Wine

[Frank Jahnke]

Wine is a difficult program to use, particularly on FreeBSD.  

Please note first that it is in the FreeBSD ports collection
(/usr/ports/emulators/wine), and not of the CD.  That version should be
20050725.  You should patch it according to
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-emulation/2005-July/001181.html
; that will get rid of a heap error you will otherwise get.

So far colleagues and I have a few successes.  Photoshop 7 runs very
well, as does Acrobat 4.0 (note: not the Reader, but Acrobat), but not
the distiller.  I almost have Excel and Word from Office 2000 working,
but there are a few major bugs, like the ability to save a file (!).
Excel in particular works very well otherwise.  

I have fiddled with the installation so much, though, that I'm not sure
I'd be able to reproduce the steps so you could install it.  I suppose I
will have to reinstall Wine and try a second time once it works.

Finally, I am initiating a petition encouraging CodeWeavers to release
CrossOver Office on FreeBSD.  It will be announced next week, and I will
post a copy of the announcement here.  

After working with Wine a bit, I find it frustratingly tantalizing, but
very difficult to get just right.  The documentation, such as it is, is
awful.  So a professionally-supported product would be a great help, I
think.

Frank