Slashdot Mirror

Well, so using a recent example. I like to use one application based on GTK/GNOME called Xara Xtreme, who until recently worked correctly. But it crashed when GNOME developers decided to change an somehow important API (god knows why). GNOME developers could have avoided this by simply making a new function and keeping the later (maybe "functionDoSomethingEx()" for the later "functionDoSomething()"), or modified the original function keeping the parameters compatible.

Yep, is a compromise. But it is way better than simply breaking all the compatibility and force users to change programs they may not have the means to change or upgrade.

P.S: Yes, yes, I can try to recompile the application because on this case I can get the source. But this can be very difficult or even impossible (dependency hell) to compile, and IF, and a big IF, if you know what and how to fix on the source.

Hi,
Firstly if you're looking for opensource app replacements you can always try www.osalt.com.

Personally I'd try:
Photoshop: GIMP or GIMPShop or Krita
Illustrator: Inkscape or XaraXtreme
InDesign: scribus
Dreamweaver: KompoZer or Aptana or seamonkey or Amaya or href="http://net2.com/nvu/">NVU

I also found this website which might help: www.thefreesuite.com

Here are the relevant OSalt links:
photoshop
illustrator
indesign
dreamweaver

Linux may be free, but there's no truly viable MS Office alternative, nothing that matches Exchange, there's no professional level Photoshop, there's nothing to edit videos with, nor post processing, good luck doing complex audio work

Ardour, anyone? It has been around for quite a few years, and is a really great professional grade DAW/production system. Try googling before posting something quite that ridiculous.

If you are a creative professional -- Linux is completely worthless. Sorry, but it is. I wish that were not the case, but there's no professional-level creative apps for Linux.

I guess all those Xara users, Ardour users, Cinelerra users, MainActor users, Blender users, VariCad users, Jahshaka/CineFX users, etc, are completely boned.

Of all the programs available for Linux, few are of comparable quality to those available to Windows or OSX.

That's just stupid. There are programs of poor quality on all of the major operating systems. Linux has its share of badly put-together programs, but saying that "few" are of comparable quality simply illustrates that you don't spend very much time with Linux systems or just have very poor choice in software.

Ubiquitous? I haven't seen a turbo button in years. I used to use them though - to turn off the turbo speed to debug redraw bugs under Windows 3.1 in an illustration package I was working on. It slowed down things enough so you could often see where it went wrong. And when I say it, I mean my code, of course.

It reminds me of when a fellow developer was trying to debug stuff, and couldn't see what was going wrong. Another developer said, "Ah, but what happens when you do this?", and pressed the turbo button. Or so he thought. The first developer, somewhat bemused to see the screen go blank and the BIOS screen appear, said slowly, "Well, it resets my PC. Duh."

Still makes me laugh :-)

GRRRR squatters. here is the right link.

Use the Preview Button! Check those URLs! :)

I've been using photoshop for about 10 years now and have become very proficient. I recently made the switch to linux. The only real application i havn't found a replacement for is photoshop. I have tried using GIMP but their are just too many problems with it.

Have you tried CinePaint aka FilmGIMP? I'll be getting into photography, well professionally I'm hoping, and because it would be a real stretch for me to afford Photoshop right now I'm been looking for a FOOS photo editor. Also as some have offered there are other editors available such as Bibble, Xara Xtreme, and Light Crafts. I'll start with CinePaint and work my way down 'til I find one that works for me, if I don't find one I guess I'll be stuck getting Photoshop. If I do what I'll do is buy an older version of PS from eBay and upgrade it. You can get PS pretty cheaply on eBay but you have to make sure what you get is eligible for upgrades and there's a Transfer of Ownership form filled out.

either that, edit some photos, create some music, even make a nice drawing or perhaps write a book. The fact that the Linux and *BSD excel at IT and programming jobs doesn't mean that's all they're good for, as you'd know had you actually used them.

or you could just troll on Slashdot like you're doing right now, you can use Opera or Firefox perfecly fine for that under Linux, too.

I'd recommend trying LightZone instead, it's a commercial app, specialized for photographers (much like Adobe's Lightroom)

I bookmarked and will check it out but I don't really want or need right now a workflow and management app, I could of gotten Aperture when I got my Macbook Pro if I wanted something like that. What I am looking for and want right now a full graphics editor. For management I want to create my own system, from accounting to websites with a shopping cart, piecing together difference open source software. I want to make something that would easily allow a photographer to create an online portfolio and sale photos. I'd use it myself but I also want the option of being able to sell it to other photographers.

Inkscape is a vector drawing software, kinda like Adobe's Illustrator

Yea, I know. It's for SVG editing but still I want to check it out for photography..

if you're interested in that area I'd also suggest checking out Xara Xtreme which is another, Free vector software for Linux and IMHO, even better than Inkscape.

I've seen it before, however there isn't an OS X version. It says they're looking for help in porting it to Macs. They do have one for Linux, and I have a Linux PC, however it will be mainly used as a server while for photography and development I'll be using mostly my Macbook Pro.

only if you're artificially limiting the supply, the GPL merely allows your customers to remove said artificial limit, otherwise the supply has always been "damn near infinite".

I'd recommend trying LightZone instead, it's a commercial app, specialized for photographers (much like Adobe's Lightroom), with a different workflow than Photoshop/TheGIMP but just as powerful and IMHO easier to use too. Inkscape is a vector drawing software, kinda like Adobe's Illustrator, and if you're interested in that area I'd also suggest checking out Xara Xtreme which is another, Free vector software for Linux and IMHO, even better than Inkscape.

vrms seems a bit outdated. Example output:

huh, user@machine:~$ vrms [...] xaralx Heavyweight vector graphics, illustration and DTP Prog

Xara Xtreme is GPL

I just made a quick check and found a download site with 1000 image editors. How many open source applications do you need? There's GIMP and Krita and... honestly, I can't think of a third one.

• POV-Ray
• Blender
• Xara
• Krita
• Inkscape

I've got a few more bookmarked. As for why there are so many, some are meant to do specific things, run in specific environments, or to edit specific formats. Some, like POV-Ray, are vector graphics editors. Some are bitmap editors. Some are 2D and others 3D. Some only run on Y OS in Z like Krita is for KDE. There are a number of reasons there are so many different FOOS image editors.

For your Illustrator user, it's worth keeping an eye on Xara Xtreme.

I'm not sure that the open source version of Xara is mature. It also hasn't changed (as far as I can tell) since January. The current commercial version is not available on Linux, or doesn't seem to be, on their main Web site.

The Linux version is at http://www.xaraxtreme.org/ (and it's not linked to from xara.com either I think, or not obviously). Last time I tried it, it didn't have much in the way of support for text.

I switched to Ubuntu a few months ago, and discovered Xara Xtreme - just 'sudo apt-get install xaraxl'. It's really pretty great (though a little buggy still, and shows its Windows roots), and is a fine replacement for Macromedia Fireworks, for those image creation/editing tasks that don't need anything as complex as a drawing program (Illustrator) or image editor (Photoshop/Gimp).

http://www.xaraxtreme.org/

-Russ

For those who like Corel Draw, the base of it is open source and available as http://www.xaraxtreme.org/ . Not finished but very usable. However I was surprised how quickly Inkscape has progressed. GIMP development seems to be slow, with its poor user interface, poor previews, and so on. Cinepaint seems to be making real progress now - I will have to try. I'd expect it to be better as it is written for a professional user base.

For photoshop there is no open source alternative that is a 100% replacement, but work is being done. You may want to check out Krita a KDE (actually Koffice) program. It knows about color profiles has floating point colors (and higher than 8bit per channel colors), they are working on LAB, HDR bracketing, paint simulation etc. They are making good progress and they are porting to QT4 which means the program will be available on Mac OSX, windows and KDE4 soon. I also read that the GIMP developers are at last seriously working on GEGL (the core for some future GIMP that does more than 8 bit per channel color etc.).

Scribus is a dtp program that is a pretty serious effort. Inkscape and xara extreme[1] are efforts to create a vector graphics program (the latter being an open sourced commercial program). Let's not forget Blender for 3d modelling.

But you're right they are no complete replacements as of yet.

[1] http://www.xaraxtreme.org/

Agreed! Especially for photographers, serious amateurs and pros. When GIMP offers at least 12 bit colour depth then it may be a good cheap, free, replacement for Photoshop.

If you want to take on photoshop... You have to get serious. Its not that hard to make a better app than photoshop. Painter and Alias Sketchbook pro both feature things that make photoshop seem primative....

Are Painter and Alias really good photo editors, better than PS? I'm hoping to break into photography but as I'm on disability and don't work I can't justify the expense of PS. So I've been considering other programs like Painter, Blender, Xara Xtreme, Inkscape, or ImageMagick. I'm hoping to get a Macbook Pro rsn and when I do I've give them a test drive.

Last time i ran linux.. the whole dependency thing drove me mad and installing things were varied experiences.

Linspire is coming out with ports for different distros of linux for Click N Run or CNR. Installing software with it means there's no dependencies to deal with, CNR takes care of installing software. Once the CNR software is installed the user goes to the CNR software warehouse, choose what software they want, then click the install button. CNR downloads and installs the software, if there are any dependencies it takes care of them. Linux geeks may frown on such things, but they have to realize that if they want the average computer user to use Linux then there has to be an easy way for users to install apps.

Xara Xtreme (formerly LX) is getting tons of features with each release. You could have a look at that for
your vector drawing needs:
http://www.xaraxtreme.org/

"Just for the record, which open source graphics program is better than the standard closed source options for pro grade work?" Aritist are always a special breed that don't like it when thier tools change to much, I would say the gimp, and xara http://www.xaraxtreme.org/ Give em a try you might like it. As for an OSS zealot, I beg to differ, i use proprietary software on a daily basis, because sometimes thats is all there is... When a great project comes along that can replace it... I look and listen.. Instead of pulling a gun out because it's free, or argue that since there is no support it's bad(using opensource software is a double edged sword you get it for free but when there is an issue you have to actually educate you self, instead of havign you hand held). I always said using OSS makes smarter people, there is less hand holding, and you ahve to actually read documentation WOW!!!!. No I have never paid Adobe for photoshop, never needed it, every apllication i need for work is free and oh OSS. You should try to get a weeks worth of work done on opened souce software, it might change your perspective on things a bit. Eventhought running proprietary software is a matter if choice, for you it's ok, but not for me. Im glad that all the combined hardware and software on your machine might cost you about $8,000 to run(enjoy):) Further more, a lot of proprietary software has benifited from OSS, take a look at the recent IE7, kinda looks and feels like firefox; but not on par yet. Don't think so? Download it give it a whirl, the fireup firefox.... After wards tell me what you think. Kudos to you my buddy on the other side of the fence; it's always better to keep an open mind.

Where can I get XaraLX to test it?

http://www.xaraxtreme.org/download/

- Peder

The one thing that a company can always sell even if they give the product away for free is commercial support, that's the kind of thing that keeps redhat and novell in business.

For me the reference to xara was the most useful thing I'm likely to get out of this thread. I've been waiting for some time for way to make system diagrams and flowcharts that look good enough for presentations (i.e. an Illustrator alternative); maybe xara will be it.

I think this is the link you want: http://www.xaraxtreme.org/

I agree with the parent. Vector is by far the easiest way to produce mockups, and Inkscape is an excellent program. However, I'd also like to throw in a recommendation for Xara Xtreme which got slashdotted a couple days back. I'm quickly falling in love with it. I initially started using it because I couldn't get the newest release of Inkscape to run... Now, I don't think I'll be going back.

Some questions:

Did you use the latest version ?

Define "immature" ?

What is your professional qualifications to make such a judgement ?

I will just point some relevant links:

The "hobbyists" - NOT: The Scribus Team bios. There are a handful of people who are involved with Scribus who have extensive experience in publishing, pre-press and image engineering among others.

Capabilities: Scribus Specs

(In the users words) Success Stories: http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/Success_stories

Made with Scribus

Press Reviews

Despite the naysayers, there is a growing interest from publishers both large and small in open source software - not just the back-end server stuff, but yes even the desktop tools... Things like the overwhelming success of events like www.libregraphicsmeeting.org and the open sourcing of Xara are concrete signals the arrival of open source what was once strictly proprietary domain.

Since we're on a similar subject I'd like to take this moment to plug Xara LX, a cool and Free graphics program for Linux/Mac.

SVG: help is underway. Xara has a very fast anti-aliased vector rendering engine that has origins in Artworks, an unknown but blazingly fast vectorgraphics designer launched in 1991 for 12MHz ARM2 based archimedes A440.
But I'd have to admit that 20 frames per second is pushing it on a 90MHz pentium. Should just be possible with a 250MHz ARM, though ;-).

On mp3's, mind that this specific appliance features TI's OMAP arch which I believe includes a DSP that should take the major workload off the CPU; unlike my 90MHz pentium system. Could help on some video tasks as well, I suppose.

Flash. Well, if probably will have some hickups once intel finally hits the 5GHz. That both due to macromedia beefing up the platform in sync or faster than Moore's law can provide for and partly due to incompetent programmers. Its a nice gadget for games, animations and simple interfaces, but I suppose Flash was never intended for any kind of real-time performance.

Read the FAQ.

They are explaining why they open the code and why they choose the GNU GPL.

I think that using the GPL is the only way for them to reuse features of Inkscape and other free projects that are missing from their product. We can ask ourself if they are not wanting to divert the Inkscape community.

However if the performance of their engine is as good as they claim, there maybe some interesting bits. Too bad cairo will not be to use some of them (Cairo is distributed under LGPL).
We can also expect them to contribute to the wxWidgets project at it is the library they choose for GUI components.

Here is the answer. Read the FAQ, it is very insightful.

Take a look at the Performance-section. Could Cairo use bits and pieces of Xara-renderer? Or could we replace Cairo with Xara's implementation? Propably not, due to licencing....

Maybe this rendering engine would be useful for the desktop or other programs, spun off on its own? I always loved SGI Irix's vector based desktop with that awesome vertically oriented scroll wheel widget that would scale all icons on the desktop.

Ok, so some old hoary ACORN codebase that got ported to Windows years ago and apparently never developed a large userbase is going GPL because they realized they were fscked and never were going to achieve a breakout in today's rapidly consolidating Windows 3rd party app marketplace.

Insightful my ass. Clearly you don't have a clue about what kind of application this is. Here:

http://www.xaraxtreme.org/about/

go download the demo video's - look at them - and tell me that Linux graphic artists aren't creaming their pant right about now. This is not just "some old piece of crap" application and their goal is to reach the same level of functionality it has on Windows (Yes, It actually builds on Linux right NOW. Rendering works too but the tools aren't finished yet). Now, I'm not a graphic artist but even I can see how desirable an application like this could be on our open source platforms (Yes, I know about scribus, Sodipodi and Incscape but they can't match this level of functionality yet). Did you ever consider what we get out of this? We get a full-featured, GPL'ed, vector drawing application.

Xara is in the same position with Adobe that Linux is in with Microsoft. Adobe dominates the market and even if their product is really, really good they don't stand a chance. By doing this they get all the Linux and Mac users. Yeah, there will probably be "issues" - there always is - but we really should let them have a crack at it to see what happens before we start bitching.

Try the FAQ.

So now I'm curious, what exactly can OpenOffice Draw do besides the basic? I don't see anything particularly special about OpenOffice Draw when I open it up, maybe I'm missing something?

As for what Xara X can do, I went to the linked website and found the following screenshots:
http://www.xaraxtreme.org/img/screenshots/screensh ot1_thumb.jpg
http://www.xaraxtreme.org/about/screenshot3.jpg
http://www.xaraxtreme.org/img/screenshots/screensh ot4_thumb.jpg
http://www.xaraxtreme.org/about/screenshot6.jpg

So now I'm curious, what exactly can OpenOffice Draw do besides the basic? I don't see anything particularly special about OpenOffice Draw when I open it up, maybe I'm missing something?

As for what Xara X can do, I went to the linked website and found the following screenshots:
http://www.xaraxtreme.org/img/screenshots/screensh ot1_thumb.jpg
http://www.xaraxtreme.org/about/screenshot3.jpg
http://www.xaraxtreme.org/img/screenshots/screensh ot4_thumb.jpg
http://www.xaraxtreme.org/about/screenshot6.jpg

So now I'm curious, what exactly can OpenOffice Draw do besides the basic? I don't see anything particularly special about OpenOffice Draw when I open it up, maybe I'm missing something?

As for what Xara X can do, I went to the linked website and found the following screenshots:
http://www.xaraxtreme.org/img/screenshots/screensh ot1_thumb.jpg
http://www.xaraxtreme.org/about/screenshot3.jpg
http://www.xaraxtreme.org/img/screenshots/screensh ot4_thumb.jpg
http://www.xaraxtreme.org/about/screenshot6.jpg

So now I'm curious, what exactly can OpenOffice Draw do besides the basic? I don't see anything particularly special about OpenOffice Draw when I open it up, maybe I'm missing something?

As for what Xara X can do, I went to the linked website and found the following screenshots:
http://www.xaraxtreme.org/img/screenshots/screensh ot1_thumb.jpg
http://www.xaraxtreme.org/about/screenshot3.jpg
http://www.xaraxtreme.org/img/screenshots/screensh ot4_thumb.jpg
http://www.xaraxtreme.org/about/screenshot6.jpg

They specifically mention the GPL here:
http://www.xaraxtreme.org/news/11-10-05.html

This will be huge news, sodipodi and inkscape could use their algorithms for new functions. Abiword could support their file formats. The Gimp could build compatibilty in easily. Bravo Xara, I will be the first one to mail a check when I know this is really going to happen. I just hope this doesn't go down like the GOBE Productive announcement a few years back.