In the next year I want to upgrade the components in my PC. New mobo, video card, memory. Well I might as well just build a new one including the case piece by piece.

Now, I'm seriously considering getting off windows. I've fiddled with linux over the past 8 or so years so I'm pretty comfortable with it. Although I'm really not feeling Gnome 3 and KDE 4 is kinda leaving a bad taste in my mouth too!

I've known of Crossover for a while I guess you could say back in its infancy. Seems their a bit more grown up now. And do any of you fine people run this for any windows apps or games?

Thanks for any input!

I suppose it makes some sense to use Crossover if you've invested a bit of time at becoming proficient with a particular piece of proprietary software available only for Windows, but barring such prior experience I see little point in pursuing a Windows solution on a GNU/Linux platform. In the long run (and do you expect to be using a computer five years from now), one is better served by investing the time to learn the software available for GNU/Linux -- preferably Free Software, but even commercial software targeted at the platform would be more prudent.

$0.02

Amen to that. In fact the important part of the move to Linux is before you install it. Start first by getting your Windows system free of all the proprietary software you've grown used to: PS, MS-Office, Lightroom... and replace them by the Windows version of their "libre" counterparts... (I don't count mundane utilities here because these have all better and more suited Linux alternatives). After six months of de-addiction, switching to Linux is easy.

No I don't.
I have wine (gpl license) installed.
Since I am not a gamer I rarely use it.
Programs like these are only necessary for gamers in my opinion.
But if you insist on having the possibility of playing games at full speed why not dual boot.
Playing games through an emulator in Linux will slow them down.
Linux has all the software I need.
Games is the weak spot of Linux.
Gerard.

I agree with your thinking. But I like to game too. I don't think they'll be making a Call of Duty version that will run on linux out of the box.

The only other things I have to consider is my wife and her games from big fish and gamehouse. *sigh* Which she had her own Win7 box with a 1.5Tb drive but continues to plug my machine up with trails and #$%^#$ toolbars!

I concur with you. Although I'd like to know if anybody has used this basically commercial version of WINE.



I don't consider myself cheap, thrifty yes. So just about everything I run on my windows platform is either open source or freeware. Which the exception of the Stardock applications (desktop eyecandy) which you wouldn't be able to go. I can live with that, there's enough eye candy in linux to keep me entertained!

It's like I said in the above .. Call of Duty gaming and a about 4-5 other PC big name PC games and the wife's stuff.

Other than that .. I've been using Open Office since it's infancy and I'm a sourceforge forager! =)

Fair enough, though more and more game publishers are delivering GNU/Linux versions of late. As far as Call of Duty is concerned, I do not believe it is necessary to purchase Crossover in order to run it; from what I hear, the free (and GPLed) download of WINE is capable of running versions 1-4 -- though I have no direct knowledge whether this is true.

Wine will satisfy the needs to run Windows sw no reason to pay crossover

I use seldom win apps in linux except for graphic, as for graphic most of the apps i try works without problems with wine

and the few that didn't works with wine i doubt will work with crossover.

What I have done is make my laptop mutliboot. I have Windows 7 which is kept for AfterEffects. I use Ubuntu for Everything else, including web surfing. That means I get no viruses.

and for years I have made every effort to not install programs on the windows side. Which means if I wish to try something out I use portable programs
http://portableapps.com/

I can install to the HD. It keeps the registry cleaner and doesn't clog up the Windows system.

I don't play games so this plan works great for me

OpenOffice is no longer being commercially developed by Oracle (due to being forked by the OO developer community), and has been shifted to the Apache Incubator Projects. You might want to migrate to Libre Office to maintain quality assurance for future patches and updates.

Have used Wine for things like Google Sketchup and the occational game. I have a WinXP dual boot for other gaming needs. No need for Windows otherwise.
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Griatch

And .. thank you again Mahvin! I don't have it installed installed .. I have a portableapps version of OO.



I knew about WINE .. but I really haven't fooled around with that since, oh, 2003. I'm sure a lot has changed, I'll give that a whirl again too! It used to be nerve racking tracking down why the app wouldn't work. I'll give it another go!

For using Wine, I recommend PlayOnLinux, a graphical frontend that will handle setup etc a little easier as well as auto-change wine version for programs with known requirements etc. It also offers direct install links for commercial games/demos on Steam or Indie games on Desura. At least under debian you can just get the playonlinux package without needing to get wine manually at all.
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Griatch

I guess a lot has changed over the course of 8 years! This will probably have to be a weekend project! =)

If you use KDE for the desktop you could also try "q4wine".
It's a nice gui to start wine.
Gerard.

I use q4wine to run certain Windows applications using the console, that otherwise would not work in wine.