Windows Programs on Linux

Hello all and welcome to my web-log I hope every one is having a good day. Its true I have not posted as much as I once did in the past and not sure how many readers I even have. I have a few, for they email me from time to time.

What is my mission here: To give information on what the web has to offer, like 5 TVs, which make finding the best TV on the internet easy. More on that in another post.

I know, your a Linux user that has a windows base program you cant do with out. You have looked long and hard and found that the company has chosen not to port it to Linux. Until then, there's CodeWeavers' CrossOver Linux. It is well known to people, who use GNU/Linux all the time. Crossover, simply put, runs Microsoft Windows applications within Linux. Unlike emulation, it is a re-implementation of the Win32 API, allowing applications to run as if natively on your system. The programs will display in their own windows just as if they were native Linux applications. CrossOver 7.0 includes support for programs such as Microsoft Office 2007 along side including Outlook 2007, Quicken 2007 & 2008, and the Adobe Photoshop CS & and CS2 product lines.

CodeWeavers, also way back when, came up with a new feature called bottles, which are virtual environments representing different versions of Windows. At this time, there are three of them: Windows 2000, 98 and XP. Some programs run well in one, but not the other. While this expands the total number of Windows programs that CrossOver Linux supports, it also comes with one key problem: ie Windows application in one bottle cant inter-operate with a program in another bottle. Say your running Internet Explorer 6.0 in a Windows 98 bottle and you want to cut and paste some text from a web page into a Word 2003 document, which only runs in a 2000 bottle. Well let me put it this way, it looks like it should work, but it doesn't. But on the plus side you can paste text in a native GNU/Linux program like OpenOffice without a problem.

GNU/Linux on the desktop continues to grow. And not only that, it’s improving. Today’s Linux desktop offerings are vastly superior to the one available even two years ago. But this is the is a conundrum; it’s hard to make the transition to Linux without being able to bring many of your Windows base applications with you. To me, Crossover is getting better all the time and it’s something that benefits all Linux users by giving an even greater range of software and the freedom to use whichever a app you can't live without, unencumbered by the operating system chosen.

CrossOver Linux Version 7 has two licensing schemes. The software comes in Standard and Pro releases, for US$39.95 and $69.95, respectively. The Pro release includes CrossOver Games--a special product designed to provide Windows game compatibility with your system (a US$39.95 value free)