[ Thanks to John
Gowin for this link. ]
“I’ve tried many versions of Wine over the last 3 years. At
first, I tried getting Microsoft Office™ to run under the
original Wine development version from WineHQ with limited success.
I did get MS Word™ to run, but it ran so slowly that it
really didn’t make it a viable option for using full time. And Word
tended to crash a lot when trying to save documents, which is
probably the worst time for a crash to happen. When Codeweavers
started to add to the Wine project, things started picking up.
Codeweavers Wine includes a nice GUI installer that gives the user
feedback when there are problems. And Office applications run a
little bit better under Codeweavers Wine than they did with the
original WineHQ versions. Codeweavers is now concentrating on their
CrossOver Office products, which run all Office applications
beautifully. I’ve not tried them personally, but I have heard users
say they work well.“Prior to CodeWeavers releasing CrossOver Office, I’d already
chosen a different method for using MS Windows applications under
Linux. I’m a big fan of VMware Workstation, even if the price-tag
puts the product out of reach for the average hobbyist Linux user
($299.00 US for the download version). It’s rock solid and when
your income relies on contract writing jobs with publishers that
require you to use MS Word, you can’t go wrong with the investment
in VMware Workstation. The only thing that VMware Workstation lacks
is the ability to run Windows 3D games. It’s this lack that made me
take notice when TransGaming Technologies announced the release of
WineX 2.1.“The thing that caught my eye the most was that WineX 2.1
supports Black and White, which coincidentally is the last Windows
game I purchased. I never really got into the game, but I thought
that here was my chance to re-visit it and maybe play it again.
Other new games that were officially supported by the WineX 2.1
release included Warcraft III, which might well be my next game
purchase, since I really liked Warcraft 2. With this news in mind,
I decided to give WineX a try. Rather than getting a trial
subscription for $5.00 a month, I purchased a full year
subscription for $50.00, with my rationale being that for the price
of a brand new game, I could use some of my older game titles
without setting up a dual boot system. And one of the added
benefits is that I get to see how the WineX development improves
over time…”