CG's Ramblings

In my last post today, I asked:

How do you get rid of Windows when important websites (for you) work only with IE?

Here's the answer, if you are using Linux: CrossOver from CodeWeavers (there's an OS X version too). I just installed IE on Ubuntu and tried a couple of websites which I knew didn't work well with Firefox. Preliminary conclusion is that they work perfectly fine on the newly-installed IE. Hurray! So I don't need to install Windows, yet.

Note that CrossOver Linux is not free software; it is a proprietary version of Wine, the well-known Windows Emulator (not!) for Linux, BSD and OS X. So you have to shell out a few bucks (around 40 USD) to buy the "Standard" version ("Professional" one costs more). Although it can run a lot of Windows apps on Linux, even if it was only for this reason (ability to run IE), I think its worth the cost.

I didn't have to buy CrossOver, however. :) I downloaded it for free in late October when CodeWeavers gave it away with their Lame Duck Presidential Challenge. Then I forgot all about it, until now. (I also downloaded CrossOver Games that day — Steam works well with it, so I've heard. Maybe I'll play some real games again.)

If you really don't want to spend the money, you could try Wine itself. But I haven't used it, so I can't say whether it works as well as CrossOver.

Labels: emulators, ie, linux, windows

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