Crossover Vs Wine

[Tywais]

I have a researcher that has documents that require specific fonts (3rd party) that are not dual-metric and as such do not work properly in Office 2003 (XP). She also uses Linux for physics application so instead of dual-booting I recommended an external USB bootable drive (needs the space anyway). She currently uses Office 97 which has no problems with these fonts.

I was thinking of installing Linux on the external drive (bootable) and either Crossover (have to buy) or Wine (free) and installing Office 97 on it. This gives her the Linux enviornment for her physics work and solves the problem with the Office fonts. Does anyone have experience running MS Word 97/98 in these enviornments and how compatible is it?

Have also considered OpenOffice but does not seem to be as compatible with Word as running native Word from an emulator. I have in the past used a font editor to convert a single metric font to dual-metric but it is a lot of work and this gives her better options.

//Edit - she currently running Suse on her home machine (dual-boot) but I was considering Ubuntu due to simplicity. Any problems with using CrossOver or Wine with Ubuntu?

//Edit2 - is Thai language support an issue since I will not be installing Windows?

[Richard-BKK]

I use Fedora Core 5, and use Crossover Office Pro 5.03 to run MS Office 2000. I never had any font problems.

Yes Crossover Office doesn't support MS Office 2003 100% but tell me who is using any function right now higher then MS Office 2000?

To talk about OpenSuse 10.1 which is the latest open Suse Linux distribution release, they still seem to have problems to release the right up-to-date packages to the updating system, even after beta testing of months by the package managers the OpenSuse guys want to test it to long for my feeling.

Really up-to-date state of the art Linux is until now, still provided by the Fedora project with the worlds best support groups and 3th party programmers and project supporters.

I like Ubuntu, but it is not cutting etch, some packages are almost 6 months to 1 year behind what the Fedora project calls current.

My wife runs OpenSuse 10.1 (64 bits) on her systems as I run on most of my systems Fedora Core 5 (32 and 64 bits), on one Fedora Linux computer we still run a Official MS Windows XP home (we are not able to run illegal software)in a Vmware (running one Linux)

We deal with several Thai government agents on a daily base, and we, until now never had a MS Office document or any other file we did not where able to open.

Even some offices of the Thai government, changed to our system, as we can show a 100% safe network operation, being connected to the Internet, for the last 7 years. (we are not commercial, and not sell anything like computer related stuff)

To answer you title question, Win and Crossover Office are almost the same, the difference is the convert of using it. Crossover has a 89 Dollar cost but has a easy installation of anything, graphical and easy for any none computer geek.

If you again, want the last of compatible, you maybe better of with Wine, but then all installation stuff is up-to-you.

Codeweavers the makers of Crossover Office is soon introducing version 6 of the ability to run Windows software while running Linux. With this next release will break new barriers and the ability to get close to run 100% all MS Windows programs

[Tywais]

To answer you title question, Win and Crossover Office are almost the same, the difference is the convert of using it. Crossover has a 89 Dollar cost but has a easy installation of anything, graphical and easy for any none computer geek.

If you again, want the last of compatible, you maybe better of with Wine, but then all installation stuff is up-to-you.

Thanks for the info. Not a problem for me with installation (Wine), been managing/running unix platforms for about 25 years. First PC version I installed was minix, the precursor to Linux. I'm currently downloading SUSE 10.1 because that is what she is using now but will look closer at Fedora. Decided against the Ubuntu distribution already due to her needs for a complete (with developement package & libraries) package for compiling physics code. I personally run Slackware for all my servers but for workstations not the best choice.

Will try Wine first, since I will be installing Office 97 and should be ok. The fonts she is using will not work under Office 2003 because they are not dual-metric, not sure about Office 2000 though. Will be interested in seeing what the version 6 of Crossover can do.

[sunstate]

Have you considered using "Parallels"? It is considerably cheaper than crossover and has the advantage of being able to be run concurrently with Linux. A test download is available at http://www.parallels.com/

[Richard-BKK]

Parallels is same as VMware a virtual machine or virtual PC which runs on a host operating system.

Crossover or Wine translate the instructions from the Windows program to the Linux kernel, it is said that therefore Crossover or Wine is much faster.

I also use VMware virtual machine, but cannot see that much speed difference. Okay the combination VMware uses lots more memory.

The difference between a virtual machine and Crossover or Wine solution is best shown in a small software layer comparison.

Wine solution: Linux->Wine->Windows program

virtual PC solution: Linux->virtual PC->MS Windows->Windows program

I not thing Parallels is cheaper then Crossover Office, as you still need MS Windows.

Edited October 16, 2006 by Richard-BKK