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Novell Suggests Linux Program Replacements
An anonymous reader writes "As a result of over 14,000 votes since the beginning of January, Adobe Photoshop, Autocad, Dreamweaver, iTunes, and Macromedia Flash are currently the top 5 'most wanted' Windows/MacOS-only applications in Novell's online survey. From comments made by the survey participants, Novell has also listed suggested substitutes for each of the five. What do readers think of these suggestions?"
Because then we linux fans can also churn out web pages that are an eyesore, full of bloat, proprietary ...
Yeah ,,, whatever.
Autocad is, for better or for worse, the standard. Right now, there are no comparable products - its somewhat like suggesting that people use Write instead of Word. For simple stuff, yes, it works just fine (and indeed with just a few enhancements would probably be better than Word for most people). For anything more complex, like most real-world uses of AutoCad (as opposed to folk just doodling around in it), you need a full blown package.
I'm sure there are people running small shops off of [insert your favorite linux cad program here] who can't wait to tell us about them. However, if you're running even a moderate sized shop, you probably need the real thing. Besides, one of the real strengths of ACAD are all of the add ons, like Land Developer Desktop, that you certainly can't get for just any random cad-lite package.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
From the perspective of a home user / small business those may be options - I've not yet experimented with them all. But medium to large architectural and engineering companies usually have a large investment in training, tools, libraries, and licenses that they are unwilling to give up, especially if it means they might lose one micron of functionality or productivity.
I for one would have no problem writing checks to AutoDesk for AutoCAD if it were ported to Linux.
-- "Never underestimate the power of human stupidity." - R.A.H.
Story posted to the general public at 9:35
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Way to go crew !
I wouldn't go as far as saying "GIMP fucking sucks!" I do agree, it is no where near being on par with Adobe Photoshop, but it still is a great piece of FREE software. I can honestly say I am more than impressed with what it has accomplished.
It works great for basic and intermediate graphics, anything above that it can be hit or miss. Especially if you are no familure with it. With Photoshop essentially the standard in graphical applications, having to relearn a program like GIMP just isn't worth it in advanced applications. Plus, I think Photoshop has one of the best UI interface layouts I have ever used, Adobe as a whole is great at that.
In conclusion, GIMP does not "fucking suck", it is just different and has its uses.
Yep...there it is...another photoshop = gimp statement. And wait? Bluefish? Nvu maybe, but it too has its drawbacks. Basically if you are a company who is paying some graphics guy $40,000 a year plus overhead, why have them work with inferior products? The cost of windows and photoshop may seem high to hobbiests, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to what you're gonna pay someone to use it. Even if gimp was 90% as good, it still might not make economic sense in the long run.
No offense, but the Linux community already has thousands of 14-year-olds cranking out helpful information like this -- it hardly seems like Novell needs to join in.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
That's the funniest comment I've read in a long time. Such an excellent caricature of the typical Free software advocate stance: offer inferior alternatives where possible without understanding the domain and discount anything else as 'useless'.
this is so going to be GIMP-vs-Photoshop all over again, with doses of Flash-sucks, Vi-rules, and the usual dose of propietary-app-is-THE-standard and even worse, those OSS-app-must-behave-like-commercial-app trolls, which are the same OSS-doesn't-innovate trolls... for heaven's sake, can't we just have a WEEK without these flamewars? I think it was better when we had a new story every week hailing our new Google overlords...
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
No doubt that Photoshop has some features that GIMP lacks, and that professionals can't do without (CMYK color, higher color depth, etc.). The next generation of GIMP will be based on GEGL (Generic Graphical Library) which will provide the bulk of these features, but it's development has been a bit slow. Lend a hand and we can help bring GIMP on-par with photoshop.
http://www.gegl.org/
Todd
As of the most recent release (yesterday), WINE 0.9.8 has reportedly fixed PS7 to run in Linux (obviously x86 only).
UGS is also porting software. http://www.ugs.com/about_us/press/press.shtml?id=4 367
Personally, I'd like to see SolidWorks ported. Yes, I ditched Acad for solid modelers 12 years ago and would be very reluctant to go back.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Novell did the original survey. Desktoplinux.com (a ZD thing, apparently) is suggesting the alternatives.
So it is Novell...ZD is just taking everything and reslicing it with minimal quotation marks. And not linking the original source. *headdesk*
If Novell want people - especially corporate users - to move to their Linux distribution instead of using MacOS or MS Windows, then yes, identify the things that are blocking them, and then identify alternatives.
If someone says they need to run Adobe Creative Studio (say), you have three choices:
(1) see if it's possible to give them Linux with some combination of open source/Libre software, and have them be as effective. In a corporate environment this will probably involve training.
(2) see if you can get Adobe Creative Suite (or whatever it is they say they need) to run on Linux, either via a system like WINE or by arranging for the software to be ported.
(3) arrange for the corporation to employ someone else.
People's needs and people's beliefs are not the same. It's not sufficient to say "you could actually work in this totally different way with these tools that are totally unknown to you" because that just creates anxiety, nervousness and distrust. You have to be gentler than that.
There's also motivation -- people may perceive it to be easier to get a job using PhotoShop than a job using GIMP (I am not saying whether it is true or not, but only that people may have this belief).
The hardest place to make changes is at the periphery of an organisation - the people who deal with other groups. For example, the person who receives AutoCAD files from external engineering companies, or the person who works with print firms and ad agencies who say "send me the Quark file and the PSDs for your images", or the external copy editor who says "send me the Microsoft Word file and I'll use Word's revision control to mark all the changes", there are a great many examples. You can't generally get outside organisations to change unless you are a major customer and they are a small firm, but when they are using high end CAD packages licensed at $30,000 per user (yes, that's a real figure) and they have spent, say, $150,000 on training in the past three years, they aren't about to change.
Instead, Novell needs to demonstrate that they have a viable platform for a lot of use cases, and it's clear today that for many people that this means running some existing commercial applications. And furthermore that it isn't only about features of those applications, or which is "better".
Liam
Live barefoot!
free engravings/woodcuts
If SVG ever becomes standard, we'll be able to do all the animation we want.
But does a solution involving SVG allow for synchronized audio? For instance, if I wanted to use SVG instead of SWF to make an animated series such as Homestar Runner or Weebl and Bob, would that work?
To me this is kind of funny.
The apps that the most people want are ones that I never use.
On linux I already have IBM WSAD, Eclipse, and the standard dev tools.
I've got Firefox (which I would use on windows if I used it)
I've got Evolution (there is no good Windows equivalent of this)
I've got GAIM so I can use all my IM's in one app
I'm not a graphics person, and I'm really surprised that there are that many of them (so much for photoshop). I don't really do design (so much for autocad) and I'm really surprised there are enough people paying that much money to rank the proggram that high in the survey (unless there are that many pirated versions). As for HTML, the text editor in WSAD or MyEclipse is excellent (everybody knows WYSIWYG editors are evil).
If these are the most desired apps for Linux, then I am very surprised that there aren't more people moving toward it. Seems the apps used 90% of the time by 90% of the population are Web/IM/email. Then again, for typical usage, the OS is really unimportant. Good Web/IM/email apps are available for just about every OS, and I'd bet most consumers probably don't care.
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
This article reminds me of another article which explained why professional Photoshop users don't want to switch to The GIMP.
yes, The GIMP is a porn site, Vi is a program to teach little kids the alphabet, Bluefish Thunderbird and Firefox are the mascots of a cartoon, and EMACS is an old piece of software dating back to the times when mainframes were cool. Wait, that one is actually right...
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
Oh, that's simple: MDI programs cover up real estate needlessly. If I'm editing a couple of photos in an SDI program like the GIMP, I want the screen area for those photos and whatever tool windows I'm using and nothing else taken up by my graphics manipulation program. Why? Several reasons:
So, to summarize, an SDI let's me position documents anywhere, not just in a resizeable rectangle. An SDI lets me leave blank desktop around my windows. An SDI lets me navigate to arbitrary open documents in multiple ways. When an MDI can do that, I'd like them more.
If I had to generalize, I would say that SDIs are better for people with "generalist" jobs like mine that involve frequent context switches. MDIs might be better for specialists who can open a single application and work in it most of the day.
All's true that is mistrusted
Photoshop: No substitute is available. Even if we filter out all the whiny bullshit that some of the graphic artist weenies expect (I want all 4000 commercial photoshop plugins too!), we're still left with things that really matter that Gimp can't do. CYMK is the killer feature. And it's apparently nothing that can be hacked in so easily. There are still some usability issues that need to be addressed (though again, some of the weenies will never be happy unless it matched pixel for pixel). There are undoubtedly major issues that a non-photoshop user like myself aren't even aware of. For now we have Gimp, but it is no substitute.
Autocad: No substitute is available. Again, it's a case of all the commercial plugins... if they really make photoshop worthwhile, well, then they basically *ARE* autocad. They make all the difference. This is going to be a tough act to follow, and worse, there are 100 graphic artist wannabees in open source for every engineer wannabe. I'm not familiar with any of those suggested by the article, but I expect they are pretty much to Autocad what Gimp is to photoshop. No real substitutes available.
Dreamweaver: Nvu. It's pretty damn close. It could be Dreamweaver with not an incredible amount of work. But I hope that we don't do that. Mozilla/Firefox aren't just IE, they're better than it is. That's what Nvu should be, or some branch off of it (know it's Mozilla Composer at its core, but is it OSS or proprietary? I never really checked it out). The best part is, that it shares some heritage with Firefox and Thunderbird, and that means in theory, writing plugins for it should be possible. I think that could be really useful in an application like that.
iTunes: Didn't we just see an article about Songbird here recently? The screenshots look pretty slick. Again, based off of mozilla code, I think this could end up being a replacement, even if it isn't yet. Though nothing would ever satisfy the mac weenies, I suspect.
Flash: Inkscape. It's not there yet, animation isn't ready. They're actually trying to design the interface correctly, rather than just imitate all the other animation software we've seen over the years. Also, they do seem to sort of be waiting for software that can view it (for most purposes, this means browsers that support SVG/SMIL). This will probably be every bit as powerful as Flash... there will be those who disagree of course, but who wouldn't have laughed if you'd suggested that mozilla would be the superior of IE in the beginning?
I'm surprised that Rhythmbox didn't make the list of iTunes replacements. It looks like iTunes, it interacts with your iPod in a similar fashion, and it even supports DAAP. Other than the iTMS, it's almost a complete replacement.
-jagWhen all you have is a hammer, everybody looks like a Messiah.
That's better-stated than my comment below. I have a window manager to let me manage windows. I don't need an application to bring its own window manager with it. I mean, I can scream "give me mechanism not policy" until my face turns red but until application designers "get it", I'm going to be stuck having to deal with the fact that Windows has a crappy window manager which forces application developers to bring their own window management capabilities.
Seriously, is there anybody who has spent some time on X11 with a decent window manager who thinks that the Windows window manager is more useable? I'd be really interested to hear some ideas. I've tried OS X's desktop too, it's better than Windows and can almost fake virtual desktops with Expose (and you can set up virtual desktops with a third party utility anyways). But honestly I find Windows' desktop almost unusable after several years of using X11. MDIs can make up for some of those deficiencies in Windows, but on a decent window manager they are close to intolerable.
All's true that is mistrusted
The fifth, iTunes, is a proprietary DRM package that it would be best to stay away from (although it too, is popular in geekdom).
/.) who have never purchased any music from iTMS and have never had to use a DRMed file. Personally I've only ever bought two, out of a total library of close to 20,000. The Music Store is not iTunes' "killer feature." Ease of use, a basically seamless interface, and tight integration with the iPod are. The new automatic features for subscribing to, downloading, and maintaining Podcasts on an iPod are going to be more important as people realize how cool a thing it is.
If you could make a program which replicated everything that iTunes does, without the iTMS or DRM functions, I think you'd do what 90% of people want.
I know a lot of iPod owners (and I'm sure there are quite a few here on
But replicating the DRM functions isn't necessarily important in terms of coming up with a free alternative to iTunes, it's replicating that useability experience and other features that is.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The point isn't that app X on Linux as "nearly as good" or "as good as" app Y on Windows, it's that, when it comes to hiring, there are people out there who know app Y but not app X.
App X has to be (a) better in some way (to get people to switch) and (b) easy to use by people familiar with app Y (to stop them giving up after 5 minutes).
And there is still no viable solution for video-editing on Linux. Sure, there's cinelerra, but its interface is unintuitive and it crashes frequently. Jashahka crashes, too. I haven't even been able to pull off any editing with it because it crashes all of the time. Now, if Novell can suggest a OSS solution for video-editing, that would be something.
I love NetHack.
Fix. The. UI. Then we can talk features, mmkay?
,always. It's called a CONTEXT menu. Be selective. Present reasonable choices.
Resize selections, please. Not by adding or subtraction, but by dragging, like in All Other Apps(TM).
Not everything on right-click
Resize brushes by pressing buttons, remove limitations - I don't want to create new brushes to get a new size.
And so on. This has nothing to do with imitating photoshop or anything, it's just common sense and removing frustrations. Just because the people who have been developing Gimp since the 90's are able to work *effectively* in it doesn't mean anyone else can.
Others can help fill this list, then someone maybe, maybe dares file a bug or ask the list. Then again, Carol the Dragon *will* bite your head of for it unless one of the others get there first, so wear flame-safe suit.
I remember when I first saw that article on slashdot - I rushed over to vote (If you call opening the link in a new tab "rushing") and what I saw was Quickbooks at the number one spot. I was needless to say hopeful that it would remain there but after a few weeks it started dropping.. Dropping in favor for the likes of iTunes, and Flash, and Dreamweaver...
;-)
The first thing this tells me is that the people who responded most to the survey were of average to below average competency in the world of *nix thus choosing their favorite windows apps instead of seeking out the many superior alternatives that DO exist.
Seriously?? I can understand ACAD and PhotoShop, but I would only recommend the other cruft to my mom... Actually.... I take that back - I wouldn't even recommend them to her.
Dreamweaver, Flash, and iTunes does not a desktop replacement make.. not even close. Those with ACAD and Photoshop in mind had the right idea - professional applications with a relevance to professional users who have no real equivalent in the *nix world as much as some people want to believe they do.
In my own case for example I challenge someone who knows of a good accounting app in the unix world that I can use with similar features to Quickbooks Pro to come forth - I would love to hear it - but I bet I can still list 20 features Quickbooks has that a *nix alternative does not. A general ledger system cannot compete with the complexities that a package like Quickbooks can as simply as it can, all while allowing a basic user to take advantage of them without a huge learning curve. I'm not a CPA and don't think I should have to be in order to effectively use my accounting package or spend FAR more time doing my bills than actually billing and making money.
Quickbooks is the sole reason I have any sort of windows install whatsoever to run my business and it's run via VMware on my laptop which is running Gentoo as it's sole OS, only because it is superior to to the other tools available for my purposes. Quickbooks contains features essential to my businesses accounting needs. This idealogy applies to a number of applications - why use Blender 3D if you can use 3DSMax? Why use GIMP if you can use PhotoShop? If a commercial product can truly outperform it's open brethren because it's had a much longer development cycle and gobs more R&D put into determining what's needed, what's nice, what's fastest, what's required, what interface users feel most comfortable with etc. etc. then why even bother making a business case for the open-source version? It's not whether it's open or closed source - what's driving this idealogy is what software people want to use. They want to use Linux because it's a superior OS to MS Windows, but they want to use applications designed for MS Windows on Linux because they are superior to their open-source pseudo-equivalents.
If Novell is really serious about making Linux the desktop contender it wants - they need to build a base system to support the functionality of ALL applications.. Not just the pretty ones with cute icons and brushed metal GUI's that oh so many 14 year olds love to fill their desktops with... I think WINE is a great start but I also think far more intelligent people than I can come up with a better solution than a poll on Novell's website could ever touch. I think it's safe to say a web-poll is not a legitimate or appropriate data set to study demographics due to it's highly directed audience, and the ability for the pollster to misinterpret which audience he or she has in fact targeted for polling while analyzing that data. I offer my repeated choice of Cowboy Neal anytime that option is available on a slashdot poll as proof...
Wisest is he who knows he does not know.
First, we need a coherent set of tools that let peripherals such as smartphones and PDAs sync with Linux calendaring apps as easy as they do with Outlook - something that's as transparent as plugging the device into a USB port and it 'Just Works'(TM) - that will start to make some lukewarm-to-Linux Managers sit up and take note. For the 'interim', we also need a bridge between Outlook and whatever app is being used under Linux - eGroupware (for example) is getting there with Outlook integration, but it still has some very rough edges. Looking at my desktiop needs, the only things that really stop me going 100% Linux are Outlook and Corel Draw. The other things I use regularly in Windows are easily sorted: Firefox FileZilla SecureCRT/PuTTY PSFTP (SFTP batch file transfers) Word Excel PowerPoint Looking at my users' needs there's two problems: 1) A proprietary app written in A Windows dev framework with an SQL server back-end. Our current supplier has no intention of porting to a LAMP (or Java) environment but one other has written a really good alternative using JBoss that works with a MYSQL back-end and they may get our business. 2) A spreadsheet app that copes with Macros and has 100% interoperability with Excel - we have a few complex spreadsheets with some macros and pivot functions which just choke on OpenOffice but without the Excel-specific stuff we couldn't do half the things we need. The other issue, of course, is whatever we do internally, we will always be thrown stuff (docs, spreadsheets etc.) from external sources and will just look plain daft if we cannot handle it, plus we are in a specialist medical care environment and some tools we use (or have demo'd to us) are Windows-based so we'd be at a disadvantage if we were 100% Linux.
AT&ROFLMAO
I've used iTunes very briefly on my father's WinXP machine, and thought it was pretty neat. I then found out about amaroK for Linux and installed it, and have instantly fallen in love with it.
What does iTunes have to offer that amaroK doesn't match?
I'm assuming the online music store would be the biggest one, but what else?
Please, for the love of god, Learn the concept of an MDI.
I have not seen a single OSS (GUI) application which uses this basic interface concept.
I'm sure this is a religious issue, but I've not actually seen the arguments against MDIs.
No, it's not a religious issue. You obviously haven't mastered the power of multiple desktops yet. I normally use nine of them and set their bindings to Ctl-Alt-Keypad #, but some people prefer to use a pager. It really makes it easy to keep your work organized. Really, give it try. I'm sure in no time you'll see why there really is no need for MDIs in such an environment.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
I've been using DIA for some serious work and created quite a few UML, ERD and network topology diagrams with it for my employer, but, with experience, I never came to actually like it.
There are some things I like about DIA.
The things I dislike about DIA are more numerous, though. Just a few:
All in all, DIA has made my live easier though. And also, I'm not exactly a fan of some of the Windows alternatives such as Smartdraw.
Morality is usually taught by the immoral.
The cost of windows and photoshop may seem high to hobbiests, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to what you're gonna pay someone to use it.
What about the cost of dealing with all the problems that Windows brings with it: viruses, worms, spyware, etc.? I know my (Fortune 100) company's IT department costs the company a fortune in not Windows licenses, but both license costs and personnel costs for dealing with all the security problems, and that doesn't count all the time wasted by normal employees due to having to do constant security updates (which means you can't use your computer, and have to reboot after every patch), and deal with the fallout from viruses and other malware.
I'll agree: the cost of Photoshop really isn't a big deal to a company paying $x0,000 for someone to use it. But the cost of Windows most certainly is. A smart company would probably have their employees use Photoshop on MacOSX instead.
when it's easy to use. Server capabilities -- no question, Linux is great. It's stable, fast, and is good on memory (well, I've heard bad things about more recent kernels but I digress....).
As far as a desktop OS goes however -- no. There is an elitism about using Linux over Windows where Linux developers and even leaders in the open source movement won't mimic anything Microsoft does -- even if it is particuarlly brilliant.
While I don't find Windows to be that great of an OS, it is still pretty easy to use. Easy to screw up? Sure. But when I can download any program off the web, run a setup.exe file, follow a wizard and see it work, that to me is simplicity. I know Linux zealots will say "oh, what about YUM or APTGET, or UP2DATE"... well folks, sadly to say, sometimes you like to find those little miscellaneous applications that people create for fun, and install them to see what they are all about. Those aren't listed in the repositories, and the fact when I try to use an RPM it's missing eleventy billion dependencies, I realize that my Windows DESKTOP OS is far more useful than a Linux desktop OS will ever hope to be.
Yea, you can have equivalent tools for Linux... but as long as the elitism of Linux stays in place with the 'holier than thou' attitude of development... Linux will remain a server OS, that will be used as the 'the right tool for the given job'. Most intelligent companies use Linux when they see it as a great benefit over Windows, either in cost or stablity (database servers or web servers, what have you).
Hell, even steal ideas from Apple -- they have that idea of just making things 'work' -- specifically when it comes to applications -- down pat. Linux geeks could learn a thing or two from Mac and yes, Windows too.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Surprised there is so little quality statistical software that will run natively on Linux. I know there's R and PSPP, but I'd really like to see SPSS or even Statistica on Linux.