WINE / CrossOver Office / Cedega

thamarok · Post by **thamarok** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 7:43 am

Hello!

I have been watching the development on WINE (http://www.winehq.com) but I have seen that it is fairly unstable. So, I Googled for something more stable to run Windows applications on Linux.

I found CrossOver Office and Cedega. I know that both of them are WINE derivatives and that CrossOver Office is more dedicated to run Windows applications and Cedega is more dedicated to run Windows games.

I made some research and I got good results; yes they seem to be very good and stable, but are they worth the money?

I would like to ask you, if you have used any of the above products, did you have success with them?

Just 2 or 3 months ago, when I still dual-booted Windows and Linux, I had bought Need for Speed: Most Wanted (A very cool racing game) and SEO Elite (A very powerful program to bomb your rankings in Google to #1) for Windows. Well, they are great software, but unfortunately, only for Windows.
Now I am curious about running them on my Linux setup, so does CrossOver Office and Cedega hold what they promise?

Thank you. Any kind of help is very appreciated!

KarLKoX · Post by **KarLKoX** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 9:20 am

My first try with wine was in 1997 (i remember the joy of compiling 40 mb of code ...), it was very unstable but it is now very powerfull, a lot of windows apps runs very well.
Crossover Office is the best solution when you want to install office products, it is very usuable for production.
Cedega (aka WineX) is the best solution for running windows games, i am always astonished when i try the latest game and see that it is working !
NFSMW, for example, run very smoothly without any artifacts, there is a very little drop in performance but not so much (4/5 fps or so).
You want to know if you can consider buying it ? If you are a gamer and don"t want too boot to windows, definitly, yes ! Why ? The product is robust, compatible, in a constant evolution so this is the better way to support the dev (who share some part of their code) and with the commercial product (cedega is also available in a CVS), you will have support for better installshield setup, protected games and have a email support wich i ve tested successfully (got an answer quickly within 24h).

Nik · Post by **Nik** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 9:59 am

You could first try the standard wine, it's doesn't work for every application and sometimes there are little problems but it often does the task. (You can even run PB 4 for Windows in it and do real Crosscomiling)

Fangbeast · Post by **Fangbeast** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 10:25 am

Nik wrote:You could first try the standard wine, it's doesn't work for every application and sometimes there are little problems but it often does the task. (You can even run PB 4 for Windows in it and do real Crosscomiling)

Nik I tried running pb4 under wine but it cpmplains about not being able to find the Scintilla engine (or words to that effect).

Do you know what you have to setup to run it successfully?

Nik · Post by **Nik** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 10:30 am

Well it worked from the beginning here, which wine version did you test?

Fangbeast · Post by **Fangbeast** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 10:56 am

Nik wrote:Well it worked from the beginning here, which wine version did you test?

Don't know off the top of my head. I'll try to find out tonight. Logged into windows at the moment.

Nik · Post by **Nik** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 11:19 am

Logged into OS X here so I don't know either which version I used^^

thamarok · Post by **thamarok** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 1:12 pm

Hello, KarLKoX, thanks for your reply.
I have already tried the standard WINE, but when I tried to run SEO Elite or Keyword Elite, it crashed right after I pressed the "Install" button in their installers; but that was using the newest WINE. I tried an older build and Keyword Elite worked fine, but SEO Elite not. That's why I think I should consider buying CrossOver Office.

And even if I'm a serious Debian/Linux Developer, I am very much into games too

And I looked the compatibility with Cedega and NFSMW and it seems to run very well.

By the way, I am considering buying a new computer and use the current one for test operations, so would you recommend an ATI Radeon or a nVidia GeForce? And if yes, which model and it's price etc..

Thank you!

Nik · Post by **Nik** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 1:36 pm

If you use Linux defintely NVidia the ATI Drivers really suck.

thamarok · Post by **thamarok** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:15 pm

Nik wrote:If you use Linux defintely NVidia the ATI Drivers really suck.

Thank you for the information. Do you know any VERY good GeForce to play games like NFSMW? I don't mind about the price, quality is what is important.

Thank you!

Nik · Post by **Nik** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:19 pm

I'm not into this very much but I would recommend you looking on the websites of some computer magazines they probably have comparison tables

thamarok · Post by **thamarok** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:29 pm

Nik wrote:I'm not into this very much but I would recommend you looking on the websites of some computer magazines they probably have comparison tables

I looked for comparison tables on Google and found a page called Tom's Hardware Guide (http://www.tomshardware.com). I think I'll look further and make some research for the GeForce 7xxx series.

KarLKoX · Post by **KarLKoX** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:40 pm

thamarok wrote:
Nik wrote:If you use Linux defintely NVidia the ATI Drivers really suck.
Thank you for the information. Do you know any VERY good GeForce to play games like NFSMW? I don't mind about the price, quality is what is important.

Thank you!

How many bucks can you paid for a GPU ? I must know this to recommend you a model.
If you can put ~150/170 $, a 7600 GT (only in PCIE) is a good choice.

thamarok · Post by **thamarok** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:53 pm

KarLKoX wrote:
thamarok wrote:
Nik wrote:If you use Linux defintely NVidia the ATI Drivers really suck.
Thank you for the information. Do you know any VERY good GeForce to play games like NFSMW? I don't mind about the price, quality is what is important.

Thank you!
How many bucks can you paid for a GPU ? I must know this to recommend you a model.
If you can put ~150/170 $, a 7600 GT (only in PCIE) is a good choice.

I paid for my current ATI Radeon X1300 about 90€
And converting 170$ to euro, it gets about 133€ so it isn't much. I started first to think about buying an Ati Radeon X1900XTX, but after Nik said that GeForce is better for Linux, I didn't know what to do.

But, all in all you recommend a GeForce 7600 GT, I made some research and it looks pretty good. I looked what components my local PC store has and I found that they have a GeForce 7600 GT but it's 186€. The price looks a bit more expensive than an ATI Radeon's. I'm still a bit confused

.

dracflamloc · Post by **dracflamloc** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:57 pm

My girlfriend has a geforce 7600gs. $80 at newegg and its VERY fast.

I recommend DOom3, QUake 4, and UT2004 for linux gaming...

Also theres a free game called Legends.

As far as cedega for games goes.. alot of games run great, some not so great. You can get CVS-builds of cedega from various websites for free.