Codeweavers: Give It Away Today
If you’re a Mac or Linux person and you want to run Windows apps without a Windows license, then the folks at Codeweavers have a deal for you. Today–and today only–until midnight GMT-5, you can get your own, fully functional copy of Codeweavers Crossover Linux or Mac for free.
Why are they doing this? It was a publicity stunt. The folks at Codeweavers challenged George Bush to do something to improve our lot in his last months of his presidency. Whether he was ultimately responsible for gas prices plummeting a buck over the past month or not is irrelevant, but the folks at Codeweavers saw that one of their goals was meant and they are keeping to their word.
The Codeweavers Crossover product is a commercial version of Wine, which is an open-source project that allows Windows executables to run on non-Windows systems. It’s not perfect, since it is a cleanroom implementation of the Windows API and they haven’t got bug-for-bug compatibility yet. However, it does run some specific applications like Microsoft Office reasonably well. It also runs Internet Explorer, which is useful in and of itself.
The main thing you get with Crossover is a much nicer installation process for Windows applications. It knows about the most common applications and is able to configure itself for an optimal installation. It makes the application installation process a bit easier.
The other amazing part about about this is that you also get a year of support with this freebie. This entitles you to technical support as well as a year of updates on the product. Quite righteous!
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