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Thursday July 5, 2007
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 Hey AppScout readers: I need your help. Recently, my boyfriend decided that he was tired of Microsoft's OS and chose to install Linux, more specifically--Ubuntu--on our home desktop. The process went pretty smoothly. However, we may still want to run some Windows programs. Should he go with CrossOver Office or Wine? Basically, he's looking for a program to run other PC applications in such as games, Photoshop, even IE for development/design purposes. Although we probably won't be using them that much, it is always nice to have. Wine and CrossOver Office seem to be the most popular ones. Any suggestions?Please leave me your comments!
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July 5, 2007 4:02 PM
CrossoverOffice and Wine are NOT Office Apps. Ubuntu comes with an entire office suite called OpenOffice.
Wine is a compatibility layer for running Windows programs. Crossover is a proprietary solution (NOT FREE) which is based off of Wine. Wine is free but VERY difficult to configure/use.
CrossoverOffice is more intuitive and has a list of officially supported Windows aps that are guaranteed to work. (Wine doesn't guarantee anything. It's pretty much, use at your own risk)
CrossoverOffice is the best program I've tried for running Windows, but you can also run an entire Windows installation vurtually with VMware. www.vmware.com
July 5, 2007 4:47 PM
See, this is what happens when I try to relay info! Hehe You can tell I know nothing about Linux. I clarified the post again.
Thanks so much for your advice duder! And for explaining each program further as well as letting me know which program works best for you.
July 5, 2007 6:12 PM
I am running kubuntu 7.04 'feisty'. Wine was easy to install. It is not as fiddly as someone suggested. Then you need ies4linux to add in Internet Explorer (don't use it for browsing ! but it helps wine with 'tricking' apps to run). I then installed M$ Office 2000 which runs fine. Installation can be a bit fiddly but if you have a copy, it will work and perfectly usably. I frequently use office 2k for dealing with work documents. If you need Office XP or 2003 then you will need Crossover. Crossover is more user friendly. Open office is a good alternative but the print options are poor and there are some compatability issues. Keep both on your machine and see the pros and cons for each. I believe photoshop 7 will run with wine but later versions will not.
Apart from office you won't need too many win programs as linux has just about everything covered. Wine will not run 'most' windows apps but it manages enough to get by. Crossover is a little better but not a great difference. If you already have a full licenced copy of XP then you can run it using the Virtualbox emulator which is free, but tricky to install. Once running, it does work well.
July 6, 2007 10:56 AM
To run Internet Explorer on Linux, I use IEsforLinux which basically runs a . I just use it for testing purposes when building websites.
RE: Photoshop. GIMP is a great open source alternative included in Ubuntu by default. It even handles Photoshop file formats so you can open and save images made in Photoshop.
Granted, Wine is easy to install, it's configuring it to work properly which is the real pain. As the above poster mentioned: "Wine will not run 'most' windows apps but it manages enough to get by." Some programs take more coaxing than others to work. Just checkout the Wine forums for examples of problems and solutions. (usually requires terminal commands which a basic end user should never really have to deal with)
Reason I suggested CrossoverOffice over Wine is because to the basic user (which you seem to be) Wine is no walk in the park. CrossoverOffice has an easy installation process for supported programs. It takes care of putting all the links and shortcuts in your menus and on the Desktop for you. A lot of the time, depending on what you're installing in Wine, you have to do this stuff manually.
If you need to run specific games that Crossover does not support, you may want to check out Transgaming's Cedega 6.0. It is very similar to Crossoveroffice, except it specifically caters to gamers. It is subscription based ($5/month a small price for freedom ;)) with a minimum 3 month commitment. Problem is, if you unsubscribe, you don't get the patches from transgaming. So, lets say World of Warcraft releases a patch, Cedega might stop working until you get the new Cedega patch to compliment the WoW patch.
I have been building and configuring Ubuntu systems for clients for a long while now, so I'm very knowledgeable in this area. My clients range from basic web users to full on media editing and hardcore gaming.
Hope that helps. Peace Jen
TRAM,
ON Canada
July 7, 2007 3:18 AM
Have you considered virtual machines? They're a lot less hassle than direct installations.
I'm on Windows, but I have three different versions of Linux on VMWare (http://www.vmware.com/) virtual machines, so I have the best of all four worlds.
July 12, 2007 12:08 PM
Thanks so much for everyone's comments! I'm still not sure what we're going to do yet, but in the next couple of weeks, we plan on buying a Dell Dimension with Ubuntu. Anyone think KDE or Gnome is better though?