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CodeWeavers reports
Gone are [...] the days that we hopelessly tried to register Microsoft Office 2013. You read that right, people. [On November 2], we successfully registered Microsoft Office 2013 in a CrossOver 16 alpha build. We [can] also:
- Open, create, edit, save, and print Microsoft office documents
- Activate a copy of Microsoft Office 2013 [with a] product key or a 365 subscription
- Use Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Project
"Everyone at CodeWeavers is incredibly excited to see Microsoft Office 2013 installing, registering, and running in CrossOver. After four years of continued development, we are preparing to deliver support for the 2013 versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Project in CrossOver 16 (due out later this year). And we hope that our development will continue making strides to include support for Outlook 2013 and Microsoft Office 2016 in the coming months." -- James Ramey, President
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Microsoft Office 2013 is Now Working via CrossOver 16
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
After all is said and done, a hell of a lot more is said than done.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 07 2016, @02:40PM
GREAT! WONDERFUL!
Now will somebody tell me what CrossOver is and why the fuck I should care? Preferably without clicking into a producer's press release / own site?
Thanks.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Kunasou on Monday November 07 2016, @02:55PM
An application based on Wine for Linux...
I tried it a few years ago (they sent a promo with 1 year free subscription) and I couldn't see a big difference, some apps didn't even work on it and they ran well on latest wine-staging.
Maybe the situation has improved somehow.
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Monday November 07 2016, @03:43PM
Your experience was basically mine when I tried their OSX offering within the last year. Maybe the Linux one is better, but I can't actually figure out what it gets you over Wine other than maybe a little less needing to configure stuff. Maybe.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 3, Informative) by linuxrocks123 on Monday November 07 2016, @04:40PM
There are differences. Mainly I think they put in special hacks to get various applications working that can't go in the main WINE source tree because they're horrible hacks. Eventually, of course, they solve the problem correctly and commit it to the main WINE source tree. I've had MS Office 2010 consistently working in a free-promo CrossOver Office even though it wouldn't work correctly with WINE. MS Office 2013 wouldn't work in either last I tried.
They do good work, and buying a subscription supports WINE. I'll probably get one once Office 2013 is officially supported because I sometimes teach a class that uses Office 2013, and not having to go to Windows for that is worth the $50 or whatever it costs for a year subscription.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 07 2016, @06:12PM
An application based on Wine for Linux...
... that you rent
Their pricing page shows the price for using it for 3, 6 and 12 months.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 07 2016, @07:26PM
That's not the price for continuing to use it; that's the price for a subscription to updates. Once your subscription expires, you're free to continue using the final version your subscription let you download indefinitely. You just won't get updates.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 08 2016, @08:49AM
Based on my experience with regular wine, once you have a version that works, you want to stick with that one anyway.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday November 07 2016, @02:56PM
Apparently it lets you run Windows applications within Mac or Linux. I'm not sure why gewg_ would submit this when he is so interested in countries switching to FLOSS.
I wonder if CrossOver supports phone home functions.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Informative) by butthurt on Monday November 07 2016, @03:37PM
The post says "we successfully registered Microsoft Office 2013"; registration is a phone-home function.
Even though Crossover is proprietary software, having the option of running MS Office on Crossover is a bit more freedom than being locked into running MS Office on Windows. Improvements in Crossover are eventually contributed to Wine [winehq.com], which is copyleft.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Pino P on Monday November 07 2016, @04:12PM
In some cases, switching both the operating system and applications at once causes more of a retraining and support headache for IT than switching one at a time.
And some companies must* continue to use a few proprietary applications even after a company-wide switch to GNU/Linux because others with whom they trade require use of specific proprietary software. For example, Amazon offers a tool for sellers using its marketplace platform to pre-validate "Listing Loader" feeds of product offers before uploading them to Marketplace Web Service (MWS). But this tool is implemented as macros in an Excel workbook. Skipping pre-validation is possible, as LibreOffice Calc is still compatible enough with Excel workbooks in "macros off" mode to read out the required column headings as well as the other sheets that contain high-level textual descriptions of field values. But then each submitted feed counts against the seller's daily upload quota on MWS even if it has obvious errors that the server-side validator catches and the client-side pre-validator would have caught.
* Technically, either this or stop trading.
(Score: 2) by zafiro17 on Monday November 07 2016, @05:51PM
I tested it back in like 2004, when they gave away a free sample or demo period or something. At the time I vastly preferred StarOffice 6 and 7 (predecessor to Openoffice and now LibreOffice) so didn't wind up keeping Crossover. But at that time, having a fully functioning Word 2000 app running on my Linux desktop (was probably Xandros back at the time) was really out of this world. Just didn't need to keep it running, so I stuck with StarOffice.
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 07 2016, @11:02PM
Pino P got it.
In my Original Submission, [soylentnews.org] I said
mcgrew has said previously that publishers require an actual M$Orifice installation to interact with them and that the slight differences of LibreOffice, et al., are not acceptable.
He has also mentioned his aggravation with Windoze and his desire to use Linux fulltime.
Celestial (4891) recently expressed a similar disappointment/desire. [soylentnews.org]
...plus a mention of Windoze-only apps.
Days ago, RoboLinux was my best suggestion for these folks. (Same page) [soylentnews.org]
So, this was specifically for that bunch.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday November 08 2016, @02:09AM
Fair enough.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Nesh on Monday November 07 2016, @02:56PM
Why care: no idea. I'd run windows if I wanted to run Windows applications;
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 07 2016, @04:13PM
Why I care is that at my employment, all Windows machines will be required to move to Windows 10 in the coming year. I will use the transition time to convert to a linux machine (right now I run linux as a guest VM in a Windows 7 host) and having something that is supposed to make Office "just work" on linux is very appealing to me. I was planning on installing Windows 10 on a virtual machine, but I might not even do that if I can get by with this solution.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 07 2016, @05:11PM
One reason why is that CrossOver is fairly good at two things: enterprise and upstream.
Many of the businesses I've seen do the Windows-to-Linux (and lesser for the Windows-to-Mac) transition use, or at least evaluate CrossOver, to assist with the transition. The fact they got the latest Office to work may be a signal of what is to come in the enterprise market for Linux adoption.
Another is that CrossOver are pretty good when it comes to upstreaming improvements they make in WINE. One reason for that is that it is much easier to maintain your own fork when it hasn't diverged much from the upstream version. It also helps because the free labor to fix the improvements means that they don't have to pay for it directly. It also provides a legal buffer when it comes to reverse engineering, as it is easier to claim a clean implementation when the parties who did it have bigger walls of separation between them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 07 2016, @04:24PM
do your own google search.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 07 2016, @06:50PM
do your own google search.
With respect, No.
The point of this place is to aggregate news. I shouldn't have to search for jack shit. Vetted stories should clearly explain the 5W&H of a story, or the submitter should take the time to write a couple sentences explaining the missing ones. I shouldn't even have to RTFA if the submitter's done a proper job.
This.... was worse than a Slashvertisement.
Thanks to everyone who answered the question seriously, and it is appreciated. Two additional sentences in the summary would've done it for me.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Monday November 07 2016, @09:24PM
Crossover is hardly the latest faddy javascript language, it's been arround for well over a decade. I'd hope that people on a site like this would recognise terms like "Codeweavers" and "Crossover".
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Monday November 07 2016, @05:11PM
CrossOver is a Microsoft Windows compatibility layer available for macOS and Linux. [wikipedia.org]. I had no idea, either. Not sure how it compares with Wine. Looks like the license is proprietary and/or GPL. I remember in the days before Wikipedia everyone always seemed to think it was normal to talk about stuff without defining it. Wikipedia's done an amazing job of spelling out what stuff is for people who don't know, clueless people like me, for over ten years now.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 07 2016, @03:22PM
https://www.libreoffice.org/download/ [libreoffice.org]
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday November 07 2016, @05:11PM
Funny, but so true: the more we promote stuff like this, the better.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 4, Funny) by Aiwendil on Monday November 07 2016, @04:41PM
Does wine work in windows? And if so - how well?
Reason for asking - if does allow me to run w10 programs in windows then it might allow me to stick with win7 longer at work
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Monday November 07 2016, @06:10PM
does allow me to run w10 programs in windows...at work
Isn't Windows Store exclusive software all games?
compiling...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 08 2016, @08:55AM
I think you have an S too much in that word... "gameS".
Source: I used to have a Windows tablet. Yeah, I had a game on it. And a browser. Unfortunately, the only browser worth using was called Internet Explorer. And the e-mail app requires you to have an outlook.com account.
Took me two years to find some poor sucker who was willing to accept a Windows tablet for free.
(Score: 2) by zafiro17 on Monday November 07 2016, @05:40PM
This opens up a few opportunities for my family. We bought a new Mac Mini for the Missus in July, and it's been underperforming on both Sierra and El Capitan. The new Mac hardware is underwhelming and I'm thinking seriously of changing it out for a non-Mac (worse, we bought it in July 16 but it reports as "2014" - WTF?). Win10 is out of the question. I was leaning heavily toward ChromeOS plus a subscription to Office365 (she requires Winword for her work), but there, the idea of subscribing to software makes me sick. It's not right. There's a no cost version she might be able to use, but that one complicated document makes it risky. Maybe I could set up a Mint Linux box with Crossover for her. A year ago this would have been a no-brainer: get the wife a new Mac Mini and the latest MS Office and call it a day. Given the latest Mac hardware and the usual MS shenanigans, I'm not happy about it.
I might give this a try. Would save us a ton of money at the least - I could even run Linux on an older Intel Mac Mini we've got kicking around. If not, a Chromebook plus Dropbox and Office365 would be about right. I struggle to see what other benefits Mac software is bringing her these days (iphoto - not really, itunes, not really) given the premium we're paying for the hardware.
Rock on, CodeWeavers.
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 07 2016, @07:01PM
Crossover is subscription-based software. So it will make you sick.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 07 2016, @07:20PM
Yes, I wasn't really understanding where this cost savings was coming from.
Someone has to pay for the MS licensing, and that's via a magical cloud of subscription services in this case--paid for by the end user or company representing the end user.
(Score: 2) by zafiro17 on Monday November 07 2016, @07:24PM
You are right.
I can't stand the idea of paying repeatedly for the same thing. I'd rather pay $200 up front than $20 a month for ten months.
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
(Score: 3, Informative) by zafiro17 on Monday November 07 2016, @07:27PM
Wait a minute, I just checked the codeweavers website. You buy it, you own it. It's the SUPPORT that only lasts 12 months. You buy Crossover and it's yours, no subscription needed.
Wish I'd looked at the website before responding a minute ago. Where's the edit button? :)
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
(Score: 2) by zafiro17 on Monday November 07 2016, @07:53PM
Actually, the more I look at the site, the more confused I am. Maybe it /is/ pay per month. That's what it looks like when you go to check out. You're buying a 1 month, 6 month, or 1 year subscription - is for the use of the product, or support?. The whole website right up until that moment looks like you buy it, you own it, then whammo at the checkout you're buying a 6 month product. What does that even mean?
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
(Score: 1) by Atreidin on Monday November 07 2016, @08:12PM
I'm pretty sure it's free updates and support for 6 months.
(Score: 5, Informative) by zafiro17 on Monday November 07 2016, @08:56PM
So, I wrote the company, and got an instantaneous response - nice work, team. Here it is:
Someone mark this post informative so it floats to the surface, and ignore my previous three vacillating posts :)
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 07 2016, @11:05PM
First, CrossOver 16 isn't available yet; it's still alpha.
(That's the original meaning of "alpha", where the pre-release product doesn't leave the department that's developing it.)
...and, as been mentioned in the (meta)thread, CodeWeavers is very good at upstream, so their improved code will make it back to the WINE project quickly.
(WINE is GPL'd.)
So, it shouldn't be too long (or too long after CrossOver 16 is released) that this stuff appears in a (totally gratis) WINE release.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Troll) by t-3 on Monday November 07 2016, @08:26PM
OSX's native office suite is much prettier and has the same functionality, or close enough to make no difference for 99% of people. Why would you want to run Word when you can run Pages? Even the spreadsheet app is competetive with Excel, so why would you ever want to do this?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 08 2016, @09:00AM
And a Mac is so much cheaper than CrossOver?
Or are you suggesting people set up a virtual machine as a Hackintosh?
(Score: 2) by t-3 on Tuesday November 08 2016, @06:35PM
I've only known crossover as an OSX application, didn't realize it was also for linux when I posted - if you're running OSX you don't need MS Office because it's own suite is almost fully compatible. For Linux I guess this would be useful, especially if the only windows thing you want is office. Frankly, I'm surprised MS hasn't started marketing their most popular software in linux compatible formats.