Virtualization on the Mac

Since Apple moved the Mac to the Intel Platform we as Mac users can now run just about any software we want. From software for OS X, Unix Programs, even Windows Programs. Let’s see a Windows computer do that quickly and easily. However with these new options comes a number of choices for how to run Windows software on the Mac. We have a range a prices and easy of use.

Yes I know we actually could run Windows on the Mac in the Power PC days using an emulator but emulators were much slower than their real hardware counter parts. For those who remember way back at one point Apple even made a DOS card that could be installed in some 68k Macs and was a PC on card and you could run a Mac program to execute programs on your PC on card but I digress.

Today our leading pay options for Virtualization on the Mac is Parallels and VMWare Fusion. The leading free options are Sun’s Virtual Box and Apple’s Boot Camp. You can also run Windows applications without installing Windows at all by using WINE or CrossOver. We will look at each of these options in turn.

In a recent MacTech Magazine article they compared the performance of VMWare to Parallels. Parallels won in nearly every performance benchmark. Now in order to use VMWare, Parallels, or Sun Virtual Box you have to own a copy of Windows to install. These applications provide a virtual computer to load an OS and your applications into. Parallels and VMWare both have good technical support and the ability to import other virtual machines into them. Today there are a variety of free and for purchase virtual machines you can get on the Internet and install into your Virtualization software. If you want to setup a Web Server on a virtual machine just download one with Linux and Apache pre-setup boot it and you are ready to go. It is great for testing products without impacting the machine you use on a daily basis.

Sun’s Virtual Box has come a long way and is close to being real competition for VMWare and Parallels. It started off as a very basic Virtual Machine lacking even support for external USB hard drives. Now it is a solid performer runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux as much better driver support in version 3 and while still not on par performance wise with VMWare and Parallels it is a fine choice for someone who doesn’t use a Virtual Machine on a regular basis or just wants to run some applications where performance isn’t a huge concern.

WINE and it’s commercial counterpart CrossOver have been around since before Apple went to Intel. Originally WINE which stands for (Wine Is Not an Emulator) was developed for Unix and Linux users to run Windows based apps on their machines without Windows being installed. WINE is a freeware application that is developed and supported by the community. This option is not for the technical novice or the faint at heart. It can be tough to configure and not all applications are supported. There is a commercial version of the software put out by CodeWeavers called CrossOver that is a company supported version of WINE. I didn’t have a lot of luck with it myself when I tired it out in 2007 but it may have progressed since then. I will look at it in a future blog post.

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CrossOver Linux 9 review

One of the most common reasons given for remaining wedded to Microsoft Windows is the absence of a key Windows program on alternative operating systems. But that needn't be the case when you can run Windows programs without the Windows OS.

 
Codeweavers CrossOver Linux 9 (codenamed Snow Mallard) and its Mac brother, CrossOver Mac 9, let you run many popular Windows applications on Linux or Mac OS X.

Supported Windows applications include Microsoft Office (from Office 97 to Office 2007), Internet Explorer 6 and 7, Outlook 2002 to 2007, all current versions of Quicken up to 2010 and QuickBooks up to 2004, along with some versions of Photoshop and Photoshop CS.

Based on our experience with CrossOver, which goes back more than a decade, we'd say this new version supports about 20% more applications (at a level that most users would find usable) than the last one.

Codeweavers CrossOver Linux 9 is based on the open-source Wine project, an implementation of the Windows API on top of the family of Unix/Linux operating system. Wine is a mature project involving almost 17 years of work to get Windows applications to run on Unix and Linux systems.
Actually, you don't need Codeweavers CrossOver Linux 9 to run Windows applications on Linux. You can do it with Wine alone, if you know exactly what you're doing.

What Codeweavers CrossOver Linux 9 brings to the table is automated installation of Windows applications, and technical support. And in this latest version, the CrossOver interface has been improved so it's easier than ever to install and manage Windows applications.

Installing CrossOver

To see how well Codeweavers CrossOver Linux 9 does its job, we tested it on two systems. The first was a Dell Inspiron 530S powered by a 2.2GHz Intel Pentium E2200 dual-core processor with an 800MHz front-side bus.

The machine had 4GB of RAM, a 500GB SATA drive and an integrated Intel GMA 3100 graphics chipset. It was running the Debian-based MEPIS 8 desktop Linux distribution.

We also tried Codeweavers CrossOver Linux 9 on an older Gateway 503GR with a 3GHz Pentium 4 CPU, 2GB of RAM, an ATI Radeon 250 graphics card and 300GB SATA drive. This machine was running Ubuntu 9.10.

Both systems had more than enough horsepower to run multiple Windows and Linux applications simultaneously. In fact, CodeWeavers claims that any 32-bit system that runs at 200MHz can run CrossOver.
(The program will run on a 64-bit system, but only if it has the 32-bit compatibility library installed. So even the 64-bit version is really a 32-bit application platform.)

Codeweavers CrossOver Linux 9 also requires that your Linux include Glibc 2.3.x or greater and X11R6 3.3 or greater. XFree86 4 with XRender and FreeType support is recommended.
In short, Codeweavers CrossOver Linux 9 will run on any modern Linux distro on almost any IBM-based PC.

There are several ways to install Codeweavers CrossOver Linux 9. CodeWeavers recommends that you use its installation shell script, but if you'd rather use your Linux OS's installation program, CrossOver also comes in RPM versions for Red Hat, Fedora and openSUSE; and DEB editions for Debian and the Ubuntu family. They both work just fine.

The one problem we found is that there's no upgrade path if you already have an earlier version of CrossOver Linux installed. We had to manually uninstall our older edition of CrossOver before we could put in the new program. Codeweavers CrossOver Linux 9 includes an uninstall option, so that wasn't a problem, but the instructions don't tell you that you'll need to zap your old version before installing the new one.

Putting CrossOver to the test

Once installed, Codeweavers CrossOver Linux 9 has a new GUI that works equally well with both KDE and GNOME. (There's a known bug that prevents CrossOver menus from appearing on KDE 4.4, the most recent version. Hopefully, that will be addressed soon.)

Installing Windows applications is a snap. From the CrossOver interface, you can easily choose which Windows applications you want to install from a supplied list of supported applications. You can also install applications that are not officially supported; for example, our favourite HTML editor, NoteTab, also runs well on Codeweavers CrossOver Linux 9, even though it's not on the list of supported applications.

In this latest version of Codeweavers CrossOver Linux 9, you also have the option of installing useful Windows components apart from the actual applications. For example, we were able to install the most common Windows fonts, such as Arial and Times Roman, as well as the .NET Framework 3.0 and Visual C++ 6.0 redistributable libraries.

For the most part, the Windows applications we installed ran without trouble. We could work with Word 2003 documents, Excel 2003 spreadsheets, IE 7 and complex Quicken 2009 financial statements quite comfortably. It wasn't perfect, though, as some of the icons appeared blotchy. It was never enough to make a program unusable, but it was enough to make them unattractive.

In addition, we would also occasionally need to force a screen refresh when one Windows application's window covered up another. When we'd brought focus to the lower application, the part of it that had been covered wouldn't render properly. After running a command with the new foreground application, however, Codeweavers CrossOver Linux 9's screen refreshed and it reappeared as it should.

Two versions of CrossOver Linux

You can download a free 30-day trial version of Codeweavers CrossOver Linux 9. The program costs $39.95. Also available is CrossOver Linux Professional for $69.95, which can be used for multiple users, and additionally comes with CrossOver Games.

CrossOver Games includes support for Microsoft's graphics APIs for games, DirectX, up to version 9. With this, many Windows games will run well on Linux. We had no problem blasting monsters in World of Warcraft and Guild Wars. CrossOver Games is also available separately.

System requirements

installed); tested on: Ubuntu 8.04/9.10; Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 4 and 5; openSUSE 10.2, 11.x; Fedora Core 11 and 12 Debian Stable; Mint 7; CentOS 5.3; 100MB of free drive space; python >= 2.4; gtk2 >= 2.10; python-gtk2 >= 2.10

CrossOver Linux running Adobe Photoshop CS2

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One more reason to use Linux operating system

There’s no doubt that Windows is the most widely used operating system in the world, with Mac OS X taking the second step on the podium. But, what about Linux OS? The Linux operating system is not that popular but many people still use it, maybe just out of curiosity or because of the simple interface it has. Whatever may be the reason, Linux is not going to vanish from the operating system market that easily. This thing is for sure, as-long-as there are software packages like CrossOver Linux that offer to extend your Linux OS’s functionality virtually out of its domain. CrossOver Linux allows you to run popular Windows OS application, plug-ins and games; just like they would run in Windows OS.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R on Mac with CrossOver Games

I look at what it takes to get the Mac to run S.T.A.L.K.E.R., with CodeWeavers CrossOver Games. S.T.A.L.K.E.R is an open-world, first-person shooter from 2007.

Star Trek Online on Mac

Part two of my exploration of Star Trek Online where I look at a different method of running it using a build of CrossOver Games made specifically for STO.

Installing Games into CrossOver Games

I like to play Windows based games on my Linux based Quad Core computer. To do this I use Codeweaver’s CrossOver Games. In general, it meets all my gaming needs. So far I have been able to install and play the following games:

• Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars using the instructions located at Codeweaver’s C&C3: Tiberium Wars compatibility page. It is important to use the ‘Default Install’ as an Advance Install will fail. Also, you will want to install inside an Unsupported Bottle, I use one named CNC3.
• Rise of Nations requires additional instructions. First you need to use the Codeweaver’s installation tool to install Steam to get the necessary version of DirectX, then follow the instructions on the Codeweaver’s Rise of Nations Compatibility page.
• Rise of Nations: Throne and Patriots should just install. All updates work as well.
• Command and Conquer 3: Kane’s Wrath installs fine but you need to follow the instructions for the Tiberium War’s compatibility page to get a running copy. Just substitute Kane’s Wrath for Tiberium Wars in most cases.
• Escape the Museum is just fun and installs fine with no issues what so ever.

What is interesting about installing these games makes me think of a Games Virtual Desktop using JeOS and CrossOver Games. Granted, the video performance would be incredibly bad, but the idea is interesting.

 

Windows on Linux

Switching to Linux is easy if you know how to run Windows applications on it.
For many users considering switching to Linux the biggest hurdle is a question of whether they can find a suitable replacement for their favourite Windows applications. While sites like LinuxAppFinder list hundreds of open source application alternatives it's not always as straight forward as that. Many users are bound, for one or other reason, to using a particular application, be it because there is no way to convert existing data or because company policy demands they use a particular application. Fortunately there are a number of ways to run a good deal of Windows applications on Linux.
Wine
Wine stands for "Wine is Not an Emulator" and is one of the most common methods of running Windows applications on Linux. Wine is available in most popular Linux distributions and as its name says, it is not actually a Windows emulator but is able to run Windows applications. Unlike virtualisation software Wine doesn't require that an existing copy of Windows is running to be able to run applications. Wine is basically a loader than executes a binary and a library that executes Windows API calls in a way that Unix and Linux can understand. Wine is very capable today and can run a wide range of Windows applications including Office, Photoshop and just about all current games. The Wine site maintains an extensive database of applications that can be run on Linux with instructions of how to set them up.
Cedega
Although Wine runs many popular Windows-based games, if you're serious about gaming then it's worth looking at Cedega, otherwise known as Transgaming. Cedega is a commercial version of Wine (originally called WineX) with a strong focus on gaming. It is a subscription service and provides a frontend to Wine with additional scripts to get games up and running quickly. Originally Cedega offered one of the best ways to run games on Linux but of late Wine has made such progress that Cedega's value is diminishing.
Nevertheless, for certain specific situations Cedaga could be the answer.
Crossover
Formerly known as CrossOver Office, CrossOver is a collection of four commercial applications that allow Windows applications to run on Linux, Mac OS X and Solaris. The four are CrossOver Mac, CrossOver Linux, CrossOver Games Mac, and CrossOver Games Linux. The Linux standard version costs $39.00 and the professional version $69.00, which is not too hefty a price tag for something that can run applications such as Microsoft Office, Project, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Quicken as well as many other applications. The CrossOver Mac, Linux and Games editions are designed for desktop use while the CrossOver Server edition allows Windows applications to run in thin client environments.

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CrossOver Linux 9 Run Windows apps without Windows

A new version expands the number of Windows applications you can run on Linux.
By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols for ComputerWorld :

Some Linux users insist that anything you can do on Windows, you can do better on Linux. While there's some truth to that, many of us have Windows applications that make completely leaving Windows close to impossible. That's where CodeWeavers' latest version of CrossOver Linux comes in.
CrossOver Linux 9 (code-named Snow Mallard) and its Mac brother, CrossOver Mac 9, let you run many popular Windows applications on Linux or Mac OS X. Supported Windows applications include Microsoft Office (from Office 97 to Office 2007), Internet Explorer 6 and 7, Outlook 2002 to 2007, all current versions of Quicken up to 2010 and QuickBooks up to 2004, and some versions of Photoshop and Photoshop CS. Based on my experience with CrossOver, which goes back more than a decade, I'd say this new version supports about 20% more applications (at a level that most users would find usable) than the last one.

CrossOver is based on the open-source project Wine, an implementation of the Windows API on top of the Unix/Linux operating system family. Wine is a mature project involving almost 17 years of work to get Windows applications to run on Unix and Linux systems.
Actually, you don't need CrossOver Linux to run Windows applications on Linux. You can do it with Wine alone -- if you know exactly what you're doing. What CrossOver brings to the table is automated installation of Windows applications, and technical support. And in this latest version, the CrossOver interface has been improved so it's easier than ever to install and manage Windows applications.

Installing CrossOver

To see how well CrossOver Linux 9 does its job, I tested it on two systems. The first was a Dell Inspiron 530S powered by a 2.2-GHz Intel Pentium E2200 dual-core processor with an 800-MHz front-side bus. The machine had 4GB of RAM, a 500GB SATA drive and an integrated Intel 3100 GMA chip set. It was running the Debian-based MEPIS 8 desktop Linux distribution.

  

Installing Windows applications in the new CrossOver is as easy as pick and click.

I also tried CrossOver 9 on an older Gateway 503GR with a 3-GHz Pentium 4 CPU, 2GB of RAM, an ATI Radeon 250 graphics card and a 300GB SATA drive. It was running Ubuntu 9.10.
Both systems had more than enough horsepower to run multiple Windows and Linux applications simultaneously. In fact, CodeWeavers claims that any 32-bit system that runs at 200 MHz can run CrossOver. (The program will run on a 64-bit system, but only if it has the 32-bit compatibility library installed. So even the 64-bit version is really a 32-bit application platform.)
CrossOver also requires that your Linux include Glibc 2.3.x or greater and X11R6 3.3 or greater. XFree86 4 with XRender and FreeType support is recommended. In short, CrossOver will run on any modern Linux distro on almost any PC.
There are several ways to install CrossOver. CodeWeavers recommends that you use its installation shell script, but if you'd rather use your Linux desktop's installation program, CrossOver also comes in RPM versions for Red Hat, Fedora and openSUSE, and DEB editions for Debian and the Ubuntu family. They both work just fine.
The one problem I found is that there's no upgrade path if you already have an earlier version of CrossOver Linux installed. I had to manually uninstall my older edition of CrossOver before I could put in the new program. CrossOver includes an uninstall option, so that wasn't a problem, but the instructions don't tell you that you'll need to zap your old version before installing the new one.

Putting CrossOver to the test

Once installed, CrossOver 9 has a new GUI that works equally well with both KDE and GNOME. (There's a known bug that prevents CrossOver menus from appearing on KDE 4.4, the most recent version. Hopefully, that will be addressed soon.)
Installing Windows applications is a snap. From the CrossOver interface, you can easily choose which Windows applications you want to install from a supplied list of supported applications. You can also install applications that are not "officially" supported -- for example, my favorite HTML editor, NoteTab, also runs well on CrossOver 9, even though it's not on the list of supported applications.
In this latest version of CrossOver, you also have the option of installing useful Windows components apart from the actual applications. For example, I was able to install the most common Windows fonts, such as Arial and Times Roman, as well as the .Net Framework 3.0 and Visual C++ 6.0 redistributable libraries.
For the most part, the Windows applications I installed ran without trouble. I work with Word 2003 documents, Excel 2003 spreadsheets, IE 7 and complex Quicken 2009 financial statements quite comfortably. It wasn't perfect, though -- some of the icons appeared blotchy. It was never enough to make a program unusable, but it was enough to make them unattractive.
In addition, I would also occasionally need to force a screen refresh when one Windows application's window covered up another. When I'd reveal the "lower" application, the part of it that had been covered by the other Windows application wouldn't render properly. After running a command with the new foreground application, however, the program's screen reappeared as it should.

Two versions

You can download a free 30-day trial version of CrossOver Linux; if you like it, it costs $39.95. You can also get CrossOver Linux Professional ($69.95), which can be used for multiple users and comes with CrossOver Games. 

CrossOver Games includes support for DirectX, Microsoft's graphics APIs for games. With this, many Windows games will run well on Linux -- I had no problem blasting monsters in World of Warcraft and Guild Wars. CrossOver Games is also available separately for $39.95

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How to run windows games or programs on mac or linux without bootcamp

Hello everybody today we look at how to run windows games and programs on a mac using software called CrossOver Games, created by CodeWeavers.

Crossover Mac Review (Mac OS X)

I was lucky enough to get my hands on a copy of CodeWeavers’ flagship product Crossover Mac this week. The software is designed to allow applications from other platforms, primarily Windows, to run seamlessly on Mac OS X without the need for emulators or dual booting the computer which requires a restart and wasted hard disk space. 

To say that the software achieves this is an understatement to say the least. During the testing of the program, I found all aspects of it to be pretty much flawless. 

The first element of the program that needed testing, was naturally the installation and setup. As with the majority of OS X software, installation was simply a process of drag and drop into the applications folder. Registering the software was a breeze too. I simply had to register on the CodeWeavers website and then register the software using the same details.

So once your all set up and registered, you may wonder where the application has gone. All that is immediately visible is the icon placed in the selected folder, or on the dock whilst open. This is due to the discreet nature of the software. It pretty much stays out of your way, not even running until called upon. However, when you enter any optical medium such as a CD or DVD containing installation files meant for Windows, the application springs into life and loads the files in an extremely similar manner to the auto-boot process on Windows. 

There is an almost endless list of software that is compatible with this software. The majority of regularly used programs will most likely be compatible with Crossover Mac. This includes anything from Microsoft Office to Call of Duty. For my initial tests of the software I decided to install Microsoft Office as I decided it would be a useful addition to my Mac as I haven’t developed a great taste for Open Office and haven’t yet bought a copy of iWork since recently purchasing an Apple Mac Mini.
The first stage of installation was fairly lengthy. This was completely due to the fact that it was the first install I had carried out and therefore the system needed to install required fonts and such. After the first installation, any further software I attempted to install was carried off without a hitch. To be honest, this isn’t a major problem anyway. Proceeding with the installation, I was confronted with the usual interface I had found with Windows. The installation process from this point onwards was as quick as any Windows installation. 

The trend of native speeds continued throughout use of the application after testing. The program boots with the natural Windows interface. It is not altered to fit the Mac themes which could be taken in either a positive or negative way. Positive due to the fact that many applications wouldn’t be suited to the alterations and may become muddled or difficult to navigate. Negative due to my opinion that the general Mac interface is more attractive than the Windows equivalent. 

Running and using the program was as simple as ever, for the most part as fast as running on Windows. I was extremely impressed with the cleanliness of the switch over considering the application was never intended to be used on this OS. In my opinion, the Mac version of Microsoft Office was never up to scratch, so to use the full Windows version was a pleasant change.

After successfully installing and running Microsoft Office 2007, I moved on to install Call of Duty 2. I dare not try the latest version of the games, not because they are incompatible, but because I have the basic Mac Mini so running the games may not be smooth enough to carry out a fair test of the Crossover Mac software. Suffice it to say, the installation and running of the game was nigh on perfect and I was able to run the game on high settings without any noticeable lag. For the gamers amongst us who do have a Mac, this software also supports platforms such as Steam.

Overall I have found many a use for this excellent software and is a real alternative to running Parallels Desktop 5 that means you don’t need to boot to a separate operating system. I also have an old Linux machine and am tempted to use the Linux alternative of this software to run the same programs. The software comes in various packages. One for general software such as Office, and one for games. However, the Crossover Mac Pro option possesses both, but carries an extra cost. 

 

Fallen Earth MMO comes to the Mac

At this week’s Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, Icarus Studios announced the Mac beta release of Fallen Earth, a Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game. The new Mac beta release – available now – requires an Intel-based Mac running Mac OS X 10.5 or later.

 

Fallen Earth combines First Person Shooter (FPS) and Role Playing Game (RPG) elements in a post-apocalyptic world. Features include classless advancement, a real-time crafting system, a faction system that enables you to ally or rally against six different factions, and a world comprising 70 unique towns with more than 5,500 missions.

To make Fallen Earth Mac-compatible, Icarus is leveraging Wine, an open source translation layer technology that originally was developed to enable Linux operating systems to run software made for the Windows platform. Wine is also leveraged by Codeweavers for its CrossOver Mac software.

 

Steam Client and Source Games Porting to OSX

So the devil called me this afternoon and said they where having a snowstorm in hell.

In other news Valve announced that their revolutionary "content delivery service" known as "Steam" is being ported to OSX and will be available as early as April 2010. No really its true, straight from the horse's mouth. In addition the actual client and "Steam-works" being brought to Apple's operating system Valve also plans to port all of the Source Engine games, these include:

• Half Life 2 Series
• Counter Strike: Source
• Team Fortress 2
• Left 4 Dead Series
• Day of Defeat: Source

All I have to say is: Microsoft has to quaking in their boots. For some time Microsoft's Windows operating system has been the standard for gaming on the PC. With Valve making the push into OSX this means more than just trouble for Microsoft's operating system. It also means their famed DirectX API that is Windows only may be in jeopardy. I say this because as stated in Valve's official announcement in order to port their engine/games to OSX they will be reimplementing them in OpenGL. After the porting of these past released source games Valve plans to treat OSX as a "first tier" operating system. Meaning that all future releases of source games will occur simultaneously for OSX, Windows, and Xbox 360.

Not a fan of Valve's flag-ship gaming engine? Not a problem, take a peak at these other titles already for sale on Steam that have a native OSX client:

• Aliens versus Predator (original)
• Altitude
• And Yet It Moves
• Ankh: Battle of the Gods
• Ankh: Heart of Osiris
• Aquaria
• BioShock
• Braid
• Brainpipe
• Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars
• Broken Sword II: The Smoking Mirror
• Call of Duty
• Call of Duty: United Offensive
• Call of Duty 2
• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
• Championship Manager 2007
• Championship Manager 2008
• Championship Manager 2010
• Civilization IV
• Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword
• Civilization IV: Colonization
• Civilization IV: Warlords
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3
• Darwinia
• DEFCON
• Delta Force: Black Hawk Down
• Deus Ex
• Doom
• Doom 3
• Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil
• Doom II: Hell on Earth
• Dragon Age: Origins
• Elven Legacy
• Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
• Eschalon: Book I
• Europa Universalis III
• Europa Universalis: Rome
• FlatOut 2
• Final Doom
• Football Manager 2009
• Football Manager 2010
• Football Manager Live
• Freedom Force
• Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
• Harvest: Massive Encounter
• Hearts of Iron II
• Hearts of Iron III
• Heretic
• Heroes of Might and Magic V
• Hexen
• Hexen II
• Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
• Jade Empire
• LEGO Batman: The Videogame
• LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures
• LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues
• LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga
• Loom
• Luxor
• Luxor 2
• Luxor 3
• Machinarium
• Multiwinia
• Osmos
• Peggle
• Peggle Nights
• Penguins Arena
• Penumbra: Black Plague
• Penumbra: Overture
• Penumbra: Requiem
• Plants vs. Zombies
• Prey
• Prince of Persia (2008)
• Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords
• Quake
• Quake II
• Quake III Arena
• Return to Castle Wolfenstein
• Rome: Total War
• Samorost 2
• Shaun White Snowboarding
• Sid Meier’s Pirates
• SiN
• Spore
• Star Wars: Force Unleashed
• Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast
• Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy
• Star Wars: Dark Forces
• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
• Tales of Monkey Island
• The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena
• The Dig
• The Graveyard
• The Path
• TOCA Race Driver 3
• Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield
• Tomb Raider: Anniversary
• Torchlight
• Unreal
• Unreal Tournament
• Unreal Tournament 2004
• Uplink
• Virtual Families
• Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning
• World of Goo
• X²: The Threat
• X³: Reunion
• X³: Terran Conflict

Phew! Who was it that said you couldn't game on a non-Windows operating system? Well truth be told thanks to wonderful software like CXGames some of us have been enjoying source games on the operating system of our choice for some time now. (Food for thought and maybe a future topic: What do you think this announcement is going to do to Codeweaver's bottom line?)

Link to Full Article

 

CodeWeavers Releases Crossover Office 9.0 for MAC and Linux

Latest Release Boasts New User Interface, Lets User Build Their Own Installation 'Recipes'
SAINT PAUL, Minn. (March 2, 2010) -- CodeWeavers, Inc., a leading developer of software products that turn Mac OS X and Linux into Windows-compatible operating systems, today announced the release of CrossOver 9.0 for both Mac and Linux. CrossOver allows Windows software to be used on Mac and Linux PCs without the need for a Windows operating system license.
Available immediately, CrossOver 9.0 features a new user interface that focuses on making installation of Windows software quicker and easier than previous versions.
"We've modified our installer so that in many cases users can install an application from a single screen, using a single click," said Jeremy White, CodeWeavers chief executive officer. "We want to make the whole process as intuitive and painless as possible."

Another new feature is CrossOver's ability to download installation "recipes" directly from CodeWeavers online Compatibility Database, located at http://C4.codeweavers.com. "If another CrossOver user has figured out how to use CrossOver to install a Windows application, they can upload that installation recipe to our database," said White. "As we go forward, and build this online storehouse, CrossOver will begin to automatically install that same application for other users. This enables us to move closer to a world where CrossOver will begin to run the majority of Windows apps, and not just an officially supported subset.

"In other words, our diabolical plot for world domination is going exactly as planned," he added.
"This new compatibility feature is an important advance," said John Rizzo, Editor in Chief of MacWindows. "It means that CodeWeavers is taking their core technology an extra step and adding user convenience. It makes switching to a Mac or Linux machine a lot less scary for some users. It also means that software manufacturers can post their own recipes to help extend their existing Windows software into new markets." White confirmed that CodeWeavers offers porting services to Windows software developers as well.

CrossOver 9.0 is available immediately at www.codeweavers.com. The Standard version of the product costs $39.95; the Pro version costs $69.95.

About CodeWeavers
Founded in 1996 as a general software consultancy, CodeWeavers focuses on the development of Wine –the core technology found in all of its CrossOver products. The company's goal is to bring expanded market opportunities for Windows software developers by making it easier, faster and more painless to port Windows software to Linux. CodeWeavers is recognized as a leader in open-source Windows porting technology, and maintains development offices in Minnesota, the United Kingdom and elsewhere around the world. The company is privately held. For more information about CodeWeavers, log on to www.codeweavers.com.

CrossOver 9 revamped reinvented and a must have

Yesterday, we received word that a new version of the popular CrossOver product by CodeWeavers had been released. Version 9 is out and it promises a new look, more versatile interface and increased compatibility with a broader line of products.

For those unfamiliar, CrossOver is a proprietary version of Wine that is used for running Windows applications on Mac OS X and Linux. While there are other products that offer similar functionality such as Transgamings’ Cedega, CodeWeavers is the only one that immediately sends patches they create back to the Wine project to further enhance it’s functionality, making it.. in our opinion, the better choice of the two.
One sore spot for a number of Linux users of late was the adjustment by Apple to make it more difficult to view it’s Quicktime movies and trailers with anything other than Quicktime itself. There are a number of ways to get around this but none are particularly easy. For this reason, we decided to test out CrossOver 9 and see if it could allow us to watch trailers from Apple.com in our native Firefox browser on Linux without any effort other than installing Quicktime through their tool.
Here are the results of this test:
First off, installing CrossOver is as simple as downloading the trial (or purchasing the product for as low as $39.95) from their website here: http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxlinux/
Once installed, simply launch the product and you’ll be greeted with an installer such as this:
 

This is definitely a more streamlined look from CodeWeavers and we like it, nice and simple and gets to the point. Also, they have added a number of new options to the software installer as you can see below:
 

It’s nice to see the inclusion of Community Supported products as well and it also gives credence to the statement that CrossOver can run quite a few applications without issue..
As we mentioned earlier, we’re going to test it out by installing Quicktime 7.5 and seeing if the browser (Firefox) picks it up as a plugin and allows us to play trailers on http://www.apple.com/trailers (a favourite site of ours).
Let’s get installing shall we? Simply select Quicktime from the list and hit next and the installer gets to work straight away:
 

Once the installer completes, it’s time to check and see if Firefox picked it up as a plugin.
 

As you can see from the screenshot above, the latest version of Firefox (3.6) picked it up without any issue at all.
Now for the moment of truth, will it play our beloved trailers? Let’s see.
 

As you can see, it worked like a charm. Quicktime loaded quickly and started playing right away without any issues at all. The video was seamless just as if we were running it through a windows machine.

Full Review

 

CodeWeavers 9.0 For Mac and Linux Released With New Interface

CodeWeavers, the popular commercial version of Wine, sees a new update this week with the release of version 9.0 for CrossOver Mac and CrossOver Linux. Users are treated to an overhauled user interface for Mac and a completely redesigned interface for Linux, which developers say makes both apps run more quickly and intuitively.

The release also includes more than 7,500 patches and a bunch of fixes and improvements to the overall application. CrossOver 9.0 now supports macros in Excel, improved Outlook stability, and limited support for Quicken 2010.

CrossOver now also has the ability to download installation files -- or "recipes" -- directly from the project's online database "If another CrossOver user has figured out how to use CrossOver to install a Windows application, they can upload that installation recipe to our database," explains company CEO Jeremy White on the CodeWeavers Web site. 

"As we go forward, and build this online storehouse," says White, "CrossOver will begin to automatically install that same application for other users. This enables us to move closer to a world where CrossOver will begin to run the majority of Windows apps, and not just an officially supported subset. In other words, our diabolical plot for world domination is going exactly as planned."

Full Article

Howto Install CrossOver Linux Standard 9.0 on Ubuntu

Currently CrossOver Linux standard already reached version 9.0. Many improvements including a brand new user interface was applied to this release. Based on the official change log, this CrossOver 9.0 Linux is more applicable to Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office. This version is based on Wine version 1.1.34.
In order to install the CrossOver Linux Standard 9.0, please follow these guide:
1. Download the trial version of CrossOver Linux Standard 9.0.0, or you can buy this software if you want.
2. On the download section, choose the installer type. You can download the installer in .deb, .rpm or .sh extension. In this tutorial I am using the .sh installer file. This installer is more applicable to many Linux distribution.
 

3. Now its time to install.
Open terminal and move to your downloaded directory. And then type this command to install
sh install-crossover-standard-demo-9.0.0.download
4. Then the graphical installation wizard will be opened.

Press OK to accept the license agreement.

To start install the CrossOver Linux Standard, click Begin Install. Then system will install this software. When finished you will be notified.

The installation is now finished. You can start using this program via Applications | CrossOver | Install Windows Software.


 

Softpedia released comment:
CodeWeavers’ CEO, Jeremy White, announced a few minutes ago the availability of the CrossOver 9.0 application for both Linux and Macintosh operating systems. Dubbed Snow Mallard, the new CrossOver 9.0.0 release has a brand-new user interface for Linux users! This new GTK2-compatible graphical user interface is a dream come true, expected by all CrossOver Linux users (take a look at the image for details).

Moreover, CrossOver 9.0.0 brings various improvements to Microsoft applications, such as Internet Explorer 7 or the Microsoft Office suite. CodeWeavers distributes the CrossOver 9.0.0 binaries for the Ubuntu, Debian, Red Hat, Fedora, Mandriva and openSUSE operating systems, as well as an universal installer for other Linux flavors.

 

The needs of the one...

From Jeremy White's Blog :
I realize that it's trite for anyone in the computer industry, but I have to confess to being a life long fan of Star Trek.

Now, mind you, I don't know Klingon, I don't own a starfleet uniform, and I don't routinely go around quoting obscure Ferengi dialog. So there are many that would say I don't really qualify as a trekkie (or trekker, although I do know that it's a point of debate :-/ ).

But my wife and I have watched every episode and every movie, and we've enjoyed sharing many of the episodes with our kids.

So when Cryptic offered an opportunity to beta test Star Trek Online, I jumped at the chance. With a lot of hard work the team here and some help from Cryptic, we were just able to get it running in Wine.
Further, I discovered as I played the game, that it's fun, and 'missions' is a better game metaphore than 'quests', in my humble opinion. That is, in World of Warcraft, I always felt like I was a dog, and each quest was an instruction to 'fetch'. And why on earth does Lieutenant Farren Orinelle need so many Merlock heads? But rescuing a freighter seems like a legitimate thing to do, and if you have to destroy a bunch of Orion ships on the way, well that sort of makes sense as well.

So I'm hoping that my wife and I can play this game for a while. But in order for that to happen, I've got to have a release of CrossOver to use to play it. So I put together an unsupported build, and did some basic testing, trying not to take anything away from our efforts on 'Snow Mallard'. It runs Company of Heroes more nicely, but seems to cause trouble with Left 4 Dead 1 and 2.

Then I asked the support staff here what they thought I should do. They were a bit concerned; they felt that any benefit from Star Trek Online would probably be overshadowed by the support issues from folks who didn't read our warnings. So they requested that we not ship it, and take some time to polish it up more properly, probably requiring that we wait until after we had shipped Snow Mallard.
But in this case, I decided that the needs of the one (me) outweighed the needs of the many (our support staff) .

So, if you want to try Star Trek Online, you can learn how to do it here.
But please be kind to our support staff - it's not their fault!

Cheers,
Jeremy

--

Now the really Cool thing is if you enter : TOM23 as your deal code, coupon offer you will receive a instant discount of 20% off the regular price. Yes you read it here first! For a limited time new CodeWeavers CrossOver customers can purchase CX Games for only $29.96 and CX Pro for only $52.46.... If You or a friend, relative etc.. ever wanted to try CrossOver Games or their Pro version this is the time to do it.

 

CrossOver Windows apps without Windows

VirtualBox may be free, but you still have to own a copy of Windows. If you’re not willing to shell out a few hundred dollars to Microsoft but still want to run Windows on your Intel-based Mac, there is one more alternative: CrossOver from CodeWeavers costs $40 and runs Windows applications on Mac OS X — without Windows.

CrossOver is not virtualization, as evidenced by the whimsically named technology behind it: the open source Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator) project. With CrossOver, Windows applications run directly in Mac OS X, and not in a virtual machine. Wine is an implementation of the Win32 API on Mac OS X. The Windows applications don’t know they’re not running on Windows. There’s also a CrossOver for Linux.
The result is that a Windows application running with CrossOver uses fewer system resources, including memory, disk space, and CPU utilization, than the same app running in Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion. Performance of Windows applications is very good.

CrossOver Mac Review

I was propitious sufficient to get my hands upon a copy of CodeWeavers’ flagship product Crossover Mac this week. The module is written to concede applications from pick platforms, essentially Windows, to run seamlessly upon Mac OS X though a need for emulators or twin booting a mechanism which requires a restart as well as squandered tough hoop space. 

To contend which a module achieves this is an understatement to contend a least. During a contrast of a program, we found all aspects of it to be flattering most flawless. 

The primary component of a module which indispensable testing, was of course a designation as well as setup. As with a infancy of OS X software, designation was simply a routine of draw towards as well as dump in to a applications folder. Registering a module was a zephyr too. we simply had to register upon a CodeWeavers website as well as afterwards register a module regulating a same details.

So once your all set up as well as registered, we might consternation where a focus has gone. All which is rught away manifest is a idol placed in a comparison folder, or upon a wharf while open. This is due to a watchful inlet of a software. It flattering most stays out of your way, not even regulating until called upon. However, when we come in any visual middle such as a CD or DVD containing designation files meant for Windows, a focus springs in to hold up as well as loads a files in an intensely identical demeanour to a auto-boot routine upon Windows. 

There is an roughly unconstrained list of module which is concordant with this software. The infancy of continually used programs will most expected be concordant with Crossover Mac. This includes anything from Microsoft Office to Call of Duty. For my primary tests of a module we motionless to implement Microsoft Office as we motionless it would be a utilitarian serve to my Mac as we haven’t grown a good ambience for Open Office as well as haven’t nonetheless paid for a duplicate of iWork given not long ago purchasing an Apple Mac Mini. 

The primary theatre of designation was sincerely lengthy. This was utterly due to a actuality which it was a primary implement we had carried out as well as thus a complement indispensable to implement compulsory fonts as well as such. After a primary installation, any serve module we attempted to implement was carried off though a hitch. To be honest, this isn’t a vital complaint anyway. Proceeding with a installation, we was confronted with a common interface we had found with Windows. The designation routine from this indicate onwards was as discerning as any Windows installation.