WINE anyone?

KAGY

I'm looking to move over to Linux soon, and although I would be happy to use all open source programs for my own use I'm an IT tutor and need screen shots etc from Office. Would this suite look the same running on a WINE layer?

Or has anybody installed a version of windows under VMware?

Any thoughts would be apreciated?

Sputnik

If you just need some screenshots I'd use VMware. the potential hassle of getting WINE working properly isn't worth it in my opinion.

¬_¬

Not 100% alike, but close enough for your purposes.
http://www.winehq.com/images/shots/full/wine_2.png
Fine for what you want, TBH.
Have a look on the same site re: running your selected Office programs with WINE.

Capt'n Midnight

If you don't need full visual compatibility you could use openoffice to get a similar feel,

or use an old machine running windows and connect to it with VNC or rdesktop

http://www.codeweavers.com/products/differences/ - for differences between freebie wine and the $59.99 version that is supposed to run office better

djmarkus

wine isnt bad with recent versions, but it is well known that office 2k3 doesnt work, but theres very little that wont run on it, but it does take some tweaking to get some things to work.

Not really relevant but i have Half life 2 running on wine nearly flawlessly

Khannie

This may be a bit late....but you should check out kernel level virtualisation which has just been added to 2.6.20. This promises to be really excellent.

ATM though, I'd go with VMware myself. Wine is good stuff though and is an easy install (depending on your distro...ubuntu and gentoo both make wine easy to install, I'm sure there are others).

telecinesk

Tried wine, and a lot of quirkes. Then found crossoverlinux as mentioned above by captn midnight. Its easier and actually works!
Its rather amusing running IE6 on Fedora v6, still I have yet to confirm how it handles Office. I just tend not to use office, openoffice is reasonable for what i want.
Get back to me if you have any success or better emus for running win software.

KAGY

Thanks for all your replies, I'll let you know how I get on whenever I get around to this switchover. I might try dual booting for a while, just in case!

In some of my more advanced classes though there has been a bit of conversation about Vista, I think that MS might have just shot themselves in the foot with the hardware requirements! I was even talking to the course manager about OpenOffice but as trainers we have to be followers rather than leaders. As long as offices use MS we have to teach it!

Jim_No.6

Try CrossOverOffice - runs MS Office perfectly.