I was also confused about the differences between the versions.
For crossover beginners essential questions may rise up:
- what is the real difference between the versions? It looks equal
Hi,
Every build of Crossover is based on one or another version of wine - sometimes
both Crossover products are based on the same wine tree, other times not. When we say
'based on', that means what it says - Codeweavers take the wine release tree, and add
to that other patches (hooks to the GUI elements and so on). Now, ostensibly there are
2 custom patch sets - one for the normal Crossover product, and one for the Games product.
The patch set for the normal Crossover product adds code/features required to make (and
keep) numerous office/productivity applications running and performing well - conversely,
the patch set for the Games version of Crossover contains code/features required to make
(and keep) many games titles working....
....due to the nature of the patches (in part caused because of the disparity of resources
demanded by a win32 game, compared to that required by a win32 app), many of said patches
cannot live 'side by side' in the one wine source tree build. An easy example would be that
a patch that allows some game to render properly, causes graphics artifacts to start appearing
in some office program...or vice versa - the code required for the office app to fix the
graphics artifacts, causes some games to crash. For these sorts of technical reasons, Codeweavers
maintains the 2 product branches so users can get the best experience/performance from their
app or game...
...mind you, wine technology itself is always evolving and growing, and I would imagine that
'eventually', the wine core code will be so good, that one version will be able to handle
both apps & games equally -- and present however, that's not really the case....
- Can both both versions be installed in parallel?
- do they integrate into each other on installation?
Yes, both version can be installed at the same time. They integrate at the OS/user level, but
in real terms the two environments are mutually exclusive.
- do i need to select the version for each crosstie?
I don't understand this question - all crossties are version matched against one or another
Crossover version in their creation. Some crossties are for both Crossover products, and
in those specific cases, if you have both crossover products installed, you have to select
which Crossover version you want to install into -- if you're talking about selecting version
for each crosstie in another context ..ie; creating them...that's really fodder for the
advocate's crosstie forum....but in the automation context, crossties meant for normal
Crossover won't work in Crossover Games (and vice-versa), and likewise crosstie made for
version 10 of Crossover products, won't work in Crossover version 9 (but crossties for version
9 -should- still work for version 10)....
Cheers!