Submitted by “CodeWeavers this month announced version 6.0 of its flagship Windows compatibility product. Now called CrossOver Linux, the new version is the first with official support for games. With its growing application support and foray into gaming, CrossOver Linux 6 is an excellent alternative for Linux users who are stuck with a Windows application at work or at school.”
If you are trying to lure windows users to linux, switch should be free. Wine sucks, crossover cost $40. Is there any meaning to programs like wine or CO? How does it help to lure satisfied MS gamer to linux land?
If i have to use games or paintshop i will be better off with windows, right?
The claim that linux is more secure system, is it still valid after playing games or watching pron through wine or crossover? Does wine or CO bring malware infection from windows partition or through browser? don’t know technical answer…any claimer or disclaimer…
Edited 2007-01-29 18:04
What a load of nonsense! I don’t mod you down because I am very much against modding down people because of their opinions, contrary to what some MS zealots do.
1)Wine doesn’t suck. Have you ever tried it? In fact it can install almost everything that Crossover can.
2)Crossover costs money because it is a proprietary front-end to Wine. They contribute financially to its (Wine) development. You don’t have to buy it. Or get Xandros, which includes it in the distribution.
In no case you are better off with Windows, nothing could be more certain.
“In no case you are better off with Windows, nothing could be more certain.”
You don’t have an ATi card, do you?
“You don’t have an ATi card, do you?”
In fact I do. While I’ll easily admit that NVIDIA Linux support is great, support for ATI is improving very fast.
I don’t think there’s any way to lure dedicated gamers over to Linux. It is however possible to lure people to Linux who are sick of Windows. Sometimes those people will still want to play a game now and again (or use IE for compatibility testing or MS Office for more certain interoperability with their office or whatever) and for them, Wine/CO can ease the shock of migrating to Linux.
Wine/CO are not supposed to be reasons to switch in themselves. But once a switch is made for other reasons, they can make it easier. Don’t try to give wine/CO a bigger purpose than that for which they are meant.
And to echo some other comments, wine is quite nice for games anymore. Deus Ex, Jedi Academy, Starcraft and Farcry all run perfectly, with Operation Flashpoint working with some bushes flickering a bit. Sure, those are a bit older, but I’m not in that hardcore gamer demographic you seem to think Wine/CO exists to entice to Linux
Lets see these are the reasons why I would pay 40$.
It would be money not going into microsofts hands, despite the fact of their ad’s on this website.
I wouldn’t have to shell out the 90$+ to buy windows.
I wouldn’t have to worry about rogue processes(spyware) and virus’s affecting my computer because im using windows.
Better scheduler controlling the application, better memory usage because of library usage within linux.
The list goes on.
for their installer and management utilities is beyond me. No, Motif does NOT just work for all. For example, it has troubles with Cyrillic fonts. Pretty much everybody has GTK2.0+ nowadays, and if not, you can always link it statically. If Adobe uses GTK2 for Reader, why can’t Codeweavers use it for their software?
for their installer and management utilities is beyond me.
Because they don’t? It is Tk-based (you can look that up in the EULA without a CrossOverOffice copy).
To answer the questions of why one should use CrossOver: I can only speak from personal experience. I have been a Linux user since around ’94, but I regularly get Word, Excel, and Access files. I bought Office 2000 many years ago, and have been running it with CrossOver Office. It is fast, it doesn’t require me to run Windows, and it always worked well for me.
Yeah, I could use OpenOffice.org, but my experiences with importing MS Office files has been nothing but bad. CXOffice + Office 2000 works, and I won’t fix it, because it is not broken.
Besides opening other people’s files I don’t really need or like Office suites.
It is Tk-based
OK, whatever toolkit they use, it sucks
You only see it to install programs anyways, so who cares what toolkit they use.
If you want Windows games on Linux, isn’t Cedega a better choice?
And for other apps, Wine works pretty good.
I subscribe to cedega currently. 5$ a month aint that bad.
With ‘official support for games’, they probably mean to say that right now they’ve got enough confidence in the capabilities of Wine for running games. And I think they are right; after all I just spent half an hour playing Secret: Files Tunguska with the latest version of Wine (0.9.30 although I’d recommend 0.9.29 for Tunguska since it’s more stable for that game).
It’s amazing what kind of games Wine can run. And Wine continues to improve at an amazing speed. It’s even starting to look like Oblivion will run well on it pretty soon: http://mongooseichiban.blogspot.com/2007/01/oblivion-under-wine.htm…
Cedega has its advantages, but don’t discredit Wine. Technically, it’s probably a much bigger achievement. And Cedega is based on an older version of Wine if I recall correctly.
The really cool thing is… I don’t have to reboot any longer from SuSe to WinXP in order to play Tunguska. I don’t think Wine does anti-aliasing yet, but with the nvidia settings tool set to “force” Anti-aliasing and texture sharpening, it looks just as good as when running on WinXP.
Also I had Keepsake running perfectly (well it crashed sometimes but it does that under Windows too… lol) and Dreamfall (runs, but lacks a couple of features like in-game videos).
Edited 2007-01-29 20:15
Personally I use both CrossOver and Cedega. I have found that with the 2 of them I can pretty much run anything I need to with games, apps, etc.
Wine can pretty much do everything CrossOver can do, if you want to take the time to tweak wine. I don’t mind paying the $40 to have that done for me, or the $5/Month for Transgaming. I do wish that more game companies would follow Id’s and Blizzard’s lead on making a binary for Linux, as well as application vendors.
excuse me? Blizzard??
Blizzard doesn’t make binary’s for Linux.
Epic does however, maybe you meant them?
“Blizzard doesn’t make binary’s for Linux.
Epic does however, maybe you meant them?”
I stand corrected. Yes, I was thinking Bioware actually with Never Winter Nights. Epic does as well, but wasn’t putting them in my example, though they do belong there.
I was playing Warcraft 3 earlier on, so my brain must have still been there
Having used both Cedega and Crossover Office, I find CO now runs everything Cedega did that I play.
The menu system/file association and the bottle features of Crossover Office are well worth the $$$.
Having switched to a Mac recently, Crossover Office for Mac is just as impressive.
Cedega , Wine , Crossover office are all fine but in a larger perspective i think we need native application support on Linux we need professional applications like Flash , Popular games ,dreamweaver , and who knows maybe MS Office (in future) their native version on linux for making linux really popular on desktop.
Emulation does work but it isnt something that would cause mass transition if i remember correctly Os/2 did offer Win32 apps support back in 90’s but the project really boomranged on IBM with Os/2 Failing miserably on desktops so native apps support is need of hour though it has improved now with some really quality open source software.
Anyways here is one extra link a article i had written on Instlling Windows apps on linux and stuff only for newbies nothing new here anyways here is the link
http://linuxondesktop.blogspot.com/2006/07/running-windows-applicat…
if there’s one thing MS can do really well, it’s make a game developer-friendly api, directx. plus, developers can easily make games for both PC and XBOX.
and honestly, if ms has any sort of future apart from selling linux certificates through “blessed” proxy companies (hahaha) it will be in gaming OSes.