Microsoft CRM on Linux!
I work with great people who are open-minded (none of this "my brand is better than your brand" thinking), so much so that they are IMHO the driving force behind interoperability in South Africa. When I recently presented a session on Microsoft CRM and said that it couldn’t be used on other operating systems, Henk, our Linux expert, took it as a challenge to get it to work.
The main issue is that for MSCRM to work, it needs Internet Explorer—and it needs IE because of the million lines of JavaScript that exist, and a lot of it makes use of MSXML, which is not available cross-platform. Henk did some magic and found a program/tool/package called IE4Linux! What is IE4Linux?
IEs4Linux is the simpler way to have Microsoft Internet Explorer running on Linux (or any OS running Wine). No clicks needed. No boring setup processes. No Wine complications. Just one easy script, and you'll get three IE versions to test your sites. And it's free and open source.
They mention three versions, which are 5.0, 5.5, and 6.0; however, 7.0 is in beta. Since MSCRM needs 5.5 or higher, it just might work! Henk did his magic to get it working, and I did mine (which was very easy—just making sure my VM was running and getting the firewall configured). Without much fuss, he got Microsoft CRM running on Linux!!! He has promised a whole post on IE4Linux, so if you want to know more, please watch his site; otherwise, enjoy the pictures taken from his Linux box below of MSCRM!
