A couple of questions for you software guru's...

[Geomoo1]

about running Designer 1.187 or even 2. on a Linux system. I have a dual boot machine with Windblows 7 and Linux and I was just wondering...
1. Has any one tried running Designer under Wine on Linux recently. I know it was tried in the past but I have actually gotten it to install under Wine and, so far, everything seems to work. The problem being that it is the unregistered "trial" version and the limited functionality won't allow me to test it out all the way.
2. If it does work, and I want to register the program running on Linux, will it count as another machine against my account? I already have it registered on my Windows 7 desktop (dual boot machine) and my Windows 7 laptop.
I have to have it running on the laptop because that is the only machine I have that recognizes the flash card as readable. For some reason my desktop says that the card is not readable but it works fine with the laptop. I have 2 readers and 2 cards and it does the same with both readers and cards. I think it is a problem with the USB ports on my desktop. Go figure!!! Any way. I have to have it on the laptop to be able to upload/manage the flash cards but the screen is so small I do all Designer work on my desktop and transfer the project to the laptop for upload. It would be a real convenience to not have to switch over to Windows just to run Designer. It would not actually be on three machines, just three different operating systems on only two machines.

[jamescwatts]

I wouldn't trust Wine. I use Sun's (now Oracle, yuck) VirtualBox. It's free and awesome. I have 2 VMs for CW; one XP and one Win7 x64 (in the process of migrating to). Both work well, but XP is about to be end-of-support. Using a Sabayon Linux box with 12 cores and 24G RAM they work extremely well. A bit quicker off of an SSD than rust. Win7 has the advantage of addressing more memory and font support is a bit better. Someday I'll benchmark them and see if there's any difference, but I really haven't noticed a huge improvement from OS alone. It would be nice if gui.exe multi-threaded better.

[RMarkey]

We run many test environments through virtualbox. Every version of windows in 32 and 64 bit runs on a single win xp machine with vb installed.

Oracle VB is not stable running windows under native linux... it works better the other way around.

We have a native linux port of designer to x86 and arm(tablets/raspberry pi), but its only for our internal use. To use the usb(flash programmer), you must have root privileges.

[Geomoo1]

Thanks for the comebacks, guys. So far gui seems to be running smoothly under Wine although running trial version precludes trying everything. I am really curious as to the answer to my second question. Does having two OS's on one machine constitute two machines or only one as far as registering the program? After all, it is only one machine....

[bergerud]

My guess is that you can run both on the same machine. The license has to do with the computer ID generated from your hardware and so will work for both. I run many different versions of Designer on the same computer with the same license. I think it would be the same.

[jamescwatts]

I've had very few issues with any OS, except for Mountain Lion, running in VB on a Sabayon (Gentoo derivative) Linux server. That's the only way I've ever run the CW GUI. YMMV, obviously.

If you wanted to release those ports I'm sure you'd have some happy beta testers! Hint Hint.