I was reading Bill Higgins blog post about converting from Windows to Ubuntu on his work desktop. While I am impressed with his little write up I would like to offer him a little something if he has not already found it.
WINE or Codeweavers Crossover Office :: Crossover for Linux
July 8th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
I recently converted from Win XP to Ubuntu - and find the experience really good. I work with a lot of customers and business partners and as I regularly discuss alternatives to Windows, it seemed churlish not to give it a go myself. There is nothing on Windows that I miss other than a good racing game!
In IBM we may not be totally weaned off windows, and there is no religious necessity to do so, but it’s good to see that the alternative is real and that it works.
John
July 10th, 2008 at 9:46 am
I have tried WINE for a couple different applications now and find it to be unacceptable for things central to your core daily tasks. I specifically have been trying to get Office 2003 working in WINE and also tried CrossOver Office - neither was stable in my experience. I continue to run WinXP in VirtualBox on my Ubuntu 8.04 specifically for Outlook/WDSC/GoToMeeting. Gotomeeting I can eventually find an alternative to, but Outlook and WDSC will be a littler harder. I am looking into a pseudo coherence mode instead: http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/149 (I haven’t tested this out yet)
July 10th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Aaron,
I have had very good luck with WINE and Crossover Office. I think maybe it was just bad luck or it could be you use those products differently than do I, which is probably the case. As for WDSC is sad that in 2008 IBM has still not released a version for Linux. At times I love IBM because they build good stuff and at other times I hate them because they build it for the wrong platform. Lotus Notes is another example of good stuff built for the wrong platform, some 10 years into it they are finally coming around.
Keep the faith and I did put on my Hair Net to write this.
July 11th, 2008 at 2:47 am
Hi David, and thanks very much for the links. To be clear “IBM” is not moving to Ubuntu officially, but there are quite a few people within IBM who have moved to Ubuntu for various reasons. As someone later pointed out in a comment to my blog post, there is a pre-built Linux package for IBMers, but it’s built on RedHat. I will continue to use Ubuntu though because of its momentum and community, even if it means that I run an officially unsupported laptop configuration (oh well).
Thanks again for the links.
July 11th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Bill, my pleasure. I never assume IBM is doing anything until they announce it. So at this point we are going to throw out the news back in 2003 when IBM said “all internal desktop and laptops will be moved to Linux by 2006″.
Of course no one at IBM can recall saying that but who cares really?
I think it’s great that you are looking at Linux, I think Ubuntu is a great place to start and look forward to knowing more about your adventures. Nice to see IBM has an internal .DEB repository.
-David