Windows on Linux workstations? Thread poster: Heinrich Pesch
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Heinrich Pesch 
Finland
Local time: 01:14
Member (2003)
Finnish to German
+ ...
Someone told me that newer versions of Linux let you run Windows in a window, so that you can run any Windows application in it. True or not? Has someone tried to run Trados on a Linux system?
Regards
Heinrich
| | | | Sonja Tomaskovic (X)
Germany
Local time: 00:14
English to German
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| Crossover Office/Wine/VMWare | Mar 18, 2005 |
Hello Heinrich,
it is true that so called emulators for Windows on Linux exist. There are several of them.
Both Crossover Office and VMWare are commercial products. Crossover Office was primarily developed to make MS Office run on Linux. AFAIK, it is pretty stable and let's you run Office smoothly (probably not 100%; I haven't tested it). Originally, Crossover Office was developed from WINE, which is an open source Windows emulator on Linux. However, wine is far from be... See more Hello Heinrich,
it is true that so called emulators for Windows on Linux exist. There are several of them.
Both Crossover Office and VMWare are commercial products. Crossover Office was primarily developed to make MS Office run on Linux. AFAIK, it is pretty stable and let's you run Office smoothly (probably not 100%; I haven't tested it). Originally, Crossover Office was developed from WINE, which is an open source Windows emulator on Linux. However, wine is far from being stable and reliable. My impression is that wine is pretty much about configuration. If you can make it run for one app it doesn't necessarily mean that you'll be able to run any other Windows app on it.
VMWare is a bit different from these two as it emulates a whole computer. It is commercial and I have never tried it. Maybe someone else can give you more information on it. I've heard it's pretty stable and reliable, but expensive.
I would just like to mention that I have not heard of anyone who managed to run Trados on Linux with the help of any of these tools. I don't think it is possible to run any Windows application on Linux. Sooner or later you will run into a piece of software that just won't work on Linux, no matter which solution you chose to make it run.
HTH.
Sonja
[Edited at 2005-03-18 08:46] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Marc P (X)
Local time: 00:14
German to English
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| Windows on Linux workstations? | Mar 18, 2005 |
Heinrich,
As Sonja says, VMWare emulates an entire PC. You therefore install Windows on top of VMWare and install your applications in turn in Windows. The main drawbacks are that you're still using Windows (so why bother) and it may be slower (though not necessarily).
There are few problems with running Windows applications with this solution because you are to all intents and purposes running Windows. Applications work fine, I understand, within their own little Windo... See more Heinrich,
As Sonja says, VMWare emulates an entire PC. You therefore install Windows on top of VMWare and install your applications in turn in Windows. The main drawbacks are that you're still using Windows (so why bother) and it may be slower (though not necessarily).
There are few problems with running Windows applications with this solution because you are to all intents and purposes running Windows. Applications work fine, I understand, within their own little Windows "space". Problems arise however when the application has to communicate with the hardware, which it has to do through the Linux layer. Dongles are a notorious problem.
Win4Lin is an alternative to VMWare, but the same applies.
Crossover Office (and WINE, upon which it is based), is quite different in that it *replaces* Windows rather than creating a space in which you can *install* Windows. Crossover Office is an excellent solution if you only need selected applications, notably MS Office. (Check out www.codeweavers.com for a comprehensive list; Word plug-ins such as Wordfast also generally work.) You can do the same thing with WINE, which is free, but WINE involves a lot of geeky tweaking. Crossover Office is well worth the $36 or so to save you the hassle. MS Office on Crossover Office is also, now, a very stable arrangement.
Marc ▲ Collapse
| | | | Heinrich Pesch
Finland
Local time: 01:14
Member (2003)
Finnish to German
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | Thank you for the information | Mar 18, 2005 |
It looks as if within a year or so Linux would be suitable for replacing Windows also for us translators.
Honestly I'd rather buy a Mac the next time, I'm so tired of these ugly boxes making noise all the time.
It was just that one friend is going to switch to Linux and I was curious if there would be any advantage for me.
But as my Win2000 runs fine, why bother?
Regards
Heinrich
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Robert Tucker (X)
United Kingdom
Local time: 23:14
German to English
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| Other emulators | Mar 18, 2005 |
QEMU/ReactOS and Bochs are other emulators possibly worth taking a look at.
ReactOS is a long way still from running even Word – the effort seems to be going into AbiWord, Firefox and OpenOffice which are already available in both Linux and Windows versions, of course!
Not currently convinced they are the way forward myself – much prefer to see quality software working on the original OS for which it was written.
[Edited at 2005-03-18 14:28]
| | | | Marc P (X)
Local time: 00:14
German to English
+ ...
| Windows on Linux workstations? | Mar 18, 2005 |
Heinrich Pesch wrote:
It looks as if within a year or so Linux would be suitable for replacing Windows also for us translators.
Do you mean natively, or by means of VMWare?
I replaced Windows with Linux throughout my office almost three years ago, without VMWare.
If you don't need particular DTP or speech recognition apps and are happy with Heartsome, OmegaT or Wordfast instead of Trados & Co, it isn't particularly difficult to migrate. One "problem" is that you don't have thousands of other users to ask for help if you need it.
Honestly I'd rather buy a Mac the next time, I'm so tired of these ugly boxes making noise all the time.
By all means buy a Mac, but for an extra 150 euros or so you can make a PC very close to silent. If it doesn't need to be blindingly fast, it can actually be silent, and attractive as well - try a Shuttle Cube, for instance.
Marc
| | | | Sonja Tomaskovic (X)
Germany
Local time: 00:14
English to German
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| Shuttle cube | Mar 18, 2005 |
MarcPrior wrote:
By all means buy a Mac, but for an extra 150 euros or so you can make a PC very close to silent. If it doesn't need to be blindingly fast, it can actually be silent, and attractive as well - try a Shuttle Cube, for instance.
Marc
I can definitely support that one. Our server here failed two weeks ago and my husband decided to replace it by a barebone Shuttle Cube. It's extremly silent and above that it's not getting as hot as the old one.... and really looks nice, btw.
Sonja
| | | | Mpoma
United Kingdom
Local time: 23:14
French to English
| Linux-compatible CAT apps - recommendations | Apr 8, 2005 |
hi,
very interested in this thread... I've been experimenting with Linux on a second comp and love it so far, specially when I actually succeed in getting it to do the next essential job... but the question of Trados is a major stumbling block
Marc mentioned Heartsome, OmegaT and Wordfast as possible linux-compatible TM alternatives... what are their respective merits?
Thanks
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Robert Tucker (X)
United Kingdom
Local time: 23:14
German to English
+ ...
This is another CAT tool that works on both Windows and Linux. Try the free version, but I suggest reading carefully the comments on linuxfortranslators (and elsewhere?) before taking it much further.
OmegaT – TMX only 1.1, no true Word input (but what's wrong with OpenOffice)
Heartsome – competent, but not cheap, no true Word input (but what's wrong with OpenOffice), not my favourite interface
Wordfast – need Word to run it (Crossover is quite a sign... See more This is another CAT tool that works on both Windows and Linux. Try the free version, but I suggest reading carefully the comments on linuxfortranslators (and elsewhere?) before taking it much further.
OmegaT – TMX only 1.1, no true Word input (but what's wrong with OpenOffice)
Heartsome – competent, but not cheap, no true Word input (but what's wrong with OpenOffice), not my favourite interface
Wordfast – need Word to run it (Crossover is quite a significant fraction of the cost of XP, especially the OEM price, so ...). What has Wordfast got that MetaTexis hasn't?
http://www.cafetran.republika.pl/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/linuxfortranslators
[Edited at 2005-04-08 11:45] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 00:14
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
| Wine is getting better... | Apr 8, 2005 |
Heinrich Pesch wrote:
Someone told me that newer versions of Linux let you run Windows in a window, so that you can run any Windows application in it.
CrossoverOffice is a commercial port of Wine, and is designed for specific Windows programs. VMWare is designed for all Windows programs. Both CrossoverOffice and VMWare (and similar programs) cost money; and you must have valid, paid-for licences for the Windows programs too.
Wine is getting better all the time, and I have had success in running several Windows based programs with it. It often works best if the programs' install sequences are run via Wine as well, instead of trying to run a program through Wine that has been installed using Windows. But on occasion I have been able to run Windows programs which were installed under Windows, which reside on a Windows-formatted FAT32 partition mounted by Linux.
You can forget about getting MS Office to work on Wine, though. You may get it to run (which I did), but actually using it won't be possible.
| | | | | | Sonja Tomaskovic (X)
Germany
Local time: 00:14
English to German
+ ...
| Merits and problems | Apr 8, 2005 |
Hi,
the big difference between Heartsome and OmegaT compared to Wordfast on Linux are that the former don't need Microsoft Word to work with it. Wordfast is actually a MS Word "plug-in", so you will definitely need Word, along with Crossover Office which makes it possible to run Word on Linux in the first place. The benefits are that you are able to deliver Trados uncleaned files to your customers. Although I've been told that Crossover Office+Word+Wordfast are pretty stable it may ... See more Hi,
the big difference between Heartsome and OmegaT compared to Wordfast on Linux are that the former don't need Microsoft Word to work with it. Wordfast is actually a MS Word "plug-in", so you will definitely need Word, along with Crossover Office which makes it possible to run Word on Linux in the first place. The benefits are that you are able to deliver Trados uncleaned files to your customers. Although I've been told that Crossover Office+Word+Wordfast are pretty stable it may not be as stable as it is on Windows.
Both Heartsome and OmegaT are designed to run without MS products. However, to harness the full potential of these two you will at least need OpenOffice.org or StarOffice. Both tools support TMX (OmegaT v1.1, Heartsome v1.4). Although you should be able to exchange these TMX files with your customers it still means that you are not able to deliver Trados compatible TMs or uncleaned files.
Furthermore, OmegaT segments by paragraph (there is a workaround to segment by sentence), Heartsome can handle segmentation by sentence and paragraph.
OmegaT is an open source software package and free. Heartsome is commercial, but moderately priced (XLF4Edit is around 90 USD at the moment, if you buy their complete package the price is about 400 USD). Both require at least the Java Runtime Environment.
I suggest you give all of these tools a try. I am not sure if Crossover Office is available as trial version, but Wordfast as well as OmegaT and Heartsome are all available for testing purposes.
http://www.wordfast.net
http://www.omegat.org
http://www.heartsome.net
HTH.
Sonja ▲ Collapse
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