CrossOver 19 Enters Beta With Better Microsoft Office Support On Linux

[rbmorse]

Does Word 365 do #10 business envelopes, yet?

[Thunderbird]

Yeah, having codeweavers at the helm is questionable to say the least. There are quite a few improvements in Crossover Office that don't make it upstream into WINE. Their current model is a conflict of interest: rather than giving the product away for free and selling support, they withhold features vital to the importance of the functionality of WINE. It's a shame as well, because they'd get a hell of a lot more ROI for support in this instance.

As a long time Wine developer, I would like to share my view on this and no I'm not employed by Codeweavers. Codeweavers is doing a great job on Wine and I believe they have the best forward with Wine. It is correct that Crossover Office has changes, which are not in Wine. This is not so much, because they don't want them in Wine. Alexandre maintains very high code quaity standards for Wine. Any changes need to be done properly. A product like Crossover Office needs to ship at some point and hacky implementations or application specific hacks are sometimes needed. The source for the Wine build in Crossover Office is public and anyone can see the changes. Over time these improvements make it over to Wine in a "proper way", which is why Wine may lack support for certain apps. Though it can also lead Crossover Office. Generally speaking mainline Wine is also the development branch for Wine and used directly by Codeweavers.

[betam4x]

How much does Google pay Microsoft per terabyte they get?

You are an idiot. Microsoft owns and operates their own cloud infrastructure. They also have a privacy policy for their business offerings.

[archsway]

Office 365 was also released standalone as Office 2019. Also, Office 365 is one of the best Office products, and value proposition out there, with up to 6 tb free per account of Microsoft OneDrive and a host of other features. Office basically is free when you look at it from that perspective, since you get all that cloud storage space.

How much does Google pay Microsoft per terabyte they get?

[betam4x]

FYI Photoshop, with a few workarounds, runs just fine on WINE. I've encountered no issues using it, but I don't use it for anything serious anymore. It's actually on the chopping block.

[betam4x]

I've managed environments with 1000's of workstations and there were people always having one issue or another with Office almost constantly. Things have improved I'll give you that, but so does any product made by a company with endless resources and a virtual monopoly on the field.

[/I]

Is this forever until the end of the universe? or until MS shuts down their licensing servers?

From MS's own website: "Office 2007 (Version 12) is no longer part of mainstream support and hasn't been tested on Windows 10. However, Office 2007 will install and run on Windows 10."

Doesn't look very promising to me.



Office 2003 doesn't work "just fine" on Windows 10 unless you're talking about a VM running Windows XP.



I can argue the same about MS, one company I worked for lost hundreds of thousands of pounds on bugs MS refused to fix back in the Windows 2000 days, in the words of the MS representative, we weren't big enough. However the same company didn't have any issues paying HP and RH to fix some bugs in RHEL back in the day.

Your mileage may vary.



Why are we here? Just to suffer?

You are creating an argument where there is none to be had. Every Office product out there has issues. All paid software reaches EOL where you either have to upgrade or you run beyond EOL. I've worked for MANY businesses, and more than a handful of startups, and NONE have taken issue with paying for Microsoft Office. I even had one company try to switch to LibreOffice once, only to switch back months later because users did not like it and document compatibility with vendors and clients was horrible. If Open/LibreOffice want to capture marketshare, they need to at least be in the same ballpark when it comes to usability and features. For example there is not a single Outlook clone out there (newsflash: Outlook is NOT just about email)

Even as an individual I happily pay for Office 365. Just because YOU PERSONALLY don't like office, don't rag on others who like it or who just don't care.

EDIT: FYI, older versions of Office work on WINE just fine last I checked.

[JPFSanders]

Over my life I've managed over 200 workstations with MS Office and there's not been a single issue to talk about.

I've managed environments with 1000's of workstations and there were people always having one issue or another with Office almost constantly. Things have improved I'll give you that, but so does any product made by a company with endless resources and a virtual monopoly on the field.

And nothing prevents you from using MS Office 2007/2010 pretty much forever

Is this forever until the end of the universe? or until MS shuts down their licensing servers?

From MS's own website: "Office 2007 (Version 12) is no longer part of mainstream support and hasn't been tested on Windows 10. However, Office 2007 will install and run on Windows 10."

Doesn't look very promising to me.

if you have one already bought if you don't want to pay for SaaS. In fact people report that even MS Office 2003 works just fine on Windows 10.

Office 2003 doesn't work "just fine" on Windows 10 unless you're talking about a VM running Windows XP.

There's too much drama here on Phoronix about any proprietary software as if Open Source is magically always better just because you can access the source code. This is just pure BS. Try fixing an error e.g. in LibreOffice which you've identified but the developers refuse to fix for various reasons, like they don't think it's important enough or they are busy fixing something else or adding new features. Good luck.

I can argue the same about MS, one company I worked for lost hundreds of thousands of pounds on bugs MS refused to fix back in the Windows 2000 days, in the words of the MS representative, we weren't big enough. However the same company didn't have any issues paying HP and RH to fix some bugs in RHEL back in the day.

Your mileage may vary.

And while we're here, there's still nothing close to Adobe Photoshop for Linux as well as other 300'000 applications and 50'000 games.

Why are we here? Just to suffer?

[betam4x]

CrossOver the software made with wine by wine developers owned by the company that owns wine that really makes windows software work if you pay but wine magically don't. The only thing that changed the rules of this is Steam paying some devs, some of them from CrossOver company to finish the work so magically Proton the software based on wine will work.

It's a pitty this was the bussiness model of Codeweawers till steam arrived, they could instead made campaings so people or companies could fund them to make playable a game or a software and the work could be really merged in wine and not in CrossOver.... but they succeded, they keept wine slowly developed meawhile crossover was ready for bussiness and at the end they made companies interested in wine to grow to pay them because they control completely wine.

Yeah, having codeweavers at the helm is questionable to say the least. There are quite a few improvements in Crossover Office that don't make it upstream into WINE. Their current model is a conflict of interest: rather than giving the product away for free and selling support, they withhold features vital to the importance of the functionality of WINE. It's a shame as well, because they'd get a hell of a lot more ROI for support in this instance.

[betam4x]

Stop being a snowflake about the phrase "stuck with". I personally work with clients everyday who express displeasure with being "stuck" with Microsoft's Renting Software As A Service ("R" SaaS) in the form of Office 365 or having to buy a ridiculously priced stand alone version of Office 20xx for one computer and one computer only and GOD HELP YOU if your copy is corrupted or you need to reinstall and have forgotten your Microsoft Account password if you even knew you had an account at all. Almost EVERY time with helping my clients in their displeasure with being "stuck" with Office I'm downloading and installing for them a copy of LibreOffice as a backup along with fixing their issue with Office.

Office 365 was also released standalone as Office 2019. Also, Office 365 is one of the best Office products, and value proposition out there, with up to 6 tb free per account of Microsoft OneDrive and a host of other features. Office basically is free when you look at it from that perspective, since you get all that cloud storage space.

[ghibli]

CrossOver the software made with wine by wine developers owned by the company that owns wine that really makes windows software work if you pay but wine magically don't. The only thing that changed the rules of this is Steam paying some devs, some of them from CrossOver company to finish the work so magically Proton the software based on wine will work.

It's a pitty this was the bussiness model of Codeweawers till steam arrived, they could instead made campaings so people or companies could fund them to make playable a game or a software and the work could be really merged in wine and not in CrossOver.... but they succeded, they keept wine slowly developed meawhile crossover was ready for bussiness and at the end they made companies interested in wine to grow to pay them because they control completely wine.