A question I have fielded more then a couple times in the Wine section of the Ubuntu Forums is
What is the difference between commercial Wine products and vanilla Wine?
There are three main commercial Wine products: Bordeaux, Cedega, and Crossover. There are a few distinct differences between the commercial Wine products and the FOSS Wine.
Support:
One of the largest benefits to using a paid for Wine product is that not only are you paying for software, you are also paying for support of said software. What this means is that if an application that is suppose to function, doesn't work properly - You will have a real live person to help you debug the issue. While support for Cedega is somewhat lacking, Bordeaux and Crossover have fantastic support staff.
GUI/Automated Installer:
All three of the commercial Wine applications provide a GUI/automated installer for installing applications. This makes it much easier for new users (and faster for experienced users) to configure applications properly under Wine. Time is money as they say.
Added Application Support:
Commercial Wine products have added pieces of code that allow some applications to function better than they do under vanilla Wine. Notably under Cedega is a superior DirectX API that allows for better FPS under a few titles (as well as running Crysis). The primary piece of code Crossover adds to Wine is their custom HTML engine. This adds better functionality to Internet Explorer, Steam, and other web-based Windows applications. Bordeaux builds Wine with a few extra patches to fix bugs, as well as support for the pulse audio sound server.
Regression Resistance:
Ever had an application working perfectly under the latest beta Wine release and then have it magically stop working for some reason or another when Wine updates? That is called a regression. Commercial Wine products are tested to ensure that all of your applications that already work, will continue to do so with future releases.
Cost:
Ah, and now the the primary reason that is always brought up whenever someone mentions any sort of commercial Wine product: The Cost. I must say, my absolute favorite response is something along the lines of:
"Why would you pay for software to use on your free operating system! That goes against the very nature of Linux!"
You know what else goes against "the very nature of Linux"? Trying to run Windows applications. Odds are you paid for that Windows application as well, so if you are going to support application development on a platform you no longer use - Why not support it on your platform of choice as well? None of the products are terribly expensive. Bordeaux starts at 20$, Crossover at 40$, and Cedega starts at 15$ (but is subscription based).
If perhaps I have persuaded you to invest one of these products and you are confused on which of the three is best for you, check out my Cedega VS Crossover comparison and my Bordeaux 2.0.4 review.
~Jeff Hoogland
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Senin, 13 September 2010
Kamis, 26 Agustus 2010
Bordeaux helps support Wineconf 2010 and FreeBSD
Projects die without dedicated people to manage them and having funding for an FOSS project allows for those dedicated people to spend more time devoted to the project itself (instead of working that silly "day job"). If you have been by my blog before then you know I write about Wine software every so often and on a few specific occasions about Bordeaux, a commercial Wine product.
Now through October 3rd, 2011 Bordeaux is running a special donation promotion to help out a couple of important open source projects. The first of these is the annual Wineconf, that is to be held in Paris, France this year. The second is FreeBSDNews.net, a good news source for what is going on in the BSD community. The third and final project is the FreeBSD foundation itself, which is a non-profit organization.
As long as the donation sale is going on 50% of the cost of Bordeaux, which is only $25.00 at most, will be donated to one of these projects. Linux and Open Solaris copies sold will donate to the Wineconf and Mac, FreeBSD, and PC-BSD sales will be donated to the BSD projects listed above. Bordeaux is also the only commercial Wine solution to offer support and "official" builds for the BSD and Open Solaris platforms.
If you are unsure what Bordeaux is/if it is right for you be sure to check out my hands on review of Bordeaux 2.0.4 If you already have already purchased Bordeaux (or another commercial Wine software) then remember - you can always just donate right to one of the above project anyways.
~Jeff Hoogland
Now through October 3rd, 2011 Bordeaux is running a special donation promotion to help out a couple of important open source projects. The first of these is the annual Wineconf, that is to be held in Paris, France this year. The second is FreeBSDNews.net, a good news source for what is going on in the BSD community. The third and final project is the FreeBSD foundation itself, which is a non-profit organization.
As long as the donation sale is going on 50% of the cost of Bordeaux, which is only $25.00 at most, will be donated to one of these projects. Linux and Open Solaris copies sold will donate to the Wineconf and Mac, FreeBSD, and PC-BSD sales will be donated to the BSD projects listed above. Bordeaux is also the only commercial Wine solution to offer support and "official" builds for the BSD and Open Solaris platforms.
If you are unsure what Bordeaux is/if it is right for you be sure to check out my hands on review of Bordeaux 2.0.4 If you already have already purchased Bordeaux (or another commercial Wine software) then remember - you can always just donate right to one of the above project anyways.
~Jeff Hoogland
Selasa, 20 Juli 2010
A New Cycle in the Vinyard - Bordeaux, Crossover, and Wine 1.2
July 16th, 2010 marks the next release in the "stable" line of Wine releases. Periodic "stable" releases of Wine are important because they are heavily tested to ensure that no regressions have occurred (meaning software that was working, will continue to work) between versions. It has been over two years since we saw Wine 1.0 stable released (which feels like a life time in Linux years - I mean comon that's a whole Ubuntu LTS release ago). This new release brings with it over 3,000 various bug fixes, as well as added support for 64bit applications. For a complete change log check here.
New stable releases of Wine are so important that my two favorite commerical Wine products, Bordeaux and Crossover, have both jumped right in Wine 1.2's new stably goodness with soon to be release product updates.
In addition to all the improvements Wine 1.2 brings to the table Crossover's 9.1 release also includes fixes that allow Star Trek:Bridge Commander and Modern Warfare 2 to function properly again. Their change log also notes "Made several application profile tune-ups" so hopefully your favorite games will perform a bit better under this Crossover release than they did with older versions.
The soon to be released Bordeaux 2.0.6 release sports a few very important updates in addition to Wine 1.2 - these include:
Also worth mentioning is that in celebration of the Wine 1.2 release Bordeaux is currently having a 50% off sale - 10$ for this product is a steal. It is well worth it for the time it can save you if you use Wine software often on your Unix systems.
~Jeff Hoogland
New stable releases of Wine are so important that my two favorite commerical Wine products, Bordeaux and Crossover, have both jumped right in Wine 1.2's new stably goodness with soon to be release product updates.
In addition to all the improvements Wine 1.2 brings to the table Crossover's 9.1 release also includes fixes that allow Star Trek:Bridge Commander and Modern Warfare 2 to function properly again. Their change log also notes "Made several application profile tune-ups" so hopefully your favorite games will perform a bit better under this Crossover release than they did with older versions.
The soon to be released Bordeaux 2.0.6 release sports a few very important updates in addition to Wine 1.2 - these include:
- Support for Firefox 3.6.3 and multimedia plugins
- Support for VLC 1.1.0 (this is mostly for BSD and OpenSolaris users)
- Many Steam fixes (Including fixing this nasty bug)
Also worth mentioning is that in celebration of the Wine 1.2 release Bordeaux is currently having a 50% off sale - 10$ for this product is a steal. It is well worth it for the time it can save you if you use Wine software often on your Unix systems.~Jeff Hoogland
Selasa, 11 Mei 2010
Bordeaux 2.0.4 - Hands on Review
Competition is an important part of all markets. It drives innovation, keeps prices down, and typically tends to ensure a quality product. Don't get me wrong, I think Crossover is fantastic software, but with Cedega pretty much being dead where is the choice in commercial Wine software? Lesser known than the two previously mentioned is Bordeaux.
Bordeaux is a commercial Wine software more similar to Crossover than Cedega in respect to the fact that it directly uses the Wine project. What makes Bordeaux worth taking a look at? Well there are a few things!
Firstly I would like to highlight the fact that Bordeaux updates their software regularly. The version I obtained to use for this review is the soon to be released 2.0.4, which ships with Wine version 1.1.41. The current release, 2.0.0, ships with Wine 1.1.36 (where is Crossover has been shipping with Wine 1.1.24 for sometime now). For those not familiar a newer Wine version typically means support for more applications and better performance for those that already ran in past versions. Worried about buying Bordeaux and then having an new version come out a couple months later? No worries, your purchase comes with free upgrades for six months after purchase.
The next wonderful things about Bordeaux is that just like Wine - they support most forms of Unix officially. Bordeaux is available for purchase for the BSD, Linux, OSX, and Solaris platforms (Where is Crossover only officially supports OSX and Linux even though they have unsupported BSD and Solaris builds). Bordeaux is also affordable, at 20$ for the Linux binary it is half the cost of even the cheapest Crossover product.
Now for the most important part of any review - the functionality of the product. While the list of software Bordeaux officially supports is not extremely large, they do support many of the key applications that most Unix users require from the Windows environment. These include (but are not limited to) Microsoft Office 2000/2003/2007, Photoshop 6/7/CS/CS2, Internet Explorer 6/7, and Steam. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the recently released new Steam GUI was near fully functional under this latest release of Bordeaux. In fact the only issue it gave me was a distortion of the tray image icon. I loaded up a few of my source engine games (L4D2, Team Fortress, Counter Strike: Source) and they all ran perfectly fine.
Bordeaux's GUI for installing and managing software is simple, but functional. It contains three main sections: Install Applications, Manage Wine, and Unsupported Packages.
The Wine management tab provides easy access to tools such as a command prompt, notepad, regedit, taskmgr, winecfg, and application un-installer. The unsupported packages tab allows for installing all of the various Winetricks packages into a given "wine cellar" (Bordeaux's version of the "bottle" or WINEPREFIX).
Over all Bordeaux works quite well and this 2.0.4 release is a step in the right direction. One key reason to pick up Bordeaux over Crossover is if you have need of both Steam and Office 2007 on your Linux install (A prime example for this is if you are a student such as myself and game occasionally while needing M$ Office because your school requires it). To have both of these applications supported under Crossover you would at least have to purchase their 70$ professional package versus the 20$ it would cost to have support for both these applications under Bordeaux.
~Jeff Hoogland
Bordeaux is a commercial Wine software more similar to Crossover than Cedega in respect to the fact that it directly uses the Wine project. What makes Bordeaux worth taking a look at? Well there are a few things!
Firstly I would like to highlight the fact that Bordeaux updates their software regularly. The version I obtained to use for this review is the soon to be released 2.0.4, which ships with Wine version 1.1.41. The current release, 2.0.0, ships with Wine 1.1.36 (where is Crossover has been shipping with Wine 1.1.24 for sometime now). For those not familiar a newer Wine version typically means support for more applications and better performance for those that already ran in past versions. Worried about buying Bordeaux and then having an new version come out a couple months later? No worries, your purchase comes with free upgrades for six months after purchase.
The next wonderful things about Bordeaux is that just like Wine - they support most forms of Unix officially. Bordeaux is available for purchase for the BSD, Linux, OSX, and Solaris platforms (Where is Crossover only officially supports OSX and Linux even though they have unsupported BSD and Solaris builds). Bordeaux is also affordable, at 20$ for the Linux binary it is half the cost of even the cheapest Crossover product.
Now for the most important part of any review - the functionality of the product. While the list of software Bordeaux officially supports is not extremely large, they do support many of the key applications that most Unix users require from the Windows environment. These include (but are not limited to) Microsoft Office 2000/2003/2007, Photoshop 6/7/CS/CS2, Internet Explorer 6/7, and Steam. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the recently released new Steam GUI was near fully functional under this latest release of Bordeaux. In fact the only issue it gave me was a distortion of the tray image icon. I loaded up a few of my source engine games (L4D2, Team Fortress, Counter Strike: Source) and they all ran perfectly fine.
Bordeaux's GUI for installing and managing software is simple, but functional. It contains three main sections: Install Applications, Manage Wine, and Unsupported Packages.
The Wine management tab provides easy access to tools such as a command prompt, notepad, regedit, taskmgr, winecfg, and application un-installer. The unsupported packages tab allows for installing all of the various Winetricks packages into a given "wine cellar" (Bordeaux's version of the "bottle" or WINEPREFIX).Over all Bordeaux works quite well and this 2.0.4 release is a step in the right direction. One key reason to pick up Bordeaux over Crossover is if you have need of both Steam and Office 2007 on your Linux install (A prime example for this is if you are a student such as myself and game occasionally while needing M$ Office because your school requires it). To have both of these applications supported under Crossover you would at least have to purchase their 70$ professional package versus the 20$ it would cost to have support for both these applications under Bordeaux.
~Jeff Hoogland
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