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Jeremy White And Mad Penguin On CrossOver Office 3 113

SilentBob4 writes "Today, a review of CrossOver Office 3 (written by Preston St. Pierre) as well as an interview with the founder of CodeWeavers Inc., Jeremy White (written by Adam Doxtater) have been published for mass consumption. It looks like CrossOver Office/Wine has come a long way since the dark ages of Linux science. Congratulations to the developers on both teams on a job well done. The interview with Jeremy is better than any I have seen recently."
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Jeremy White And Mad Penguin On CrossOver Office 3

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  • by xlyz ( 695304 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @01:30PM (#9231082) Journal
    I feel less and less the need to run Windows software
    • I guess you use your bank's online software to synchronize your account.
    • by gmuslera ( 3436 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @01:49PM (#9231221) Homepage Journal
      The nice thing is not needed it, but having that alternative available. In a future something could make you need to run a windows program (for whatever, from firmware configuration to certain places idiot policy on required browsers/software/etc) and you'll prefer to have some way to run the desired software under linux that boot windows.
    • by Rignes ( 224624 ) <rignes@[ ].net ['ptd' in gap]> on Sunday May 23, 2004 @02:00PM (#9231296)
      I think there is a nitch for Crossover. While many Linux home users don't feel the need to run Windows applicaitons anymore, there are plenty of businesses that feel they need to run MS Office (some even have it as a requirement to do business with others). I think Crossover is a great way to offer a stepping stone for businesses. As in, they can ditch the expensive Windows Operating systems and change to Linux while their users can still use the applications they already know.

      In my mind it gives a middle ground step between being 100% Microsoft and changing to 100% Linux/OSS. As in, individual users are very dynamic and can change all their stuff at once if they so choose. Must businesses take things slower and think about making such drastic changes.

      Crossover just gives them a stepping stone that breaks a big change into smaller, easier to swallow, chunks. Also, it breaks up the learning curve, it gives users a chance to learn Linux first, then to learn an Office alternative if they so choose.

      Brian
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • > As in, they can ditch the expensive Windows
        > Operating systems and change to Linux while their
        > users can still use the applications they already know.

        But Office is the most expensive part of the Windows desktop! And so CXOffice doesn't save you that much... If you pay, say, $60 (a year!) for Mandrake (I paid $120), and ~$60 for CXOffice, you're not that far from Windows.

        Now OpenOffice is a totally different story... but it doesn't work for me as yet.

        Ah, and right, I didn't have to pay for MD
      • In the small businesses I deal with, replacing Microsoft Office isn't a major problem, except where documents need to be edited by a client then returned.

        My major stumbling block is Quickbooks and related tax software. GNU Cash just isn't up to speed, and I don't see where my auditors would be happy with my using it.

        I sure would like an acceptable alternative, because Intuit's forced upgrade practice is absolutely rotten. I also don't like that there is no real export facility for transactions.

        I've read
      • by mvdw ( 613057 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @09:30PM (#9234103) Homepage
        I think there is a nitch for Crossover.

        Here the bastardization of the english language is complete. Interesting that the word "niche" (pronounced 'neesh'), can be mis-pronounced as 'nitch' by so many people, that it will then become phonetically mis-spelled as "nitch" by someone.

        What's next? "My computer has 512k of level 1 catch"?!?

    • You feel less and less the need to run Windows software? You obviously don't work in a business-to-business capacity. Linux and its apps (Ooo, Gimp, etc.) are fine if you're working with technical folks. But I'd say most businesses assume you will be using MS Office for pretty much everything, and if you're not, you'd better not tell them.
      • There also doesn't seem to be 100% capable replacements to Photoshop and Quickbooks. Gimp and GNUCash seem to be good for personal use, but once you get into business use, they don't seem to stack up. I had not checked on replacements for my CAD software, but I'm relatively sure that my microcontroller programming environment isn't available for Linux.
    • by dracvl ( 541254 )
      There's one very important need, at least for people doing web applications - and that is to be able to test how things look in Internet Explorer.

      The only thing tying me to Windows at the moment is the fact that all our clients use it, and I need to make sure that everything is flawless in that browser too.

      I'm going to try this out when I get the time to set up a proper Linux setup, and if it works - you have a switcher. ;)

      • The only thing tying me to Windows at the moment is the fact that all our clients use it, and I need to make sure that everything is flawless in that browser too.

        I've had Internet Explorer working on my work computer under Linux for going on 4 months now...
        without crossover office.

        It works... and sadly it works faster than Mozilla under wine. (no flame intended.. my observation)

        I use Firefox as my primary browser, but as you said it's nice to see that it's flawless under IE also.
    • by yog ( 19073 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @03:48PM (#9232125) Homepage Journal
      Well, each person's needs are different. Since you don't need it, you can save your $60. But I still have a lot of uses for Windows software, and Crossover has saved me from having to go boot up my Windows laptop, to wit:

      - IE 6.0 -- some sites simply won't work with Mozilla. Rather than mess around, I can easily run IE now right on my Linux desktop, view the offending page, and later whip off a scolding message to their webmaster.

      - MS Word 2000 -- sometimes I have to save a document in Word format, and I need a way to confirm that Open Office did the right thing. Word 97 Viewer is useful but I feel safer when I can easily edit a document using the native tool.

      - Photoshop 6.0 -- works terrifically! I am an enthusiastic GIMP user, but it's nice to have all the best tools for a job, not just some of them.

      - Finale 2001 -- Finally, I can view and print my music from Linux! Works like a charm. Think I'll d/l Finale 2004 and see if that works....

      - MS Excel 2000 -- for occasional use.

      - MS Powerpoint

      - Efax Viewer -- I wish they'd send faxes in some more obvious format like jpeg but anyway this works great with crossover.

      - H&R Taxcut 2002 - the only thing wrong with it was that it would crash when I clicked "Help". Now if Turbotax worked, I'd be happy as a clam.

      - Palm apps that come packaged as .EXE or use a SETUP.EXE, like f'r'instance Adobe Acrobat for Palm. I can safely execute these programs, let them "install" to my fake_windows directory, then grab the Palm .prc files and manually install them.

      - Little Windows freeware or shareware utilities that do stupid little things and expect you to send $20, like finding all the images inside a DLL or EXE. I can d/l these, try them out, etc., from the convenience of my Linux desktop. Often they have strange glitches but the general functionality is usually intact.

      I wish Dreamweaver MX 2004 worked in wine. Maybe Crossover 3.1???

      • Figure I'd chime in as well though I'm using Wine as opposed to crossover.

        -IE 6.0
        I don't use it at all. I haven't encountered any sites I need to visit that don't support Firefox. Then again, there are very few sites I _need_ to visit and IE is difficult to get working in vanilla wine.

        -MS Word 2000, Excel, Powerpoint
        I have all 3 installed and run great under wine but rarely use them. Only for sending to businesses that must have .doc's. For everything paper-based or for my own use, I use Abiword and G


      • You can get Efax to send faxes as Tiff attachements.

        My account is setup that way - in Windows the Microsoft Picture and Fax viewer does a great job - KDE will open them just fine as well.
    • We Still Need It (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Well, the kids do their homework with it
      I run Photoshop with it
      I'm (still) trying to run our proprietary network with it
      It's the only Notes client on Linux
      It got my Quicken off windows
      We have an application that uses it to write spreadsheets in genuine MS format
      And it's about 50 bucks.

      Damn nice software, as Agent Cooper said.
  • by Dwonis ( 52652 ) * on Sunday May 23, 2004 @01:33PM (#9231103)
    Argh! Multi-user support is no longer in the standard version of Crossover Office. I'm tired of people assuming that home users don't run multiple user accounts.
    • Hmm.. On the other hand, it seems as though the Crossover Plugin was merged into Crossover Office... So I guess I'd end up paying the same amount for CXOffice Professional as I used to for *both* CXOffice and CXPlugin.

      I think I can live with that (although the presumption that home users only use one account still irritates me).

    • I could be mistaken, but it looks like the "standard" version is cheaper than the old base version. I suspect that the professional version is a little closer to the old base version, and it still supports multiple users. So, it looks to me like they may have just introduced a lower-end version without the same level of support and the multi-user capabilities.

      Again, I could actually be talking from my posterior. I don't remember for sure what the pricing used to be.
      • by Dwonis ( 52652 ) * on Sunday May 23, 2004 @04:01PM (#9232199)
        Hmm. It looks like you're right. I paid 54.95 (USD, I think) for Crossover Office 1.0.0 Downloadable.

        I guess I owe the guys at CodeWeavers an apology.

        Although, I *still* think multi-user support should be *standard* with *all* Linux-based software, I'm probably going to buy Professional anyway.

        As a side note, it seems that CXOffice 3.0.0 Standard (not Pro) comes free if you have a CXOffice support extension.

  • by haX0rsaw ( 687063 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @01:34PM (#9231111)
    I would argue that an application of this nature, is, in the long term, a bad thing for desktop Linux.. in the same way that OS/2's Win16 support actually served as a detriment to that platform...
    • by arvindn ( 542080 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @01:44PM (#9231183) Homepage Journal
      No it won't. This has repeatedly been gone over before. The difference compared to OS/2 is the community. Do you think all of us linux zealots are going to stop writing apps if wine becomes good enough? :-)

      There might be a slight tendency for commercial software vendors to not bother porting their apps to linux because of wine, but that's becoming harder and harder as linux edges closer to critical mass. And with heavyweights like IBM and Novell behind linux, I wouldn't be too worried.

    • It would be cool if IBM capitalized on the OS/2 name and released OS/3 the winders killer!
    • by e6003 ( 552415 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @01:47PM (#9231207) Homepage
      I disagree. There are far greater pressures for switching platforms (such as the MS licensing fees hike and the pressure to upgrade to give MS another cash injection - not to mention Sasser and Blaster) now than there were 10 years ago when OS/2 was at the peak of its fitness. Like it or not, MS Office at least has become the standard and if you want to persuade the corporate users to switch, you need to support it. Also recall what Disney said about Photoshop - it was the last thing that kept them switching their animation studio over to 100% Linux desktops, so they paid Codeweavers $15k to support it.

      There was no real incentive to switch to OS/2 from Windows as the state of the market was then. 10 years later there is, and I don't think the comparision is valid any more.

    • by IamTheRealMike ( 537420 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @01:50PM (#9231225)
      Can you actually show that Win16 support acted to the detriment of OS/2, or is that just an assumption you've made - "other people on Slashdot keep saying it so it must be true" ?

      Actually, I've seen some pretty compelling arguments from people who used OS/2 at the time that Windows support did not harm it, and in fact probably helped - they have claimed that the main reason OS/2 failed (and of course there were many) was that IBM didn't market it well: they weren't even selling machines with it on themselves at one point.

      Regardless, whether it hindered or helped OS/2 is largely academic. Application support is one of the big things currently stopping a mass migration to desktop Linux, along with inertia/lack of experience and some general immaturities in the technology. Nat Friedman of Novell has said that app compat is the number one blocker for their sales team.

      So Wine really is necessary, simply because it doesn't make sense to rewrite every desktop program in the world to use the Linux APIs. To be frank, humanity has better things to do.

      Disclaimer: I'm a Wine developer so am somewhat biased. But on the flip side, I wouldn't be working on Wine if I didn't think it was important.

    • No,

      OS/2s Win16 support (and Win32 lest we forget) was not the reason that platform went by the wayside. There were a TON of reasons that went by the wayside including marketting (IBM is starting to get better at this), amount of knowledge needed to administrate OS/2 boxes (was more than Windows 3.x and 9x boxes), cost (OS/2, for the most part, cost more), and did I mention marketting? :) I was a TeamOS/2 member at one time and I tried to do my part to spread OS/2 around (got about 15 people to switch in the end) but damn IBM didn't help matters one little bit. On top of everything else, we had the lovely lovely FixPacks? Anyone remember those? Nothing like 20+ floppies, get 18 disks in, one bad floppy, start from Step 1 sort of thing.

      Ok, I'm done ranting because even I see I'm not making too much sense. In short, Win16 compatibility wasn't the downfall of OS/2, IBM and OS/2 were the downfall of OS/2. Still an excellent system even today with some excellent concepts, but buried by no marketting effort. No mindshare equals no market penetration equals no apps (I know, there were a lot of shareware and a good bit of commercial stuff out) equals no mainstream users equals dead product.

      CliffH

    • If WINE works 100% then people will use it to develop applications for both Windows and free UNIXes. Why, exactly, would this be a bad thing? If 100% of software worked on all platforms then would people still choose Windows? I doubt it would come bundled with many systems (since it would be cheaper to include a free-beer OS. Mmmm. Free-beer...), so people would have to actively choose to run it. Do you really think that's likely?
  • by IANAAC ( 692242 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @01:48PM (#9231213)
    Yay! Notes 6.5.1 runs wonderfully. That's really the only "Windows" tie-in I have to worry about at work. So with a 2.6.x kernel and CXOffice, I'm pretty much set for all I need to do.
  • by panamahank ( 233338 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @01:59PM (#9231291)
    In looking at the list of Gold apps, and those are the only ones that matter since partial functionality sucks, I don't see a single app that I need that isn't already done well enough by Linux. It would be nice if they had fully functional Access compatibility, since one of my customers has subscribed to a service that uses an Access database, and records can only be downloaded in Access format. It really sucks to have to have a dual-boot computer just to convert those records.
    • access and project (Score:4, Insightful)

      by millahtime ( 710421 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @02:08PM (#9231348) Homepage Journal
      Access and MS Project are two programs that a lot of business use. Especially companies that do business with the military and big 3 auto manufacturers.

      Where I work there needs to be open source software that can work with these files and probubally perfect functionality in wine for them.

      More to the effect there needs to be an open source counterpart.
    • Look again, including the Silver apps this time. In their rating system, Silver apps are fully functional, but haven't yet stood the test of time. They don't make them Gold until they've fully worked for a while.

      When you include the silver ones there's quite a bit.

      I use Crossover almost completely to hit web sites that were writting for IE only. There's only two that I hit regularly, but even one was annoying, and I'd been unsuccessful at getting the dweebs who wrote the sites to fix their code. It works
    • by miyako ( 632510 ) <miyako AT gmail DOT com> on Sunday May 23, 2004 @04:30PM (#9232339) Homepage Journal
      Actually, many of the silver apps work wonderfully as well. YMMV, but I have found that the majority of the functionality works perfectly in the silver apps, except for maybe a little quirk here and there . Even the bronze apps work well for the most part if you are not using any of the exotic features of the app, and they will sometimes crash for seemingly no reason (but then again, many apps do that on windows too). Although I have not used Access (ever, windows or under crossover), I would suggest downloading the free trial and giving it a shot, you may be suprised.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    someone post a copy!
  • by aussersterne ( 212916 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @02:19PM (#9231412) Homepage
    I am a former "wine hater" who was never able to get it to do anything useful. It turns out that a large part of making Windows applications work properly in wine is managing the registry and which libraries will be native/non-native for each application.

    This is Crossover's value-add to wine: it takes care of all of the wine details for you, so that you don't have to be a wine coder with all of the detailed Windows .DLL and registry knowledge that implies, just to make Windows applications work.

    I have to use MS Office XP for my work in print media and publishing. I also need Photoshop from time to time, though with GIMP 2.0 this need is greatly reduced.

    MS Office XP, Internet Explorer, Photoshop, and Windows Media Player all work perfectly under Crossover with Wine. I will never have to use Win4Lin or VMWare again or cope with a full Windows desktop again!

    Now that I have seen wine actually work, and work brilliantly, I believe in it to a much greater degree.
    • It is not free, so I'm not sure how many will switch from wine to crossover. I know I won't, but I hope that wine can make some of the advancements that they did. And possibly a shorter install (took 5 hours on my slow computer to make install).
    • by Anonymous Coward
      Just wait until you find out that
      1) MS Office is visibly slower than in its native environment.
      2) These apps crash even more often than under Windows.

      For me, Word XP under CrossOver becomes unusable after about 10-15 minutes of use (it seems to go into a 30 second CPU-torturing loop after each keystroke by then). Maybe because I use WindowMaker and like to switch desktops.

      Also, Visio 2000 won't install at all even though it is supposedly supported. Not to mention any newer versions of Visio.

      As long as th
      • by aussersterne ( 212916 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @10:33PM (#9234422) Homepage
        I'm working on a masters' thesis right now and have just used Word XP in Red Hat 9 for nearly seven hours straight, with styles, tables, graphics, footnotes, etc.

        Two days ago, I spent nearly 12 hours straight in Word XP working on a complex document, with revision marks, for use in a publication.

        1) I don't find it to be slower than in its native environment (PIII-900, 512MB RAM)
        2) It has not crashed on me since I installed it several months ago (neither has Photoshop 6)

        I'm sorry you haven't had the same experience!
    • Pedantic: Crossover is not an application. It is a utility.

      You use it to enhance the functionality of applications, but not as an end in itself.
      • That semantic game is a bit silly.

        After all, MS Word isn't an end in itself either, a nice, persuasive masters' thesis is the desired end. So MS Word is obviously a utility.

        But wait! A nice document also isn't an end! The policy changes advocated by the masters' thesis are the desired end. Therefore, the masters' thesis is merely a utility!

        But wait! The policy changes also aren't an end in themselves! The resultant changes in the environmental and social status quo are the desired end! Therefore the poli
  • by Anonymous Coward

    Jeremy White (written by Adam Doxtater)

    I knew it! I wonder what language Jeremy is written in...

  • Article Text (Score:3, Informative)

    by aldoman ( 670791 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @02:33PM (#9231530) Homepage
    Server is dying:

    For those of you who might not be familiar with what Wine actually is, let me clarify. Even though some of us enjoy a sip of wine every now and then, this is not what we are talking about today. We are referring to a package that allows Windows applications to run on Linux... outside of an emulator. Wine uses an open source Windows API (application programming interface) to allow modified Win32 binaries to run in a UNIX/Linux environment, completely free of Windows. Think of it not as an emulator, but more of a compatibility layer, or translator if you will. The status of the Wine project can be found here.

    CodeWeavers is at the head of the pack in Wine development and deservedly so. They produce the most well packaged, capable distributions of Wine available. As Jeremy has stated, development is in the hands of their customer base and supporters. Whatever the customer wants the customer gets, and so it should rightfully be. Mr. White knows his business. You can see which applications are getting all of the attention at the CodeWeavers Top List page, and it's actually pretty interesting to see what apps are getting pushed to the top. Take a look.

    Well, enough of the small talk, let's carry on with the interview. Enjoy!

    Mad Penguin: First of all, I'd like to thank you for taking the time to sit down with us today to answer a few questions. I guess the first thing I'd like to know is more personal than anything... why Linux? What was the motivational factor(s) behind developing software to run Windows applications on Linux?

    Jeremy White: Well, it's a fairly long story. I've always been a geek. I've loved programming on computers since I was 11 and had to sneak into the Radio Shack to do it, and I've also always loved computer games. Early in my career, I grew quite proficient at communications and networking programming. I was working on a project for a customer that had a Solaris system. But, they were across town, and I had to drive over there to work on it, and I couldn't afford a Sun of my own. So, instead, I installed and starting developing against Linux (circa 94 I'd say), and then just migrating the code once it was done.

    So that's when I fell in love with Linux, and when we started having at least one Linux box around all the time.

    Now fast forward to about 1997. One day, at lunch, I'm talking to a few new hires (young kids) that had never played the original Combat cartridge in an Atari 2600. This struck me as horrible
    cultural illiteracy on their part, and so I set off to find an Atari 2600 emulator to correct this horrible flaw in their education. Along the way, I stumbled across the Wine project, and thought that it was the most audacious project I'd seen in a long time. I thought then (as I think now) that if Linux could become a truly Windows compatible operating system, it would allow for an explosion in new computing choices, and I'd get to feel like that kid at Radio Shack again.

    Further, in 1996, I had founded CodeWeavers so I could do work I considered meaningful, challenging, and fun, and although we did some fun projects, I was really looking for a mission. Of course, I had a day job (and a young kid), so I couldn't really do much with Wine then. But I kept dreaming, and then one day, it being the 90s and all, I decided to pursue a business built around Wine and helping people port Windows software to Linux. I successfully landed some venture capital, asked a bunch of the Wine developers to come on board, and that's really how we got started on this mission.

    MP: I'm interested in learning how quickly CodeWeavers evolved into the full-blown business it is today. How long did it take you to realize that it had become an actual business and would require your undivided attention? What was the one even that made you sit back, take a deep breath, and think &#147;whoa I am in over my head&#148;?

    JW: I think I've actually answered that one a bit in the previous question; the truth is that CodeWeavers s
  • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • can someone explain what transgamming is doing to wine and why they can't backport their changes to the main tree?

    cheers
    • by Anonymous Coward
      it's all about the license.

      Wine switched to the LGPL license, so transgaming can no longer use wine's code without any worrries about what will happen.

      If you google for ReWind, you'll find that most of transgaming's code is going in there. and perhaps some of the people who code for wine also submit their changes to ReWind, which transgaming can use.

      Also, transgaming provides all their code via CVS, with the one exception of the code that handles anti-piracy mesaures. -- Translation: You can grab transga
    • can someone explain what transgamming is doing to wine and why they can't backport their changes to the main tree?

      Transgaming could give changes back to wine, but they don't want to. They'd rather charge money for them.

      Originally, the Wine project allowed people to modify and resell Wine without giving back the changed source code. But Transgaming built a business on doing that, and the Wine guys didn't feel like doing volunteer work for a corporation, so they changed Wine to a license that Transgami
  • Review Text (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This was my first experience with CrossOver Office of any version, and I was not disappointed. The people at CodeWeavers and at the Wine project really know what they are doing, and combined, produce a very useful program. Easily worth the measly forty bucks they charge for it, CrossOver Office provides an easy way for regular users to easily install and use many Windows products on Linux.

    CrossOver Office is an excellent program based on the Wine project. This program optimizes Wine and allows users to eas
  • by oujirou ( 726570 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @04:36PM (#9232393)
    Where I work we use MS Project, Rational Rose and StarTeam, all tied closely together. Up until now myself and some other Linux zealots in the company were forced to use Project and Rational Rose from a Windows 2000 Terminal Server machine which was good enough for us and bad load on the server.

    But now MS Project really runs under cxoffice, and that's great, although having a native Linux project planning and managing application would be much better. Alas, MrProject is still not good enough for us. :(

    On the other hand, Rational Rose still doesn't install, and we were never able to make native Linux version if Rose run. Maybe somebody had more luck making the thing work?

    BTW, StarTeam runs on Linux natively just perfect, perhaps because it's a java application. :)
  • ...for just letting my Crossover free upgrade period expire just before this release. We can cut the reviewer some slack for using it to install IE and MSN messenger :) It really does work quite well for those of us who have to review and sometimes co-author works with MS Office people.
  • The reviewer complains about not having MSN Messenger-lookalikes: kopete [kde.org] works fine for me, as did gaim [sf.net] last time I checked; and if he wants something to run on crossover, he can try trillian [trillian.cc] which is supported. I know windows users who switched from the official MSN client to trillian because MSN was too intrusive.
  • I'm about to try out CO thanks to coverage here and the ability to scan through top-modded comments.

    To Jeremy: geek power all the way!

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