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A Printshop Equivalent for Unix?

Posted by Cliff on from the cliparts-banners-and-greeting-cards...oh-my! dept.

mcorliss asks: "I'm trying to convince my wife to switch from Windows to Linux. However, one program she loves is Broderbund's PrintShop, which I haven't found a Linux equivalent of yet. Does anyone know of such a product, preferably one that's free and fairly easy to use?" For banner creation, there's Gozer and AAType, but they aren't the easiest of things to use. Unless you consider The GIMP, software for designing greeting cards (another PrintShop specialty) seems to not have appeared for Unix. So is there an all-around equivalent for PrintShop for Unix users? If not, can you get close to that same functionality using a specific set of Open Source software? If it turns out neither of the first two questions produce encouraging answers, would anyone be interested in starting an Open Source project to fill this niche?

3 of 59 comments (clear)

  1. Same thing.. by Perdo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    My Aunt is a bigtime print shop poweruser. She gets updates in the mail. They send her reams and reams of disks. I swear she can do things with it that can't be done in Photoshop...

    The sad part is, she has actually shown a strong intrest in Linux.

    I tried to get Print shop running under wine but was stopped dead by what else, Linux's dismal printer support.

    You want to get mad, try loosing all your formatting in a program that essentially does nothing more than formatting.

    I think that is the key though. Print shop does little but formatting, with some stock pictures, formatting templates and a heavy dose of ease of use thrown in.

    Keep that in mind if you think of something that might work. Whatever replaces print shop, must replace print shop, not quark.

    --

    If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.

  2. Why Free? by rudy_wayne · · Score: 5, Insightful

    PrintShop isn't free, but you use it. Why must a Linux program be free?

    This attitude explains why there are so few Linux versions of software.

  3. Can you spare $300? by LordNimon · · Score: 4, Informative
    VMWare costs $300, half that if you're a student. You can set it up so that whenever she launches VMWare, it automatically launches PrintShop. That way, she can use Linux for everything but PrintShop.

    The question is, is that worth $300 to you?

    --
    And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
    To mold a new reality... closer to the heart