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lyceum
January 12th, 2007, 10:55 PM
I have been very unhappily using Windows for a while now due to my school and I am thinking about getting CrossOver Linux to get one step further away from MS. I need MS Office 2003 and could not get it work with WINE and a few other things COL supports.

Before I check it out, I wanted to see if anyone here has tried it and what they thought of its abilities. Is it hard to install? Are the updates worth it? Is it user friendly, or will my wife want to throw my laptop out a window for getting it?

Mathiasdm
January 12th, 2007, 10:57 PM
http://www.codeweavers.com/products/download_trial/

Edit: I know you asked for other opinions, but this link might be useful too ;-)

Rackerz
January 12th, 2007, 11:01 PM
Crossover is certainly a way to go but you can also OpenOffice. It looks just like MS Office.

aPello
January 12th, 2007, 11:33 PM
OpenOffice is even compatible with Ms Office documents, i use openoffice on both linux and windows.

tagra123
January 13th, 2007, 12:01 AM
I use OpenOffice and have Crossover too.

It installed MSOffice with no problem. A lot of other "unsupported" programs work with it too.

lyceum
January 13th, 2007, 02:52 AM
To all posts thus far, thank you. I use OOo exclusively at work, and for most everything else. However, I have to use MS Office for school. I have been told the Writer is fine, but calc and data are not. I have to know excel & access to pass some of my classes, statistics is one and I can't pass out of it. It is a "Statistics with Excel" class.

I plan to try crossover with the free trial, but didn't want to waste my time if someone told me it was too hard to use. I am sure I can get it working, I am just worried about my wife. She uses OOo on her Mac, but uses MS Office when needed on the MS machine. There are some other programs to that I would need it for, but I just wanted to be sure it would not be too hard for her to use. She was not too happy with WINE, but I am still just starting to use it.

I guess I'll just put it on my machine tomorrow.

Thanks!

:)

gjtoth
January 13th, 2007, 03:24 AM
I've tried it under a different distro and was disappointed.

Try Parallels (http://www.parallels.com) or VMWare. I'm sold on Parallels because it allows me to run just about any OS I want to play with... including *******.

Frak
January 13th, 2007, 03:26 AM
Use Crossover, it runs GREAT!, I use it everyday, alongside QEMU, and VMWare.

EDIT
You can also use WINETools (http://www.von-thadden.de/Joachim/WineTools/) to run Microsoft Office on there, its free of course (as in free beer)

lyceum
January 16th, 2007, 02:46 AM
Well, I am giving it a run, and if you are thinking about trying it yourself, when you open the terminal you need you type


cd ~/Desktop
ls -l

then cut and paste their command. (I had to come here and ask for help, they still have not responded to my e-mail, this forum is the greatest ever!!!)

Everything loaded well that I needed, except for Access, but the program said that it wouldn't.

After it is done loading a program my PC stops working right and I have to re-start with the on off switch, doesn't freeze, but it doesn't let me do anything either.

Start up is very slow (of the MS program, not Ubuntu), so if you think that OOo is slow, you will really not be happy there.

Also I had the joy of talking to the MS staff to validate everything. But I won't even go into all the reasons that is a pain. It has nothing to do with Crossover.

Everything builds into a nice Windows column in the Applications menus, and crossover has its own spot as well.

So if you are thinking about trying this software, there is my review. :)

Since is it not Windows I give it 4 out of 5 stars. I am sure they are still working on it :)
My only real grip is that parts of is a proprietary. I have no problem paying for it, I jsut wish all of the code was open. After all, if it is licensed right, you can't steal it (as far as I know)

:KS :KS :KS :KS

Frak
January 16th, 2007, 02:48 AM
huh, all I had to do was enter


sh <location of crossover_beta.sh>

and it decompressed and installed.

lyceum
January 16th, 2007, 04:06 AM
Yeah, I loaded the file to my desktop. I am guessing that messed it up.

Shay Stephens
January 16th, 2007, 04:34 AM
Photoshop runs (mostly, if not problematically) under wine. But it runs great with crossover office. I just loaded crossover linux to get a feel for how photoshop runs in the new version. And I do believe I will be buying crossover linux at the end of the trial. I know this doesn't address the original software, but it might help others.

Photoshop ❤ crossover

hahaha

Frak
January 16th, 2007, 05:08 AM
Crossover 6.00 is out, and Photoshop runs perfectly, includes new apps to run.

MrJackdaw
January 17th, 2007, 10:35 PM
I'm rather fond of crossover - it does have its issues and crashes my laptop when I try to run anything on an extrenal monitor (Data Projector). Maybe it's only when I'm running unsupported software - I'll have to edge out some time to try.

It is a wonderful tool, and buying it supports wine!