[seul-edu] wine testing efforts

[Matt Drew <mdrew@redhat.com>]

One of the major things I've run across in the Red Hat pilot is that 
most of the schools would really like to keep running most of the 
educational software they have.  If they are interested in moving to 
Linux, right now this means Wine (with a couple of exceptions).

Here are some preliminary Wine testing results from different sites here 
in North Carolina.  Test platform was RHL 7.3, updated with the 0512 
build of of the basic Wine (obtained from http://www.linux-easy.com/daily/).

If anyone has tried any similar applications or has done some serious 
testing, I'd love to hear about it.

We should probably database-ize this at some point. :)

Note that the commercial Codeweavers Crossover product 
(www.codeweavers.com) is known to handle Office much better than the 
basic Wine.

*****

Microsoft Office 2000:  Partially functional

Office 2000 installs fairly well.  DO NOT install the Office Assistant 
-- he will crash Wine everytime he starts up.  If you don't have an 
Everything Red Hat Linux install, there are complaints about fonts -- 
looking into this.  Even with the font problems, the apps seem okay. 
Known working:

Word 2000
Excel 2000
PowerPoint 2000

OLE functionality (cross-program transfers, like putting an Excel 
spreadsheet into an Word Document) does not appear to work.  Access and 
FrontPage both require IE 3.0 or higher -- the IE 5.0 installation 
included with my CD did NOT work, so those two are out for the time being.

This is probably the easiest of applications to replace (OpenOffice.org, 
StarOffice) in the grand scheme of things because most people do not use 
90% of the included functionality.  The major block we've run into is 
that some business education units concentrate on Microsoft 
certification and application-specific training.

*****

Riverdeep Pre-K software:

Riverdeep/Edmark "ABCs and 123s" -- seems to be fully functional on 7.3 
(with updated wine)

Riverdeep/Edmark "Trudy's Time and Place House" -- partially functional 
on updated RHL7.3, has a redraw issue that prevents proper function.

Riverdeep/Edmark "Sammy's Science House" -- partially functional on 
updated RHL7.3, has a redraw issue that prevents proper function.

Riverdeep/Edmark "Millie's Math House" -- partially functional on 
updated RHL7.3, has a redraw issue that prevents proper function.

Riverdeep/Edmark "Travel the World with Timmy! Deluxe" -- nonfunctional 
under updated RHL7.3, needs DirectX 7.0 or better(winex?)

Riverdeep/Edmark "Thinkin' Things: Toony the Loon's Lagoon" -- 
nonfunctional on RHL7.3, but also nonfunctional on Windows system, so 
status is unknown (corrupted CD?  incompatibility with Win98?).


I was disappointed in how this turned out.  Most of this software is or 
was very recently Win3.1 compatible, which would imply better Wine 
compatibility in my mind.

*****

Orchard Software:

Nonfunctional.  The demo installs, but apparently the database fails to 
initialize and you can't get to any of the lessons.  I'm still working 
on this one, because it is important here in NC.

*****

NCS Mentor for Virginia Schools:

Mostly functional.  A couple of minor display issues, but the program 
works, even running off of a Samba share.

*****

SIFS -- a Windows-based Student Information System in use in Virginia. 
Appears to be fully functional, but probably needs further testing.

*****

SIMS -- a DOS-based SIS.  Folks here have it running with 
dosemu/FreeDOS, there are issues with printing (should be solved) and 
with backup, which is done with a Zip disk.  We also have contact with 
the maintainer, so this should be okay.


-- 
Matt Drew
Red Hat, Inc
Education Pilot Tech Coordinator
(919)880-7736 (cell)
(919)754-3700 x44192
mdrew@redhat.com