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."
Convince Adobe to bring Photoshop to Linux and I know dozens of people who'll switch in an eyeblink.
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.
iTunes? hah!
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
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.
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!
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.
Here's how I deal with this. I use OO.o and send them in native (.odf?) format. THen I let the word victims figure it out. When they email back that they can't read my file, I wait 24 hours before sending an rtf. Then I politely suggest that they upgrade to more modern software that can handle this format. ;)
And the reality in my little world is that most people are running a couple years behind on their Word updates anyway and so the filters work fine.
man, I feel like mold.
Because it's not true.
A few years back, it was "I'd switch to Linux if (insert game) ran on Linux." Or "I'd switch to Linux if Word ran on Linux." Or "I'd switch to Linux if it was easy to set up stuff that I need on Linux."
Not "Microsoft Word", just "Word", so these are probably people who would be fine with OpenOffice. And yes, there was free StarOffice back then.
All of these have been fixed. Microsoft Word does run on Linux, even if you can't deal with OpenOffice. Quite a lot of decent games run natively on Linux, and if you go nVidia, it's not hard to set up. I mean, alright, you don't have AutoPlay -- which is a GOOD THING, remember that rootkit stuff? But I think people can handle typing "emerge quake4".
Plenty of games now work out-of-the-box on Wine, and more work out-of-the-box on Cedega, from the insanely popular (WoW, Counter-Strike) to the unheard of (NexusTK). Drivers come with distros, usually, or are quite easy to find/install.
More recently, there've been other reasons, other things that aren't compatible, but the most commonly cited is "I don't want to learn a new system, and I'm afraid most of my stuff wouldn't work on it." Which is the same old FUD.
If you are hearing that a lot, make a bet with someone. Get them to switch to Linux. Most of the technical stuff is close enough, what we need now is the marketshare so that the FUD can't hold. Making it "cleaner" (native versions instead of Wine) can come later.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
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.
Stop right there. You're basically saying that there's no money in the Linux desktop market and there never will be. Which is simply wrong and a harmful way to think.
Open source is a software development tool, not a religion or a marketing strategy.
Are Windows or Mac users really used to buying every last separate piece of software? Do they really do that? Do they never pay for anything and pirate everything (like some corporate drones already say they do)? Aren't these just extremes?
I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. People will use free (beer) applications if they're Good Enough (well, duh, who wouldn't) but will pay sensible amounts for their own copy of a piece of quality software, with support and love put into it.
As long as a state of balance is kept -- ie. the free stuff is of decent quality, and the payed-for stuff doesn't try to screw you with spyware or claiming you don't really own your copy -- everything's cool and everybody's happy.
On a personal note, I wish Microsoft wasn't a world-wide monopoly. They omnipresence blurs and distorts everything. They superimpose their double-standards and medium quality software over everything. Imagine a world where platforms like Mac, Linux, Solaris, OS/2, BeOS and whatnot occupied fairly equal market shares. There would be a lot less misguided passion and hate, IMHO, and more quality and consumers getting their work done on the platform of their choice.
i ate crayons when i was a kid and now i have two braincells and the blue ones taste nicer
More likely it's the same reason why people say "Sun" and not "Earth's Sun"; that is, when there is no significant possibility of a misunderstanding, qualifiers tend to be dropped. Human language is a compressed communication protocol :D.
I must have just lousy luck then, since the only program I've ever gotten working well under either is Morrowind, which crashes all the time (but it does that on Windows too, so that's not Wine's fault).
And so many of them are so frustratingly close - Arcanum's graphics are just corrupted enough to be unplayable, Poser works perfectly but doesn't display any text, etc.
Oh well, can as well ask it here: does anyone know any way to make Poser 6 display text in labels under Wine ? I've found nothing from Google... This might be some kind of font problem (there's a file called "ASIFONT.FON" in Poser's main dir), but neither Wine nor Cedega show any error messages whatsoever.
And, failing that, does anyone know any Poser replacement that runs on Linux (no, a generic 3D editor isn't a replacement, since they tend to have user interfaces that make edlin look sane) ?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Holy crap don't spread that disease around. At my workplace, being caught using Outlook is grounds for termination (not kidding).
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.
Thanks.
You have an excellent point about the demands of tech support.
I have actually done Linux product support for a living: Shrink-wrap Linux applications, along with Windows versions. And the vendor actually did target Redhat specifically... 6.x, 7.0, and 7.2 were supported. Redhat 7.1 was never supported because of an incompatability introduced with libpthreads that was rectified in 7.2. The introducion of Redhat 8 made the largest app nearly impossible to install, and 9.x just blew the whole thing out of the water.
I have several major programs which worked on Redhat 7 but a couple years later couldn't work with current Linux distros: WP Office 2000, Rational Rose 7, VMWare 3.2. Tux Racer is the only independant program I have older than 2 years that still runs.
Why have this lethal environment? Distro architects say that a constant flow of architechtural changes is easier on them than major revisions after 3-5 years. But I am inclined to think this amounts to cutting corners where flesh exists.