Running MSN on Mac using WINE / CrossOver

[navi.matrix]

Hello there forum, this is my first post here, I've been meaning to sign up for ages but only now am I getting around to it.

Anyway, here is my question.

I have been running Linux for quite some time, and am fairly adept at using terminal, WINE, etc. As with most people, I still cannot completely avoid Windows (Borderlands is addictive ok?) and I still use MSN, seeing as 95% of the people I know use it, not Yahoo messenger, AIM or Skype. Which is a nuisance for me, because while I like Adium, it really does suck compared to the real MSN client. And as usual, Microsoft pretends to be nice to Apple "developing software for it" while making sure its products are crippled so people either need to run CrossOver / Wine or Parallels / VMware to use it inside OS X, or create a boot camp partition for Windows. This doesn't make me want to use Windows, it makes me even more glad I purchased a Macbook.

Ranting aside, I find the Wine client for Mac kind of 2nd rate compared to the Linux version. Installing winetricks fails miserably, where on Linux it was simple. Also, the lack of a decent DMG file or package makes installing it that little bit more difficult, I've never had good luck at installing things via terminal, even on Linux.

My question is, has anyone found a way to install Wine and Winetricks on Mac to install MSN messenger?

-IMPORTANT NOTE-

I have Adium installed, as well as Microsoft Messenger, aMSN and I've tried basically all the other clients out there. Do not suggest these as solutions. This is about how to install the OFFICIAL Windows Live Messenger on Mac OS X using Wine, CrossOver or another method.

Thank you everyone

 

[balamw]

Being that there is no official WineHQ sanctioned release of Wine for Mac OS X (apart from crossover), you're absolutely right it is pretty lousy.

Were you running Messenger under Linux? Surprising since the Crossover and Wine compatibility lists show all recent versions as "known not to work".

For other apps, have you looked at http://winebottler.kronenberg.org/ though? I just tried it for a standalone app I need for work and it was absolutely simple. Much better than my last DarWine experience.

What's wrong with Parallels/Fusion/Virtualbox for your current needs?

B

 

[navi.matrix]

Hello and thanks for your reply.

I was running Messenger under Wine in Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic, using additional winetricks libaries to achieve this. Here is the link to the guide to making it work. http://wine-review.blogspot.com/2009/02/msn-messenger-2008-and-2009-on-linux.html

This did actually make it work surprisingly enough, it wasn't fantastic, but it was better than nothing.

Wine bottler looks pretty good, I'll give it a go and see what happens.

Finally, running parallels has been my current work around, but this is not so much about finding alternatives, as proving that it CAN actually be done on the Mac. I think that its important that a solution using WINE is found / developed. Besides, MSN is one of the more difficult apps to run under WINE, once it is working, I'm sure a lot of other apps would work just as well (Example, live mail).

Thanks for your time.