CrossOver is a

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

compatibility layer available for Linux, macOS, and ChromeOS. This compatibility layer enables many Windows-based applications to run on Linux operating systems, macOS, or ChromeOS. CrossOver is developed by CodeWeavers and based on Wine, an

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

Windows compatibility layer. CodeWeavers modifies the Wine source code, applies compatibility patches, adds

configuration Configuration or configurations may refer to: Computing * Computer configuration or system configuration * Configuration file, a software file used to configure the initial settings for a computer program * Configurator, also known as choice board ...

tools that are more

user-friendly Usability can be described as the capacity of a system to provide a condition for its users to perform the tasks safely, effectively, and efficiently while enjoying the experience. In software engineering, usability is the degree to which a soft ...

, automated installation scripts, and provides technical support. All changes made to the Wine source code are covered by the

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and publicly available. CodeWeavers maintains an online database listing how well various Windows applications perform under CrossOver.

Versions

CrossOver Linux

CrossOver Linux is the original version of CrossOver. It aims to properly integrate with the

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and KDE desktop environments so that Windows applications will run seamlessly on Linux distributions. Prior to version 6 it was called CrossOver Office. CrossOver Linux was originally offered in Standard and Professional editions. CrossOver Linux Standard was designed for a single user account on a single machine. CrossOver Linux Professional provided enhanced deployment and management features for corporate users, as well as multiple user accounts per machine. With the release of CrossOver Linux 11 in 2012 these different editions have all merged into a single CrossOver Linux product.

CrossOver Mac

In 2005 Apple announced a transition from

PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...

to Intel processors in their computers, which allowed CodeWeavers to develop a Mac OS X version of CrossOver Office called 'CrossOver Mac' CrossOver Mac was released on January 10, 2007. With the release of CrossOver Mac 7 on June 17, 2008, CrossOver Mac was divided into Standard and Pro editions like CrossOver Linux. The Standard version included six months of support and upgrades, while the Pro version included one year of support and upgrades, along with a free copy of CrossOver Games. With the release of CrossOver Mac 11 in 2012 these different editions were all merged into a single CrossOver Mac product. In 2019, macOS went 64-bit only and eliminated 32-bit compatible libraries. In December 2019 Codeweavers released CrossOver 19, providing support for 32 bit Windows applications on an operating system with no 32 bit libraries solving this problem.

Discontinued products

A standard copy of CrossOver now includes the functionality of CrossOver Games, CrossOver Standard, and CrossOver Professional editions. These older individual versions of Crossover have since been retired. CrossOver Games, announced on 10 March 2008, was a product intended to let users play a broad range of games by providing current Wine patches. The expectation was that it would update on a weekly to monthly schedule in order to incorporate the latest Wine programming work being accepted. In contrast the general CrossOver Office product focused more on stability and productivity software, and had a much slower beta and release schedule. CrossOver Games wasn't able to release updates with enough frequency to justify its separate production track and was discontinued in 2012. It was merged back into a unified CrossOver product. CrossOver Server was a specialized version of CrossOver Linux which allowed Windows applications to run on thin-client systems. It was discontinued in 2007 as many of its features were present in the CrossOver Linux Pro edition.

Software giveaway

On October 28, 2008 as the result of the Lame Duck Challenge, Codeweavers gave all of their products away for free. Codeweavers' main page was temporarily replaced due to the day's unusually high traffic. According to CodeWeavers at least 750,000 product registrations were given away during October 28. On October 31, 2012, CodeWeavers had a second software giveaway, this one entitled "Flock the Vote". CodeWeavers promised to have such a giveaway if 100,000 American voters would promise to vote on election day, in a

nonpartisan Nonpartisanism is a lack of affiliation with, and a lack of bias towards, a political party. While an Oxford English Dictionary definition of ''partisan'' includes adherents of a party, cause, person, etc., in most cases, nonpartisan refers sp ...

bid to encourage

activism Activism (or Advocacy) consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in Social change, social, Political campaign, political, economic or Natural environment, environmental reform with the desire to make Social change, changes i ...

. More than 100,000 people pledged, so CodeWeavers allowed any person in the world to download and register a copy of CrossOver Linux or CrossOver Mac.

References

External links

* {{Unix–Windows interoperability Compatibility layers Linux emulation software Software derived from or incorporating Wine Unix emulation software macOS emulation software Wine (software) Python (programming language) software