Slashdot Mirror
The Most Desired Linux Ports
zenboomerang writes "It looks like Novell is trying to hit the hammer on the top of software developers heads and try and get them to port their applications directly to Linux. With help from the public they will try to pursuade the management of the most popular programs picked to get into the 21st Century and do some Linux testing. It seems to me to be a good idea and all it needs is a little help from the community."
Port 80.
Everyone wants that sweet sweet http.
How about Microsoft Bob first?
FreeBSD ported ! ;^)
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
Sure. That'll happen.
I know everybody's all about the 80, and don't get me started on 1338, but there's nothing like a good 22 to handle all your needs. ;-D
From TFA:
Also, I think a nice attention-getter for the survey would be to get it slashdotted. Generally, I give about 75 points for a great article. If someone can get the survey on Slashdot, I will give you 250 points. As you all know, we have some incredible stuff for which you can redeem your points.
Because when it comes to major software manufacturers we know that they really fear Novell's clout right? There was a time when Novell was relevant in the software industry, but these days they're breathing their last dying breaths by trying to embrace Linux.
Convince Adobe to bring Photoshop to Linux and I know dozens of people who'll switch in an eyeblink.
Also, I think a nice attention-getter for the survey would be to get it slashdotted. Generally, I give about 75 points for a great article. If someone can get the survey on Slashdot, I will give you 250 points. As you all know, we have some incredible stuff for which you can redeem your points.
Hmm, seems that the article redirects to itself when you block cookies, essentially causing the page to reload forever and ever. Can you say "automatic slashdotting"? :)
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Come on, who doesnt want a cute purple thing talking to you while you recompile your kernel?
And it has to be said: In soviet russia, linux ports you!
*hides*
Menya zovut Shnur
Perhaps anyone who would like to see the widespread adoption of OSS should pass this poll along to even their non-geek friends.
It would seem reasonable to assume a widespread response to this survey would be shopped to app developers.
"Of those top 10 applications, two of them are financial management packages. Looks like there is quite a demand for that. It looks like there is a huge interest in the AUTOCAD arena, as well. Something that is very well worth noting is the demand for multimedia applications."
/. knows that there's a pretty large community of gamers that keep that one Windows box around just for gaming.
I imagine this is probably because of the fact that they suggest all of those top ten applications in their dropdown menu (leaving an "other" option at the bottom in case you don't want any of their default applications). Anyone whose ever worked on survey or statistics theory knows this is an obvious bias. That's not to say that's its a bad idea to do this if they have an agenda, I'm just pointing out that the results should definately be taken with a grain of salt here. There may be more relevant programs people would like to see ported to Linux. I imagine lots of people can think of specific games they'd like to see ported. Anyone whose ever reads
Anyways, I say best of luck to Novell. I'd love it if they were able to make some ground with Adobe on porting some of their apps.
There is a dearth of good general purpose drafting programs. I would actually pay money for a version of AutoCad that runs on Linux.
User interface is very important and I have found most of the available programs frustrating in this regard.
Wouldn't hurt to have a client for Webex, either. Never mind what they say, their putative Linux client still seems to require Red Hat 7.x
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Nobody? Come on, you know you miss him...
That said, I don't think you'd ever see iTunes for Linux (and I was amazed it was on the list, I would have never guessed it).
And then there is Visio. That will never be ported either. If Visio is there, why isn't Office? That said, I've never met someone who liked Visio in the two years or so I've been exposed to it. What Visio needs first is a good Windows port. OmniGraffle is much better. How about a Linux port of that?
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
interesting that autocad is #2 but microstation didn't even make the list? they're pretty much the last 2 standing in the design world.
i think if the gimp had cmyk support photoshop probably wouldn't be on the list at all.
When you recognize love in another and realize how precious it is, everything else seems so insignificant.
So what do you suppose CowboyNeal is going do with his 250 points? Can you say, unethical journalism?
Wait, did I say journalism? Nevermind.
iTunes? hah!
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
It actually surprises me that Lotus Notes has never been avail for linux. Since it's heavily Java based it should be easily portable and with IBM backing it in their Pro-Linux state... why hasn't it been? Maybe because it's a hunk of junk.
:)
The only ones on that list that I'd care to see are Visio, Autocad and Photoshop.
But I do agree that there's a serious need for business/money/finance software. GNUCash and a few other's that are out there just don't cut it. I just hate Quickbooks with a passion
It's just Crap.
Why, that program sucks, and I *like* lotus notes.
Supplies!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Oh, come on. There have got to be a ton of other people that want their CS:S fix without having to keep around a Windows box. And don't start with that Cedega crap. I want it a real Linux installer.
It's not on the frontpage, but rather in linux section, so zenboomerang, did you get 250 points?
/.) that now it's much easier to spot non-frontpage linux stories (thanks to CmdrTaco ;)
:)
some luck for linux-interested people (whole
nice followup will be about the results from this slashdotting. Will Autocad get to the top? I really hope so. CAD people in big companies really are tech-saavy, and really need reliable software to work with. Autocad running under windows is a misunderstanding, that currently lasts about 12 years (since they switched from dos, I still have v.12 running on dos, and v.13 running both on dos and windows). Heck, I remember working with some CAD software on on Amstrad/Shneider about 15 years ago, aww memories
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
One of the things I miss on Linux is PF. I like OpenBSD for other reasons, but PF is the only thing I can't do without, so I keep another box around for it.
Once I've got one of those chips with hardware-supported virtualization (AFAIK, OpenBSD doesn't get along with Xen), I'd like to try putting both together on the same box.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
I've never used it from a client perspective, but from a file, network, and multiple user perspective it's really quite a terribly designed program. I sincerly hope that Quickbooks is NOT ported to Linux, and someone else designed a different program that's designed with the Internet and multiple users in mind.
Just to give people some perpsective, quickbooks is used by a lot of small businesses. The problem is that these people need to access the books from more than one place. Usually home, and the office. Also, it's quite common for multiple people to want to use the same quickbooks file at the same time. Or, say you want to give access to your quickbooks files to your accountant. Quickbooks was never really designed for the Internet age, and it shows. People solve these problems with ad-hoc solutions like emailing quickbooks files back and forth. Please don't port quickbooks to linux, let this crappy program die the horrible death it deserves.
AccountKiller
The universe! Maybe it already runs on Linux...
What would happen if you were root...
What this article seems to be forgetting is that we have free replacements for many of these. Not all of them are perfect, not all of them are complete, but, a significant number of people are content with them, a significant number of the projects are promising, and, well, isn't that remarkable in itself?
I think Duke Nukem Forever would be great on Linux!
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
C'mon ????Lotus Notes....I wish they would unport it for Windows....I'm forced to use it at work and I hate it. Give us Google Earth for Linux. That needs to be on the list. I set up dual boot on my home PC which is normally just Linux, just so I could get on Google Earth. Before anyone tells me to Wine it, I have tried to and it's just not going to work on my preferred distro. I've heard of spyware, malware, abandonware, shareware, freeware, and all that. Lotus Notes should be labelled crapware.
Beer! It's what's for breakfast!
I've heard several times that offices could switch to Linux, and even tolerate OpenOffice, but they simply cannot do without Outlook+Exchange.
Yes, there may be better solutions (such as using separate applications for e-mail and calendaring, possibly web applications) but none are as polished, easy to use and comprehensive in just the areas people like this need.
-- Sig down
Porting any of those apps to Linux would be a wasted effort.
First, Linux users are used to free (beer) software. There are a few money-makers running on Linux, but for the most part the software doesn't cost anything except maybe the occasional Paypal donation. Secondly, Linux users are used to Free (speech) software. If the software is not licensed under the GPL (or a GPL-compatible license) there will be hell to pay. I cannot think of any proprietary software that was ported from Windows to Linux and was successful in any sense of the word (I'm sure somebody will counter this will some examples). The GPL is just too entrenched in the Linux software world to allow any competitors. Thirdly, Linux users are more-or-less satisfied with "good enough" Free software; they rarely even consider proprietary software when Free software exists that gets the job done.
I don't think there is a big enough market for proprietary software to make it worth their while. However, I do think there may be a market for "complete solutions". I.e. Adobe could come up with a high-end fully-contained Linux-based photo-editing solution. However, proprietary software (for the most part) is so entrenched on the Windows platform that it would be hard for them to break away from that.
Let's be realistic. Do you really think these Linux users are going to shell out $500 for Photoshop if it gets ported? Most of thse people (VERY BIG GENERALIZATION, but in my experience the truth) are the same people who pirate the Windows version of Photoshop. Granted not every Linux user is RMS or a pimply-faced Microsoft hater, but I just don't think the market is big enough to warrant porting some of these major applications. On the other hand, if there is going to be a market you probably want to be the first player there. Then again, we are entering the 10th year of "Year of Desktop Linux". The more things change the more they stay the same.
Those are just the issues with the Linux mentality. What about the technical issues? There are hundreds of Linux distributions. There are just a few different Windows configurations, mostly compatibile with each other. Linux is still too fragmented to offer the (platform) stability that Windows has. Adobe or Quicken or whoever would probably have i386/i686 binaries, and mabye x86-64 if you're lucky. Granted that covers the majority, but then you have all kinds of package and library dependencies. In Windows you can basically ship a binary and a few DLLs and your product works out of the box (again, a generalization). In Linux a proprietary software application would be difficult to deploy and maintain across more than a few major distros. And then users of other distros would whine about being left out and things not working and whatever other problems they have. Linux is always a moving platform, while Windows offers excellent binary backwards compatibility (at least compared to Linux).
To summarize, I don't think proprietary software will be successful on Linux until the market grows. I don't think the market will grow until proprietary software is successful on Linux. I think this is another "Year of Linux on the Desktop" situation.
OmniGraffle.
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
Microsoft Word.
No, really, I'm being honest. If there's one application moreso than any other I want on Linux it's Microsoft Word. None of the word processors on Linux (free or pay-for) have decent enough import/export filters for me to collaborate on documents with Word victims. Unfortunately in my line of work that is a serious limitation and it's basically impossible for them to switch to OpenOffice. It's extra sad because OpenOffice Writer is just fine as a word processor.
I wouldn't mind MYOB either.
Mod down parent. He's just copied 5 sentences exactly from TFA
That's right, they are all propriatery. The groups who use this software are so bound into it's usage that the very idea of trying to substitude one of these programs for a Free one makes people scared. It won't matter how closely Free software can mimic those programs, as long as they aren't *EXACTLY* the same, they won't touch'em.
Also this article sounds way to much like begging to me.
"please sir, can we have these program ported! Please!". "All our money will belong to you if you do!" etc. Why do we need these programs so badly? Might it be because now there is some value to be found in using Free software?
I'm sorry if I sound a bit bitter about this. I worked at a small firm where everyone was using popular propriatery software, always without any proper licenses. If I talked about it or sugested a substitude (gimp for photoshop) people would just say that it didn't matter and that everyone did it, so why shouldn't they.
If people were actually forced to pay for all the software that they used (that they can't get for free legally) there might be a serious effort put into trying alternatives.
Just let me ask you one question.
How often in the last month have you been asked for a copy of a propriatery program that you know you aren't legally allowed to copy and distribute to others?
A bad analogy is like a leaky screwdriver.
Autocad on linux sounds like a no-brainer to me.
Ximian was a small outfit and Novell bought them out, maybe they're considering a similar move with CodeWeavers?
In any case, for comparison here's a list of top most wanted apps for Crossover to support next.
Your Brain + EEG + LEGO Robots = Brainstorms
With a Mac port, surely Linux can't be too far away?
A month ago, I would have said Continuum (formerly called Subspace)... a wonderful free (as in beer) massively multiplayer online game, the oldest running one in history. Fast paced, extremely addictive, excellent gameplay.
But some nice people hacked WINE and got it working (see also WineHQ Notes), something I've been waiting for for years.
I'm now thoroughly wasting all my time in this game again, without the guilty feeling of booting Windows for it! Screenshot
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Another program I hope is never ported to Linux. I hate outlook in every way there is to hate a program.
AccountKiller
I have always missed 180 Search Assistant
Isn't going to happen until Microsoft starts being a platform neutral software company again. I have an older pre-Microsoft version and it rocked. Too bad Microsoft killed (oops, integrated) it with Office.
/. patrollers, ask upper management if its worth selling me nothing or selling me a $40-$100 standalone version of Visio for Linux? I'm not a thief and I won't upload my copy.
Dia http://www.gnome.org/projects/dia/ as replacement works for me. Windows port available.
Hey Microsoft
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
Or switch to Pro/ENGINEER
Quickbook's is one of the worst written programs out there.
It's based of IE 5.5, and is made of swiss cheese.
It requires administive privledges (or local standard user) to check a balance.
The database is propritary, and very easy to corrupt.
It's reporting functions are pathetic at best.
The $3000 "Enterprise Edition" won't work off a DFS share.
You need to buy a new payroll file every year, or a yearly version.
Hell, Microsoft is going to include it's clone of QB in Office for Small Business, and they're more open then Intuit.
Counterstrike
Starwars Battlefront
Battlefield 2
Age of Empires III
FEAR
etc...
Notepad
Seriously, we need a contender to vi
Task Mangler
1.) Autocad
2.) MapInfo (yeah I know I can use GRASS, don't start in on that)
3.) ESRI's ArcGIS
4.) WinAMP (XMMS is not the same. I want the visualizations & everything else, don't get me wrong though, I'd love to see Amarok ported to Windows too)
This would save my company tons of money in Windows licenses.
Almost everything else that I would find useful (sans games) has already been ported or there is a better native Linux version.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
I don't really understand what keeps this from happening on the technical side, but all I ever hear is "I'd switch to Linux if (insert Adobe / Macromedia product here) ran on Linux." So what is it that keeps Adobe from obliging? Is my perception of potential customer base way off? Is the porting process too daunting? Or is there some corporate political issue we don't know about (does Adobe have some type of business relationship with Microsoft)?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
NT
I really wish Finale would get proted to Linux. A good scoring program is really the only thing I miss from my Windows days. Lily Pond is nice, but it just doesn't cut it, and doesn't really do what Finale does. I'm sure many other composers and music people out there would agree.
Here's to hoping...
Buckethead
Can it run on FreeDOS? The old stuff, I mean.
The opposite of progress is congress
I would love to have Rhino (A 3D surface modeler) run on Linux.
Here is a list of apps I'd like to see ported to Linux. not in any order, just the way I think of them (They're apps that I use):
1- FileMaker Pro
2- DreamWeaver
3- InDesign
4- Timbuktu or equivalent (remote control tool)
5- Netmeeting (I saw someone mentioned it)
6- I would say Outlook, but it's not actually outlook that's needed but a group calendarening system
WordPerfect I would buy it the second it came in a Linux version (Like a bought so many of its DOS & MS Windows versions). I really miss it. OO.org is actually quite nice now, but not having "reveal codes" sucks, since I am control freak when it comes to large documents.o rel3/Products/Display&pfid=1047024307359
I even see a new version of WordPerfect Office called X3is out now:
http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=C
Well, back to work..
--
Regards
Peter H.S.
... cygwin
1) Chemdraw
2) SciFinder
3) Endnote ported to work for OpenOffice,ODF under Linux
SciFinder can be tortured into working under wine, but it would be nice if it would work natively. Especially since a lot of the people who use it are physicists/physical chemists who do use *nix.
LaTeX or RevTeX (with BibTeX) are pretty sweet and most journals will accept one or the other, until you need to colaborate with someone on a paper and then a plain text file with backslashes and braces everywhere suddenly becomes extreamly confusing, (try to explain that \begin{equation} \exp(x)=e^x \end{equation} will look just fine once it's been processed to someone who doesn't realize that there are alternatives to wysiwyg) so some way to interoperate with the MS addicts and still conveniently insert references would be nice.
Finally, the FOSS offerings for drawing chemical structures are pretty pathetic compared to ChemDraw. Cactvs and XDrawchem are a nice start, but that's all they are ... a start. For crying out loud, they have an OSX version ... so they're about 75% of the way there already.
So, from my particular niche, that's what I'd like. Another option would be to port a useful free equation editor to MS office, then I might almost be tempted to try windows again.
Not sure if you're aware, but there was, once upon a time, a version of Photoshop for UNIX in the form of Sun Solaris. I think the last version (and maybe the only) was 3.01.
... but if Adobe ever felt like bringing that one back from the dead, even if it was just recompiled as x86 binary-only, if they didn't charge an arm and a leg I think there would be a serious market for it. Even Photoshop version 3 is nothing to scoff at -- it had full CMYK, TWAIN import, and pressure-sensing tablet support, to name a few. And this was designed to run on a SparcStation 2 with 32MB of RAM; I don't care how much optimization you lose by compiling it for x86, you're not going to notice on a modern machine. And given that they had versions for Win, Mac, Solaris, and SGI, I'm betting that the codebase was pretty portable.
There's a PDF version of the product brochure here. (It's 1.5MB and hosted out of some university's server in Switzerland. If you're feeling kind, here's the CoralCache link of same.)
I'm curious what form it was distributed in -- I assume just binaries
Ah, well. A man can dream...
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I need Macromedia's suite, Photoshop (I love GIMP, but it just isn't the same), Illustrator. My husband is a commercial artist and he really needs Quark. Most of the other stuff I use on a regular basis has acceptable open source equivalents.
2 cents,
Queen B
HDGary secures my bank
Last time I checked it worked okey for me, though the Netmeeting client needed an extra audio codec installed... and I remember having video issues at various times when using gatekeepers.
I was quite happy to see Dreamweaver in there, NVU really never made it anywhere. I'd also like to see some nice DVD-authoring software that works... I have DVDauthor/qDVDauthor... which almost works but tend to segfault near the end and it's not quite... polished.
I doubt DVD media authoring falls high on corporate lists though, unless they plan on using it to replace powerpoint.
1. CAD and 3D modeling software (basically all of Autodesk portfolio:
:).
AutoCAD, 3DS, Inventor).
2. Office (yes MS Office : Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access, Visio)
3. Film recording and editing (a port of Final Cut Studio would be a
start).
4. Scientific analysis tools (Origin and Labview come to mind. Well,
Labview itself is available but many little things like drivers aren't, which for Labview is a deathknell. Also, Labview code compiled
for Windows will not run on other platforms without recompile even if you only make calls to Labview libraries. That needs to be fixed.
If WINE can do it, then NatInst has no excuse.)
5. The entire Adobe portfolio.
(Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, Golive, Premiere, LiveCycle,
AfterEffects, Flash, Acrobat and others).
Oops, that's more than 10. And that's just off the top of my head.
As far as I am personally concerned, as soon as Office, Origin,
Labview with all drivers, and Illustrator are ported, I will be able
to switch to Linux at work.
Basically, the guys they should go after are Adobe and Autodesk, with
Apple and Microsoft right behind. Good luck with that
AutoCAD used to be offered as a UNIX program. Like the "Photoshop for UNIX" that Adobe offered, it was distributed as a binary for Sun Solaris, I believe. A quick Google search didn't turn up any definitive information on whether or not it's still being offered (I'm thinking no) but there's one university that still has it available for students to use, and you can read the instructions for using it here. Based on the list of packages installed on their UNIX systems, I'm going to guess they're older SparcStations.
This doesn't do us modern Linux users much good, since it means the software was probably distributed as SPARC binaries only. So unless you know of a good way to emulate/virtualize a SPARC (which shouldn't be impossible, given that it's an allegedly open architecture) system from within x86 Linux, I'd say we're SOL there.
There are some people in South Africa who have AutoCAD running (apparently) to their satisfaction under Debian WINE, according to this page. They mention a "German GNU/Linux clone of AutoCAD which is quite impressive and very cheap" in the article, but sadly don't give a name.
LinuxCAD, which rather hilariously describes itself as "the Best application program for Linux. Period." claims to be an AutoCAD replacement, but just from first glance the site seems questionably maintained (as in, '1995 called, they want their web page back'). The company behind it has also been alleged to be behind some Usenet spam. On that last site there are several "alternatives to LinuxCAD" listed, including VariCAD, which seems like a pretty polished (it ought to be, for $500) product from a company in the Czech Republic.
Anyway, I thought I'd throw those options out there. If anyone has any experience with any of them I'd be interested to hear them.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
... but I can't think of any. Everything *I* use my computers for is already better on Linux than on the competition. The only things I'd really like to see ported are some things from BSD, particularly drivers like ral.
When MS Office can export PDFs and Shockwaves with a single click I'll consider it an alternative to Open Office. When Outlook includes basic crypto support like public key signing and encrypting, it might be an alternative to Evolution or Thunderbird. When Quickbooks stops corrupting its own database every few months I'll consider it a possible (but still ugly) alternative to Gnucash. When iTunes plays oggs and takes plugins it might possibly stand in for XMMS.
The list keeps going: when Windows XP finds all of my network interfaces and sound cards like Knoppix or OpenBSD do, I'll consider it ready for my desktop. I don't want to spend time downloading drivers (which is especially hard when it's the network card driver I need). When a proprietary OS includes a decent package / version management system, it might be usable (I know OS X includes Fink, but that kind of proves my point, doesn't it?).
I make my living programming and doing network administration. When the day comes that I can install Windows on a box, leave it be, and have some sense that it will be roughly the way I left it in a few months like I can with Linux or BSD, I'll consider it a viable alternative, though it's irritating to have to download perl and clisp (don't even get me started about how few decent LISP compilers are available for Windows!) every time I go to a new machine to work.
All's true that is mistrusted
My last diatribe reminded me of the one thing I REALLY want ported to linux, the ral driver from openbsd. I know there is a project underway to do it, but I'd really love to get that ASAP so I can get rid of my one OpenBSD box that, for logistical reasons, can only use my linksys USB wireless receiver.
All's true that is mistrusted
I agree 67% with you, but...
At the university I study, we have a SciFinder client that runs on a Winblow2k server with citrix, and we use a citrix client... in Java !, so from the browser, the interface is a bit slow, but works.
Chemdraw will come in handly, really handly, I couldn't find yet any decent formula editor that works on linux... may be I will start my own integrated with OO.
Another dream will be to have EndNote integrated with OO... Actually is not that difficult to program... I even started to read the OO SDK, I hope they will not change everything in ver 2.0 ! I still want to doit if you are interested you can contact me at hppacito{at]yahoo dot com
Macromedia Dreamweaver & Macromedia Flash are a part of Macromedia Studio. Seems to me to be an artifically inflated list or they don't really know WTF Macromedia Studio is. Atleast there's an "Other" option.
It also kind of seems like Novell's digging for people to market to since you're REQUIRED to enter your name and email address. That's what's keeping me from filling out the survey. I've already spoken with their salesmen and "I don't want to waste my time if you're only going to buy 2 or 3 licenses a month...." was repeated to me on several occasions.
...its the hardware. We need all the major box vendors to offer Linux pre installed. You should be able to waltz into office city depot mart and see linux running on decent machines at all the price ranges. Peripherals need to work out of the box with no fooling around. You should be able to grab anything from a printer to a webcam to a wireless whatever and it says right on the box "runs on linux".
And if you want to make an impact, you need to say "games" first, and loud. If the OS was just as prominent in machines and assorted hardware, you wouldn't have to petition (beg) the various software places, they would "port" to Linux as a matter of course. It's a catch 22 with those guys, they won't offer much, because there's little demand. No demand because no one besides geeks even SEES linux anyplace, it is non existant. You can't buy it if it isn't on the shelf! You can't buy it if you go to the online store and it's UNOBTANIUM.
Looking at YOU, Dell, you dipsquat weenies, you da BIATCH of MS, and you other big vendors are right in line, bent over.
I blame the vendors and the legitimate reasons behind the MS/DOJ monopoly lawsuits, and the big "nothing to see here, move along now" non-fix that was the outcome there. We have a still organized and running cartel, still pushing an expensive monopoly "solution".
Together with InDesign and Illustrator, this would round out a complete Linux publishing solution that any professional could sit down at and get productive. I have prayed for this for most of the years I was working in graphic arts.
But if they don't come to the party - that's OK: We'll just keep polishing GIMP, Scribus, Inkscape etc until they start seriously eating into Adobe's monopoly (same way M$ lost the server market). Your move, Adobe!
you had me at #!
its the only windows app I see open when I walk past cubicleland
Out of the 10 packages listed on their site, I've stopped using most of them (only photoshop is used on rare occasion, try to stick with GIMP) on my Win32 systems and moved to Open Source replacements. I just find it interesting that there are movements to port them to Linux when I and several people I know have dropped them even on Windows for Open Source projects. TdC
The survey options are added from those who enter something in OTHER. Try it...
I use Cedega to play Counter Strike: Source, it runs good on my overclocked 6600gt but I would love to have a native linux port. I wish a mod team would port half life 2 to the Quake 4 engine. Half life 2 running native in linux, that would be cool.
I can dream.
There have been some *very* bad Linux ports in the past. Compare NeroLinux with K3b and you'll see what I mean. Also all these apps are proprietary and I don't think MS would be happy GPLing its software. What I would really like is for companies to public domain old versions of their software, let's say over 10 years old or something.
This poll seems business oriented. :-(
But if I look at people around me, the biggest problem is web-based apps, such as games. I mean simple but multi-player games such as chess, cards, etc. Both my mother and a neighboor would be ok to switch to Linux, but their favorites games, played online with other players around the world, are not Linux friendly
Subj is the only application I ever miss. It would be sweet if it got ported, but it would be even sweeter if I could find a free (as in GPL) relacement. Any pointers?
As an independent developer/consultant what I really need is an Access clone, complete with the ability to act as a front end system to a back-end database - ideally Postgres - in the same way that Access/SQL Server does at the moment.
The market for such an application is immense. Access/SQL is a very common combination for vertical business apps. I have many clients running PCs where the only purpose of the box is to run the app.
For example I've been developing a formal clothing hire point-of-sale system for a client for a couple of years now, the system installs into shops (may be multiple branches) and handles the hire/sales within that shop. The system was originally developed just for the client's shops, but we're now starting to sell it to others. Currently to deploy the users require a server with a sql server licence, and workstation running Access. This tends to be expensive on software. If we could use a linux server running postgres, and an workstation pc running linux/access clone, then they'd be zero hesitation with many of our clients to deploy linux.
This isn't the only example. I've seen dozens of other systems I've either worked on or had proposed which use the same combination of software where an Access/db replacement would directly sell linux boxes.
AutoCad actually used to run on Unix workstations, up to about version 11. I have vague memories from my Uni days of a horrid two-stage process for transferring files between AutoCAD on DOS and AutoCAD on SunOS, involving specially-formatted floppy disks. Chances are somebody still has an original tape with the .tar.Z file somewhere ..... now, if you could only get something to read it, it just might still compile on a modern Linux system. It would be blindingly fast, too, since today's machines typically have more RAM than the older machines had HDD space.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
FineReader perhaps? The native linux ones I've tried simply didn't work at all.
It's a Windows Explorer replacement and is very good. The amount of configuration possible is staggering - a true power users tool. I'd love to see something on this scale under *nix. If nothing else, the KDE developers should be forced to sit down and use it for a while to get ideas of how to write a better file browser.
If you use Windows and consider yourself a power user, seriously, give it a try. It'll take a bit of getting used to but there is no going back.
http://gpsoft.com.au/
Roger
Do you have any better hostages?
Modern computing platforms have:
1. A relatively predictable set of ABIs (for both drivers and apps)
2. Standard installation procedures
3. A defacto IDE that lands new developers smack in the middle of said platform's functionality and documentation
4. The above implemented such that ISVs can easily distribute to the platform with one file or CD-ROM distributed independantly.
5. Technical decisions that do NOT force authors to distribute through a Centralized Repository just to keep their application from breaking with each OS update.
6. A developer base that can concentrate on their ideas and customers, not on the shifting sand underneath them. Whereas 'Linux' distros have 'maintainers' that insert themselves between the end-user and the developer (and make users wrestle with faltering package databases to boot). Is the distro the right focal point for customer relationships?
'Linux' is just a kernel with several OSs built upon it. And those OSs don't constitute modern computing platforms either. They are good ways to run Apache + a databse, and one could say that LAMP is a solid platform concept. But that is all for the sever room and for web development.
Our community needs a 'LAMP' for the native, desktop environment. Is LSB Desktop up to the task?
Well... are developers creating RPMs for LSB? I've never seen such an RPM. I don't think that's even possible. How will LSB Desktop fix this?
Someone from OSDL's Project Portland invited me to join after I expressed these concerns. But even with 5 years of using Linux on my desktops, I spend most of my time on a Mac now. Maybe I will anyway; It should be interesting to find out if the community is still trying to pour sugar over warmed-up server-room procedures, or if they are going to focus on meeting user expectations.
1) - EndNote.
I'm keeping a WindowsXP partition on my lab PC and a copy of Office installed on it only for this purpose. I looked into Pybliographer but it's simply not good enough (pretty unstable, cumbersome bugs) and too much LyX/LaTeX oriented (I'd LOVE to use LaTeX at work, but I can't,alas), I also spent some time looking at the code to improve it: it's good Python, but uhm, I don't like it. I'm seriously considering writing a replacement.
2) - FruityLoops, Reaktor, Traktor etc.
There is no music-generating and mixing software for Linux that AFAIK comes even *close* to proprietary windows solutions. However seems FruityLoops 4 COULD work on the latest versions of Wine. The audio output on my machine is horrible, but I think the problem is my audio setup on the Linux side.
I also can't see why people who write Windows apps can't recompile them for Linux against the Winelibs. This would give 99.999% Linux compatibility (at least on x86) with very minor tweakings to the codebase (AFAIK). Can someone explain me why can't this happen?
-- Patent no.123456: A way to personalize
That Auto Whitebalance thing is horrendous. And nothing else in the program indicates a manual white-balance.
I know I am expected to use the eyedropper in Color Levels, at the bottom under All Channels... but that only works for white and sometimes black. With few pictures having medium-grey subjects in them, how do I adjust the middle-intensity hues???
What I get is something that kinda looks white-balanced... until I put it next to the same image that was processed with a real manual white-balance like Photoshop.
I should be able to point at something white in the image, and have the dedicated white-balance function adjust hues for all intensities equally. That's what white-balance is!
This may interest you:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8722
The new 'Base tool in OpenOffice has all of that: table, query and views designer; forms and reports; etc.
And it was written with real databases in mind (unlike Access).
If you read the survey, you'll notice that the survey is intended for Datacenter applications. This is a shame, since IMHO there is a huge potential market for a low cost / Linux based computer in home and educational markets.
I guess that it's understandable for companies to focus their Linix efforts on traditional Linux markets, but Novell has in the past been very popular in the Education area. Why don't they start pushing Linux there?
From personal experience I would suggest that Quickbooks being at the top is not actually a bias. I'm a big fan of Quickbooks as I have found it the most intuitive (no pun intended) solution for small business accounting - however:
My only Quickbooks options are dual-boot or of late Qemu (though I have yet to put it through its paces) - which is still Windows whether I like it or not.
I have been able to replace every single application on Windows with an equivalent or, more often, better on Linux, except for Quickbooks. It feels like Intuit's product strategy is 'If we ignore Linux, it will go away'.
I would suggest that Quickbooks is number one not because the application is more in demand, but because it is the most resistant to transfer, always sucking you back to Windows - when you don't want to go.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
music score edditing software: No port to linux or open source equivelant. Some atempts have been made, but lag the functionality of Finale edition of the first Macindosh.
if only they just ported photoshop over, I need it like i need to breath air, well not that much but you get what i mean,
I presume you mean, "why don't you just use a Microsoft box like Everyone Else?"
Simple answer was in the grandpost: I don't do it often enough to keep the MS account from expiring, much less remember the login. My main work is all with *nix-based tools (and today, that means "Linux-based.") When NetMeeting and other conferencing tools are the only tools missing from Linux, I'm not about to switch to turn my dual-Opteron 4 GB box into a dumb terminal to shared servers just so I can conference once in a blue moon.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Nedit is a notepad on steriods. Simple UI, very clean window layout, open source, but with all the toys under the hood: syntax highlighting, rectangular moves, autoindent, macros, the works. (Unfortunately based on Motif/Lesstif, but about the nicest Motif UI I've seen in a long time).
other games too, but a native World of Warcraft client would be sweet.
They can still sell the boxes in stores with cds for texture, sound, all the platform independent stuff, and the all-important account activation code.
I think this is probably true; the Photoshop for Mac and Windows both seem to have identical features, but in most cases use native widget sets.
That said, I'm sure they put a great deal of effort into each of these versions, so even in the very hypothetical situation of them deciding to do a Linux port, it might take significant resources to produce a version that they would be comfortable releasing (staking their reputation as a company who makes quality gear to, etc.).
This is slightly OT, but it seems like there are a lot of applications that were originally made back in the workstation days, that would be if not "killer apps" now, at least nice things to have. Given that the SPARC architecture is open, and now the basic code of Solaris is also (I assume that Solaris v2 would be mostly now part of what's been opened up), I wonder if it would be feasible to create an emulation/binary-compatibility environment to run Sun SPARC applications (or even Solaris SPARC itself) on x86 Linux, given that today's processors would have the speed necessary (I would think) to cover the emulation overhead? There are a lot of neat CAD, and 3-D modeling/rendering systems which don't have direct Linux counterparts even today; even old versions run in emulation would be a step forward.
Actually, I wonder if Sun itself is doing anything to allow someone to run legacy SPARC applications on Solaris x86? It seems like that would be a desirable feature to have on a Sun Opeteron workstation -- but perhaps they don't, in order to preserve demand for the SPARC 'stations.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
And this changes the bias how? It's called groupthink. One person makes a suggestion, putting that suggestion in the list. Other people see the suggestion and immediately pick up on it.
How about Windows XP? I couldn't see that one in those lists.
Well, I suppose if you say so.
Now, if you'll pardon me I have to get back to my Linux desktop. My simulation run on HSPICE ($40,000/seat license) just finished and I need to update the schematics on Virtuoso ($ame general ballpark) so the layout engineer can update it on his Linux/Cadence workstation (IIRC somewhere north of $100,000/seat) before shipping it out.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I've got a salesforce here that uses ACT. If I can get them off of that one application, and one other canned dingus, I can get them crappy laptops with Linux and non-root passwords. I can hand them an entire mobile office that they won't be able to completely screw up with ad-ware and games and other crap. If if dies, I can hand them one exactly like it with just a few minutes of human labor.
In short, I'll be able to drag them into actual automated salesforce world.
I don't have the clout to do it, now, when it would mean the loss of these Windows-only apps on the machines, nor do I have the man-hours available to can something under Windows.
ACT would be a huge first step.
As soon as (new) games can find a way (the popular games... when it is released, not a decade later) on Linux with good performance, I'll not need Windows anymore.
These two will really push Linux into the enterprise, and theyre 2 out of 3 reasons why we're not 100% Linux. Lotus belongs to IBM which has been pushing Linux for a while. Its a wonder why they wont compile a Java app for Linux at all. I know the Domino server exists for Linux, just why not the client??
AutoCAD and the likes of Photoshop are also really important. Acrobad reader exists thankfully, but theres a huge userbase for each of AutoCAD and Photoshop, who will be tempted to switch.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Strange that I don't see MS Office anywhere in their drop down.
;) ;).
Yeah yeah, MS Office isn't that great blahblah, but I use Open Office at work and it sucks - slow and bloated - it makes my 2GB 3GHz machine seem slow, launch times are terrible even the 2nd time round. I've had snappier performance from 2.5MHz machines.
As for Windows on Linux: if Linux is just the kernel as many people here like to keep saying, Microsoft could theoretically put something like Windows on top of it.
I wonder how suse, redhat, KDE and Gnome would like that...
Maybe some person would be happy that it's no longer GNU/Linux but Windows/Linux.
How about some functional music sequencers for us electronic composer types? With that follows some decent ASIO drivers, good sound card compatibilty (the professional ones that is loaded with DSPs and whatnot).
n/t
you had me at #!
* Google Earth
* http://www.rudenko.com/ebook.html --- linux equivalent
* good object pascal IDE + libraries
www.lemonodor.com A mostly Lisp weblog
Geez man... Actively challenging a giant is the fastest way to get smashed. By all means continue to improve the software and keep Adobe in the crosshairs but don't turn it into a pissing match. The best way to suddenly outpace a competitor is to trick them into thinking you're not even competing with them.
Before Novell starts trying to convince others to port their apps to Linux, they really need to sort out their own applications. The GroupWise Linux client is a mess; slow, clunky and missing several major features that have been around in the Win32 code for years. The back-end server runs lovely on Linux, but then again it ran lovely on OS/2 10 years ago.
Linux certainly has its charms, but as a target for deskop-user shrink-wrapped software, it's just too much of a moving target.
Aside from everything else, imagine the costs of tech support: the possible variations are so huge that tech support in the conventional way would be cost-prohibitive.
Of course, Adobe could (say) choose exactly *one* distribution and choose to support *only* that one... which would give them a small fraction of the Linux desktop market, which isn't exactly huge to begin with.
Together with InDesign and Illustrator, this would round out a complete Linux publishing solution that any professional could sit down at and get productive.
Well, OK, but look at this from Adobe's perspective:
-- Adobe already owns the lion's share of the "creative professional" market, virtuall all of whom use Mac or Windows.
-- Adobe could decide to spend millions of dollars, and man-months (or more likely, man-years) of time doing Linux ports... which, at best, would get customers currently using Mac or Windows to switch to Linux.
-- This may be great for Linux, but helps Adobe not at all. In fact, they have now blown money and time to do ports which probably haven't affected their marketshare in the slightest (but most certainly would increase their tech support costs).
Bottom line: Adobe's in business to make money, not to promote Linux. I guarantee you that if Linux ports made it likely for them to increase their profit, those ports would be underway tomorrow.
Omigod ... let's hope they never read my post then! I had no idea of the danger I was in!
you had me at #!
I know, it's lame to post just a "Mod parent up" -- especially an AC post -- but this guy is right on the money:
To summarize, I don't think proprietary software will be successful on Linux until the market grows. I don't think the market will grow until proprietary software is successful on Linux.
Hi Janek, I just got a reply from Novell an hour ago telling me that they have given me the points. It wasn't the reason I posted the article (my first), really just wanting to help push some popular software developers into writing their code for Linux as well as the other two main OS's. Though the points are nice as well :)
Andy aka zenboomerang
I don't really care how much it costs them to port, or whether it ever makes them a cent. That wasn't the question.
you had me at #!
From TFA
I checked the numbers, and just under half of the overall requests came from the United States. About ten percent came from the United Kingdom. Why could that be? Well, it could be because the survey is in English. Or, it could be because most of the people who want to switch to Linux live in those countries.
Well, why could that be?...Language issues aside, any chance of it being that this stupid top 10 country list by number of requests is pretty much based on their population?! (note...population _with_ internet access).
I bet they're also having quite a higher number of right-handed readers than left-handed. Now why could that be...?
Wikipedia: US 300million, UK 60million, Germany 82million...
Err.. am I the only one not able to imagine that happening?
You just got troll'd!
I wish for Forte Agent Newsreader. Yeah, we have Pan or Knews, but Agent is the defacto yard stick which all newsreaders are measured against.
Omni suite. Specially Omnigraffle. Just cuz it rocks and will make Win32 users jaleous!
Nobody, especially not people selling packages running into the thousands or tens of thousands of dollars per seat, is going to port a package to Linux if there isn't a market. These people are not only saying there's a market, but that that said market has a LOT of very rich people in it. It's not just students. Well, at least I don't know of any students that can afford to buy thousand-dollar software, and I certainly don't know of any that would have much of a need for an Enterprise-level database or high-end maths package. (I know "open book" exams tend to be generous, but somehow I can't see them letting you bring in a quad Xeon deshtop system with Mathematica loaded on it for a maths test...)
I think it would be good if someone ran a much more comprehensive survey, and also one that wasn't self-selecting. I also think it would be good to split the user types up a bit more - I somehow don't see the people with an interest in Maya 7 being the same people as those interested in Photoshop, for example.
However, I guess you have to start somewhere.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
It would also be C&Dd after about, ooh, 2 minutes. I doubt Valve would look too kindly upon all of their content being ported to a competitor's engine...
I've wanted this for Linux for years. Together with iTunes... it could be very good for Apple's media platforms.
you had me at #!
"Geez man... Actively challenging a giant is the fastest way to get smashed."
Oh holy shit, I'd better return this goose that lays golden eggs then!
of course, that will require to port oh so many other things as well ...
After all, linux geeks need to burn cycles somehow, and why not do it by simulating a LAN party at a geek frat house filled with vampires while death makes zombies in the back yard?
hmm, guess that means they should port Sims 2: University and Sims 2: Nightlife while they're at it.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I start with a disclaimer, which is that GIMP is good enough for me. Then on the other hand, I drive a gutless old pickup that happens to be very tempermental. So..... take it with a grain of salt. A couple of my friends are really into art. Both of them dislike the GIMP. A lot. Especially the one that's going to art school. I think that if it wants to be taken seriously in 'the industry', it needs to try to penetrate the instructional environment. I mean, isn't that what Apple did? The key to this, though, is that.... however hard it might be to admit.... The GIMP people would have to listen to what those guys had to say. I'm not saying that GIMP isn't good enough, or that people haven't had some amazing results with it. I'm saying that an art school grad needs to be able to sit down with it and feel completely comfortable, or it's wasted effort.
(Terry Hancock)
s sue_10/free_matter_economy_4/
I used VariCAD successfully for a short while. It was a very good program, as far as it went. Probably not as full-featured as AutoCAD, but considerably more intuitive to use (it compared well to DesignCAD, I believe).
In the end, I let my license expire and didn't upgrade, though (without an upgrade, with a binary-only package, the old package became obsolete quickly due to upgraded shared libraries on my Debian system).
I found that in the end, I was dissatisfied with it not being a free-licensed open source software. With proprietary software on Linux, you still have a lot of the baggage that you get with proprietary software everywhere.
And of course, being Czech, I'm not sure VariCAD was in a position to offer a full service and support model in the United States (they could've tried it of course, but they'd need support reps with good English skills and so on -- which would likely have been more expensive than selling licenses).
So I would personally say that what the world needs is not "AutoCAD for Linux" but rather a true FLOSS CAD package that interoperates well with AutoCAD (and other CAD packages). I think such a creation would be not only valuable, but profitable, since it's the perfect sort of package for a "services-based" vendor to get behind (but it involves a substantial investment, too).
Of course, you could predict that I would say that, since I recently wrote an article advocating it:
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/free_issues/i
but I still believe it, and this data, biased as it may be, encourages me that it's true. There are a number of resources in the bibliography of my paper for anyone interested in pursuing such a project (I'm sorry to say that my CAD links wiki is not yet one of the better ones -- still working on it. But I'd particularly recommend following up on the STEP and EXFF projects).
i use openoffice.org's draw prgram for charting and the like. it is not too fancy, but it gets the job done!