CrossOver Support - Community Forums

I've been trying to get Sidekick 98 or 99 to work with Ubuntu 8.10. Installation with Wine is flawless but there is a deal-breaker in running the program -- you can not "Save" or "Save As" without the program crashing.

So I just purchased CrossOver Linux Pro to see if that would solve the problem(s). But I can't get Sidekick 98 or 99 to install with it. Crossover starts the installation, then the complete monitor goes completely white then just sits there, forever. Pressing "Esc" closes the white window and the Crossover dialog box then indicates that it is rebooting Windows.

That is not how it should work. Sidekick's installation routine does make the screen white but there is text and some stuff to click on as you are walked through the installation process.

Any ideas?

PS: The best answer of course is to replace Sidekick with a native Linux & Windows program. Sidekick was a PIM originally developed by Borland back in the DOS days. During its Windows hayday it was the most popular PIM. The last few versions were developed by Starfish Software (founded by Borland's Philippe Kahn). The last version was Sidekick 99 before Starfish was bought by Motorola and the Sidekick product was abandoned.

The only part of Sidekick that the five of us use at work is the customer database. I've looked and looked and looked for a replacement for it and I haven't found one. The hard feature to find is a small customer database that has no pre-defined fields. We have about 35 custom fields that hold a bunch of info about the customer. Oh, and the other part that has been tough to find is super ease of use and visually clean and simple.

Sidekick is the last program that is holding us up from completely switching over to Linux. If you have any suggestions for a Sidekick replacement I'd love to here them! I'd really rather have us run a native Linux program...

The first question, do you have anything extra installed in Wine? (winetricks maybe?)

If you do, CrossOver may also need some additional pieces before it can run your installer. Some of the more common packages are directx, flash, MDAC, IE6, .net, etc. The application seems like it is too new for .Net, but a more tenured building block would not be uncommon.

Unfortunately I do not personally know of a good Linux alternative program, but I believe that one is out there somewhere. I get quite a few Google hits just by looking for 'linux customizable customer database'. I am no expert in your business, so I have no idea if any of the solutions that come up are acceptable for your needs.

As far as Sidekick goes, it may just take a little bit of playing to get it to come alive.