Codeweavers has released v4 of its Wine implementation with the addition of support for iTunes.
CrossOver Office 4.0 Released
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Very cool, now about about Napster? Is it possible to play protected WMAs on Linux?
That rhythmbox doesn’t?
Buy music. Watch Videos via the Store. Visualization. Burning CDs (Rhytmbox burning is still in its infancy). Cuter interface. Better Radio support. Etc etc.
connect to an ipod without requiring hassle just to mention two.
Hopefully Crossover 4 can work with more distributions. Had to wrangle 3 to work with fc2 and has menu troubles with others. Works great on Ubuntu though.
That rhythmbox doesn’t?
Allows you to connect to the Apple store and buy/play/burn Apple’s encrypted AAC files. Yeah I know ‘Why would anyone want that?’ Well, they do, so iTunes is important.
Even without iTunes, you could still play the ITMS AAC files by decrypting with Hymn, but I don’t know you you’re actually going to connect to the Apple store and buy them without iTunes.
At the moment, I don’t know if it’s even possible to buy digital music online legally using Linux. Others have offered this other site (can’t remember the name) out of Russia – that site takes advantage of a loophole in Russian law to be able to selle those mp3 files legally in Russia, but it’s still illegal in the US.
Direct access to iPod.
Does crossover work on 64bit linux distro’s?
In 32bit mode, yes. I had crossover 3.1 installed on a 64bit Ubuntu system and was very happy with it.
It seems that Crossover Office has released a few versions this year and there getting off track in my opinion…
For the last 2 releases Office 2003 has been out but not supported… Whats the go?? Office compatibility is perhaps there biggest drawcard and yet no 2003 support???
For the last 2 releases Office 2003 has been out but not supported… Whats the go?? Office compatibility is perhaps there biggest drawcard and yet no 2003 support???
AFAIK, aren’t Office 2k3 documents backward compatable with Office XP? If that’s the case, and if there hasn’t been a large demand for 2k3 yet, that maybe be why it’s not yet supported. Or maybe it’s just a pain in the ass to implement and they’re working on it
But IMHO, this version should be something like 3.5 instead 4.0.
folk are running out of excuses to persist in running windows…:)
folk are running out of excuses to persist in running windows…:)
Seems it will eventually come to ‘we just like it better’.
Um, #1 it doesn’t suck and crash constantly. Rhythmbox has a bunch of really annoying bugs with the filtering and importing. It is also lacking in many features. I’m not going to use iTunes either (because I don’t have an iPod anyway) but rhythmbox, just as a music player, sucks big time. Not because of its UI or the idea, just because it is buggy as hell.
To me, CXOFFICE 4.0 is something of a disappointment. There is just not enough features to be called a major upgrades.
I was looking forward to Office2003 support and the very least to bring Office XP to gold status and includes Access XP support.
The decision to support Framemaker and not Pagemaker/Indesign/Xpress page layout program is also highly questionable as the following programs are widely used by DTP houses currently
For the corporate market, CXOffice really do need to work with MS compiled program such as those done in MS VC or MS VB (with ActiveX support and ODBC support)
CXOffice 4.0 is not a bad program but basically does not warrant a status of major upgrade
BTW, I’m a paying CXOffice user
All you have to do is join, complete and online offer, and refer friends to do the same. That’s it!
Disregarding the fact that this is blatant spam, if it requires me to complete an online offer, then it really isn’t technically free, much less totally free.
I think the reason for framemaker support is that someone ponied up for development time.
I believe that CodeWeavers uses a pledge/voting system to determine what applications/bugs to work on.
If you have purchased CrossOver I suggest you submit some votes or better still pledge some money for the applications you want.
I just tried to install crossoffice 4 over my 3.0.1 installation and the “configuration” after install not only failed, but made crossoffice unusable. Had to reinstall 3.0.1. Be careful with this buggy product!
Anyone know if it supports Dreamweaver and Fireworks MX2004 ? Dreamweaver MX was only supported in the last version (not MX 2004), and Fireworks wouldn’t even run. These are the last two apps still tying me to Windows
The MX2004 versions doesnt currently work, as far as I can see. Dreamweaver MX is working like a charm though. That was the only app that kept me from using Linux fulltime. 🙂
you are both correct. windows users are having a harder and harder time coming up with excuses to continue using that system… but it could be that they are indeed happy using it. Good on them.
Me, I am not happy with Windows, I am happy with Mandrake, but so what ? that is my preference.
So EVERYONE, stick to your own preference and stop all this shit about windows is shit/linux is shit/mac is shit.. I don’t care, and neither should you.
Go do some work
thors_hammer123 : This tends to come from the configuration changes in Wine. The drive setup, apart from other elements, has altered. In general, trashing ~/.cxoffice will ease the problem.
There are some tricks that can be used to keep 3.x and 4.x installed at the same time, if that is necessary. I’d prefer they implement a more forward-looking design, though, allowing mixed wine versions to be included within the same CXO release for compatibility reasons. Some apps break with newer versions of Wine; having per-application control of Wine version to be used would ease this.
the reason that MSoffice 2003 and others don’t run is because crossover office tells the setups that it’s windows 9x not XP or other nt based OS therefore office 2k3 installer refuses to install
office 2003 is not really that much of an update mainly just better looking GUI appart from that not much more, i’m still happy with office xp, and that runs great on crossoffice, just a small problem with the open dialog and printing in excel.
Hi guys,
I work for CodeWeavers. Here are some answers to the comments made here:
Why iTunes? It was our top voted app by far. Most of the votes appeared to be motivated by the online music store, so getting that working well was our priority.
Why no Office 2003? This is the first release of Office that requires Windows 2000 or above. This means that a lot of infrastructure and APIs which would have been installed by Office in previous versions no longer are, instead Office expects them to be there. For instance, MSI falls into this category. iTunes has the same issue (2000+ only) which is one reason it took a long time to make work, we had to clone the MSI installer DLL to get it running. Office 2003 is highly rated, and we are likely to work on it next. The functional differences between 2003 and XP seem to be fairly small though, and demand for O2k3 is lower than the demand for eg, Quicken 2004.
@alie: That is not the case. Wine can tell the app whatever it needs to hear. iTunes is also a Win2k+ only app, and it works OK.
Why does DreamWeaver/Flash MX work but MX 2004 not work? Basically, they both work fine but the newest versions are protected by an advanced copy protection system that we’ve currently been unable to make work on Wine. So far we’ve put little effort into it, getting the MX 2004 editions working well modulo the copy protection was motivated by other factors. It’s possible we’ll get the copy protection system working correctly in future and at that point the 2004 editions will be perfectly usable.
On the iTunes audio problems: these only affect certain chipset/driver/kernel combinations. For other people audio should work well. We understand this is a major problem for those affected and are working to resolve them. Unfortunately this is tricky as the bugs appear to actually be in iTunes which is extremely sensitive to scheduling changes: Linux 2.6 uses a more advanced scheduler than NT/2K/XP/kernel 2.4 does and this can apparently disrupt the iTunes/QuickTime audio infrastructure. We’re no strangers to such low-level problems though and hopefully will have a solution soon.
thanks -mike
I stand corrected as i knw that wine was able to tell what-ever program that what ever windows version it wanted to hear, i only made the comment on the output the Office 2k3 installer made to me when i tried… i didn’t think of the other reason
thanks for clearing that up for me 
(yes i’m a Crossover Office user and use office 2000 on it… runs nice)
one more Q though… will crossover office conflict withy cedega? just a thought
one more Q though… will crossover office conflict withy cedega? just a thought
I see no reason why it shouldn’t. I’m running Crossover 3.0.1 and Cedega from CVS in parallel withour problems. It should even work with wine, since cedega and cxoffice both use wrapper scripts.
you are both correct. windows users are having a harder and harder time coming up with excuses to continue using that system… but it could be that they are indeed happy using it. Good on them.
I can think of many reasons to continue using Windows, Cooledit Pro and Winorganizer being tops on the list. But the biggest excuse is that I really don’t have an excuse to switch to Linux. Being a Windows power user for about 11 years now, so Windows runs like a dream for me and is pretty much my bitch
I do apprciate what Codeweavers is doing, but why would I want to switch to that enviroment just to run many of the apps that are already running flawlessly in Windows? If they ever got to the point of near-100% compatability, I might consider it, but that’s never going to happen outside of a court order to force MS to open up its APIs.
Because it just works?
Games?
Easier to set up and maintain?
nope not even, Games yes there are more on windows, Because it works… no… average uptime of the XP pc’s here is 6 weeks… so stability isn’t it’s fort’e either, uptime of linux box’s at home run @ 350 days each…
setup… nope try pclinuxos or mandrake or FC3 or… (list goes on)
maintain nope… sorry linux is way easier to maintain than windows plus the benefits of having no virii, adware, spyware, activeX (another long list) and remote admin of linux is a breeze. i can’t think of any reason to keep windows (the xp boxes here are being migrated
)
oh and if u want to play games on a MS box buy an Xbox (then mod chip it and install linux hehehhe)
maintain nope… sorry linux is way easier to maintain than windows plus the benefits of having no virii, adware, spyware, activeX (another long list) and remote admin of linux is a breeze. i can’t think of any reason to keep windows (the xp boxes here are being migrated
)
See my previous post.
oh and if u want to play games on a MS box buy an Xbox (then mod chip it and install linux hehehhe)
Right, as I’m sure any avid PC gamer hasn’t considered this already. People who play PC games do so for a reason, because they prefer them over consoles.
itunes supports is great, i think it’s silly to make a point release over it, it’s still great news though
=)
To the people who cited that – does it actually work as simply under Crossover, though?
When was the last time you used it? I pretty much gave up on it all the way up to 0.80 or so, as I had the same problems as you, but it seems to be a lot better lately…
is a good point, though, I forgot about that. I still don’t understand paying ten bucks for below-CD quality DRM-encumbered music, but hey, if you want to do it, it’s your funeral. Me, I go to HMV.
is a good point, though, I forgot about that. I still don’t understand paying ten bucks for below-CD quality DRM-encumbered music, but hey, if you want to do it, it’s your funeral. Me, I go to HMV.
The main advantage is that you don’t have to buy the entire CD. If you only want 2-3 songs off a CD, you can usually just buy those 2-3 for $0.99 a piece. To me, the sound quality is fine, but I dislike the DRM, so I rarely purchase anything from there.
It should be noted though that you can remove the DRM, but unless you convert to another format (which results in quality loss), you’re still (AFAIK) limited to iPods when going portable. At the moment, I don’t know if any other device that plays AAC files of any type except for iPods.
I’m sorry but it seems like a poor excuse for a user to think the best reason to run iTunes whether natively or on Wine is just so they can have access to the Apple Music Store. Do a Google search for the keywords “online music store” to see several links to online music stores that are not dependent on you running iTunes. The advantage then would be to download songs you like at competitive rates and be able to use the media on players that run natively on Linux such as Amarok.
As for Wine the only reason I’ve found to use it is to play my games that are not all ported to Linux. Some consumers fail to realize that considering there are thousands of free open source software ported to Linux then there shouldn’t be much need for Wine (whether commercial or free Wine). Even some commercial developers have or are starting to port to Linux because of demand by consumers. My point is that I’d rather convince developers to port their applications to Linux (commercial and open source) than run on Wine. Especially as a consumer you’re concerned not only with overhead cost but also simplicity and performance.
Do a Google search for the keywords “online music store” to see several links to online music stores that are not dependent on you running iTunes. The advantage then would be to download songs you like at competitive rates and be able to use the media on players that run natively on Linux such as Amarok.
Right, there are some online stores that work on the web, but every one of them that I’ve seen (that are actually legal in the US) use protected WMA as their encoding scheme. So that’s why I originally posted and asked is there any way to play protected WMA files in Linux?
Some consumers fail to realize that considering there are thousands of free open source software ported to Linux then there shouldn’t be much need for Wine
Well, this works when you’re talking about ‘bread and butter’ apps, Linux has those pretty much covered (except for web/Intranet sites that use ActiveX). On the other hand, once you get into more ‘specialized’ apps, the open source choices are spread kind of thin. Even when there is something available, it’s usually a half-assed, pale immation version of some high-dollar app. That’s fine if that is all you need, but doesn’t work for many.
I don’t get the ‘one song’ thing either – I’m very much an album buyer, in that I figure that if someone can’t make an album’s worth of songs worth listening to, they aren’t due *any* of my money. But I realise there’s a lot of people who do like buying one song at a time, so hey. BTW, I don’t remember the mechanics of the trick exactly, but doesn’t removing the DRM from iTunes stuff involve quality loss in the first step, even if you don’t convert to another format? IMBW.
there’s a few indie online stores which provide unDRM’ed mp3 files. None of these have agreements with the major labels, though.
I don’t get the ‘one song’ thing either – I’m very much an album buyer, in that I figure that if someone can’t make an album’s worth of songs worth listening to, they aren’t due *any* of my money.
As they release more and more CDs that are copy protected, if you want to play these on your computer, chances are you’re not going to be able to do it on Linux.
BTW, I don’t remember the mechanics of the trick exactly, but doesn’t removing the DRM from iTunes stuff involve quality loss in the first step, even if you don’t convert to another format? IMBW.
Not according to the Project Hymn homepage:
The purpose of hymn is to allow you to exercise your fair-use rights under copyright law. It allows you to free your iTunes Music Store (protected AAC / m4p) purchases from their DRM restrictions with no sound quality loss.
http://hymn-project.org
Still though, decrypting in this method, the only portable device you can play them on AFAIK is the iPod. I don’t have an iPod nor do I want one, so this doesn’t really work for me.
Re: “Right, there are some online stores that work on the web, but every one of them that I’ve seen (that are actually legal in the US) use protected WMA as their encoding scheme. So that’s why I originally posted and asked is there any way to play protected WMA files in Linux?
You’re correct in ascertaining that the majority of online music stores in Canada and the USA support Microsoft WMA codec over Apple AAC codec. Though there are some such as http://www.puretracks.com/ , http://telus.moontaxi.com/default.aspx that are stating they’ll offer support for Apple users in the near future. Considering I have yet to experience any issue using Amarok to play streaming radio from sites that state they only support Windows Media Player then you shouldn’t have any issue playing songs from online music stores that state they only support Windows Media. Besides with the latest version of Amarok there shouldn’t be anything you can’t play. Plus there’s additional tools such as KPod (Kio iPod Slave) http://kpod.sourceforge.net/ipodslave/ that allows an iPod to communicate with Amarok. Hopefully the Amarok developers will integrate this tool in the near future.
Re: “Well, this works when you’re talking about ‘bread and butter’ apps, Linux has those pretty much covered (except for web/Intranet sites that use ActiveX). On the other hand, once you get into more ‘specialized’ apps, the open source choices are spread kind of thin. Even when there is something available, it’s usually a half-assed, pale imitation version of some high-dollar app. That’s fine if that is all you need, but doesn’t work for many.”
Hopefully you can clarify what you consider as a “half-assed pale imitation version of some high dollar app” and “bread and butter” applicaions. For most of what is supported on Microsoft’s Windows I can find a reasonable good quality alternative whether from a commercial competitor that ports to Linux or from the open source community. For example commercial highend software used for game creation, broadcast and film is typically ported to Linux (ie: Maya, XSI, Shake, Smoke, etc). Then there’s commercial products from Macromedia and Adobe which for the most part work on Wine it is not only nice to know they are both working towards porting their apps to Linux but also there are several free alterantives. For example Cinepaint and Gimp are just as good or even better in some ways than Adobe’s Photoshop. Same goes for Sodipodi and Inkscape vs Adobe’s Illustrator. Most users whether home or business based have no issue going from MS Office to Open Office or from MS Outlook to KMail or Evolution. I could go on about this but instead the posts in this thread should be useful to the uninformed http://www.linuxforum.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=53452