Wine Reviews your source for Windows Applications and Games on Linux and Mac

Internet Explorer 8 on Linux with Wine

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:22:32 -0600

About Internet Explorer 8

Windows Internet Explorer 8 (abbreviated IE8) is the latest web browser developed by Microsoft in the long running Internet Explorer browser series. The browser was released on March 19, 2009 for Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, and Windows 7. Both 32-bit and 64-bit builds are available. It is the successor to Internet Explorer 7, released in 2006, and is the default browser for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 operating systems except in Europe. IE8's global market share is estimated to be about 18-20%.

According to Microsoft, security, ease of use, and improvements in RSS, Cascading Style Sheets, and Ajax support were its priorities for Internet Explorer 8.

uTorrent 2.0.0 on Linux with Wine

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:02:33 -0600

µTorrent, the BitTorrent client that is..

Micro-Sized Yet Feature Filled

Most of the features present in other BitTorrent clients are present in µTorrent, including bandwidth prioritization, scheduling, RSS auto-downloading and Mainline DHT (compatible with BitComet). Additionally, µTorrent supports the Protocol Encryption joint specification (compatible with Azureus 2.4.0.0 and above, BitComet 0.63 and above) and peer exchange.

Resource-Friendly

µTorrent was written with efficiency in mind. Unlike many torrent clients, it does not hog valuable system resources - typically using less than 6MB of memory, allowing you to use the computer as if it weren't there at all. Additionally, the program itself is contained within a single executable less than 220 KB in size.

RealPlayer SP 1.0.2 on Linux with Wine

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:47:21 -0600

RealPlayer has always enabled you to play RealAudio (*.ra) and RealMedia (*.ram) files.

Now, with RealPlayer, you can:

Download videos from thousands of Web sites with just one click
Build your own video library and playlists
Play all major audio and video formats

RealPlayer for personal use includes audio CD burning capabilities, DVR-style playback buffering, multimedia search, Internet radio, a jukebox-style file library, an embedded web browser (using Microsoft Internet Explorer), and the ability to transfer media to a number of portable devices, including Apple's iPod, MP3 players, and Windows Media devices.

Since version 11, RealPlayer also includes Flash Video support, DVD, SVCD, VCD burning and video recording.

Wine Cedega Crossover and PlayonLinux

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:06:56 -0600

As the title says I'm going to talk about some of the differences between all of the above.

WINE is the reimplementation of the windows API for Linux/Unix operating systems. WINE allows you to run some applications on Linux that does not have Linux support or installers ie: Office 2007, World of Warcraft and many others. This is not a how-to but more a idea of what is going around and what its all about. WINE is the underlying technology for all the above applications. But lets face it, this was made so we could run the nice Microsoft games on our Linux distros. I for one love to game and I really would like to have more games written for Microsoft and Linux. I can't figure out what the big deal is as most games are written in C++ and could be compiled for any OS type.

Games is a major stumbling block when it comes to people moving from Microsoft to Linux and most don't have the knowledge or time to sit and try figure out how to play there favorite games on Linux. Here comes the solutions. Some are free and others not but lets take a look at them a little more.

PlayOnLinux 3.7 has been released

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 07:12:42 -0600

PlayOnLinux 3.7, the latest version of PlayOnLinux is now available.

Changes

The changes brought by PlayOnLinux 3.7 are:
- Right-clicking directly on A application is now possible.
- The ability to change an application's icon.
- The ability to access very quickly the installation directory of an application.
- The ability to stop all the applications run by PlayOnLinux at once.
- A new option: "playonlinux --debug <Application>" allows us to help you by providing more information so that we can understand why the <Application> doesn't work for you.
- A much improved manual installation procedure (e.g. you can choose the version of Wine to be used).

Download

CodeWeavers Announces Lame Duck Support Insurance Policy

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:29:25 -0600

On Anniversary of Huge Software Giveaway, CodeWeavers Announces "It’s NOT Free" Special for Wednesday, October 28
In 2008 CodeWeavers Gave Away 650,000 Free Licenses in 24 Hours; This Year’s Special Includes "Lame Duck Insurance Policy" Offering 2-for-1 Support

SAINT PAUL, Minn. (October 27, 2009) – On the one-year anniversary of the software industry’s largest-ever one day giveaway—a publicity stunt that nearly crippled his company—Jeremy White, the deeply embittered CEO of CodeWeavers, announced ALL of his software will NOT be free tomorrow in celebration. "Not even CLOSE to free," White proclaimed in announcing his non-giveaway. "Still, we’ll have some pretty good deals."

Codeweavers honors the great Lame Duck giveaway

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 03:32:36 -0500

From Jeremy White's blog,

Wednesday the 28th is the one year anniversary of our Lame Duck giveaway special, in which we gave away 650,000 copies of CrossOver, melted down our servers, and destroyed the US economy.

We're choosing to celebrate the anniversary in a variety of ways. First, we're going to launch a 'CrossOver is NOT Free' promotion starting on Wednesday.

Next, in honor of the Lame Duck, we have given our next two upcoming releases code names. 'Snow Mallard' is the upcoming version of regular CrossOver and 'Zombie Mallard' is the upcoming version of CrossOver Games.

Snow Mallard represents a radical departure for us. For the first time, we're going to embrace the reality that CrossOver runs many applications, rather than just a limited number. Instead of a fixed number of applications supported by CrossOver, CrossOver will be able to use 'Application Installer Profiles', which can come from us, or from the broader community. This should make it easier for our Advocates to bake tips and tricks right into an installation recipe.

Wine 1.1.32 Released

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 09:56:55 -0500

The Wine development release 1.1.32 is now available.

What's new in this release:

Many crypto fixes, particularly on 64-bit.
Improved DVD access on Mac OS.
Several common controls improvements.
Various HTML support improvements.
More DIB optimizations.
Various bug fixes.

The source is available now. Binary packages are in the process of being built, and will appear soon at their respective download locations.

winetricks 20091022 released

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:40:09 -0500

Winetricks 20091022 has been released, Another fortnight, another winetricks.

Eleven new verbs and spices, and a few bugfixes.

new verbs: glsl-disable, glsl-enable, physx, mingw, mingw-gdb, cmake, dotnet11sdk, dotnet20sdk, vc2003toolkit, vc2005sp1, vc2008sp1

Updates since 20091015:
* Fix vc2005express verb (interactive mode) to work on windows
* Add mingw and mingw-gdb (hey, we support cygwin. Equal time!)
* Add cmake. Based on a patch by Mathieu Malaterre
* Update gdiplus download link
* Added a draft vc2008sp1 verb; works on Windows Vista.
* Trim CR from output of cygpath, which screwed up bash strangely on windows.

CodeWeavers CrossOver Mac Pro 8

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 16:41:11 -0500

Sometimes, what is possible it not always practical. Some users, such as those who absolutely must run a legacy Windows application, have found it's possible to load Windows on a Mac. Not for the faint of heart, the process involves booting into Windows--you'll need software such as Apple's Boot Camp (free)--or running Windows within a virtual machine application such as Parallels ( Macworld rated 3.5 out of 5 mice ) or VMware Fusion ( Macworld rated 4.5 out of 5 mice ).

A slicker option is CodeWeaver's CrossOver Mac Pro 8.0, an application that runs a virtual environment so you can run Windows applications on your Mac. (We tested the Pro version, which supports both apps and games.) With CrossOver 8 installed on your Mac, you can insert a Windows installer disc such as the one for Microsoft Office 2007 or Quicken 2009 for Windows, install the program, and run it without actually running Windows. This saves time, because you never have to boot the Windows OS. And, theoretically, it should make Windows apps run faster on your Mac.

CrossOver Mac Pro 8 is a smart application; it relies on the open-source Wine application for running Windows apps and streamlines the install process. However, since the CrossOver 7 ( Macworld rated 3 out of 5 mice ) release last year, the new version only adds support for one major, new Windows application (Quicken 2009) and tweaks Office 2007 compatibility. CodeWeavers has not addressed my chief complaint, which is that the application does not provide any guidance as to whether an application will work at the time of install, and relies instead on an online user forum. So, CrossOver 8 is smarter, but still not smart enough.