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Linux Software

Codeweavers' CrossOver Plugin Reviewed 166

Posted by timothy from the win-what-was-that dept.
Grok writes: "CodeWeavers' CrossOver Plugin allows Linux users to use software and browser plugins that where once only avaliable on Windows. Version 1.0 was released in late August 2001 to much media furvor, while the release of version 1.1 arrived without much fanfare. Despite the lack of attention by the news media, the new version of CrossOver is a more exciting release than the orginal. The reason? Microsoft Media Player Support. Finally, every major plugin on the internet, along with several obscure ones, are now supported under Linux. (Full Story)"
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Codeweavers' CrossOver Plugin Reviewed More

Codeweavers' CrossOver Plugin Reviewed

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  • Nice, but... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jad0 ( 512503 ) on Wednesday March 20, 2002 @07:10AM (#3193220)
    Is there much point, I think the only files I can't play with Xine+plenty o' plugins are wma's - and do I really want to be able to?

    • Re:Nice, but... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by CProgrammer98 ( 240351 )
      If you subscribe to the "linux for the desktop" theory, (rather than "keep it on the servers") then yes, it does matter.

      If "linux for the masses" is to take off and become a reality, an awful lot of people will look for wma support on their linux browsers.

      • And as others have said while MS aren't the most popular of companies WMA is of a reasonable quality and does as it says on the tin (if you ignore all the crap about digital rights management that is)...

        • Re:Nice, but... (Score:3, Insightful)

          by mgv ( 198488 )
          WMA is of a reasonable quality and does as it says on the tin

          Yes, but doesn't microsoft have a fair bit of control over the WMA architecture - the usual problem of not being able to view it on any other player because of the control?

          Anyway, if everyone starts using it it becomes the standard. Sort of like internet explorer. Do we really want to go that way with WMA compression?

          Michael
    • It seems fairly unreasonable to say that you refuse to listen to anything in a particular format even when presented with a way to do so without selling out to the evil one.

    • Re:Nice, but... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by digitalunity ( 19107 ) <digitalunity@yah o o . com> on Wednesday March 20, 2002 @07:15AM (#3193227) Homepage
      This is a good thing here. It allows Linux users to more fully collaberate with business users and will probably help make some headway into the desktop arena. That is what we want, isn't it?

      Once video codecs become a commodity item, the user begins to ignore them and decides which player to use based on quality. If this plugin can provide the features we all want along with the stability we're all accustomed to, the shores of Microsoft just eroded that minute bit more.

      Now, if I could just get both SolidWorks and Autocad in linux...
      • I'm not aware of anyone running a current version of Solidworks or Autocad on Wine, but Vdraft and Intellicad both have been running under wine for quite some time.
        http://www.dragon-designs.net/~cad-tastrafy/wine .p age1.html

        according to a post in comp.cad.solidworks, there is a petition to have mac and linux versions.

        http://www.petitiononline.com/SWonMac/petition.h tm l

        =====
        phrostie
        Oh I have slipped the surly bonds of DOS
        and danced the skies on Linux silvered wings.
        http://pfrostie.freeservers.com/cad-tastra fy/
        http://www.freelists.org/webpage/cad-linux
        • Yeah, I saw that too. I don't think that the company will go for it though. Maybe it'd fix my OpenGL problems though????

          At this point, I'm almost ready to install software opengl. This whole accellerated OpenGL crap isn't working out so good. Here's a question: How is it I can play quake at high res at 90+ fps yet have solidworks crash to desktop at 800x600? I got 32MB video memory. What gives?
          • I think it's probably because CAD packages and games use a very different subset of OpenGL. This difference is what led to all the mini-drivers in Windows that only supported the subset of OGL that quake(2) used, making these drivers useless for any other use of OGL.

      • Once video codecs become a commodity item, the user begins to ignore them and decides which player to use based on quality. If this plugin can provide the features we all want along with the stability we're all accustomed to, the shores of Microsoft just eroded that minute bit more.

        That would be great, except:

        • Microsoft controls this particular codec
        • Microsoft is well known for changing interfaces in order to foil third-party apps
        • Microsoft has plenty of good reasons to act in such a way towards Linux support

        There are a lot of problems associated with taking the Microsoft road when you're not on good terms with them.

    • Re:Nice, but... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mccalli ( 323026 ) on Wednesday March 20, 2002 @07:29AM (#3193246) Homepage
      the only files I can't play with Xine+plenty o' plugins are wma's - and do I really want to be able to?

      Forget WMA's - I don't see widespread take up of these anywhere. However, WMV is a big thing. The quality of those compared to the download size is very high.

      I have a couple of videos on my site (http://www.eruvia.org [eruvia.org]) in MPG format to make sure everyone can see them. I'd rather use WMV however, because my testing showed that the quality/file size trade-off was better. I'd be pleased to see these under Linux.

      Cheers,
      Ian

      • Re:Nice, but... (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        As long as you're talking about WMV 7 (not sure about WMV 8, though it may well be supported), and you're not planning to stream, the avifile [sourceforge.net] Win32 codec hacks and MPlayer [mplayerhq.hu] (I use the latest CVS) seem to work fine. Just make sure to install the codecs before you compile MPlayer and specify --with-win32libdir= as an option to configure. You can also get support for stuff like DivX 5, too. :) Hope this helps.
      • wmv all the way to 8 can be parsed and decoded by avifile (therefore pythontheater as well, my player :) and mpalyer, maybe xine too, I dunno....
    • There is the major point of being able to view office documents easy and painlessly.

      I'm a business user with a pure Linux setup and finally I'm able to read those pesky documents with the official Micro$oft viewers.

      I don't know, if this violates any license agreements, but frankly, I don't give a shit.

      Yes your honor, those evil communists break our monop^H^H^H^H^H customer experience by using CrossOver.

      20$ is a bargain and I shelved it out gladly.

    • Is there much point, I think the only files I can't play with Xine+plenty o' plugins are wma's - and do I really want to be able to?

      Are you saying you can play Sorenson-encoded QuickTime movies with Xine? If so, this is (big) news to me.

    • I use xine (and sinek) too, but I have never seen a Sorenson Quicktime plugin for it. If something like that is out, then Crossover really is obsolete, at least for me.

  • Anyone tried QuickTime plug-in support with Mozilla? This review mostly focuses on Real and WMP ...

    • Re:QuickTime (Score:5, Funny)

      by rjamestaylor ( 117847 ) <rjamestaylor@gmail.com> on Wednesday March 20, 2002 @07:26AM (#3193243) Journal
      it's early - or late - re-read the article after coffee/sleep and you'll see that it addresses QT: standalone is flaky, embedded rocks, and it's "just like Windows" version to the reviewer.
      • Thanks (i'm somewhat awake now)! Did a search & came up with another review [oreillynet.com] on O'Reilly that goes into QuickTime & CrossOver*1.0 in a lot more detail.

        The really interesting bit was here, though;

        "Not only was Apple helpful with the technology issues," Graham said, "but they even changed the QuickTime license to accommodate CrossOver. The previous license stated that the QuickTime plug-ins could only run on the native platform they were designed for. That wouldn't work for CrossOver because we're using the Windows QT plug-in on the Linux platform. Apple changed the license so we could do that."

        EE-yow! Apple really are copping-on. Not exactly open-source or even public-source [apple.com] but it's a step in the right direction.

        • very cool. I'm impressed with my TiG4 Powerbook and OS X. (btw:
          • [localhost:~] rjt% uptime

          • 8:35AM up 7 days, 11:55, 3 users, load averages: 0.31, 0.63, 0.80
          Pretty good for a freakin' laptop) I'm also impressed with Apple's close cooperation with the Open Source arena.

          I started with Apple in 1979 as a 12 year old with an Apple ][+ (no Disk ][ drive at first, used the tape player; also no monitor, used the RF hack to a small TV). I'll always be thankful for my dad's decision to *not* get the game consoles but instead to fork over the $big$bucks$ for the computer. Once I was done with Apple Trek, lemonade stand, the "guessing game" (decision tree thingy), little brick out (tho' I never really did get tired of that ;-) I picked up the entertaining programming books that came with my computer and a hacker was born. Interesting: my TiG4 5500 costs roughly the same as the Apple ][+ so many years ago.

          It's like coming home.

    • I have it running. Works great for me for the files that I tried sofar ... No problems (both embedded and standalone players).... Probably the gretest help are the "excel, word2000, powepoint" viewers support (staroffice/open office, abiword, ... sometimes fail on some docs ... :-( Wonder why people keep on sending docs in these formats...). Printing documents also work great from these - transparently through my Debain/Linux printing system ...

  • Crossover is great, but... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by JimR ( 101182 ) on Wednesday March 20, 2002 @07:33AM (#3193250) Homepage

    The crossover plugin (and the WINE installation that you get with it) is great. I bought it as a company expense so that I could view documents in proprietary Microsoft formats that I need to do for my job - and I don't see why Microsoft should be rewarded for polluting the world with proprietary formats. I'd rather money went towards the development of WINE.

    But what worries me is that now I can view all those whizzy Sorensen encoded QuickTime movies without worrying about it, I am actually reinforcing the view that these formats are good - by increasing the download figures for them.

    I guess I really should compose some standard email to send to sites that publish stuff in proprietary formats - but it's often difficult to even find an address to send stuff too, and when you do you don't usually get any kind of response.

    • I bought a copy and liked it so much I got one for my dad for his Birthday too. It's really cheap costing me about £6 (6 quid - if that pound symbol doesn't make it). I suspect that the 0.01% of people who don't use Windows to browse the web and visit sites using Qt/WM, don't bother the site owners. Even if every one of us complained it's such a piddly amount of complaints it still won't help. However with crossover allowing linux to see pretty much any site it'll encourage those on x86 systems to use Linux, which in turn might have the affect you're after at a future date.
    • Enterprising hackers will of course find and steal secret keys, so that they can release freeware MP3 players that run on Linux. But again, as soon as these programs get popular enough to show up on Microsoft's radar, the operating system giant will download the new patches which specifically forbid these programs from working.

      Try to understand. Microsoft's eventual plan is that you will not own your computer anymore. They will own your computer, and lease its use to you on very specific licensing terms. Their long-term goal is that people who try to use their computers like Turing machines, thinking they can make them do anything they want, will go to jail.
    • But the sorensen codec *is* good - that's what makes quicktime rock compared to realplayer or WMP. What sucks about it is merely the fact that they didn't bother porting it to anything but the sheep OS'es. But that doesn't make it a bad codec. It's a great codec with crappy availability. I don't see why Sorensen dying would be a good thing. The solution is to see it ported, not to convince people that it should no longer be used.
  • Hey, I've been ranting about lack of Authorware support on a Linux desktop for years now. Stokin'. This is really a big deal because all sorts of multimedia educational apps are made with Authorware and only work on Mac and Windows. Getting Windows out of the schools seems like a primary (get it) starting point.
    Of course it's not the K runtime I've been asking the good people at Macromedia to compile, but it's better than nothing which was what the options were before.

  • Where Microsoft gets in trouble... (Score:4, Funny)

    by ImaLamer ( 260199 ) <john@lamar.gmail@com> on Wednesday March 20, 2002 @07:36AM (#3193256) Homepage Journal
    I love this idea.

    The use of free software such as Windows Media Player and such makes it funny because what is Microsoft's defense?

    Do they say to use their free Windows software such as WMP you need Windows? I've been trying to make this point since the trial started. The OS is the bundleware stupid! It's that tax you pay to stay under the MS umbrella of products.
  • Gates getting up and preaching about how now "The Enemy is using our own weapons against us" or some other Operation-Enduring-Monopoly-esque response to something like this.

    Heh... how are they going to respond to this? I'm willing to bet something like a "Department of Obfuscation" to make their apps more Windows-reliant to counter the GPL's general desire of universal compatability. Ministry of Truth, anyone?

    Oh well. The more Orwellian that M$ becomes, the more I can call up my mother and say "See? I told you so!"
    • Well If you notice the crossover plugin is useing windows media player 6 (i belive) and the reasion they cant run a newer version is because Microsoft added a line in the EULA of media player, saying it can only be installed on a system with MS windows.

      So how long untill windows media player 6 just wont cut it? I think the best hope for linux media is MPEG4 and quicktime 6. Even if apple dosent release Quicktime 6 for linux, MPEG4 is an open standard and it will be easier to port something.

      • There is a small loophole here...

        You can install it on MS Windows, but what if I have Windows CD and it's in the basement and not installed? am I legit to install Windows Media player 7.1? I think so..
      • Well, if they're going to play that game...just install a (legal) copy of Win98 on your machine and dual-boot into Linux...heck, you don't even have to dual-boot! As long as it's install on your disk, your computer will qualify as a "system with MS Windows".

        I'd like to add that I did buy the CrossOver Plugin, and that it's all that it's cracked up to be except for two things (which may be related to my configuration): it did not install icons or MIME type extensions (a minor annoyance) and I can't install the Word viewer without the installer crasshing (a medium one). No matter, I think I'm entitled to download updates as they come...in any case, I urge as many people as possible to contribute to both Codeweavers Crossover and Transgaming's Winex project. I mean, their products are relatively cheap and it does help them bring Windows assimilation into Linux closer to being a seamless experience.
    • I'm willing to bet something like a "Department of Obfuscation" to make their apps more Windows-reliant to counter the GPL's general desire of universal compatability.

      What the hell are you talking about? "GPL's general desire of universal compatibility"??

      The GPL is a free software license. The program featured in this article is proprietary. The GPL says and does nothing to promote universal compatibility. Sure the FSF may support portability, but that is hardly the real issue underlying the GPL. Finally, while this may be a great program, because it is not free software, I am not sure I see the point. If I wanted to run proprietary software why would I run Linux at all? (Hint: Macintosh).
  • Propitery? Equilivent? Avaliable? Furvor? Commercal? Instalation? Execlent? Usefull? Acurratly? Unnoticiable? Noticable? Embeded? Prefrences? Imagianable? Opiton?
    • I know. It annoys the hell out of me too. Typos are one thing, but how people can go through life without understanding the differences between words like to and too, where and were, and there and their is beyond me. It's not really that hard. Are these people really as dumb as they sound?

      • Likewise. But I've quit flaming people about it - usually they moan that English isn't their first language, and then I feel bad about the whole thing. So instead I'm just accommodating myself to the atmosphere of mediocrity that our English-spelling-as-a-nth-language counterparts are promoting. Maybe in a few years I just won't care anymore...

        It's funny, though. I remember when I had to take four years of French classes, and we got marked off every single time we misspelled a French word. Apparently the foreign English teachers of the world are much kinder than my French professor was :)

        • Actually, I've found that the reverse is often true. There are certainly many people who speak English as a second language and do so poorly, or at the very least with interesting sentence structure (tomshardware.com used to be this way years ago, "And itemX did never do this...", etc.).

          In my job at freshmeat, I correct a lot of grammar and spelling. It seems that whenever someone replies with the disclaimer, "Please forgive my bad English", their English is mostly fine. On the other hand, most people that I know who are native speakers of English mangle it badly and often.

          I personally think that Japanese is much more difficult than English (nihongo muzukashi desu yo), but I wonder if language native mangling is as much a problem in Japan as it is here. There's no shortage of studies showing that our schools suck compared to other countries.

    • Some which the parent missed :
      orginal
      Hilight
      recieve
      Oh well. The typos seem to repeat for more than once. Either the person typing the article had some horrible typing habits, or somebody ran the article through a filter deliberately. (for fun?)

      I mean, some of those typos are really funny.
    • Aye wash noteasing simular problimbs wythe they're artickle.

  • My experiences (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ciryon ( 218518 ) on Wednesday March 20, 2002 @07:50AM (#3193275) Journal
    I have used CrossOver since v 1.0 and it is really good. First of all, the installation is very simple and it let's you download the latest codecs of say QuickTime (that's what I mainly use it for) so you always get the latest versions installed. It nicely installs the browser plugins and let's you enable them for individual browsers on your system.

    It also creates nice Gnome/KDE shortcuts to launch the QuickTime player.

    One could use normal Wine to watch QuickTime in the player, but I gladly pay the extra $20 to get the browser plugin.

    Conclusion, very nice product worth paying for. But wouldn't it be even nicer if we could play Quicktime/Windows Media movies with a native library instead?

    Ciryon

    • Re:My experiences (Score:2, Interesting)

      by anandrajan ( 86137 )
      I've used Crossover Plugin ever since it was first released and am now running Crossover Plugin 1.1. I find it to be a very useful tool especially for reading proprietary Microsoft formats. Crossover Plugin 1.1 (and 1.0) allows you to install the free Word, Excel and Powerpoint 97 viewers available on Microsoft's website. I now have no need for the extra Windows PC that I have in my office which used to crash each day. Also, my office is a lot cooler these days since the Windows PC has been switched off. One feature I have not seen mentioned which is a killer feature is that I can open a Word document and use the Wine Postscript driver to create a PostScript version of the file on my linux box and then print it. I have now taken to informing colleagues to save and resend Word and Excel documents in '97 rather than 2000 formats so that I can read them on my linux box. Goodbye Citrix MetaFrame, Vmware and Windows!

      • Why not install openoffice?

        Jason

        • >Why not install openoffice?

          >Jason

          I have Star Office 5.2 installed. It is good to have more options for .doc and .xls files. Crossover gives me that extra option. I haven't tried any open office builds yet.

      • Sounds really nice.

        I'm wondering if Crossover Plugin with just the handful of Office programs on a Linux desktop would be sufficient for most business purposes.

        Also, whether managing a whole LAN of Linux desktops with these Crossover Plugins would be easy or hard?

    • What is it, exactly, that you're paying for ? Since Crossover is apparently based on Wine, what is it that you get extra that isn't open source ? Could it ever be open, or is it a means to get around some NDA ?
  • Has anyone successfully got SVG (scalable vector graphics) working in Konqueror? I'm not just talking about static images, but fully ECMA-scriptable ones, like you get in Mozilla or Internet Explorer with Adobe's plug-in. How easy would it be to get the Adobe plug-in to work in Konqueror using something like CrossOver? I'm surprised at the apparent lack fo support for an open graphics standard in the open source world.

    Having support for all the major media formats is good though, because I don't intend buying a television when I move out of my parents' house, so I'd be really happy to watch streaming videos in my favourite operating system.
    • KDE 3.1 is going to support animated SVG.

      However that doesn't help you now. I noticed that Konqueror didn't pick up my SVG plugin (the Adobe beta plugin, which you can download from their "older versions" link) which works fine in Mozilla 0.9.9. I tried all sorts of ways of copying it around different places but just couldn't get it to work. I suspect that Konqueror expects plugins to be in the old Netscape format, rather than the newer Mozilla plugin format - so I think you need to ask the KDE people to look into supporting Mozilla plugins too.

  • Same probelm that WINE has and OS/2 had (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Colin Smith ( 2679 ) on Wednesday March 20, 2002 @08:20AM (#3193326)
    If a platform runs Windows software better than Windows then developers will only ever write Windows software, leaving said platform as a vaguely interesting curiosity.

    The monopoly will only break when developers move away, and they'll only move when they have to.

    • Probelm that OS/2 had (Score:4, Interesting)

      by wiredog ( 43288 ) on Wednesday March 20, 2002 @08:32AM (#3193348) Journal
      WINE isn't an IBM product. It isn't being sold at twice the cost of the MS product (rather the opposite, in fact). OS/2's problem wasn't that Windows ran Windows programs better (it didn't) it was that IBM sold it at retail for $250 when Win+DOS was less than $100. IBM's sales force couldn't have sold space heaters in Point Barrow Alaska. IBM killed OS/2. MS just let them.
    • I'm with you. As long as Microsoft controls the Win32 APIs these products will only get you legacy support and present another reason NOT to port to the LSB. If Microsoft lost control of Win32 then this would be great.

      **** History lesson ****
      Microsoft [product x] isn't done
      until [competitors product y] doesn't run.

      LoB

  • Why use plugins? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Raedwald ( 567500 ) on Wednesday March 20, 2002 @08:48AM (#3193381)

    It is a bad idea to make any of the content of your site only accessible via a plug-in [anybrowser.org], sure this software increases the number of systems that a plugin can use, but why bother? Why not create and encourage useful websites that don't need them?

    • While the core argument of sticking with pure text content for a website is a good one for many "overdone" websites, there are a number of cases in which these plugins do make perfect sense.

      For example, as a gamer, I like being able to see video previews of works in progress, or catch a short film from any of those online film sites, or see a televised news report streamed to me about important events when I'm nowhere near a television.

      It's a fine balance that needs to be struck between content and usability, sure, but going luddite on any site that dares use an animated gif is no better than those sites that have a non-skippable fifteen minute flash intro's.

    • Re:Why use plugins? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by edremy ( 36408 )

      I have a bunch of sites devoted to molecular visualization. Students can load 3-d models of atomic orbitals [vt.edu], proteins, crystals and the like, then rotate/zoom to look at them from different angles. Simple buttons allow them to modify the views: for example, They can show alpha helix areas in a protein [vt.edu] while also highlighting an inhibitor. Others [vt.edu] let you quickly switch between spacefilled and wireframe views to show the differences between graphite and carbon or color code the layers in FCC vs. HCP crystals to show how the stacking changes. Sure, I can show a bunch of JPGs, but it's not the same.

      Now, how do I do that without a plugin [mdlchime.com]? Java? Don't make me laugh: Chime has features that would take me years to code in Java- no remotely close equivalent exists.

      I try to make plugin free sites whenever possible, but limiting yourself to never using plugins gives up so much capability that you'd be silly to do that.

      Eric

      • Eric --

        It looks interesting, but after playing with it a while your plugin crashes Internet Explorer 5.50 under NT (and perhaps would crash others), leaving lots of pieces-parts scattered around the screen.

        -- MarkusQ

        • Not my plugin, but older versions of Chime have issues with IE5.0 and beyond. It's always worked better in Netscape. (See the MDLChime site for some of their comments.)

          No idea why, but it's a very complex plugin and perhaps MS changing the plugin format under them every few months has finally taken it's toll. They claim the newer version will finally fix the problems.

      • Once, long ago, when dinosaurs ruled the earth, we used these little things called APPLICATIONS to manipulate downloaded data.

        Perhaps you've heard of them?

        Plugins are only relevant if you are trying to prevent free unfettered access to the data in question. Unless you think you are the RIAA or MPAA, why bother attempting to lock your end users out?

        • Once, long ago, when dinosaurs ruled the earth, we used these little things called APPLICATIONS to manipulate downloaded data.

          And more recently, mammals evolved and so did USER INTERFACES. I can create buttons to run certain scripts against the display. I can wrap text around those buttons and embeds. How do I do this with an application?

          Let's see: with a plugin

          1. Install plugin
          2. Click on link
          3. Click on button. See pretty pictures and hopefully learn some chemistry

          With an application
          1. Install app
          2. Click on link
          3. Flip back and forth between app and web page
          4. Give users detailed instructions like
            • Ok, now highlight atoms 1-50, make them green and size 10
            • Next, highlight atoms 51-100 and make them blue and size 5
            • Set ribbon mode to alpha helix
            • set display mode to ball+stick

          5. Watch users give up in frustration

          Do you honestly think that stand alone applications are better in this case? There is one very similar to Chime: most people don't use it for web stuff anymore since Chime is so vastly better.

          The data you want "Free, unfettered access" to is perfectly available: you can save the data files if you really want-just right-click and choose "Save". They may be ASCII, but they aren't something you can edit by hand or even understand for all but the simplest cases.

  • Chime is also supported (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Chrimble ( 7748 ) on Wednesday March 20, 2002 @09:17AM (#3193467) Homepage
    I've been using the Crossover plugin for about three months now, and it never ceases to amaze me quite how well it works.

    One of the things that was not mentioned in the review was that the 1.1 version of the plugin also officially supports Chime - a plugin for viewing proteins and molecular structures - perfectly. (version 1.0 could run chime after a bit of hacking, but did occasionally crash).

    For people working in Bio/Cheminformatics, this is a genuine boon, as the plugin traditionally only supports Windows and Mac. All of a sudden, you don't need to use citrix (or whatever!) to view molecules in mozilla on your linux box! It's the best $25 I've spent in a long time. 8)
    • ...the 1.1 version of the plugin also officially supports Chime - a plugin for viewing proteins and molecular structures - perfectly.

      Man, I can't tell you how many times I've been cruising through the same old web content hoping to run across a good, viewable protein or molecular structure....

      Actually, if I'd had mod points I would have modded you up as informative. Unfortunately all I had on me was a biting wit (or maybe only a half-wit).

  • How did you get WMP working in other browsers? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Nailer ( 69468 ) on Wednesday March 20, 2002 @09:23AM (#3193495)
    I own Crossover 1.1, and reading the documentation that comes with the product, in browser WMP is only supported under Netscape 4.7x, because the Windows WMP plugin relies on Javascript quirks not available in Netscape 6, or Galeon, or Konq, or Opera, or (euw) Moz. My own experiements seem to confirm this.

    Has this situation changed?
    • The current cvs version of Mozilla works with WMP but not 0.99 . THis is a bug in mozilla. I think that it does work in Netscape.
    • You can patch Mozilla 0.9.9 to get WMP plugins to work. This is (sort of) mentioned in the article. The patch is here [mozilla.org] and the bug report (resolved) is here [mozilla.org]. And it works fine for me, moreover...
    • You call it Mplayer [mplayerhq.hu]

      Mplayer plays any video WMP can play, and plays it with its own interface directly to the WMP codecs, and does it for free. The downside is they only allow source distribution, because it sorta auto-configures in a massive way during the build. The player is open source, the codecs are not.

      Works really really well.
      • The player is open source, the codecs are not.

        The downside is they only allow source distribution, because it sorta auto-configures in a massive way during the build.

        Then MPlayer violates criterion 2 of the Open Source Definition and is therefore not Open Source. I'd rather buy the similarly non Open Source Crossover and help fund the developers of the LGPL/X11 licensed Wine (many of whom work for Codeweavers, including Alexandre Julliard, the founder o the project). MPlayer also obviously can't handle Sorenson Quicktime.
        • Then MPlayer violates criterion 2 of the Open Source Definition and is therefore not Open Source. I'd rather buy the similarly non Open Source Crossover and help fund the developers of the LGPL/X11 licensed Wine (many of whom work for Codeweavers, including Alexandre Julliard, the founder o the project). MPlayer also obviously can't handle Sorenson Quicktime.

          Mplayer is no more and no less 'free' in the free speech sense than Codeweavers, but it is 'free' in the free beer sense. Free beer beats paying for beer, obviously.

          Also, Mplayer is a movie player intrinsic to linux, so it takes full advantage of the Xvideo and SDL extensions when possible, and it scales easily, syncs properly, etc. And it plays anything WMP can play.

          As for Quicktime using Sorenson, they are working on they API - I doubt it will be long judging from the latest on the email list.

          I don't have anything against contributing to WINE, but Mplayer can be downloaded and installed by just about anyone for free, and that is kinda nice too.
  • Yes! On the official screenshots page, they have CmdrTaco's Hamster Havoc animation as a mozilla video plugin demo! Now he's ready for prime time! His liberal arts education has finally paid off!

    http://www.codeweavers.com/products/crossover/sc re enshots.php

  • CrossOver is useful.... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Junta ( 36770 ) on Wednesday March 20, 2002 @10:02AM (#3193664)
    But I can't understand why anyone would use it to play RealMedia content. Although Real's site has seemingly obfuscated the links to it out of existence, there is both a native RealPlayer8 and beta quality RealOne player for linux, with plugins included.

    That said, I can barely see any reason to use Windows Media Player from crossover, as a number of linux players (numerous avifile based programs, xine, and mplayer) can play Traditionally Windows-only (avi/asf/wmv/etc.) media in much more efficient ways. With CrossOver, pretty much everything is done in win32 binary format before being put on the display. Whatever you may say about wine's efficiency, it still is simply not feasible to beat native code. With the semi-native players, most of the time they get away with native codecs, resulting in no win32 code at all. Even in cases where codecs have to be pulled from win32 codecs, as little as possible is done there. The file is demultiplxed, the video stream is passed through the win32 dll, and is only required to provide decoding of frames, and in the case of video, usually in the easiest colorspace for that dll to produce. From there, native code takes over, and, if available, passes the data straight to an Xvideo overlay of the appropriate colorspace, and hardware does some filtering, colorspace conversion, and scaling. Even if hardware can't be used, native methods to do this outperform wine-mode code. The only reason I can see is for the plugin aspect of this implementation. Of course, I have always hated the "plugin" style of viewing content, and have always saved to disk when I could. Same with "embedded" playback in file managers (i.e. Konqueror), I always disable that crap...

    Now with QuickTime, you have a pretty good reason to use CrossOver, the best (only way) to view Sorenson codec material is QuickTime's player. Plus you get browser embedding if you like that. A little tip for those who just want standalone player, wine is enough to run the full installation. In fact, if you disable ddraw.dll in your wine config, you get CrossOver level cleanness (i.e. no black all over the screen, no messed up menus, etc).

    As far as the office format viewing, I have no clue, I don't have to deal with that much :) This may very well be where CrossOver truly shines in business, making a friendly desktop more feasible. Though most of us will download a file and use some imperfect converter/importer to load it into another editor, or use wine itself to view the material, a lot of business people want the convenience of viewing it in the browser, and for .doc content and the like, this makes a lot more sense than multimedia does in the browser paradigm...
    • Agree completely. I installed the Linux native Real and Shockwave plugins. For everything else I use Crossover - and I love it!

      Yes, I would like to see more native plugin implementations. Perhaps with time. In the interim, I'm delighted to have Codeweaver's alternative. Great job, guys!
    • http://service.real.com/help/faq/security/bufferov errun.html
    • But I can't understand why anyone would use it to play RealMedia content.

      Neither can I, but I do understand why CodeWeavers included the support. First, they had customers asking for it. I'm fine with the native Linux Real support (or as fine as it is possible to be with their poorly designed spyware), but other people feel that the Windows version is superior. I've seen a number of people on their public support list quite happy about using the Windows player. Second, I suspect CodeWeavers did it because they could. I suspect every mainstream Windows program is viewed as a challenge and they try to support it because they can.

  • probably not, since it depends on WINE.

    But somebody probably could do this with Mac-On-Linux (MOL)--it's loosely the same idea as WINE, it lets you run a Mac OS in a window under Linux for PPC. It's very fast since it's not emulating the CPU.

    anyway, having this type of capability for linux on all hardware platforms is important for linux world domination. so get busy.

  • Don't let this one slip!!! (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    These guys are doing a great service in helping to complete Wine. But they are a commercial entity and need funding. Don't let this become another Linux company that believes in Free software that doesn't make it.

    This product only costs $25; that's a small price to pay to get stable interoperability with Windows software on Free operating systems.

    From their site: http://www.codeweavers.com/products/crossover/supp ort_wine.php

    CodeWeavers will use the revenue from the end user version of CrossOver plugin to continue its work on Wine as well as to enhance and improve the Plugin product. We feel that this hybrid model is an excellent model for Free Software companies. We are able to contribute, extend, and help a significant Free project, Wine, while still having some mechanism to help us sustain our efforts.

    Thus by purchasing CrossOver Plugin, you will be helping to provide a much needed source of income to a Free Software company that has provided a large range of valuable improvements to one of the most key Free Software Projects - Wine.

  • Don't support Windows Media! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by IGnatius T Foobar ( 4328 ) on Wednesday March 20, 2002 @10:47AM (#3193856) Homepage Journal

    While it's great that Codeweavers has managed to get enough of WINE working to support Windows Media Player, it's still a very bad idea for us to use it. Here's why.

    Every time you click on a Windows Media file, you are sending a message to the site operator which basically says "I support Microsoft's efforts to monopolize digital media." You're voting with your mouse.

    Right now, in most places we still have a choice of formats: Windows Media, Real, streaming MP3, whatever. If everyone just mindlessly chooses the Windows Media formats without a second thought, site operators are going to look at their logs and say "well, nobody is using the Real/MP3/whatever formats, so let's just start webcasting exclusively in Windows Media format." Do you want that to happen? I sure don't. We cannot afford to let Microsoft monopolize this market. Think of the ramifications of Microsoft having a 100 percent lock on digital content. Digital Rights Management? Easy... just put it in Windows Media. Region lockouts? Put it in Windows Media. Want to work around those problems? Sorry, you can't, because digital media is Windows Media and you don't have any other choice!

    Let's not forget that even though Windows Media Player may now run on Linux, you'll never see a Linux distribution that includes it, because the Crossover Plugin is not free, and Microsoft's licenses prevent WMP from appearing on Linux CD's.

    Great technology, bad way to use it. As Linux users we must keep on clicking on those non-Microsoft formats, and politely asking site operators to maintain or add media in non-Microsoft formats. Let's not succumb to the urge to satisfy short-term viewing/listening needs at the expense of sacrificing long-term interoperability.

    • Well, Mr. BigSupporterOfChoice, thanks for telling me what formats I should and shouldn't support or use.

      Should I mindlessly click on the Real formats instead? Even though their quality sucks? What message is that sending?
    • Give us a viable alternative that works any better? Quicktime? RealPlayer? Well, for QuickTime (Sorenson codec QuickTime), your choices are either Mac or Windows binary, not much bettter than WMP....

      RealPlayer? Once upon a time, maybe. The quality is crap, but at the very least they *had* native linux player versions. Now, while they are still physically on the site, the non-win32, non-realone real player versions are no longer just difficult to find from the main page, they are now completely gone. They don't even want to support Mac, they are full out Windows now, click on the check out realon player link, and you auotmatically get a .exe. I have native versions of Real8 and a beta of RealOne for Linux, because I was around when they had them available, nowadays users are screwed...

      Now, what is left that is a viable alternative? You could use quicktime with a differenet codec, but even then player support under linux is not great. Ogg Tarkin might be good when it is released, but for now it isn't an option.

      Now, let's re-examine the situation with AVI/ASF/WMV (of which ASF/WMV is the streaming option). Most of these files can be played under linux (though ASF, and I would imagine WMV are illegal due to patents, but that hasn't stopped projects from putting it in), and many without ever resorting to win32 code. For example, consider MPlayer. If a file is indeo created, it can use an xanim module. If it is divx encoded, ffmpeg or divxdecore can be done to natively open it (though divx is snubbed by MS, so that isn't much of a streaming option). Ultimately, for commercial streaming you would probably end up using a Windows dll, unfortunately, but of the options that you can try to plug through right now off the web, Windows content actually involves running the least win32 code.

      When Ogg Tarkin or something like that comes out, *then* you can push forward and protest sites that don't use a good alternative, but in the meantime, the multimedia providers have to serve it *somehow*, and none of the streaming options right now are any better to linux than others.

      Until recently, an official MPEG-4 release looked like it could be the ticket, but the proposed licensing really messes that up. And don't even begin to suggest that you could use MPEG-1 for streaming, if you thought Real is crappy at low bitrates, well, just try MPEG at those bitrates and even Real looks better..
      • BTW, for reference, here is a URL to Real's download area that still has linux versions, if anyone wants to grab them before real, say, distcontinues them:
        http://scopes.real.com/real/player/unix/uni x.html
    • We cannot afford to let Microsoft monopolize this market.

      They already have a monopoly. NHL.com, unfortunately, only uses MS Win Media Player. Do I like it, hell no. Broadcast.com used to provide both formats before the NHL took it inhouse. (though I think it streams from msnbc or one of the other ms sites). I'm willing to bet that MS is not charging the NHL very much just to lock it in, since that's how they work. At this point, marketshare is more important than money.

      Basically, companies will not switch unless given a good reason. If MS can practically give service away, there will never be a reason to use a free alternative.
    • We cannot afford to let Microsoft monopolize this market. Think of the ramifications of Microsoft having a 100 percent lock on digital content. Digital Rights Management? Easy... just put it in Windows Media. Region lockouts? Put it in Windows Media. Want to work around those problems? Sorry, you can't, because digital media is Windows Media and you don't have any other choice!

      There is really no choice now. If you want to make a high quality video you would know this. You can
      1) Pay to use Real.
      2) Pay to use WM7 or WM8
      3) Pay to use Sorenson
      4) Use opendivx, which most Windows and Mac users cannot play.

      Real, WM7 and 8, and Sorenson are all patent protected. And the future here is anything but bright. MPEG4 is laced with patents and they want to make as much money off streaming media as possible. There are literally NO free alternatives that are high quality and allow people from Windows, Mac, and linux to view video. [if I am wrong - I'd love to hear about it - but I've researched this a bit lately for my own projects]

      Ogg is working on Tarkin, an open video codec, but they are still in the "throwing ideas around" phase.

      Me - I make mine vids in MPEG1, b/c I need for some WebTV users to see them, and they can only view MPEG1s. Online video is horrible, and this doesn't appear to be changing anytime soon.
    • If you use Windows 2000, there's still another reason not to use Windows Media Player.... it has a high probability for crashing the OS [roxio.com]if you also use DirectCD or Roxio's Easy CD Creator.

      I upgraded Internet Explorer and off-handedly allowed it to upgrade/install Windows Media Player at the same time. The resulting problems stumped me for days... The OS would reboot the instant the DirectCD software was used and would not allow the OS to restart even in safe mode. I recognized the CD-Writer as part of the problem, and was able to reboot after disconnecting the drive. It took some very carefully worded Google searches to discover the culprit.

      Both Microsoft and Roxio apparently blame each other for the incompatibility, but at least Roxio offers a easy to manage fix. Windows Media Player is not easy to uninstall, either.....

      Cheers,
      cfeagans


    • Right now, in most places we still have a choice of formats: Windows Media, Real, streaming MP3, whatever. If everyone just mindlessly chooses the Real formats without a second thought, site operators are going to look at their logs and say "well, nobody is using the Windows Media/MP3/whatever formats, so let's just start webcasting exclusively in Real format." Do you want that to happen? I sure don't. We cannot afford to let RealNetworks monopolize this market. Think of the ramifications of RealNetworks having a 100 percent lock on digital content. Digital Rights Management? Easy... just put it in RealPlayer. Region lockouts? Put it in RealPlayer. Want to work around those problems? Sorry, you can't, because digital media is RealNetworks Media and you don't have any other choice!

  • CodeWeavers and the Wine project are great, but... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Lethyos ( 408045 ) on Wednesday March 20, 2002 @10:48AM (#3193861) Journal
    If as much time spent developing great software for running Win32 binaries and strengthening Microsoft's position, was spent towards building a plethora of open-source multimedia applications, we'd be a lot better off. Linux needs more native software that it can run well, instead of software that gives it access to a library of programs that it can run poorly. Plus, the more we support Microsoft's platform, the stronger they get. It keeps us dependent on Microsoft and other proprietary platforms, and gives less incentive to move completely over to Linux. (Think: "if Linux can run Windows software, but not as good, why should I use Linux?")

    Again, they are great projects and kudos to them for doing such a great job. I just wish we could see more native software of this nature.

    (just my two cents)
    • The interesting thing that I've found, as I run WineX and play Counter-Strike/Day of Defeat through linux rather than windows, is two fold. First, I've found that the program doesn't crash, Windows isn't running and cannot fubar the program. I've also found that the engine gets better performance than in Windows. Part of this is the kernel drivers for my graphics card, but part is that using the Linux API gives better performance. (W.ine I.s N.ot an E.mulator [Wine is an implimentation of the Windows API in Linux])
  • I was able to use the plugin to run a few applications that I just couldn't get to run well under WINE. Trillian [trillian.cc] being one of them.

    You might not agree the plugin is best for Linux in that it lets folks continue with proprietary formats (WMA) and prorietary codecs (Quicktime) but it sure is nice to see WINE come this far. Using this plugin I can honestly say I can surf the web and use the net with all the features I want without needing Windows at all. Codeweavers did a good job here.
  • Just curious...are there any new streaming standards which are open standards, and have the potential to replace Micorsoft's formats?
  • I have to label this a Bad Thing(tm). Oh I'm sure Crossover works, and with the proper configuration and hardware, probably works well. But that's what's bad about it.

    I don't want to run Windows plugins on my Unix box. I want to run NATIVE plugins on my Unix box. If I can't get Open Source plugins, at least give me native plugins.

    Crossover gives Apple/Sorensen, Macromedia, et al, zero incentive to release native plugins. That's not good. Crossover is setting in stone these proprietary plugins as standards, and no standard should be proprietary.
  • Will this thing let me use Yahoo Companion on Linux? For those who haven't seen it, Yahoo Companion is a toolbar that gives quick access to various Yahoo things. The thing that I really like is that it has its own bookmarks manager, that lets you do the usual things (add, organize into folders, etc).

    Why use this instead of the browser's bookmarks, I hear you ask? Because YC stores the bookmarks on a Yahoo server. This means that when I add an interesting bookmark at work, for example, it is there in my bookmarks when I browse from home.

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