On Wednesday October, 31st, everybody can get a free copy of CrossOver with 12mths support.
CrossOver is an emulation layer for MacOS X and Linux. In contrast to virtualization solutions like VMWare, Parallels or VirtualBox, it allows running thousands of Windows applications, tools and games without having to install a legit Windows operating system.
Wine based Crossover 9.2 now brings Civilization 5 support to the Mac and Linux. Crossover runs flawlessly with Civilization under Snow Leopard and with some minor flaws under Leopard.
Prices
Aspyr will release a native Mac version of Civilization 5 before Chrismas. We would not wonder if the Crossover emulated Windows version is more performant than the native Mac version, but let’s see ;-)
Crossover allows installing Microsoft Windows based software on MacOS X or on Linux. In contrast to virtualization techniques like VMWare or Parallels, Crossover hooks API calls and redirects them to their MacOS or Linux equipollent.
As of version 8.0 these new applications are supported:
Crossover also improved Copy and Paste functionality to and from the host operating system and improved integration with the upcoming Apple Mac OS X Snow Leopard.
» Find Crossover’s complete change log here…
Strange things can happen. With the Lameduck Campaign Jeremy White (CEO of Codeweavers) initially wanted to:
“(..) to inspire President Bush to make the most of his final days in office. Who knew that our Challenge would have this kind of impact on the country?” White said. “On the other hand, who knew that the economy would implode, causing oil demand to drop into the abyss and gas prices to plummet as well. Clearly, investigating Bear Stearns, AIG and those guys is misplaced – CodeWeavers is responsible for this mess. So it’s free software for all!”
Luckily for the american customers the price of a gallon decreased to 2.79$ on october, 14th and so Codeweavers will give away free copies of their Crossover software tomorrow (2008 october, 28th).
» Crossover’s press release here
» Crossover’s Lameduck Campaign
» Incomplete-Labs’ HowTo: Crossover and UltraEdit
“WINE Is Not An Emulator” has been released in version 1.0. Since the first release of a 16bit version in 1993 it only took 15 years to eventually bring version 1.0 to the world. Since 1993 the development was an ongoing process with the help of a large community of volontarily testers.
In a Linux environment WINE basically hooks Microsoft’s Win32 APIs and translates them to Linux APIs – as good as possible, because Microsoft does not provide documentation for all of their APIs. Getting a program like Adobe’s Photoshop to work seemed not to be a hard issue. This is because Adobe uses an own API for many things like windows and their well known tool boxes. The main problem are programs like Microsoft’s Office. Microsoft makes heavy use of implementing undocumented APIs into their own products. Anyway this is a large milestone into a world that allows to choose which operating system fits your needs best, but without the disadvantage of having not all the standard software available.
While WINE is intended for Linux users, Crossover – a commercial version of WINE developed by Codeweavers -is available aswell for Linux as for MacOS X. Crossover allows user friendly GUI based installation of many Win32 programs and has been released at the same time in version 7.
Moreover we will see the impact of WINE 1.0 also in our beloved ReactOS project – which is a free and open source implementation of a Microsoft Windows 32 bit operating system that aims at complete binary compatibility.
Congratulations to the WINE team. Keep up your great work.
Yes, it really is true. After only 15 (yes: fifteen) years of development, eventually there will be a version 1.0 of Wine. Back in the days I would never have expected them to survive that long, since nobody expected Microsoft Windows to be the winner of the operating system wars.
Anyway nowadays Wine is heavily sponsored and developed by Codeweavers, who commercially offer Crossover and Crossover Mac aswell. Both Crossover versions are based on Wine. Moreover ReactOS – a very promising operation to build a free and open source operating system, which is completely Windows API compatible – is also based (in parts) on Wine.
» WineHQ…
» Codeweavers’ Crossover…
» ReactOS…
And for the fun part. The most unanswered question is: did the Wine devs implement the same bugs into Wine like Microsoft implemented into Windows – means: will it really be compatible?
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