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CodeWeavers To Release CrossOver For Android To Run Windows Programs

Posted by samzenpus on from the playing-together dept.

An anonymous reader writes: For the better part of three years there has been talk about running Wine on Android to bring Windows x86 programs to Android phones/tablets, and it's going to become a reality. CodeWeavers is planning to release CrossOver For Android before the end of the year. This will allow native Windows binaries to run on Android, but will be limited to Android-x86 due to struggles in emulating x86 Windows code on ARM. The tech preview will be free and once published the open-source patches will be published for Wine.

8 of 66 comments (clear)

  1. WARNING: --- Codewavers == Wine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    Remember what happened when the **superior** IBM OS/2 had Win32 "emulation" (which really worked amazing well). Nobody would write native OS/2 programs cuz Windows was "good enuf".

    NATIVE APPS ONLY, PLEASE.!!!!

    FAIL.

    1. Re:WARNING: --- Codewavers == Wine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Not a problem here. I've tried CrossOver on and off for a few years now; it's still shite.

      Honestly, I've had better luck using WINE for free. God only knows what Codeweavers have done that warrants a not-free fork of an admirable FOSS project.

    2. Re:WARNING: --- Codewavers == Wine by WaffleMonster · · Score: 2

      Remember what happened when the **superior** IBM OS/2 had Win32 "emulation" (which really worked amazing well). Nobody would write native OS/2 programs cuz Windows was "good enuf".

      NATIVE APPS ONLY, PLEASE.!!!!

      When you think about it running windows programs under wine is more native than running android apps under ART. Windows software executes natively on the CPU under wine. Android java code has to be translated to machine code before it can execute.

  2. Re:Bloated stinking carcass ... by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Fuck you. Don't want this fucking garbage on Android.

    Then don't install it. Phew, that was hard.

  3. Re:Who actually wants this? by garcia · · Score: 2

    What percentage of Android owners even remotely want any of this?

    Users don't know what they want until it is provided to them and, honestly, if you don't want any part of it, that's cool but perhaps it will really help developers port their work cross-platform and bring us to a completely different level.

    I would love to see Android or iOS apps come back across the divide in some cases, so there's likely a market in reverse.

    No sense in getting all fired up about CodeWeavers doing this.

  4. Re:I am curious about one thing... by morcego · · Score: 4, Informative

    Codeweavers has a very strong business focus, and most of the innovations are based on client requests.
    You can rest assured that, if they developed it, they already have a client willing to pay for it. Jeremy White is no fool.

    --
    morcego
  5. androwish by stabiesoft · · Score: 2

    I don't know how well their windows emulator works, but when emulators work they can be very helpful. I was trying to write a simple app for my nexus phone and started looking into it and found it was going to be overwhelming. But then I stumbled on androwish, a tcl/tk environment for android and found it trivial to write my app. So this was a case of a emulator/port saving substantial amounts of time.

  6. Re:I am curious about one thing... by lakeland · · Score: 2

    Yes I was thinking something similar.

    We recently had a situation where the business decided to buy the field force all iPads because they were going to change the whole business process around a new app which happens to only run on iOS. Midway through the project we discovered that a few of the field force have a critical business application which only runs on windows.

    We couldn't have used this specific solution since it is Android rather than iOS, but if it had been available then it would have been very attractive.