Will Codeweavers Crossover work in Puppy? YES

Using applications, configuring, problems
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The Major
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Will Codeweavers Crossover work in Puppy? YES

#1 Post by The Major »

I'm new to Puppy Linux aand I think it's great. I have used Linux before, and I have a copy of Codeweavers Crossover. Does it work with Puppy?
Last edited by The Major on Fri 31 Mar 2006, 22:30, edited 1 time in total.

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Lobster
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#2 Post by Lobster »

Dunno - you may be the first to let us know . . . Wine works - which I believe Crossover is based on - any one know?

Oh and welcome to the kennels :) Are you really a Major? Have you considered pacifism? - just a thought . . . :oops:
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Puppy Links Page http://www.smokey01.com/bruceb/puppy.html :D

The Major
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#3 Post by The Major »

Nothing military about me, just the name. I'm getting problems when I run the install script. It keeps telling me that the file is corrupt, and I should try another browser to download it (as "Netscape sometimes changes bin files to text" - I paraphrase.

I've even tried changing the permissions of the file to make it executable, but no joy.

It runs on another of my PCs (using Ubuntu) which has a 2.6 kernel. Would that make any difference? One last thing - I note that Wine needs a new partition to install. Might that also be the case for Crossover?

I'll ping Codeweavers to see what they say / suggest. Sorry for the stream of consciousness, but it's a useful app for some MS software e.g. MS Project 2000, and I'm too lazy to convert 5 years worth of Outlook pst files, so I use it to read that.

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dvw86
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#4 Post by dvw86 »

I had the same issue with Crossover. I think it is because Puppy uses BusyBox and not the full Bash. I don't think it has to do anything with the kernel. Please ask Codeweavers about it though. I did and it would be great if they kept getting requests specifically for Puppy. They may make an installer just for Puppy.

The Major
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#5 Post by The Major »

Thanks. I will post any response I get from Codeweavers

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Using Wine

#6 Post by The Major »

I decided to persevere with Wine, and I found http://frankscorner.org/ really helpful. I had an old licenced copy of Office 97, so I installed Powerpoint as a trial, and I found that it loaded and ran faster than OpenOffice. Therefore, I now use Abiword, Gnumeric and Powerpoint as my standard office suite.

I also had a copy of Macromedia MX suite, and I installed Fireworks MX, and that runs perfectly (I'm just more familiar with that compared to Gimp).

Running on ThinPad 600E, 366Mhz, 288MB memory

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#7 Post by The Major »

or even a ThinkPad....

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Nathan F
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#8 Post by Nathan F »

The installer for the trial version does not work with Puppy (the corrupt file problem you were having). If you ever do buy a license then the rpm version does work quite well in Puppy. You just have to extract it manually and copy the files to the right places. I tried it once upon a time and found it was fine.

Nathan
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#9 Post by The Major »

Thanks for the tip - I'll try it

cdbsystems
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crossover shell issues... (and getting it to work!)

#10 Post by cdbsystems »

I've gotten crossover office working - largely...

more information for those of you trying.

there are several reasons the loki installer shell does NOT work in puppy.

fortunately, all can be addressed.

1) the corruption it complains about when installing is nothing to do with a browser, it is that the common linux util 'cksum' is missing (mysteriously imho) from puppy.
grab a copy (I got mine from a fedora core 2 install) and you will be able to install the crossover office up to a point.

2) it will complain (various errors) if you dont have perl installed - so you need to do so.
the dotpup installs perl5.8.0 but seems to be a stripped version.

3) installing perl is NOT sufficient because you will run into errors like 'FileHandle.pm not found'.
this is because things like 'FileHandle.pm' that would be in the directory /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0 are, in fact, missing.

I got an rpm for perl 5.8.5 (fedora core2) and attempted an rpm install.
the rpm install failed, but it DID create directories /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.5 - and lo! in this directory are infact the FileHandle.pm file. copy it to 5.8.0 directory.

I then proceeded to get an error saying Encode.pm was not found and I located that (I just did a find command) in one of the subdirs under perl5, moved it to 5.8.0 directory - and crossover office was operational!

you may not run into all of the above because I proceeded to install several programs (and maybe the Encode.pm error was run into during a program install).

but if you follow the above, as much as is needed, you will have Crossover operational.

with crossover, I was able to install Internet exporer 6 (yeah, I hear you scream, but my dam winapp INSISTS on it being on the system before IT will even try to install).

I have my app, netobjects fusion 9.0, largely working at this point, and its a BIG windows app. only have run into minor (but alas important issues), things like the built-in ftp client (presumeably using ie6 component) crashes the window.

one bummer, is that the crossover docs refer to starting a winapp with a command like

wine --bottle win2000 myappname

and the distributed wine simply does not support these commands.

I can run my app from the cxrun util, but it would obvsiouly be much nicer to have a nice desktop icon!

I'll let you know but I'm satisified that crossover is operational...

cdb.

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#11 Post by The Major »

Thanks for this detailed advice, but i have a follow up question. I have a copy of coreutils, which includes cksum - should I run ./configure to install all of the coreutils so I get a copy of cksum, or is there another way?

If so, in which folder would I put cksum?

thanks

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Crossover - SOLVED !!

#12 Post by The Major »

Many, many thanks. I followed your instructions and it works. I had a licenced copy, and evrything seems to be fine. Compared with wine, Crossover is more complete - for example you can run Outlook, which is useful for me so I can access several years worth of old pst files from previous client projects.

As I'm using the Xfce desktop, I have set icons for cxrun and officesetup (to install or change any windows software) in the menu bar.

Would it be worth posting copies of the various files that you need, so that others could use them without having to worry about finding them?

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Proving it works

#13 Post by The Major »

Here's a screenshot of my desktop (no pretty pictures - I like them functional) showing Crossover running Windows Media Player along with open source applications.

As you can see I prefer the Xfce window manager.
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desktop icon to launch Windows applications

#14 Post by The Major »

I re-installed Puppy using the cut down version of XFCE, and installed Crossover 5.0.1 (that was the last version covered by my licence).

I found that I could launch PowerPoint (or other Windows applications) by using this script, saved to a file called PowerPoint.sh. Drag and drop to the desktop, or add to the XFCE menu bar.

#!/bin/sh
exec "/opt/cxoffice/bin/wine" --bottle "win98" --start "c:/Program Files/Microsoft Office/Office10/POWERPNT.EXE" "$@"


Obviously, change the directory and application .exe file name as required.

Ian

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#15 Post by Sit Heel Speak »

Major, a question (and you too, NathanF):

Have you experienced any problems with Crossover in remembering window positions and sizes?

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Further experience of Crossovers in Puppy

#16 Post by The Major »

I haven't had any problems with Crossover remembering Window positions and sizes. In fact, I've found that once I've got the programme window to my preferences, it is saved by Crossover.

I've experimented a bit more with it in Puppy. I needed to install PowerPoint to read some very complex native PowerPoint presentations with specific fonts (although on my USB installation I use Thinkfree using Java), and Outlook to access about 5 years of my corporate memory.

When I installed Office XP (about the highest level you can go in Crossover - Windows 2003 isn't fully supported yet), it installs Internet Explorer. Crossover tries to install an IE icon on the desktop, but in Puppy this ends up as an icon in a new folder called Desktop. It was looking at the script in this file that allowed me to create other executable Windows shortcuts (see my earlier post).

In fact, Crossover creates icons in the Desktop folder for some other programmes as well - Media Player and Acrobat 5.0 (full version). The rest need to be created using variations of the script listed earlier. Here's a screen grab of my Desktop folder, which is opened my clicking the Windows icon in the Xfce menu bar. I've shown other Windows programmes that work - Dreamweaver and Flash work too.

Running under an adapted version of 109CE - I've switched to Seamonkey because of the junk mail filter and built in address book - now I just need printing to work and I've got my perfect desktop
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