Today's screenshots: CrossOver

<span class="bold">-&gt; CrossOver &lt;-</span>

CrossOver is the commercial/proprietary equivalent of PlayOnLinux and works in a similar manner. It offers an easier to use interface than POL, better "out of the box" compatibility and official support, and in general it's much faster to get things running in CrossOver than it is with PlayOnLinux.

<span class="bold">-&gt; CrossOver (Install software) &lt;-</span>
<span class="bold">-&gt; CrossOver (Install software - GOG installer) &lt;-</span>
<span class="bold">-&gt; CrossOver (Manage Bottles) &lt;-</span>

You can either install using a "CrossTie" if one is available or perform a manual install (CrossTies are CrossOver's equivalent of the install profiles/scripts that PlayOnLinux uses).

Installation is a case of selecting a CrossTie (if you want to use one and if one is available - otherwise just select "Other Application"), selecting the installer and a "bottle" (wine prefix/virtual drive) to install into or set it to create a new one, and then clicking "install".

If you're creating a new bottle it'll do that first, then if you're using a CrossTie it may download & install any redistributables that are needed such as DirectX, .NET, PhysX etc. and set up any Wine tweaks and then after that it'll start the software's installer. After installation completes, CrossOver will automatically generate menu & desktop shortcuts if any were created within the bottle by whatever was installed.

Again, as with PlayOnLinux it can be a pain to get new things running but I find that CrossOver usually has better results and with less time and effort (remember to check WineHQ's AppDB, and also check CrossOver's own compatibility database) - for this reason I mainly use CrossOver instead of PlayOnLinux.

You might be tempted to install everything into a single bottle, however this should be avoided unless you know that all of the software you're trying to install will not conflict. For this reason I usually install anything new into a fresh bottle and limit grouping only to things that use identical Wine settings & redistributables.

The downsides are that CrossOver uses a fixed Wine version and currently only supports 32-bit software.

<span class="bold">-&gt; IrfanView running in CrossOver &lt;-</span>
<span class="bold">-&gt; Total Annihilation &lt;-</span>
<span class="bold">-&gt; Max Payne &lt;-</span>

In my opinion CrossOver is well worth the money; in addition to the convenience, better OOTB compatibility and official support, buying CrossOver also supports Wine development. I was lucky enough to get a free year of support during a promotion they were doing late in 2012 while I was considering Linux & it has been very useful in helping me move away from Windows. They do offer a 14-day free trial though, and they do discounts every so often.

For more information:

https://www.codeweavers.com

Today's games: STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl + Call of Pripyat (both on one key), Deus Ex GOTY

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Nice work you did with your guides. For my test with Mint I will stay with PlayOnLinux. You said that CrossOver is better and i get the point why but I don't want to pay money to get my games working on Linux. If this is the case I can buy Windows and have the easier way with it. (OEM versions are cheap and german courts decided that binding software to hardware is not allowed in Germany. So you can install a OEM version on another PC and activated it.) Perhaps I will try out the trial version of CrossOver but I won't buy it (reason above and I have some 64 bit games/software which aren't supported by CrossOver).

Zee germans: censored games, but they can buy OEM Windows:(

Do you know if any info is available on approximate number of games/apps installable through CrossOver that are unable to run using Wine, at least not without serious tinkering? I'm asking because I usually find even POL superfluous for this kind of tasks, but maybe I just haven't come across software vanilla Wine can't handle on its own.

Also, does CrossOver build upon the work of POL, if even compatible, ie. do they use its scripts, test and possibly modify them or do they write everything from scratch? Otherwise, does that mean POL supports some software CO doesn't? From what I've seen, they don't list GOG versions specifically as POL does.

So you can't choose among different Wine versions like with POL? I guess that's the flipside of official support, being hard to maintain multiple versions simultaneously. But if it works, nobody's complaining.

As for 64-bit, it's very strange given that Wine supports them.

Another downside, from Free Software point of view, is that it's proprietary. I guess they don't intend to open-source it?

If I understood correctly, CO is mainly offering a little more convenient method of installing software, a bit easier and faster than its POL "rival", and an official technical support, which to be honest most typical Linux users never resort to :) Unless, of course said tech support would help you install a product not yet officialy supported (therefore not working properly or at all) by CO which is ironically the situation where you would need it the most.

While I certainly do approve of supporting Wine and its devs through Codeweavers, if looking at their commercial product alone I don't find the price tag completely justified, especially having in mind what Ritualisto said. I fully support Linux therefore trying to be that more objective saying they would have to lower the financial requirements to at most $20 (btw, how much does it cost during discounts?), compared to present ~$40, if they are to be serious contenders and given the current set of features. And for the people wishing to give back to Free Software, donations are always an option.

One of the reasons I pay for CrossOver is because it helps improve Wine (also IIRC 64-bit support is planned for CrossOver eventually), in turn serving to further reduce my dependency on Windows & being subject to Microsoft's whims.

Plus I don't intend to ever buy another copy of Windows :) Windows 7 is supported until 2020 and by that point I hope to have no need for it at all.

There isn't any such info available that I'm aware of. Mostly it's convenience - stuff tends to work in CrossOver with much less tweaking involved / time & effort required. The version of Wine that CrossOver uses is a bit different too, for example it includes the CSMT patches by default as well as other things that aren't yet available in regular Wine.


Not AFAIK, aside from users of both contributing to both projects.


I think it's a case of 64-bit compatibility being considered not quite ready enough to officially support yet.


It's a mix of proprietary and open source components:

https://www.codeweavers.com/about/philosophy/
https://www.codeweavers.com/about/support_wine/


Just a few days ago they had a 48% discount promotion, although I've seen discounts up to 75% (and these discounts also stack with the discount you get for support renewals).

I completely symphatise with them. It is hard to earn for living selling Free Software at the moment, but as its supporters I hope CodeWeavers will find a way to open-source it completely while finding a viable business model to back that up, perhaps following the footsteps of Red Hat giant.

Well, that is more than generous price cutting for such a piece of software, showing also they are being realistic concerning everything said beforehand and commendably not greedy, as a result making their product available to larger worldwide userbase than if price was fixed. You're absolutely right, people should express their appreciation and support in this way too, knowing that Wine wouldn't be what it is now without the work of CodeWeavers!

And thank you for your thoughts and clarifications!

the source code is available here:
http://media.codeweavers.com/pub/crossover/source/

I was thinking about open-sourcing it completely and as stated on the site and adamhm also pointed out:
CrossOver, while composed primarily of an open-source core, also contains proprietary components that comprise some of our "value-add."
Thank you for the useful link immi101!

I have a feeling about that...

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? :)

Close, but not quite there

If we put Q instead of P?