one might expect given the name. It uses "formulas" to get proper application support. These formulas have specific WINE build versions (whether in CVS or not) which are known to work with the chosen application. It then installs the WINE version with specific WINE settings as well as the chosen Windows application within its own environment path, essentially 'jailed' from other, separate WINE + application installs.
I've used PlayOnLinux to install a number of games (FallOut 3 included), and I was quite pleasantly surprised how well it worked. No, it doesn't always work, but it works damn well none the less. I don't doubt that many "hardcore gamers" (not of the bleeding edge variety, but of the addicted-to-games variety) who aren't terribly computer savvy would have little/no problem using it to install a great many of their favorites (Blizzard and Valve fare, for instance).
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Since they even have console ports, I'd expect a full port. In the worst case, I believe Steam will act as a wine gui (much like Crossover).
I'm not a big fan of Microsoft but when the application (word processing, spreadsheets, presentations) opens 3 times faster and is more responsive and reliable, I take notice.
I was amazed at the performance of Windows 98 when run under Win4Lin/Merge: fast and stable. If it offered 3D support it would have made a great gaming platform. And because it actually ran on a Linux filesystem rather than FAT, there were never any registry corruption or other file corruption problems and it was nice to be able to apply UNIX file permissions to the Win98 files.
It did offer an explorer shell replacement that allowed you to boot directly into an app instead of the desktop. Anybody have a link to that .exe?
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
"Users of a certain proprietary software can now make eachother get Windows viruses on GNU/Linux and Mac OS X"
You say that in a way that indicates that not only are you uninformed, but you wish to spread FUD. I hope that's not the case.
WINE has progressed to the point where it can actually install and (kind of)run some viruses, but by using WINE instead of native Windows, there's little the virus can do in a malicious way. I have used WINE to "install" several infected apps that could easily be cleaned/disinfected and then run malware-free on WindowsXP.
Windows malware really can't hurt a Linux system although it might damage some ~/.wine files. No big deal.
Crossover even inhibits some malware attack vectors and enables safer default behavior for some notoriously unsafe win32 apps.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
I was just mocking the proprietary software fork - not Wine. Specifically, that was my critique of their "receipt" model, but I'm sure they'll subject the entries to revision (first?) - if nothing else, in an "open" manner. In so doing I might've shared some of my own FUD about non-free software. .wine is where their "My Documents" are.
However, if people run Windows progs on GNU/Linux, it's logical to assume they'd want them to be safe. After all
However, if you are running a 64 bit distribution, you WILL have problems...
snip
The issues you WILL have on a 64 bit system if you try to play a Windows game are continuous random crashes due to running out of memory.
You mean to say that those are the issue YOU have. I don't have those issues.
Oh, and CodeWeavers is not a re-seller of Wine. If that is what you think, then I doubt that you are even a customer of theirs. Go buy your Wine somewhere else, if that is what you think.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Obviously a fork would solve that problem but they seem to be unwilling to go that route.
You will note above that I put 're-seller' in quotes. If you have a better way to describe their business, I would love to hear it.
I suppose I could have been a bit more specific though. The problems only occur if you are running a 64 bit OS and have more than 4GB of RAM. (There isn't much point to running a 64 bit OS if you have less.)
Until (if ever) vendors actually make a point of releasing cross-platform builds (or platform-specific builds for all mainstream platforms), Crossover provides a low-cost functional solution to a real user and industry need, and with it removes a roadblock that can, for many, completely disqualify non-Windows operating systems as a platform choice.
I agree. Personally I think it goes even beyond that. Some software vendors are already willing to supply patches that make their win32 software run better on Crossover. The next step is that they will test their products on Crossover before release for the simple reason that they are interested in linux themselves, that their developpers like linux, and/or that their customers are getting more and more interested in linux. Of course they want to keep their customers. The market for running windows apps on linux is growing, and can only be growing more in the future. In a couple of years I do believe that win32 vendors support the wine/crossover platform as much as hardware vendors support linux nowadays.
There's only one person that has control over what goes into wine and that is Alexandre Julliard who maintains the GIT repo.
Also Codeweavers version IS a fork which includes all their own patches.
Sure, and I run virtualbox because the two apps I like in Windoze don't run in crossover plugins. When crossover can handle Windows DRM, call me.
I suppose it depends upon your definition of a fork. I am quite aware that they have a set of patches they apply on top of the standard WINE distro. I could have been more concise.
They sell a supported version of Wine that includes their own in-house developed tools for administering it. Sort of like what RedHat does with the Linux kernel.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.