[K12OSN] Crossover office

"Terrell Prudé, Jr." microman at cmosnetworks.com
Fri Oct 1 19:23:05 UTC 2004


Not in my experience.  What I looked for was evidence of shared code 
being used by multiple users, a'la Mozilla or OO.o.  I did see that 
evidence.  The WINE libraries appear to get loaded once.  From what it 
looks like, something similar happens when you load MS Office XP.  So, 
it appears to behaving the same as other apps generally do on 
GNU/Linux.  What appears to matter is how many apps you have open in the 
first place, be they Win32 or native, so if you've got 25 people loading 
all of OO.o, MS Office, The GIMP, Mozilla, etc., then you're going to 
want to look at large DRAM.

DISCLAIMER:  I do not run this in production.  I am a beta tester, and I 
test this in my spare time at home.

No special tweaks that I noticed to installing Xover on a LTSP server, 
other than adding the path to Xover to your /etc/skel files.  That of 
course assumes that you want to do "Start"/Run and type "winword.exe".

--TP

Steve Hargadon wrote:

>I'm interested in:
>
>1)  Has it been your experience that an LTSP server, already
>configured and running a certain number of workstations with
>OpenOffice, Mozilla, etc., needs any additional power or memory when
>you add Crossover Office?
>
>2)  Are there any configuration tweaks to installing Crossover Office
>on and LTSP-configured server?
>
>Steve
>
>
>On Fri, 01 Oct 2004 14:09:17 -0400, Terrell Prudé, Jr.
><microman at cmosnetworks.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>Krsnendu wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>I am considering my options of Crossover office vs Win Server 2003 for
>>>our school. We can get licences for Win Server 2003 quite cheap, but
>>>it would be easier to manage if we only had one server to maintain.
>>>
>>>It also comes down to costs. The educational pricing for Crossover
>>>office is $52 where as the server version is $1500 for 25 licences.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>If I install Crossover office professional on my K12LTSP server, will
>>>all the clients be able to concurrently access it? Or would I have to
>>>get the server version?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>If we can use Crossover office Professional that would be the
>>>preferred soln, if we had to pay for the server version for concurrent
>>>access then WS2003 would obviously be a better solution.
>>>
>>>We can get it for about (annual) $65 server licence, $6.50 each
>>>terminal licence. We get Office XP for free.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>Any advice?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>Go for it.  I am currently an "advocate" for Xover Office, specifically
>>the Time Matters app, and thus I get the beta copies.  CrossOver
>>Professional great with K12LTSP and multiple simultaneous users, and I
>>know this because that's what I test it on.  :-)  I find it way, way
>>more efficient than any version of Windows Terminal Server, despite
>>Microsoft's marketing claims.  For that reason, you won't need nearly
>>the server farm with CrossOver Office (any version, Server included)
>>that you'll need with Windows Terminal Server, for the same amount of
>>users.  Thus, you save big time on the costs for the physical servers.
>>
>>HOWEVER....
>>
>>You will need to pay for each user concurrently using CrossOver
>>Professional.  Yes, the software will let you "get away" with it w/o
>>paying, but that's software piracy and not fair to CodeWeavers.  For 25
>>users, that's $1300.  Note that the aforementioned reduced hardware cost
>>for servers will more than equal out any initial price difference
>>between the Microsoft solution and that of K12LTSP/CodeWeavers, so you
>>actually spend *less* with the latter, not more.  The following question
>>is also raised:  is classroom instruction time, or time spent
>>maintaining computers, more valuable to the Powers That Be?
>>
>>Speaking of price, I'd love to know how you're getting MS Office XP for
>>free.  Our district sure doesn't, so if you'd be willing, could you
>>provide me with the contact info for your contract negotiatiors
>>(off-list for this is fine)?  I'd like to pass this on to the folks who
>>negotiate our contracts.  Yes, I'm dead serious; we could conceivably
>>save a lot of money on our MS Office bill with whatever your district
>>did...again, if you'd be comfortable sharing this.
>>
>>--TP
>>_____________________
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>>
>>
>>
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>>
>>    
>>
>
>
>
>  
>


-- 
_____________________
Do you GNU!? <http://www.gnu.org>
Be virus- and spam-free with Free/Open Source Software (FOSS). Check it 
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