LinuxWorld 2006: CrossOver Office for Mac OS X

Filed under: Business, Games, Internet, Macintosh, Linux, Office, Microsoft, Commercial, Open Source

LinuxWorld 2006: CrossOver Office for Mac OS X

by Scott Granneman Aug 16th 2006

I'm reporting in from LinuxWorld, letting the fine folks who read DLS know about the latest & greatest news from the Land of Free & Open Source Software. A few weeks ago, Apple made quite a stir with their announcements about their spiffy new Mac Pro and Xserves, as well as cool new updates to Mac OS X. Lost in all the hubbub, however, was an announcement by a great open source company that they are porting their software over from Linux to Mac OS X. Yes, Codeweavers, makers of the amazingly cool and useful CrossOver Office, are going to release betas of their software for Mac OS X later this month.

What's CrossOver Office, you ask? Linux users have been taking advantage of it for several years now. Basically, CrossOver Office is an easy-to-install, easy-to-use version of the WINE project, which basically fools Windows apps into thinking they're running on Windows. Why is this possibly better than Parallels Workstation, which lets you run Windows itself? Because with CrossOver, you don't need to open Windows; instead, you just click on the Word icon, or the IE icon, or the Outlook icon, and the program opens, just like a regular ol' Linux program. Can you smell the convenience? (Still want more info? Read the posts I made about CrossOver on the now-retired Open Source Weblog: Introduction to CrossOver Office in PC World, CrossOver version 5 released, & More on CrossOver ... and Win4Lin ... but please don't read Codeweavers' CrossOver Office support disappoints and apply it to the company today ... that issue was resolved to my satisfaction.)

Well now, ladies and germs, CrossOver is going to work on Apple machines that use the Intel processor. Want to run ONE Windows proggie but don't want to have to install Windows? Or need to run Outlook but don't wanna go through the hassle of setting up Parallels and then install Winders, being forced to reboot a gazillion times and then deal with the endless hassles of security? Or - and this is sooooooo cool, and it's coming up in the latest version of CrossOver - want to run Half-Life II or many other Windows-only games without requiring Windows? Then use CrossOver! It's a good company and a great product, and it just utterly fantastic that it's now going to be available to Mac users. Now that's great news!

Tags: apple, codeweavers, crossover, intel, linux, macosx, wine

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