CrossOver is a popular compatibility layer for Windows applications on Mac, Linux, and Chromebooks, based on the Wine project. CrossOver 24 has just been released, with some great usability improvements and significant upgrades to app and game compatibility.
CrossOver 24 is based on Wine 9.0, which brings over 7,000 changes aimed at improving a variety of applications. It also contains Wine Mono 8.1.0, vkd3d 1.10, and MoltenVK 1.2.5, with the latter two designed to help run more games and 3D-accelerated applications. CodeWeavers specifically mentions Planet Zoo, the Warframe standalone launcher, Mafia: Definitive Edition, and Horizon Zero Dawn as some newly-compatible games, and the latest installers for Microsoft Office 365 applications now work (as long as you use the 32-bit online installers).
The CrossOver team has also included several highly-requested UI updates in this release. You can now drag and drop executables into CrossOver to run or install them, which is particularly useful for standalone Windows applications that can be run without installation. You can also save commands as a launcher on Mac or create a launcher on Linux. This action creates a launcher icon for the selected executable in your bottle.
CrossOver 24 also now allows users to change the directory where their bottles are stored. This feature is a boon for users who wish to store large Windows applications on an external drive. This new setting can be accessed from the CrossOver > Settings menu on Mac and Preferences on Linux.
CodeWeavers said in a blog post, “CrossOver 24 is just the beginning of what our team has planned for this year. This is the quickest turnaround that we’ve ever had for including a stable Wine release in CrossOver, and we have grand ambitions of building on this success and continuing to ship new features as fast as possible.”
CrossOver is a paid application that normally costs $74, which gives you 12 months of support and updates, plus special renewal pricing. There’s also a free trial available, and right now you can use promo code “WineNine” to drop that price to $56.24.
CrossOver works well if it’s compatible with the games and applications you need (that’s what the free trial is for), since it doesn’t require a Windows license or virtual machine running on your computer. For applications and games that absolutely need Windows, Parallels or VMWare Fusion are the other main options on Mac, and Linux users can try QEMU or VirtualBox.
Source: CodeWeavers
