is Cedega or CrossOver worth the $$??

[billdotson]

I was wondering w/ Wine freely available is Cedega and/or CrossOver worth the $ to get? I looked at CrossOver very briefly and it didn't look like it had any better features w/ it than Wine currently does. I haven't looked at the compatibility list for Cedega but once I saw subscription I decided that wasn't too good. I am currently looking at the games database but subscription-based sounds like crap.. I could just buy XP for a year or so of this service and the games would be native.

are these worth it? I have tried doing some things like steam and day of defeat in wine and they really didn't work at all.

Also TransGaming claims to be working w/ game developers to make porting of their games to other consoles and OSes wasy but I have yet to see any evidence of ports of newer games to Linux or OS X.. is that just marketing bull or do game developers mostly just ignore them?

It seems like a large period of time is spent trying to make games and other Windows apps run in Linux but is it really worth it.. all the time spent trying to emulate the environment?

[machoo02]

That depends on what you want to do with them. Transgaming/Cedega have built up on the DirectX and graphics portions of the WINE codebase, and would appeal to gamers that just can't live without their games.

I would wholeheartedly recommend CrossOver. They specialize in getting a core set of applications to work (e.g., MS Office). If you've ever tried to install Office in regular WINE, you would definitely appreciate their efforts (I've never been able to do it, and I consider myself pretty handy with WINE). They also provide a nice graphical interface that makes installing/uninstalling software very easy. Probably the best thing about CrossOver is, unlike TransGaming, all of their improvements go directly back to the WINE codebase eventually, so by buying CrossOver you are also financially supporting WINE as well. In addition, the latest version of CrossOver has done a lot of work in getting Steam-based games (World of Warcraft, Half-Life) working as well in addition to the complement of office-oriented application.

So...short answer is, it depends on what you want to use them for. If you have an app that you really want to use, is supported by Crossover, and you don't want to go through the pains of potentially getting it to work in WINE yourself, then I would say yes.

[billdotson]

from what I have looked at there doesn't seem to be that many games that work w/ Cedega and the subscription price is surely not worth it.. you might as well buy XP or Vista if you are paying for a subscription.

[jdong]

I have heard stories across the board with Cedega/CrossOver -- that is, from "well worth the money" to "totally useless".

I suppose that their flagship advertised working components do actually work to an acceptable degree, but that success rate to be significantly lower for other things.

From what I understand, you can obtain a copy of Cedega for $5 (maybe this is dated info, sorry) so I don't see the hurt in trying if it seems like others are moderately successful.