5 ms·

Does code weavers actually work any better than wine?

ActionHank 3y ago
I think this is an important question. Whilst I know they contributed a fair bit to Wine there is no clear indication why I would hand over my money vs get the free and open solution.
- adrian_b 3y ago
  I have not used Codeweavers for many years, because I have switched to LibreOffice after it became able to convert well enough most of the MS Office documents. Nevertheless, before that I have used Codeweavers CrossOver for some years, mainly to run MS Office on Linux. During that time I have been very satisfied with Codeweavers CrossOver, because the latest MS Office Professional versions available in those years were running under Linux at least as stable as under Windows and for some operations they were even faster than under Windows (presumably due to the faster file system). Earlier, during the Windows XP days, running MS Office Professional with CrossOver on Linux was even much more stable than on Windows XP, because before many Service Packs have accumulated fixing tons of Windows XP bugs, it was not unusual for MS Office to crash, even if such events were much more rare than with older Windows versions, like Windows 98. At least at that time when I was still using CrossOver, Wine supported well only older MS Office versions and had some problems with the latest. Even if I have no longer needed their product for many years, CrossOver remains one of the few software products that I have purchased for which I consider that the price paid for it was completely worthwhile, because it did exactly what I needed and what I had expected.
- lwkl 3y ago
  To support the development of Wine and for ease of use? Without CodeWeavers Wine wouldn’t be where it is today. They are the ones building your free and open solution. If it’s an important program for you, you should probably pay them.
  - ActionHank 3y ago
    Sure, if you want to be precious about it. My point was more that there should be something on the page to show me how it differentiates to add value for me as a customer.
    - EdwardDiego 3y ago
      Click a button, install a supported app with all the ideal tweaks already provided.
      - ActionHank 3y ago
        Cool, send that to them so they can literally put that one, simple sentence on the site.
        lwkl 3y ago
        You prompted me to look at their site and I definitely get your point. The site was definitely more focused on what you described back in the days. The site tells me that their business might have shifted to offer more consultation services for porting games and programs using Wine. If that’s true they might not need the Crossover revenue that badly anymore?
- EdwardDiego 3y ago
  Because giving them money keeps the contributions to Wine flowing.
trelane 3y ago
It kind of is WINE. They are (the?) major contributors to WINE. https://www.codeweavers.com/wine https://www.codeweavers.com/wine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CodeWeavers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CodeWeavers
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  It's unfortunate something like ReactOS never took off. I guess if one wanted to do something similar from scratch would be to take something like NetBSD, strip it down and start Wine as the only thing running on it. That could probably replace some embedded uses of Windows.
  - t8sr 3y ago
    I'm still not completely sure who or what ReactOS is supposed to be for. If you want to run Windows applications, Wine on Linux works better. In fact, Wine and ReactOS exchange a lot of code in the user layer anyway, IIRC. Meanwhile, Linux is probably the best optimized, most ported and most customizable kernel we have. The only thing you get by running ReactOS instead of Linux is... worse performance, worse hardware support and possibly a kernel based on leaked copyrighted code. What's the point?
    - actionfromafar 3y ago
      Nowadays, not much except for legacy embedded use. (Though in practice, the stability of ReactOS isn't great and also there's the untested licensing situation of ReactOS. Allegedly some of the code might have been lifted from Microsoft code. This issue alone may have made companies stay clear of it.) But way back when, before everything computing metastased into a fluffy Javascript cloud world, and when Linux wasn't as mature, an "Open Source Windows NT 4" would have been a great off-ramp off Microsoft. You know, "Year of Linux on the Desktop" which was such a coveted thing, could have been "Year of Open Source Win32" instead. Instead, the Desktop waned in importance, we got cloud services and smart phones instead, and Linux grew up to be a force in its own right.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
toasteros 3y ago
It's Wine, but with additions made by full-time developers who are paid to work on it, backed by a support team that you can go to and say "Hey, help me get this Win32 app running". What you get here is Wine and some level of guarantee that what you want to run will run. The focus is on applications rather than games. Codeweavers contributes back to Wine upstream. Most changes that go into the Crossover fork of Wine end up in the main source tree, so this is a very good way of supporting Wine development and getting something out of it, but if all you're doing is playing games then you're mostly covered by Proton. When Win10 EOLs I think CrossOver will be very important for allowing organisations to keep MS Office.
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  I think something which could be really big thing is to run WINE in Windows, exactly to keep legacy applications running. That could be via WSL, but it would be even more useful if WINE ran on Windows itself. Some corporate computers can't enable WSL because of policies.
- AdmiralAsshat 3y ago
  > It's Wine, but with additions made by full-time developers who are paid to work on it, backed by a support team that you can go to and say "Hey, help me get this Win32 app running". That's the idea in theory, although I recall the one time I actually reached out with a Windows app that was unresponsive in Linux, the support guy just kinda shrugged on the ticket and nothing came of it. I get that they have finite resources, but that wasn't exactly the level of support I was hoping for from a product I'm paying for. I still do pay for it (usually whenever I can get a promo discount on renewal), but I'm resigned to the idea that it will really only help on popular Windows applications.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >When Win10 EOLs I think CrossOver will be very important for allowing organisations to keep MS Office. Huh? If they're running windows 10 and Office don't you think they'll just upgrade to windows 11 instead of using emulation? Organisations are on a ~3-4 year upgrade cycle and any computer made in the last 4 years from 2025 when windows 10 goes Eol will be able to run windows 11.
belthesar 3y ago
CrossOver is a WINE implementation for people that want a really nice and simple interface. I used to beta test apps for them ages ago, which was nice, as that got me a free copy of the pro product. They recently just cleaned house on that program, and I lost my access, which, you know, fair, but also it happened right as I was wanting to check them out again after having managed WINE with other tools on my workstation. By default, it makes brand new prefixes, has profiles for well known apps to configure the prefixes accordingly, including managing downloading the installers. Their fixes and changes to their version of WINE are almost always upstreamed, so eventually you do get those features in OSS WINE, but that's honestly never been the reason to get it. It's the much more friendly UX, and for those using WINE in business environments, a channel to get support for the framework. For those that want better prefix management for their home projects, there are plenty of OSS projects doing that now. Whisky for macOS, and Bottles for Linux are two fine alternatives to help keep WINE prefix hygiene without it, but neither come with the "we can install this business app for you with no hassle" concierge features. These folks do know WINE well though. There's a reason they're working with Valve on Proton, and why so many of the commits to WINE come from them.
MattPalmer1086 3y ago
Yes, in my experience. But maybe wine is a lot better now. They just made wine work well, but it's still wine.

I think this is an important question. Whilst I know they contributed a fair bit to Wine there is no clear indication why I would hand over my money vs get the free and open solution.

adrian_b 3y ago
I have not used Codeweavers for many years, because I have switched to LibreOffice after it became able to convert well enough most of the MS Office documents. Nevertheless, before that I have used Codeweavers CrossOver for some years, mainly to run MS Office on Linux. During that time I have been very satisfied with Codeweavers CrossOver, because the latest MS Office Professional versions available in those years were running under Linux at least as stable as under Windows and for some operations they were even faster than under Windows (presumably due to the faster file system). Earlier, during the Windows XP days, running MS Office Professional with CrossOver on Linux was even much more stable than on Windows XP, because before many Service Packs have accumulated fixing tons of Windows XP bugs, it was not unusual for MS Office to crash, even if such events were much more rare than with older Windows versions, like Windows 98. At least at that time when I was still using CrossOver, Wine supported well only older MS Office versions and had some problems with the latest. Even if I have no longer needed their product for many years, CrossOver remains one of the few software products that I have purchased for which I consider that the price paid for it was completely worthwhile, because it did exactly what I needed and what I had expected.
lwkl 3y ago
To support the development of Wine and for ease of use? Without CodeWeavers Wine wouldn’t be where it is today. They are the ones building your free and open solution. If it’s an important program for you, you should probably pay them.
- ActionHank 3y ago
  Sure, if you want to be precious about it. My point was more that there should be something on the page to show me how it differentiates to add value for me as a customer.
  - EdwardDiego 3y ago
    Click a button, install a supported app with all the ideal tweaks already provided.
    - ActionHank 3y ago
      Cool, send that to them so they can literally put that one, simple sentence on the site.
      - lwkl 3y ago
        You prompted me to look at their site and I definitely get your point. The site was definitely more focused on what you described back in the days. The site tells me that their business might have shifted to offer more consultation services for porting games and programs using Wine. If that’s true they might not need the Crossover revenue that badly anymore?
EdwardDiego 3y ago
Because giving them money keeps the contributions to Wine flowing.

trelane 3y ago

It kind of is WINE. They are (the?) major contributors to WINE. https://www.codeweavers.com/wine https://www.codeweavers.com/wine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CodeWeavers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CodeWeavers

actionfromafar 3y ago
It's unfortunate something like ReactOS never took off. I guess if one wanted to do something similar from scratch would be to take something like NetBSD, strip it down and start Wine as the only thing running on it. That could probably replace some embedded uses of Windows.
- t8sr 3y ago
  I'm still not completely sure who or what ReactOS is supposed to be for. If you want to run Windows applications, Wine on Linux works better. In fact, Wine and ReactOS exchange a lot of code in the user layer anyway, IIRC. Meanwhile, Linux is probably the best optimized, most ported and most customizable kernel we have. The only thing you get by running ReactOS instead of Linux is... worse performance, worse hardware support and possibly a kernel based on leaked copyrighted code. What's the point?
  - actionfromafar 3y ago
    Nowadays, not much except for legacy embedded use. (Though in practice, the stability of ReactOS isn't great and also there's the untested licensing situation of ReactOS. Allegedly some of the code might have been lifted from Microsoft code. This issue alone may have made companies stay clear of it.) But way back when, before everything computing metastased into a fluffy Javascript cloud world, and when Linux wasn't as mature, an "Open Source Windows NT 4" would have been a great off-ramp off Microsoft. You know, "Year of Linux on the Desktop" which was such a coveted thing, could have been "Year of Open Source Win32" instead. Instead, the Desktop waned in importance, we got cloud services and smart phones instead, and Linux grew up to be a force in its own right.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago

toasteros 3y ago

It's Wine, but with additions made by full-time developers who are paid to work on it, backed by a support team that you can go to and say "Hey, help me get this Win32 app running". What you get here is Wine and some level of guarantee that what you want to run will run. The focus is on applications rather than games. Codeweavers contributes back to Wine upstream. Most changes that go into the Crossover fork of Wine end up in the main source tree, so this is a very good way of supporting Wine development and getting something out of it, but if all you're doing is playing games then you're mostly covered by Proton. When Win10 EOLs I think CrossOver will be very important for allowing organisations to keep MS Office.

actionfromafar 3y ago
I think something which could be really big thing is to run WINE in Windows, exactly to keep legacy applications running. That could be via WSL, but it would be even more useful if WINE ran on Windows itself. Some corporate computers can't enable WSL because of policies.
AdmiralAsshat 3y ago
> It's Wine, but with additions made by full-time developers who are paid to work on it, backed by a support team that you can go to and say "Hey, help me get this Win32 app running". That's the idea in theory, although I recall the one time I actually reached out with a Windows app that was unresponsive in Linux, the support guy just kinda shrugged on the ticket and nothing came of it. I get that they have finite resources, but that wasn't exactly the level of support I was hoping for from a product I'm paying for. I still do pay for it (usually whenever I can get a promo discount on renewal), but I'm resigned to the idea that it will really only help on popular Windows applications.
FirmwareBurner 3y ago
>When Win10 EOLs I think CrossOver will be very important for allowing organisations to keep MS Office. Huh? If they're running windows 10 and Office don't you think they'll just upgrade to windows 11 instead of using emulation? Organisations are on a ~3-4 year upgrade cycle and any computer made in the last 4 years from 2025 when windows 10 goes Eol will be able to run windows 11.

belthesar 3y ago

CrossOver is a WINE implementation for people that want a really nice and simple interface. I used to beta test apps for them ages ago, which was nice, as that got me a free copy of the pro product. They recently just cleaned house on that program, and I lost my access, which, you know, fair, but also it happened right as I was wanting to check them out again after having managed WINE with other tools on my workstation. By default, it makes brand new prefixes, has profiles for well known apps to configure the prefixes accordingly, including managing downloading the installers. Their fixes and changes to their version of WINE are almost always upstreamed, so eventually you do get those features in OSS WINE, but that's honestly never been the reason to get it. It's the much more friendly UX, and for those using WINE in business environments, a channel to get support for the framework. For those that want better prefix management for their home projects, there are plenty of OSS projects doing that now. Whisky for macOS, and Bottles for Linux are two fine alternatives to help keep WINE prefix hygiene without it, but neither come with the "we can install this business app for you with no hassle" concierge features. These folks do know WINE well though. There's a reason they're working with Valve on Proton, and why so many of the commits to WINE come from them.

MattPalmer1086 3y ago

Yes, in my experience. But maybe wine is a lot better now. They just made wine work well, but it's still wine.