Ask Slashdot: What Windows-Only Apps Would You Most Like To See On Linux?

An anonymous reader writes: With all the recent brouhaha about Windows 10 privacy violations and forced updates, I'm one of those that wants to thank Microsoft very gently, while taking it by the hand, and slamming the door behind it for good. Fortunately for me, I don't use any special software that is tied to Windows, except games, of course. One program I would really miss though is Total Commander file manager, which is basically my interface to the whole OS. So, I know there are Linux alternatives, but which one is the best? Also, I currently use PaleMoon fork of Firefox as my main browser, but there doesn't seem to be a Linux variant. What other software would you want to transplant to Linux, if any?

Comments

Photoshop

[jfdavis668]

I think Linux memory management would go well with Photoshop. Might struggle with video card support.

Re:Photoshop

[sanf780]

I will add other Adobe tools here. After Bibble got assimilated by Corel, I migrated my photo catalogue to Lightroom. I know there are alternatives for GNU/Linux, but I still play videogames in Windows.

Re:Photoshop

[JMJimmy]

Apps aren't the blocking element for the switch to Linux. I've said it before and I'll say it again: it's the ability to recover relatively painlessly that is lacking in Linux. As for apps, there are hundreds of business specific ones (TimeMatters for the legal profession, Photoshop for graphic artists, Final Cut Studio for film makers, and so on) the open source alternatives for these are woefully lacking - most don't exist and if they do they are pale imitations of the originals (GIMP vs Photoshop... there's just no comparison). First and foremost, something like the MS KB system for errors with the OS rather than 3rd hand forum jockeying. Remote & trusted diagnostics/fixes that do not reset personal settings. Online anti-virus/malware/etc akin to Panda Software's old 'Active Scan' so that when stupid user syndrome hits it can be dealt with *without* having to lock my system down with every anti-whatever under the sun.

Once it's easy to recover, people like me will make sure the people around us switch and with userbase come the app developers.

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

try Krita, its interface is somewhere between photoshop and fractal painter

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

GIMP can handle the pictures. Now FrameMaker would be cool.

Re:Photoshop

[pr0fessor]

I don't do much work with photos or digital art however I do use gimp it can be skinned and switched to single window mode so it more resembles photoshop's interface. I have no idea if it has the same features but was under the impression that it did have nearly all the same plus a few.

Re:Photoshop

[jones_supa]

I assume you are referring to Photoshop having a Mac version as well. But in this case, "Windows-only" probably refers to the software having a Windows version instead of both Windows and Linux versions.

Re:Photoshop

[orasio]

Gimp eventually did become decent feature-wise, but of course it can't replace Photoshop for people who want Photoshop. People learn to work with images, using photoshop, and they don't want to learn a different way of doing things. They shouldn't need to. If you need Photoshop, you should just use that.

For me, I never learned photoshop, I tried to, several times, but just couldn't do basic stuff. Gimp was very easy for me to learn, I use it only for very simple stuff, like resizing pictures, color management, basic compositing, sprites, logos for web development, that kind of thing.

Re:Photoshop

[SQLGuru]

Also, GIMP should implement a like-for-like JavaScript language so that you could easily port Photoshop plugins over to GIMP easily. That's one of the main reasons that GIMP isn't a viable alternative to Photoshop.

Re:Photoshop

[BronsCon]

You're joking, right? I use GIMP much more often than Photoshop, but I do keep Photoshop handy for all the times I need to do any *real* work. As a software developer, those are few and far between; my wife is the designer, here.

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

While I would also like Photoshop for Linux (or BSD), but it is not a Windows-only application. It's a Mac and Windows application.

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the real comparison to make is not between GIMP and Photoshop, but Krita and Photoshop.

Re:Photoshop

[damn_registrars]

I'm not sure what it is that you dislike so much about GIMP or why you find it so intolerable. Yeah, it is not a direct drop-in photoshop replacement for most people, but nothing can be.

I can tell you from my experience that I was once traveling with my wife - who is a graphic designer who uses the latest versions of every Adobe product - and we only had my laptop with. She needed to edit an image in a hurry so I told her to try GIMP (as her Adobe licenses are all Mac, which made them unusuable for me anyways). She didn't love it, but she was able to do what she needed in a short amount of time. I myself use GIMP all the time, but my needs as a scientist are much different from hers as a designer.

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. De fanbois doth protest too much.

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate Adobe. I hate Flash. I hate the new Creative Cloud junk they're doing and will probably stick to Photoshop CS6 until I literally cannot use it for some reason or other. But GIMP is laughable compared to Photoshop. You can't even rotate text without rasterizing it.

Re:Photoshop

[TemporalBeing]

Apps aren't the blocking element for the switch to Linux. I've said it before and I'll say it again: it's the ability to recover relatively painlessly that is lacking in Linux.

Recover from what? Apps in Linux are typically very centralized in app-specific manners compared to Windows where everything tends to get thrown in and around the Windows Registry. Have an issue with Firefox? Reset firefox - rename its directory (~/.mozilla/firefox) and start-it up again; you can even recover the old stuff if you like. Have a user account issue? Just rename your user folder (/home/username) and login again.

The same cannot be said on Windows. Have an issue with an App on Windows? Good luck - find the registry setting that's causing the problem and reset it and its 4 or 5 backups. Have a user account issue? You might be able to get by with resetting a registry setting, but more likely than not you'll have to create a new user using the tools - so now you have all new ACLs, a new user directory, and you've lost all your settings, etc.

As for apps, there are hundreds of business specific ones (TimeMatters for the legal profession, Photoshop for graphic artists, Final Cut Studio for film makers, and so on) the open source alternatives for these are woefully lacking - most don't exist and if they do they are pale imitations of the originals (GIMP vs Photoshop... there's just no comparison).

Agreed. I can't move my wife to Linux simply because she's an accountant and needs access to Quicken/QuickBooks and others tools (MS Excel) that are pretty much industry standard for her. It would be great to have those all ported to Linux, but you'll have to convince a lot of corporate oriented software development houses (f.e Intuit) to do so. It's a big chicken-vs-egg issue - corporates won't move over unless there's software and the software devs won't make the software without the corporates.

First and foremost, something like the MS KB system for errors with the OS rather than 3rd hand forum jockeying.

So you do realize that every distribution has that kind of thing already, no?

Remote & trusted diagnostics/fixes that do not reset personal settings.

Well, the first part here is remote access. For Linux users that means adding a new user account and enabling SSH for a third-party to be able to access it. True, you could install TeamViewer, LogMeIn, or similar third-party services, but you have to first and foremost solve the remote-access issue.

Online anti-virus/malware/etc akin to Panda Software's old 'Active Scan' so that when stupid user syndrome hits it can be dealt with *without* having to lock my system down with every anti-whatever under the sun.

So now you're projecting issues from Windows onto Linux. Even then, there are tools - like the venerable Open Source ClamAV - which can do the job; but you typically don't need them to start with.

Re:Photoshop

[TemporalBeing]

I don't do much work with photos or digital art however I do use gimp it can be skinned and switched to single window mode so it more resembles photoshop's interface. I have no idea if it has the same features but was under the impression that it did have nearly all the same plus a few.

I believe GIMP introduced the single-window mode in version 2.4 or 2.6; the multi-window mode was just a PITA. Overall, GIMP is suppose to be on par with PhotoShop; it's just got a lot higher learning curve so it's harder to take advantage of it.

I've tried a few times to use GIMP for the small things I do on occasion - making icons, etc - and given up each time simply because it was too difficult to get the tools I needed working right and easily. Even with single-window mode, they still have a long way to go on usability.

Re:Photoshop

[swv3752]

Apps aren't the blocking element for the switch to Linux. I've said it before and I'll say it again: it's the ability to recover relatively painlessly that is lacking in Linux. As for apps, there are hundreds of business specific ones (TimeMatters for the legal profession, Photoshop for graphic artists, Final Cut Studio for film makers, and so on) the open source alternatives for these are woefully lacking - most don't exist and if they do they are pale imitations of the originals (GIMP vs Photoshop... there's just no comparison). First and foremost, something like the MS KB system for errors with the OS rather than 3rd hand forum jockeying. Remote & trusted diagnostics/fixes that do not reset personal settings. Online anti-virus/malware/etc akin to Panda Software's old 'Active Scan' so that when stupid user syndrome hits it can be dealt with *without* having to lock my system down with every anti-whatever under the sun.

Once it's easy to recover, people like me will make sure the people around us switch and with userbase come the app developers.

CorelDraw (and the companion app) were really nice programs. There was even a version proted to Linux back in the day. Problem was, they were not Photoshop. Does not matter how good the program is, it does not have the UI of Photoshop so people complain.

You want a Vendor supplied knowledge base? You mean like http://rhn.redhat.com/ ? Satellite, Puppet, or Chef can all automate and remote administrate machines. I am not aware of remote scanning for Linux, but not really needed if you enable SElinux.

None of this is available for cheap home use. If you want cheap, go do a web search for a solution to your problem.

Re:Photoshop

[future assassin]

I'm not ragging on gimp because you can't do stuff on it as obviously you can its just you shouldn't fight the tool to use it. Car analog, you go from driving a nice auto luxury car to diving a hoopty, manual with a bad clutch. They're both gonna get you to your location is just you'll be frustrated as hell with the hoopty.

Don't get me wrong for a free software Gimp is very nice.

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

People say this a lot, but Photoshop's UI is just as clumsy and awkward as GIMP's. You're just too used to its weirdness to see that anymore.

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

That was one of RMS' original arguments for Guile (Scheme) as the official GNU scripting language. With macros he said it'd be easy to implement other languages on top for compatibility reasons.

Re:Photoshop

[JMJimmy]

Recover from what?...

OS to be easy to recover, not the apps. And by easy I do not mean a re-install.

So you do realize that every distribution has that kind of thing already, no?

For Ubuntu as an example, I know there's a wiki and a bug tracker but nothing that compares to the MS KB pages that detail problems, error codes, version application, fixes, etc. What I know of Ubuntu's solutions is more MS Answers quality than MS KB.

Well, the first part here is remote access. For Linux users that means adding a new user account and enabling SSH for a third-party to be able to access it. True, you could install TeamViewer, LogMeIn, or similar third-party services, but you have to first and foremost solve the remote-access issue.

I don't need to know what it involves, I just need to know it works for stupid people. My aunt-in-law has a problem with her computer, I send her a link to a fix and it fixes the problem without me having to go to her house or have a working remote login for myself on her system. I spend enough time fixing peoples computers, I want to be done with it as quickly and with as little inconvenience to myself as possible. Like it or not, those "Mr FixIt" scripts save a LOT of time.

So now you're projecting issues from Windows onto Linux. Even then, there are tools - like the venerable Open Source ClamAV - which can do the job; but you typically don't need them to start with.

It's a reality, the more popular an OS is the more likely it'll be a target for malware. Right now there's no need but I guarantee there are thousands of security issues waiting to be found in Linux code that are getting by because of security through obscurity. Apple has seen it, Android has seen it, and Linux will too if it gains any real marketshare. Even if security was perfect there's no stopping stupid user syndrome. When that happens I want a cloud based tool that can fix the damage caused by malware. Win8/10 don't have it yet and it really bothers me because I haven't run active anti-X software in a decade and don't want to return to that particular nightmare.

Re:Photoshop

[pr0fessor]

Mostly I only use gimp to make icons or the occasional logo but since it was the first software of it's type that I learned to use I imagine it made learning it easier.

Re:Photoshop

[JMJimmy]

I can't access the redhat link without an account - MS KB is public. Satellite/Puppet/Chef aren't exactly what I mean, I mean something akin to Mr FixIt scripts that can fix specific problems.

Re:Photoshop

[JMJimmy]

I wanted to reply to the CorelDraw thing separately as that's a conversation worth having. In my opinion GIMP's interface is nearly as good as Photoshop's in many respects. I was able to pick it up, coming from the latter, and understood 90% of it right away. What I found difficult was a lot of the refinements in things like line detection, box manipulation, and many of the filters... they just didn't have the same level of refinement, would jitter frequently between objects, wouldn't allow for certain actions to be performed easily (though there was often a more complicated method available via the menu). The tools seemed very much what you'd expect from a programmer. They do the job, they do it accurately, but they don't understand the user and what the user wants to do most often. Photoshop does have the opposite problem, in compromising for the "most often" they do make some actions more tedious to do accurately with objects snapping to when you simply want to place them nearby forcing you to zoom in/out.

It's difficult to say whether open source can make those types of choices without creating conflict/forks for people who don't want to compromise to truly improve the user experience.

Re:Photoshop

[sexconker]

This is like saying MATLAB/Mathematica does everything Photoshop does and more, or that AVISynth and MeGUI do everything that After Effects and Premier do and more.

Yes, you can absolutely get these tools to do everything. I use GIMP and AVISynth for everything, never touching Adobe's trash. But I know that the more complicated my shit gets, the easier it would be to do a decent job of it using Adobe's tools. My use cases involve needing to do frame-perfect or pixel-perfect complex jobs (meaning I CAN'T use Adobe's tools) or needing to do simple jobs (meaning I have no reason to use Adobe's tools).

As for the UI, GIMP's UI is trash. The UI introduced in 2.0 was even worse (and extremely buggy) but I got used to it (mostly). That said, Adobe's interfaces are utter fucking shit across the board and make GIMP's UI look like the magnificent stone hard (yet flaccid) cock on Michaelangelo's David. Like the marble penis, it is both beautiful and utilitarian, at least compared to Adobe's Picasso renditions.

Re:Photoshop

[paulatz]

[she] needs access to Quicken/QuickBooks and others tools (MS Excel) that are pretty much industry standard for her. It would be great to have those all ported to Linux,

Actually, MS Excel has already been ported to Linux, although and to be completely fair, it is a rather specialized distribution of Linux called "Android"

Re:Photoshop

[goose-incarnated]

I'm not ragging on gimp because you can't do stuff on it as obviously you can its just you shouldn't fight the tool to use it. Car analog, you go from driving a nice auto luxury car to diving a hoopty, manual with a bad clutch. They're both gonna get you to your location is just you'll be frustrated as hell with the hoopty.

I feel your analogy is inaccurate: I've never used Photoshop but I have used Gimp since it came out. Now when I try to use Photoshop I cannot understand the workflow and find it very unintuitive.

IOW, you're labelling one of the options bad because you're used to the other way of doing things. The way you're used to doing things may not necessarily be the best way to do things.

Re:Photoshop

[BlackPignouf]

Yes. I had a very hard time understanding the weird UI of Photoshop.
It still doesn't change the fact that some crucial Photoshop features have been lacking in GIMP for a *long* time.
I can get past the weird (and different) GIMP UI, but I cannot live without adjustment layers.
See http://wiki.gimp.org/wiki/Road...

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Most of the UIs in Creative Suite/Cloud applications are pretty bad, but it's the features that count as much as anything.

For example, look at popular FOSS tools like the GIMP, Inkscape and Scribus. How well do they support CMYK images? Serious typography with OpenType fonts? Professional colour books for the spot colour in your client's logo?

If you want to create work that looks like it was designed with WordArt from the early '90s, I'm sure this stuff is great. If you need to produce a professional quality magazine ad to the publisher's specs or professional quality graphics for a client's new web site, not so much.

Re:Photoshop

[Lord Bitman]

in Gimp, layers have boundaries. This doesn't seem to be a problem nearly as much as it used to be, but I have still run into it semi-recently. "I cropped your image because the part you were working on moved at some point in its history" is completely insane. Layer boundaries are visible by default, meaning your image starts with some square around its visible area, showing you... well, I don't actually know what it's intending to show you, as they seem to auto-resize for most operations these days.

The UI for the "resize" tool is so absurdly backwards that I suspect that it was implemented as a proof-of-concept for some pre-1.0 version and then never looked at again by a developer.

I'd say the same for the "text" tool, but I do recall a time when it was actually worse (it once didn't give any preview at all)

Want to change something's opacity from 0 to 100%? How about changing a brush size? Or maybe you want to select a colour from a range of hues? Each of these sliders has a completely different interface. Two of them share the ability to change their behaviour based on where (not indicated on the interface itself) you click / slide.

I'm not a graphic designer, so I rarely have need of GIMP or anything like it. When I do need it, I almost always want to: Paste a layer, resize it, probably copy it a few times, maybe change the opacity, maybe draw a circle around something, probably type in some text to explain what was circled. I don't need a lot from GIMP. The only things I interact with are the most basic of tools: move layers, resize layers, draw a squiggle, type some text. Even with these absolute basics, I encounter painful UI issues every time I load up GIMP.

I really enjoy graphic design, image manipulation, etc. But I would sooner install Windows and sign up for a £40/mo subscription to Photoshop than I would attempt to use GIMP for anything more complicated than I already use it for.

Just in case you were actually curious, that is what I find so intolerable. I can go into more detail, but I expect this summary is enough to give you an idea.

tl;dr: Try to do the most basic things I can think of wanting from an Image Manipulation Program; encounter UI which consistently prevents me from either seeing what I'm doing; never bothered trying to do anything less-basic because of it.

Re:Photoshop

[Jim Hall]

Gimp eventually did become decent feature-wise, but of course it can't replace Photoshop for people who want Photoshop. [..] For me, I never learned photoshop, I tried to, several times, but just couldn't do basic stuff. Gimp was very easy for me to learn, I use it only for very simple stuff [..]

I think that's the important point, and something that I found a few years ago when examining the usability of several free/open source software packages. Does GIMP have good or bad usability? There were some strong statements on either side: About half said it had good usability, and about half said it had bad usability. However, I decided to skip GIMP in my usability study, as it is intended for people who do need/want to do graphics work, and my usability test targeted the general user. But I didn't discuss the split opinions in the usability of GIMP.

In following up, it seemed that two types of users thought GIMP had poor usability:

1. Those who used Photoshop a lot, such as professional graphics editors or photographers
2. Those who never used Photoshop, and only tried GIMP because they needed a graphics program

Users who thought GIMP had good usability used Photoshop occasionally, such as hobbyist photographers or casual web designers. Digging further, I believe this is because:

• Those who only occasionally use Photoshop understand the concepts and terminology used in Photoshop and so are easily able to transfer their knowledge from Photoshop to GIMP.
• But those who never used Photoshop were completely lost in the terminology and concepts. GIMP relies on layers for image construction (so does Photoshop). "Layers" are a difficult concept for someone who has never worked with them before. A simple paint program like MS Paint usually suffices for these users.
• And those who use Photoshop all the time were confused that functionality and features differed slightly from Photoshop v GIMP, or was accessed differently, or used different terminology; these users were stymied by what they perceived as a dramatic change from Photoshop to GIMP.

So GIMP is an interesting case. It's an example of mimicking another program perhaps too well, but (necessarily) not perfectly. GIMP has good usability if you have used Photoshop occasionally, but not if you are an expert in Photoshop, and not if you are a complete Photoshop novice.

Re:Photoshop

[jeti]

Reminds me of the time I tried to batch-convert hundreds of icons. GIMP is scriptable. So I looked at Scheme and then at the API and examples. Scheme wasn't the issue, but the API just didn't seem to make sense. After a few hours, I gave up and started Photoshop. I pressed record, converted an icon and applied the recorded script to the folder within a few minutes.

Re: Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that the cost is your privacy and at least 70% of your soul for using Windows in the first place.

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, but I'll take exception with the "They shouldn't need to."

Learning is both about knowing how to do with what you have, and how to do with what you get. We all initially learn how to add by counting, and we (hopefully) all learn how to add by memorization. Over application of "we have a way we know how to do it, so we shouldn't need to learn any other way" is the equivalent of conceding that the entire field is dead as far as possible improvement is concerned. Even Photoshop is getting ready to release Photoshop (the next version), which requires some form of learning, so even Photoshop doesn't agree with your statement, if taken at face value.

The real reason why people working with Photoshop don't want to change is the real reason why people working with one tool don't want to change. They have to develop skill using the new tool, and they don't value being skilled with the new tool enough to invest the effort.

I have a friend that programs in C#. He's constantly aware that I tend to use Java. He's made a number of rather odd comments indicating that there's no reason to use Java when C# does everything you could want. While his arguments could be addressed and shown to be lacking, it won't matter. For him, C# does everything he wants because his first "want" is C#.

You probably know a person who feels this way about spoken languages; you know, the person that feels that foreigners should speak his primary language if they are in his neighborhood.

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

By now, you should know that every car analogy is inaccurate. In short, if they have to resort to a car analogy, odds are they have proven their point to be false.

To make my point with a touch of irony. I know people that insist Ford cars are the best in the world, and wouldn't shift over to some hoopty foreign built Lexus. Even after the facts got in the way of the argument, they made all sorts of deprecating comments about how the minutiae of the Lexus controls were so bad, like the seat adjustment controls that didn't exist in their car, and the placement of the hood release (which is one that even I couldn't figure out how it was comparatively lacking)

Re:Photoshop

[hairyfeet]

How about a "roll back drivers" or "system restore" when updates go wrong, something Windows has had since Win2K? The zealots can get pissy and downmod all they want but there is a reason that "the hairyfeet challenge" has lasted for 8 years with nobody passing, its because updates break shit in Linux and when it does you had better 1.- Know EXACTLY the make/model/rev of the affected hardware, 2.- Have a SECOND device to hunt for fixes, as the first one can easily be broken beyond use, and 3.- Have the skills to take a bunch of arcane bash commands and tweak it for the hardware in question as the "fixes" are often NOT written for YOUR hardware, they are written for a previous version and Linux is so God damned picky that if you have hardware Foo, rev bar version X and the fix is for hardware Foo, rev bar version X1 it will not work and the end user HAS to fix it himself!

I can take a copy of Win2K, go from RTM to EOL and the drivers that worked at the start will work at the finish and the same is true of every subsequent release, Hell just for shits and giggles I went from Vista to Win 7 to Win 8 to Win 8.1 once, guess what? ALL of the drivers worked! The fans can scream all they want but Linux in 2015 reminds me of Windows in 1998, where if something fails? You are SOL unless you are a geek with some serious troubleshooting skills, if you don't have those? Well give it up Chuck, you are just boned.

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I am very very OVER anything Adobe. Flash - thank you Adobe. PDF "Reader" spyware platform - thank you Adobe. Subscription based Photoshop - Adobe. Their cr@pp is unwelcome on my system. GiMP does the job, and with G'MIC and a few other add-in gadgets, you are almost lost in the maze of choices to get things done in GiMP.. Plenty of excellent applications for photography exist - all free, not "licensed" invasionware riddled with backdoors and closed-source secret sauce that calls home and does who knows what else. If you like that sort of thing, run Windows.

In the photography realm I really "miss" Irfanview (can be coaxed to run under Wine), but gThumb is quite a close equivalent.
CAD is still a bit weak under Linux, I had a hard time convincing someone to jump ship and they had years of CAD work they wanted to continue with.
Hugin is the only option for assembling panoramas. I would love to see Panorama Studio Pro as a Linux application.
Despite the plethora of editors, what Notepad++ does with the Scintilla base has not (yet) been repeated in Linux.

Of course, there are relatively simple ways around all these issues. Linux people tend to be a bit more computer savvy that Auntie Maybel or the sales drone at the electronics store. Already native to Linux is everything from the kitchen sink to professional DTP (Scribus) - all in a tried and tested "Unix" setup with proper permissions and controls out of the box.

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

Donny, you're out of your element.

OS to be easy to recover, not the apps. And by easy I do not mean a re-install.

There are a half-dozen different ways to do this. Most distributions will split /home off to a different partition, so a reinstall is often the ten-minute solution (which does not lose data). Unless you're doing something stupid with software sources, it's fairly unlikely that you will be able to hose your system anyhow. If the end-user does not have root privileges then they're only ever going to be able to screw up their own profile. And yes, you can give them install/uninstall access without giving them access to any other sysadmin tools.

Red Hat probably has some equivalent to the MS KB pages. For everything else there's the Arch wiki. You also need less documentation with Linux issues because you don't need screenshots.

I don't need to know what it involves, I just need to know it works for stupid people. My aunt-in-law has a problem with her computer, I send her a link to a fix and it fixes the problem without me having to go to her house or have a working remote login for myself on her system. I spend enough time fixing peoples computers, I want to be done with it as quickly and with as little inconvenience to myself as possible. Like it or not, those "Mr FixIt" scripts save a LOT of time.

How are they going to screw up the computer when they can't run untrusted executables and don't have access beyond their own profile? I don't think you get the core concept here. For the rare exceptions, TeamViewer or SSH work just fine. It's not overly troublesome to set up Dynamic DNS and a port forward to the specific box. For almost any given maintenance task, the user will never even notice their machine is being accessed remotely. As an example, having to restart apps or the system due to updates is extremely rare.

It's a reality, the more popular an OS is the more likely it'll be a target for malware. Right now there's no need but I guarantee there are thousands of security issues waiting to be found in Linux code that are getting by because of security through obscurity. Apple has seen it, Android has seen it, and Linux will too if it gains any real marketshare. Even if security was perfect there's no stopping stupid user syndrome.

Linux runs the majority of the world's servers, cell phones, and supercomputers. The servers are often pricelessly valuable. There have been some high-profile vulnerabilities, but true exploits are rare and quickly patched. Stupid user syndrome is mitigated by having all software come from a trusted source, and by removing unnecessary user privileges. Same thing with Windows and OS X for that matter.

TemporalBeing was right; you're projecting Windows issues onto Linux. I'm not going to suggest you use anything but the software you want to use, but while Linux is far from perfect, its issues are entirely different from Windows issues.

Re:Photoshop

[TemporalBeing]

How about a "roll back drivers" or "system restore" when updates go wrong, something Windows has had since Win2K? The zealots can get pissy and downmod all they want but there is a reason that "the hairyfeet challenge" has lasted for 8 years with nobody passing, its because updates break shit in Linux and when it does you had better 1.- Know EXACTLY the make/model/rev of the affected hardware, 2.- Have a SECOND device to hunt for fixes, as the first one can easily be broken beyond use, and 3.- Have the skills to take a bunch of arcane bash commands and tweak it for the hardware in question as the "fixes" are often NOT written for YOUR hardware, they are written for a previous version and Linux is so God damned picky that if you have hardware Foo, rev bar version X and the fix is for hardware Foo, rev bar version X1 it will not work and the end user HAS to fix it himself!

Funny, given how much breaks when you update Windows; and the only solution there is to typically to take it into a help desk of some sort (e.g GeekSquad). Most people do not know how to use System Restore or Roll-back drivers - even in Windows.

Now you can top that off by the fact that with Linux, many issues that break things in an update will be fixed in another update, typically released faster than a user can drop it off to support and get it back.

As to hardware, you really do have the same issue in Window and on Mac. The main difference is the included installation disk. For printers, most Linux systems will auto-recognize the printer and load up the CUPS driver (thank you Apple) to use with it.

So even most Windows users would not pass your "Hairy Feet Challenge" when running Windows.

I can take a copy of Win2K, go from RTM to EOL and the drivers that worked at the start will work at the finish and the same is true of every subsequent release, Hell just for shits and giggles I went from Vista to Win 7 to Win 8 to Win 8.1 once, guess what? ALL of the drivers worked!

That's funny, given that every release of WIndows uses a different driver model. And the driver model between Windows XP and Windows Vista was an extremely great change. One of the main issues with Vista was that Microsoft changed the device driver interfaces between Vista RC2 and Vista RTM with no RC3 in between - so all the drivers that Microsoft did not themselves support broke! Hmm...wonder what you're smoking...

The fans can scream all they want but Linux in 2015 reminds me of Windows in 1998, where if something fails? You are SOL unless you are a geek with some serious troubleshooting skills, if you don't have those? Well give it up Chuck, you are just boned.

Funny how that's the same issue for Windows users. The big difference is that Windows users learned to stop complaining and pay someone to fix it. They just don't know who to call for Linux, and the various support groups out there (f.e GeekSquad) don't officially support it. Change that aspect and the support issue will quickly go away.

Re:Photoshop

[TemporalBeing]

[she] needs access to Quicken/QuickBooks and others tools (MS Excel) that are pretty much industry standard for her. It would be great to have those all ported to Linux,

Actually, MS Excel has already been ported to Linux, although and to be completely fair, it is a rather specialized distribution of Linux called "Android"

Well...not really. If I'm not mistaken it's just a dumb interface to Office365.

Re:Photoshop

[fizzer06]

Micrografx Picture Publisher 8. (I tried WINE but it was unstable)

Re:Photoshop

[TemporalBeing]

Recover from what?...

OS to be easy to recover, not the apps. And by easy I do not mean a re-install.

Linux does not typically require a re-install to recover the OS, and if you're having that kind of issue, then it doesn't matter what OS you're using - most users will typically call someone else or pay someone to fix it; that someone else typically knows where to look - whether MS KB (which is horrendous), TechNet, or Linux Distribution equivalents.

And, FYI - Ubuntu and Red Hat all have equivalents of MS KB and TechNet for their subscribers to support the corporates that want that kind of thing. However, that's just a centralized copy of all the decentralized works. MS has nothing comparative to that amount of software shipped in a normal Linux distribution - they (MS) only have a few products compared to the thousands of products in any given Linux distro. If you have an issue with GIMP you may first try your distribution, but the issue will more likely be documented with GIMP unless it is distro specific. Same goes for any of those other pieces of software in the distro. Not necessarily an ideal situation, but not one that is easy to rectify either.

In comparison, you don't go to MS KB to solve an Adobe Photoshop issue; you go to Adobe. MS could care less.

So you do realize that every distribution has that kind of thing already, no?

For Ubuntu as an example, I know there's a wiki and a bug tracker but nothing that compares to the MS KB pages that detail problems, error codes, version application, fixes, etc. What I know of Ubuntu's solutions is more MS Answers quality than MS KB.

Again, MS doesn't do that for every single application that runs on Windows. They do it on their own, and they may have some high profile ones where they are the culprit of the issue. It's no different with Linux distros other than the fact that you don't have to go to 1000 different places to get all the software to start with.

Well, the first part here is remote access. For Linux users that means adding a new user account and enabling SSH for a third-party to be able to access it. True, you could install TeamViewer, LogMeIn, or similar third-party services, but you have to first and foremost solve the remote-access issue.

I don't need to know what it involves, I just need to know it works for stupid people. My aunt-in-law has a problem with her computer, I send her a link to a fix and it fixes the problem without me having to go to her house or have a working remote login for myself on her system. I spend enough time fixing peoples computers, I want to be done with it as quickly and with as little inconvenience to myself as possible. Like it or not, those "Mr FixIt" scripts save a LOT of time.

Typically for Linux the solution is: "Go to updater, refresh, click apply" Sometimes you'll have to add "log out and log back in" but that's it. You can do that over the phone. Some times, you may have to wait a day while the patch comes through, but that's really it.

Of course, there are other solutions that you could do too - like giving her text to copy/paste into a terminal (with minimum direction to do so) that would run a shell script you wrote - e.g "wget https://mysite.com/myshellscri... | bash" and you could automate some things yourself.

And again, it's not really any different on Windows aside from the fact that you would have to go to one of any number of websites to download an update to a particular package, hope she gets the right one (and it's not infected with malware), and then guide her through running the install -which could be as simple as click-click-click or as complicated as building a 747 depending on the vendor.

Conversely, the Linux distros validate everything that is being updated against its source

Re:Photoshop

[gabereiser]

I laughed at this a little...

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

Layers took me too long to learn. I simply wanted to paint in RGBA. I find the concept of layers too awkward for my purposes.

Re: Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

"Auntie Maybel" and "the sales drone at the electronics store" ARE also Linux users. If you attend a geeky convention (like, say, Nan Desu Kan last weekend) and note who's talking about this stuff, you too can get this perception. There are actually lots of Linux users who are older women, as well as people of any gender in retail jobs, who use Linux!

Re:Photoshop

[tezbobobo]

It's not the interface. It's the lack of support for colour systems from CMYK through Pantone, and so on. Gimp is fine for web work, but impssible for colour managed print.

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

1.- Know EXACTLY the make/model/rev of the affected hardware

You need to know make/model to hunt for drivers, for any system/OS. You do not need to know revision, for any system/OS.

2.- Have a SECOND device to hunt for fixes, as the first one can easily be broken beyond use,

Or you stick your LiveUSB install media in and do whatever you need from that.

3.- Have the skills to take a bunch of arcane bash commands and tweak it for the hardware in question as the "fixes" are often NOT written for YOUR hardware, they are written for a previous version and Linux is so God damned picky that if you have hardware Foo, rev bar version X and the fix is for hardware Foo, rev bar version X1 it will not work and the end user HAS to fix it himself!

Absolutely not. First, god knows what hardware you're actually referring to, I doubt if it exists outside your head. There's probably not going to be any driver related problem more complicated than

#aptitude purge $DRIVER
#aptitude install $DRIVER
or
#aptitude install $ALT_DRIVER

The nastiest any driver-related issue can get is having to edit a text file (not a script).

Linux has the broadest hardware support of any kernel. It runs on CPU architectures that Windows hasn't even heard of, and you can bring your printer drivers along with if you like. Whereas Windows can't even manage to get Office ported to ARM.

And you can't even pretend that Microsoft doesn't break their driver model; you know very well they did that between 98/ME and NT/XP, and again between XP and Vista. It's a problem that every OS has, including Windows. You're selectively picking what you consider to be the same OS, and I have no idea how you can look at the Windows world, where drivers only function on one architecture, break when Microsoft OR the vendor decides that they break, and when they break you're completely without options whether or not you're a geek.

As for system restore, most drivers come with the kernel, and most systems let you choose which kernel you boot with, and keep several versions. I understand that actually managing computers is too hard for you, and it's perfectly okay to admit that and use Windows. It's cool. It's what it's there for. Linux has its own uses that you're willfully ignorant of. Let's not compare the server OS to the desktop OS more than strictly necessary, m'kay?

Re:Photoshop

[hcs_$reboot]

Give GIMP 2.8 another chance. The Gimp folks made huge improvements into the 2.8 release.

Re:Photoshop

[YouGotTobeKidding]

Sorry but that is just bullshit. Rightly or wrongly the industry standard is Photoshop and its workflow. Sticking your fingers in your ears and going la la la I cant hear you doesnt make the truth any less real. This is a common problem with many FOSS programs. They do their own thing in their own way just to be different. Not because it is better. Now Im not saying GIMP is total shit. GIMP is fine if all you have used is Corel Draw or MS Paint. Once you go beyond that its work flow SUCKS. Its advanced features....are not advanced, even when compared to even 3 year old versions of Photoshop GIMP gets it ass handed to it. The best and only good thing about GIMP is it is free. That is not saying much. Honestly if there WAS a Linux FOSS version of Photoshop CC (not even CC 2014...just one gen out of date CC) Linux would find a hell of a lot more traction in professional circles outside the IT dept.

Re:Photoshop

[Jethro]

A lot of people automatically compare Photoshop to GIMP, but ignore some of the tools that come with Photoshop, such as Adobe Camera Raw.

I've tried several different RAW processors for Linux, and none of them even came CLOSE to ACR. Not by a long shot.

I've used GIMP since version 0.54, sometime back in the '90s. It was an awesome tool back then. It's still a very impressive program. Then I did a pretty big year-long photography project, and some time in the middle of it I tried the trial version of Photoshop. The workflow improvement going from Shotwell (or whatever) -> UFRaw (or rawtherapee or dcraw) ->GIMP, to Bridge->ACR->Photoshop was unbelievable. Again, at this point I'd been using GIMP for well over a decade, and going to Adobe's tools made my life incredibly easier and more effective and I was getting much, much better results. GIMP was always awkward to use, whereas Photoshop was almost completely intuitive.

But Linux has nothing that can compare to ACR.

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

So GIMP is an interesting case. It's an example of mimicking another program perhaps too well, but (necessarily) not perfectly. GIMP has good usability if you have used Photoshop occasionally, but not if you are an expert in Photoshop, and not if you are a complete Photoshop novice.

In my case, I've never used Photoshop. Literally, ever. I don't pay license fees (hence Linux/BSD for me), and it wasn't important enough to get off of eDonkey back in the day. GIMP was a little awkward at first, but no more so than I would've Photoshop. I actually really liked (still do) the multiple window interface, since I was already familiar with workspaces on early GNOME2. What made the transition easy, was that I already knew what I wanted to do, and had the GIMP User Manual open.

You make a really good point, but I think that novices would've been just as confused by Photoshop starting out. Photoshop only has the advantage of being able to should down the hall "A Coward, How do I turn boobs.bmp, into boobies.jpg?!", at places other than a Linux conference. Jocularity aside, I do think my complete lack of artistic skills makes GIMP easier for me. I mostly use GIMP as "ImageMagick with a GUI", so I rarely (about once a year) have to go back and remember how to $SOMETHING_ADVANCED (which would trip up the Photoshop guys). The fact is, different programs require different methods. In reality, trying to port the exact procedure for doing $SOMETHING_ADVANCED in Photoshop to GIMP, is just like people asking "I need to declare a C char pointer in Python." That exact sequence of steps is not required to make a string, or a good looking 'shop. The end result is all that matters. GIMP is a wonderful program, and I love it. It just suffers derision from people who refuse to RTFM*, or a approach their problem from an alternative angle.

*The documentation really is great, IMO.

Re:Photoshop

[issicus]

the worst part of photoshops UI is how windows handles pressing the alt key. i hate that.

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee! You seems one of these that never need to print a Pantone or photo. GIMP cannot handle colors for the design industry, several graphic designers would be happy for use Linux. But when they see that GIMP prints an Aquamarine as Safe Web Blue, they come back to Mac or Windows. When GIMP comes out of the comfort zone of "Web only. We never print a paper" maybe you may have more users around.

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a litle bit like “I wish I could use Garage Band on Linux” There are other editors that do similar things to GarageBad, but the number and high quality of the samples it ships with just make it a no brainer go go and buy a $700 mac mini if you just want GB, and yo ucan book linux on it 8)
Same for photoshop. Yiu pick the app you need to get teh work done, then you pick the OS that runs that app the best, then you pick the hardware to best run the OS with the performance you need for the app. In. That. Order.

There are philisophical reasons to pick Linux, and they are all well and goo, as long as you are aware of the freedom compromise you are making to pick the app that you want to use..
Every day at work, I curse the crappy windows dekstop I have to use to manage and troubleshoot the network, because there are a lot of great utilities that just either come with most linux distros or are just an apt-get install away, but the environment we have requires a domain authenticated computer before the switch will let me out of the quarantine network, so I have ot use Windows 8(
But at home, we only have one windows PC, and that is my laptop from 2010 that never gets turned on 8).

Re:Photoshop

[Wolfrider]

> How about a "roll back drivers" or "system restore" when updates go wrong, something Windows has had since Win2K? The zealots can get pissy and downmod all they want but there is a reason that "the hairyfeet challenge" has lasted for 8 years with nobody passing

--I accept the hairyfeet challenge, and offer a quick google: OpenSuSE has had this feature since 2014; see:

http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20141110#news

--From the article:
[[
However, perhaps the biggest advancement is the way openSUSE automatically takes snapshots of the Btrfs file system and allows the user to rollback to previous configurations by rebooting the machine and selecting an old snapshot from the boot menu.
]]

--FYI, I have been using a btrfs Root filesystem on Debian (Antix--64) for the past few months and it's been stable for me. I'm running stock repo kernel 4.x. Apart from that, I do a full system tar backup before doing *any* apt-get update, and log every package that is being changed...

--You're one of my Friends here on /. -- I imagine the SuSE forums might benefit from some of your input and ideas regarding system recovery ;-)

Re:Photoshop

[MrKrillls]

"it's the ability to recover relatively painlessly that is lacking in Linux." Huh? If the OS borks, as I trust all will eventually, from bitrot if not my idiocy, I can just reload Linux and go on from there. No one tells me I can't do so. No one charges me anything. I don't need permission from someone at Apple or MS to fix my computer. As long as I have done real backups, I can recover from darn near anything short of a planet size asteroid collision. I'm far more worried about recovery from problems with commercial software than from things from the Linux universe. KB maybe works for you, but my experience with it has not been so encouraging. Sometimes KB is right on, but it usually doesn't help. With Linux, once I figured out that somewhere out in the searchable web, someone has written out a detailed and workable answer to every issue I've had, I've never since worried whether an answer exists for Linux issues. I can't offer quite the same confidence for KB (on it's own). KB plus the web is, however, quite workable; mainly the web. As far as losing personal settings etc, with hundreds of flavors of Linux out there, someone's making one that requires little tweaking to feel right for most potential users. So, with a good choice of OS, you'll neither need nor want many settings and tweaks that might need to be replicated. With my favored distribution, it is pleasing and workable from the moment I finish an install, and only a few subsequent tweaks will make it darn near perfect - for me. I essentially live on the road, and sort of commute between machines I have set up. After installing on my machines once, I'm simply not bothered by concerns about ease of recovery.

Re:Photoshop

[tepples]

I think the argument is that of the pool of graphic designers you can hire in any given city, far more are used to Adobe Photoshop's way of doing things than are used to GIMP's. That and your clients and suppliers prefer PSD over XCF.

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

And then to retort, I have to recompile my network drivers and add the startup options back into probe every time the kernel is updated. That's just not acceptable and is shit behavior. Why should I have to compile drivers just to get network functionality? Why is driver management such shit? Spin it all you want but Apple and Microsoft have gotten this problem gone. Why can't Linux?

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee! You seems one of these that never need to print a Pantone or photo. GIMP cannot handle colors for the design industry, several graphic designers would be happy for use Linux. But when they see that GIMP prints an Aquamarine as Safe Web Blue, they come back to Mac or Windows. When GIMP comes out of the comfort zone of "Web only. We never print a paper" maybe you may have more users around.

You do know the reason GIMP cannot use Pantone isn't a technical one, right?

see here

The relevant part

..Without derogating from the generality of the foregoing, published materials of Pantone, are protected by copyright laws and include, for example, graphic presentations, color references, PANTONE Colors, PANTONE Names, numbers, formulas and software. An unauthorized claim by third parties either as principals or agents, inferring that any referenced color or color system is the same as, or equivalent to, a color standard or color system of Pantone, may be a violation of Pantone’s proprietary rights and is strictly prohibited. Similarly, any cross-referencing, in whole or in part, to any PANTONE Color System including, but not limited to, the PANTONE Numbers and PANTONE Colors, by third parties, may be a violation of Pantone’s proprietary rights and is strictly prohibited.

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, right, go try to make a macro in Gimp.

Re:Photoshop

[dave420]

And that doesn't change a single thing. You still can't use Gimp if you need Pantone.

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

Gimp can be scripted using python

Re: Photoshop

[master_p]

That's why no one can touch Deluxe Paint: RGBA image editing at its finest.

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

You either messed it up or chose a distro like slackware that is not for newbs.

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

And who needs that anyway? Big publishers can afford Photoshop AND Macs to run it on.

The rest of us target either web or cheap printers (e.g. birthday invitations). We don't have the money, nor the need for color matching, to get involved in the "mailbox to recycling" industry.

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

Rolling back a package on Linux is as simple as pointing the package manager at the old package in /var/cache.

With kernel drivers, it's even easier, simply select the last known good kernel in the GRUB menu.

As for system restore, I'm sure that will come once somebody invents a system breaker, like Windows has the registry. On Linux, you just roll back the one thing that broke (if it was an update), check the file integrity (through the package manager), or clear the user settings (dot files, firefox profile or similar).

Re:Photoshop

[Gunstick]

I'm happy with pinta. It does what the photo viewers do not provide and has all typical tools you would expect in a simple paint program.
http://pinta-project.com/
It is not meant as a photoshop but as MSpaint alternative

Re:Photoshop

[LinuxIsGarbage]

I can take a copy of Win2K, go from RTM to EOL and the drivers that worked at the start will work at the finish and the same is true of every subsequent release, Hell just for shits and giggles I went from Vista to Win 7 to Win 8 to Win 8.1 once, guess what? ALL of the drivers worked!

That's funny, given that every release of WIndows uses a different driver model. And the driver model between Windows XP and Windows Vista was an extremely great change. One of the main issues with Vista was that Microsoft changed the device driver interfaces between Vista RC2 and Vista RTM with no RC3 in between - so all the drivers that Microsoft did not themselves support broke! Hmm...wonder what you're smoking...

While MS will introduce new driver models with new features, old drivers will typically still work. However the architecture must be the same. 32 bit Windows XP drivers will work on 32 bit Windows 7, but not on 64 Bit Windows 7. Drivers relying on half baked helper applications, or installers may break. Largest breakage occurring from XP->Vista which forced manufacturers to stop half baking software.

For shits and giggles I installed Windows 7 on an old Pentium 3. Half the drivers I installed were Windows 2000 drivers.

One of the big changes between XP and Vista drivers specifically was the Video driver. There were "XPDM" XP drivers, and "WDDM" Vista drivers. WDDM drivers were required for Aero. Crappy hardware like the intel i910/i915 (at the center of the "Vista Capable" fiasco) only had XPDM capability, so though they would work at full resolution, etc, Aero would not work.

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

As a software developer myself, I use GIMP for anything involving pixels (or rather anything more advanced that MS Paint). For real work, I use Visual Studio. I have no idea why you'd want to use Photoshop instead.

Re:Photoshop

[Mike Frett]

Why do you need to restore or rollback anything? The drivers usually just work and if they don't you just purge them and revert to older ones. System restore? ha, it's called a Live CD. Back up your junk from that and reinstall.

Windows has those two "features" because of how badly it was needed due to crashing and incompatibilities with that OS. Linux doesn't suffer even remotely from many of the problems of Windows; hence why you don't see those features. And like TemporalBeing said, most people don't even know how to use those features anyway they're mostly there for those PC Repair people to use. I should know, I use to repair Windows Computers.

You want to know how we fixed your problems most of the time? We backed all your stuff up and reinstalled the OS. Something you could've done yourself. That's your System Restore and Rollback, something we hardly bothered to use since most of the time it created more problems than it solved.

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not just the lack of features like adjustment/style layers, the shit UI, or the lack of non-sciprted automation, it's the speed. FUCKING CHRIST, GIMP has to be the slowest image editing software in existence. Even something as simple as a gaussian blur takes twice as long compared to old versions of Photoshop. Moving large graphic layers around, the screen is slow to update. Even the undo command is sluggish. GIMP is just slow, which would only be OK if you used it once a year or you haven't used anything else.

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe GIMP introduced the single-window mode in version 2.4 or 2.6; the multi-window mode was just a PITA

On Windows. On Linux, I really prefer the freedom to move the different parts where they are the most convenient, rather than being constrained to a single window.

Windows' click to focus makes anything but single window really annoying to use.

Btw, I recall people claiming in previous discussion on the subject, that Photoshop only uses single window mode on Windows. With Photoshop on a Mac, you are, reportedly, able to move the parts around almost as freely as on Linux.

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

Photoshop is easier to understand and makes more sense if you've had lots of experience with other software, even going as far back as Deluxe Paint on the Amiga.

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if you're right, more people are used to Photoshop's weirdnesses than to Gimp's. So if Gimp wants to become relevant it needs to offer these people something to make the transition less painful, simple as that.

Re:Photoshop

[TheRaven64]

GIMP and Photoshop both have pretty terrible UIs. If you've spent a lot of time and effort becoming comfortable with one, then having to switch to the other is painful. At least a bad UI that you're familiar with means that you've learned to work around its brokenness - an unfamiliar bad UI is far more painful than a familiar one.

Re:Photoshop

[captjc]

Paint.NET can be made to work via wine or mono. De facto standard for easy to use free image processing.

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

Duh, that's because it's a link to Redhat's paid support. It's sounds like you expect to be spoonfed everything in life. If you're too lazy to form a simple Google query to get an answer in 2 minutes...well then pull out your wallet. That's how life works.

Is every Windows user a lazy retard?

Re:Photoshop

[AmiMoJo]

Most people do not know how to use System Restore or Roll-back drivers - even in Windows.

If your system fails to boot or has some other serious problem, the first thing Windows does is suggest you roll back to the last system restore point. In fact on Windows 7 and later if you select the "fix it for me" option it will do it automatically in many cases.

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

have you tried GIMPshop?

        https://www.gimpshop.com/
       

Re:Photoshop

[jez9999]

GIMP became usable for me when they implemented single-window mode; now I use it all the time as my main image editing program. I'd probably find Photoshop harder to use because I've gotten used to the way GIMP does things.

Re: Photoshop

[nashv]

There is also the situation that Photoshop is objectively better implemented compared to GIMP. Many Photoshop features have no GIMP equivalent. Eg: Liquify.

Re:Photoshop

[TemporalBeing]

One of the big changes between XP and Vista drivers specifically was the Video driver. There were "XPDM" XP drivers, and "WDDM" Vista drivers. WDDM drivers were required for Aero. Crappy hardware like the intel i910/i915 (at the center of the "Vista Capable" fiasco) only had XPDM capability, so though they would work at full resolution, etc, Aero would not work.

You also skip over the fact that Video and Sound Driver in Vista and later are user-space drivers, not kernel space drivers. They entire architecture of the drivers changed.

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

and windows 10 now is the end of that story; it automatically replaces the manufacturer's drivers with its own choices in spite of yours.

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

This. Is. Why. Linux. Is. Not. For. Users.

Re:Photoshop

[fgouget]

Agreed. I can't move my wife to Linux simply because she's an accountant and needs access to Quicken/QuickBooks and others tools (MS Excel) that are pretty much industry standard for her. It would be great to have those all ported to Linux, but you'll have to convince a lot of corporate oriented software development houses (f.e Intuit) to do so. It's a big chicken-vs-egg issue - corporates won't move over unless there's software and the software devs won't make the software without the corporates.

Note that recent versions of Quicken should be quite usable on CrossOver and maybe Wine too. Same thing for Excel 2010 or older. Unfortunately it's not the case of QuickBooks :-(

Re:Photoshop

[Schmorgluck]

In my opinion the real problem with The Gimp is the limited overlap between its target user base and people with the skills to create useful add-ons. Photoshop is developed by teams of people of various backgrounds: programmers, artists and writers, mainly. They are brought together by the company they work for. This doesn't happen on a sufficient scale with The Gimp. Programmers and artists don't communicate enough with each other in the Free Software community. As a result, The Gimp lags behind. As for writers, well, let me put it bluntly: Free Software hackers seem to be allergic to documentation.

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

Snapshot your system before doing an update. Roll back to the snapshot if the update is FUBAR. (rsnapshot is nice for this)

This is pretty much box admin 101. How do you not know this?

Re:Photoshop

[Zardus]

Linux has had such "rollback" support for driver/kernel updates for a very long time. On Debian-based distros (such as Ubuntu), when the kernel is updated, the old images are left on the system, and can be selected and launched via the boot menu. This recently happened to my dad -- an update *did* break something, he called me in a panic, and we had him booted into the previous kernel revision in about two minutes.

Where it *could* improve is feedback about errors. My dad's issue manifested as a mysterious error message at boot -- having him boot into an earlier revision was a guess on my part that just happened to be correct. It'd be nice if a failure to boot resulted in a dialog detailing possible next steps that could be taken. But that's very different than not having this functionality. In fact, this has been around at least since I started using Linux, which was shortly after Win2k came out, so there you go.

Rolling back other software upgrades is a more mysterious process, though. It'd be cool to have some seamless git-like support for that, with some sort of easy way to select the "system revision" at boot. I'm sure there are projects out there that do this, but it's definitely not mainstream.

Re:Photoshop

[TemporalBeing]

Most people do not know how to use System Restore or Roll-back drivers - even in Windows.

If your system fails to boot or has some other serious problem, the first thing Windows does is suggest you roll back to the last system restore point. In fact on Windows 7 and later if you select the "fix it for me" option it will do it automatically in many cases.

If a Linux system fails to boot, the first thing you typically do is select to boot the previous kernel, especially if you did a kernel upgrade. That functionality has been there since the 1990's - before Windows even let you choose between booting multiple systems.

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

Old versions of Photoshop work under WINE on Linux. I started with PS 6.0, still have the CD, and it works on Linux.

Re:Photoshop

[david_thornley]

It's the apps, as you point out in your third sentence. Most people don't know what you mean by "recover relatively painlessly". Heck, I don't, and I'm a geek. Recover relatively painlessly from what?

I'm willing to bet that approximately nobody, statistically speaking, uses the KB system for OS errors, or "Active Scan".

Re:Photoshop

[LinuxIsGarbage]

One of the big changes between XP and Vista drivers specifically was the Video driver. There were "XPDM" XP drivers, and "WDDM" Vista drivers. WDDM drivers were required for Aero. Crappy hardware like the intel i910/i915 (at the center of the "Vista Capable" fiasco) only had XPDM capability, so though they would work at full resolution, etc, Aero would not work.

You also skip over the fact that Video and Sound Driver in Vista and later are user-space drivers, not kernel space drivers. They entire architecture of the drivers changed.

Because regardless of what changed, drivers designed for Windows XP (or Windows 2000) can run unmodified in Windows Vista / 7. I ran Windows 7 on my Intel i810 graphics in the Pentium 3, and it worked just fine with the Windows 2000/XP drivers.

Re:Photoshop

[ChrisMaple]

I don't entirely understand the concept of adjustment layers, but it looks to me like most of the functionality can be achieved with the "undo history" and/or copying everything to a new image.

Re:Photoshop

[TemporalBeing]

One of the big changes between XP and Vista drivers specifically was the Video driver. There were "XPDM" XP drivers, and "WDDM" Vista drivers. WDDM drivers were required for Aero. Crappy hardware like the intel i910/i915 (at the center of the "Vista Capable" fiasco) only had XPDM capability, so though they would work at full resolution, etc, Aero would not work.

You also skip over the fact that Video and Sound Driver in Vista and later are user-space drivers, not kernel space drivers. They entire architecture of the drivers changed.

Because regardless of what changed, drivers designed for Windows XP (or Windows 2000) can run unmodified in Windows Vista / 7. I ran Windows 7 on my Intel i810 graphics in the Pentium 3, and it worked just fine with the Windows 2000/XP drivers.

What would be interesting though is verifying that it is actually using those 2k/XP drivers - it may have auto-updated them to a newer compatible driver set.

Even in Windows, drivers don't typically work across major kernel versions (5.x to 6.x), but will within minor version (5.1 vs 5.2). Now sometimes they may work if the kernel interfaces didn't change too much...it depends on the driver, but that's rare.

However, I wouldn't be surprised if it auto-upgraded the driver on you without you realizing it. Otherwise it's relying on some pretty neat sand-boxing functionality and while MS is good at user-space backwards compatibility they usually don't care about kernel space backwards compatibility at all. Realize too that MS does ship a lot of drivers for older hardware by default, so it (Win7) may have decided it had a better driver than you for the same hardware.

Re:Photoshop

[ChrisMaple]

WineHQ claims that Photoshop CS6 installs and runs on wine, although the testing that's been done is not extensive.

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

Rolling back other software upgrades is a more mysterious process, though. It'd be cool to have some seamless git-like support for that, with some sort of easy way to select the "system revision" at boot. I'm sure there are projects out there that do this, but it's definitely not mainstream.

There are various ways to solve that problem depending on what exactly you're trying to manage. Often you can just purge the package and specify an earlier version to be reinstalled. There's also btrfs for snapshotting filesystems, and various other solutions for managing images or configurations. I think also yum in Red Hat based distros has a rollback command.

Re:Photoshop

[LinuxIsGarbage]

Windows update wouldn't find any driver, which is why I manually loaded Windows 2000 drivers for the video card. The card is so old and hopeless that MS update assumed no one would use it in Windows 7.

One feature that XPDM video drivers has that WDDM drivers does not, is the ability to do fullscreen console windows. So XPDM drivers, loaded in Vista or 7 allow full screen console windows, while not allowing Aero. The same graphics card, if loaded with WDDM drivers, allow Aero, but not full screen console.

Re:Photoshop

[armanox]

It used to be on Solaris, HPUX, IRIX, and I think AIX too!

Re:Photoshop

[SpinyManiac]

Windows has supported "point to focus" or whatever it's called since 95. It's just that there's no interface to enable it without installing TweakUI.

If anyone reading this far down wants to try it, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\UserPreferencesMask.
The bitmask starts with 9E for off, and 9F for on.

Re: Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

Then see comments above, buy photoshop and a Mac.

Re:Photoshop

[strikethree]

Hm. As far as drivers go, all mainstream distributions and recommended best practice is to have two kernels selectable from the boot menu. The first (default) one is the newest kernel while the second is the older kernel which you are upgrading. That way, if you have an issue with drivers, you can merely boot off of the older kernel which is known to work.

Is that ideal? No idea. It works fine for me. Applications? Meh. Worst case scenario, you can uninstall the newest version and reinstall the older. Not quite a rollback but it has the exact same effect.

In summary, you are most assuredly not SOL if something goes wrong with an upgrade. If you are talking about upgrading entire versions, I would be interested in seeing your test for upgrading from Win2k to Win2003 to Win 2008R2 and let me know how rolling back works for you.

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

This is probably the most articulate and bulletproof argument in favor of Windows over Linux I've ever read.

Re:Photoshop

[SQLGuru]

Yes, I know. But Photoshop uses JavaScript as the scripting language. If GIMP implemented a like-for-like API, all of those Photoshop plugins would port over and people wouldn't complain that they couldn't use GIMP......it's the App argument for mobile phones (People think other platforms suck because it doesn't have certain apps.....which isn't the fault of the platform but the devs). People want their plugins and their plugins only exist in Photoshop, so they won't use GIMP.

Re:Photoshop

[hairyfeet]

It is trivial to tell the difference, thus proving your theory incorrect. if you have to use previous drivers Windows will say "unable to find drivers" and will leave the device a question mark in device manager. At that point you simply manually install the previous driver and voila!

So yes Virginia you can use Win2K drivers on Windows 8.1, probably Windows 10, so we are talking 23 YEARS of driver support (since 8.1 will be supported until 2023) which no Linux comes even close with their driver support which despite all the BS about how "Linux supports more hardware" is in reality quite poor.

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

Your computer is shit.

Re:Photoshop

[graphius]

I tried really hard for a couple of years to use GIMP exclusively. (I am a pretty serious photographer and do sell some images) It did work, but I often found advanced techniques* harder in GIMP than in Photoshop. Eventually I ended up back using Photoshop.

*things like actions are stupid simple in Photoshop. History retouching and even masking I found much easier in Photoshop.

Re:Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

So yes Virginia you can use Win2K drivers on Windows 8.1, probably Windows 10, so we are talking 23 YEARS of driver support (since 8.1 will be supported until 2023) which no Linux comes even close with their driver support which despite all the BS about how "Linux supports more hardware" is in reality quite poor. [osnews.com]

Actually, any driver submitted to the Linux Kernel is continuously maintained with the kernel. It was only recently (3.x era) that support for i386 was dropped. Good luck installing Windows on an i386 processor.

Re:Photoshop

[jwhitener]

As a developer, I turn off windows automatic updates. Sometimes I allow only security updates to be automated.

Most the stuff that 'breaks' in linux when an update happens are things like video drivers, X, sound, wifi, etc.. very little of that is found in security updates. I wonder if different linux distros have the ability to only allow security updates?

For the record, I have about 10 different flavors of Linux in virtualbox right now, and I have yet to see any of them break after a full update. I wonder if they are artificially more stable inside a VM (which perhaps uses very basic emulated hardware)?

Re: Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

There's the fact that a C# developer can easily use Java components. It's like being bilingual without the effort of learning another language.

Visual Studio + g++ || Clang

[erapert]

VS is definitely a very nice IDE for C++. It would be awesome to have in Linux especially to work on projects with Unreal 4.

Re:Visual Studio + g++ || Clang

[MatthewCCNA]

MSVS and MS SQL Server on Linux and OS X would be sweet.

Re:Visual Studio + g++ || Clang

[gQuigs]

This is the smaller "Code" version, but still - https://code.visualstudio.com/...

Re:Visual Studio + g++ || Clang

[FranTaylor]

MS SQL Server on Linux and OS X would be sweet.

yeah it's called "sybase"

Re:Visual Studio + g++ || Clang

[JamesRing]

I wonder how CLion (https://www.jetbrains.com/clion/) stacks up. I've been using it and I love it, but I haven't used VS in years.

Re:Visual Studio + g++ || Clang

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah VSC++ has actually matured quite nicely. I remember flaming it quite badly for whatever the version was called before the 2003 edition, but back then I did get INTERNAL COMPILER ERROR and other useless error messages for typos and other minor errors. Now it correctly states syntax error in file X, line Y and it has become a quite useful tool. I particularly like the debugger, which is fairly easy to control compared to some other debuggers I have tried.

Re:Visual Studio + g++ || Clang

[cbhacking]

Code is a pretty nice editor, and I am really glad to see Microsoft working on releasing products for Linux (and OS X, but I don't much care there). It's not even close to full Visual Studio, though. As far as I can tell, it has almost no integration with compiler or debugger, beyond the standard *nix code editor "Run this command and show me the output of it" functionality. It certainly doesn't include any compilers. No background compilation means no syntax checking, etc. It doesn't use Visual Studio solution or project files (I'm not even sure it can parse them; it suggests it can but I haven't managed to get it to do so usefully), which makes it minimally useful on larger Windows code projects.

On the plus side, it's free, easy to configure, and getting rapid updates.

Re:Visual Studio + g++ || Clang

[bhcompy]

Yes, but try finding an ASE DBA. Or, better yet, try finding an ASA/SQLA DBA. Watcom SQL? What's that?

Re:Visual Studio + g++ || Clang

[FranTaylor]

Yes, but try finding an ASE DBA.

You do realize that SQL Server is a fork of sybase? Microsoft never had the chops to write a competent SQL engine so they went out and bought a copy of the sybase source. They have diverged slightly over the years but their clients are compatible with each other and you will generally find them to be just about identical.

Re:Visual Studio + g++ || Clang

[show me altoids]

Oh my God yes. I worked for a consulting firm that specialized in PowerBuilder front ends with Sybase as the backend in the early '90s and saw the whole thing go down.

MS: Hey Sybase, let's form a partnership!

Sybase: You want little old us to partner with the most powerful software company in the world? Hell yes!

MS: Just let us make our own version of your database for ahem, fun, you know, and we'll call it MS SQL Server. Just to get it spread wide, and get it known, you understand.

Sybase: Uh, well, I guess, Okay.

...time passes, MS knows all the secrets to the Sybase database...

MS: Hey, nice knowing you, we got all your stuff now, bye, and don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out!

Re:Visual Studio + g++ || Clang

[FranTaylor]

MS: Hey Sybase, let's form a partnership!

This is not how it happened at all. Microsoft bought a source license to sybase with the rights to modify and redistribute. Sybase will sell it to you, too, if you pay them enough.

Re:Visual Studio + g++ || Clang

[mdm-adph]

You know, I was going to reply with a snarky comment about how "Can we all just admit to ourselves that we'll probably never see Microsoft programs on Linux", but seeing how Microsoft has been changing ever so slightly recently, I'm not sure anymore. They do seem a bit more inclined with their new CEO to be present everywhere and to be seen as more of a service you can use anywhere, but I'm sure they'd have to balance this with the resources necessary they'd have to assign to making them work, and work well, on Linux.

I never thought I'd see their programs for Android either, though, but it has a vastly greater market share than any sort of Linux desktop.

Re:Visual Studio + g++ || Clang

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a difference?

The same thing happend to Spyglass...

Re:Visual Studio + g++ || Clang

[markhb]

No, Microsoft supposedly licensed Spyglass with a promise to pay them for every copy of their derived software (IE) it sold. Then, as of IE 2 or 3 (IE 1 was bundled with the Windows 95 Plus Pack, a retail product, and I think IE 2 was Windows NT only), they went to a free distribution model which meant Spyglass got nothing else from them, and were left with an unsellable product (since their competition was free) to boot. I've never heard what the terms were surrounding the Sybase deal, but I do know that Microsoft has never been in the habit of giving unrestricted licenses to SQL Server away.

Re:Visual Studio + g++ || Clang

[TemporalBeing]

VS is definitely a very nice IDE for C++.

I can understand the appeal of Visual Studios having used it for a number of years; however, I have found I am by far a better coder without it. And no, I don't miss VS.

If you want integrated debugging, there are a number of projects that do that and do it well. GDB has been extended to have interfaces specifically for doing so - so it's easier for programmatic access to GDB, and programs like ddd (http://www.gnu.org/software/ddd/) and QtCreator utilize it.

And honestly, QtCreator is about the closest thing to VS, and in many ways superior for JS/C++/Qt programming.

Re:Visual Studio + g++ || Clang

[Gr8Apes]

Sybase thought it had made some extra money from an obsolete codebase. They were about to come out with their new engine, and figured if MS wants to pay for this stinking pile of crap, why not. Their mistake was that MS cut the price and backed it to the hilt while Sybase failed to get much advertising time for their new engine. So it worked better than Access, worse than everything else out there. That was enough to get it traction. MS SQL is still a crappy DB.

Re:Visual Studio + g++ || Clang

[Gr8Apes]

MSVS and MS SQL Server on Linux and OS X would be sweet.

Please no.

Re:Visual Studio + g++ || Clang

[pla]

yeah it's called "sybase"

Having used both, and knowing they share their ancestry... They diverged a looong time ago - MS SQL blows ASE out of the water; for performance, for reliability, for 3rd party tool and connector support, and even for their native tools (SSMS counts as just about the greatest IDE Microsoft has ever created; and I've tried a lot of FOSS clones with not a single one even close enough to stand in its shadow).

And no, not a MS fanboy. I love Linux but make my living in the MS world, and know both well enough to know what I love and what I hate about them. And MS SQL rules the DB world (Oracle aside... Though syntactically, I would still say I prefer tSQL over PLSQL) for a damned good reason.

Re:Visual Studio + g++ || Clang

[Anonymous Coward]

Your argument sure is convincing with your minimum of five points of difference illustrating how SQL server is indeed different to Sybase.

Re:Visual Studio + g++ || Clang

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I remember MS SQL Server 7 was a total rewrite, but the basics were still the same. There were small differences. I haven't used MS SQL server in ages so I am not sure how much further they have parted.

Re:Visual Studio + g++ || Clang

[fredgiblet]

Yes. The first option is shady, the second isn't.

Re:Visual Studio + g++ || Clang

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I'm an AC, but you are wrong about everything you wrote...

20 years ago you were right.

20 years later:
1. no Sybase code left (last gone in 2005)..
2. oldest Sybase 4.2 client might still connect to SQL Server, but no extensions would work (either from Sybase/SAP side or Microsoft side)
3. Identical...ha ha ha (except for backward compatibility to common 4.2 base)
4. Disk format changed in '98...never similar since then...

Re:Visual Studio + g++ || Clang

[jandersen]

VS is definitely a very nice IDE for C++. It would be awesome to have in Linux especially to work on projects with Unreal 4.

I haven't been anywhere near VS since the late 90es, so I don't know what it is like now, but I do know there are several IDEs that look a lot like what I remember, and in some cases are better: NetBeans, Eclipse and what is now called "Oracle Solaris Studio" are all free to use. I know Netbeans quite well - I use it for Java EE, although I still prefer vi for C/C++. I am not an expert in Java, so NetBeans' ability to spot errors and fix them intelligently (if you choose to do so) help me a lot. Plus, it somehow knows how to deploy to an application server and can debug remotely. I'm sure it handles C++ equally well - it would surprise me if VS was better.

I suspect that a barrier to VS going outside Windows is that its toolset is built up around Windows specific APIs, that simply have no direct equivalent in Linux. Remember that Windows is deliberately built to be incompatible with its competitors. You could conceivably move many user tools, like MS Office, to Linux, but a developer tool would be really hard.

Re:Visual Studio + g++ || Clang

[Anonymous Coward]

Troll. It's not that they didn't have the "chops." They could code you into a circle without even breaking a sweat. But, it made more sense to buy something already written than to start from scratch.

Re:Visual Studio + g++ || Clang

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you even used SQL Server in the last 10 years?

Any similarity that it has left with Sybase is purely syntactical at this point, and Sybase is *FAR* from "just about identical". I mean, Jesus Christ, you can execute R code inside SQL Server 2016 and have a table partitioned across a local database instance and a SQL Azure instance.

Re:Visual Studio + g++ || Clang

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out KDevelop

Re:Visual Studio + g++ || Clang

[jwhitener]

"And MS SQL rules the DB world"

Really? Without looking I would assume the number of installs by product would be something like

1. MySQL
2. Oracle
3. MS SQL
4. Postgres

I just found a site that ranks them (no clue how they obtain the data though...)

http://db-engines.com/en/ranking

MS SQL is 3rd. I got 1,2 swapped as well, Oracle is #1. And I was surprised that MongoDB was in slot 4 and postgres is 5.

Games

[Gaygirlie]

Almost all the actual apps that I use are more-or-less open-source already. Or, well, Netflix I would also like as a native app; as far as I know the web-browser client still doesn't support 1080p resolutions or surround-sound.

Re:Games

[psych0sis]

Steam has a pretty good number of linux-compatible games now. Not nearly as many as Windows, of course, but it's moving in the right direction.

Frankly, I think that users who like both OSs and use Steam should probably buy and initially download the games that are compatible with Linux ON Linux so that Steam gets those metrics (which would hopefully provide encouragement to continue Linux offerings).

Re:Games

[Anonymous Coward]

Sigh...
http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/

Re:Games

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, I've acquired a lot of Windows-only games as a byproduct of bundles that include Linux games (where often it's cheaper to get the bundle than to buy the Linux games directly). Happily, my experience has also been rewarded with several games being ported to Linux after-the-fact so that I can enjoy them in Linux too, but most those games were already well behaved enough to run under WINE.

Meanwhile, the other end of the spectrum are the difficult to run games that I imagine there's (by raw numbers) more Winodws users having trouble running the game (1%) than Linux users (99%). To me that's one of the bigger flaws in Steam for Windows under WINE. Because WINE provides such a non-standard collection of library support and even loading a lot of Windows dlls is not enough if the underlying functions don't exist or work well enough, it's often necessary to create a separate PREFIX with the required collection of dlls and registry patches to get a game to work. But thanks to Steam, that's neigh impossible as Steam was never designed to allow 20-30 "Windows installs" so even something like PlayOnLinux which is designed to heavily automate the task really can't do the job.

Of course the long-term best option would be for WINE's compatibility to be greatly increased. But, then, we'd at best be back to the Windows user circumstance (1% of users with issues/games not working). The closest thing to a real panacea is to use a console for gaming, as undesirable on how limiting that is. Which is why I'm still using Steam (and admittedly a lot of non-DRM Linux games). *shrug*

Re:Games

[Anonymous Coward]

For the last two years, I've been purchasing my games with an eye towards "must run on SteamOS" or "must run under WINE". So at this point, about half or more of my Steam games run under Linux. It's nowhere near as dire as it was 3-5 years ago when only 10% of all games worked under Linux.

Heck, for a game like Kerbal Space Program, you're better off running the 64bit Linux version then the memory-constrained 32bit Windows version.

Re:Games

[Anonymous Coward]

Video drivers in linux still suck too much. I have a Radeon HD 7850, which is a pretty old card these days, and the drivers support is still bad enough that none of the Source engine games run correctly - they have completely intolerable graphic artefacts.

Borderlands 2 runs beautifully, but then lags for about 1/2 second every time it tries to render a string of text for the first time.

The games are there, but they're not playable, and the problem is with the hardware support.

Re:Games

[Anonymous Coward]

Embedded toolchains would be nice too (esp ARM), but that's my boss' Windows box, not mine :)

Uhm...say what? Embedded toolchains exist on Linux for pretty much every architecture that's out there and in use, *especially* ARM.

Re:Games

[Anonymous Coward]

"Elite: Dangerous" would be really really nice https://www.change.org/p/frontier-developments-plc-port-elite-dangerous-to-linux-desktop

Re:Games

[Anonymous Coward]

Netflix to work smoothly without fuss. Haven't tried lately, so maybe this is wrong. If so, my wish has been granted. All the other stuff I've seen here aside from games... no. It's all either easily replaced or the (widely used) wrong tool for a job (SQL Server half the time).

All the games

[Anonymous Coward]

Only a fraction of my steam library supports linux, so as long as I am a gamer I'm stuck with windows or crap emulators. Visual studio would also be useful.

Re:All the games

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure about that? It might be more than you think: http://steam.bravehost.com/

Evernote

[Anonymous Coward]

Please

Re:Evernote

[lupinetine2896]

Yeah, this. I tried using the clone, everpad, and it doesn't even synchronize notes properly.

Re: Evernote

[Anonymous Coward]

this

TurboTax

[Anonymous Coward]

and abbyy finereader

Re:TurboTax

[mknewman]

+1 for TurboTax

Re:TurboTax

[Anonymous Coward]

Or TaxCut (HR Block).

Re:TurboTax

[Anonymous Coward]

Why Turbo Tax? I mean 8 or 9 years ago I would get the CD. 7 years ago I would download the installer. But now it just works on the web. Sign up, pay, and use it in the browser. Why would anyone install it anymore?

Re:TurboTax

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't speak on behalf of TurboTax, but filing with H&R Block online went flawlessly on my Ubuntu machine.

Re:TurboTax

[TemporalBeing]

Why Turbo Tax? I mean 8 or 9 years ago I would get the CD. 7 years ago I would download the installer. But now it just works on the web. Sign up, pay, and use it in the browser. Why would anyone install it anymore?

That works fine for simple tax returns; but you can get more advanced versions for the more complex returns. Not everything in the client-side installed software is available in the web version.

Re:TurboTax

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't TurboTax have a full web interface now, or is that only for filing federal taxes?

Re:TurboTax

[Anonymous Coward]

I do my taxes in linux on Turbo tax every year... In a browser.

Re:TurboTax

[Admiral_Grinder]

How many versions can you go back on though with the online only? Granted a disk will go out of date and support dropped, but as long as it is installed locally I can do amendments with it.

Re: TurboTax

[Anonymous Coward]

A big fat plus for FineReader, the GUI-based one (not the CLI engine). As a professional technical translator, I regularly need to convert PDFs with the ability to select areas of different type and order them, preserving most of the formatting. Online tools are a no go due to client confidentiality. No stable, full-featured GUI tools like that exist for Linux currently, even though we're far into the XXI century. Forget about OCRfeeder etc., they're not suitable for serious work.

Temcat (not logged in)

Re:TurboTax

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not being snide, but get a real CPA.

They are surprisingly affordable, about $200 per year or less. A good one will find enough ways to save you the cost you'll pay, and do so in a manner that is safe enough to not trigger an audit.

In the event you do get audited, they signed the return, and so they will represent you. Provided that you didn't lie to them, you are very likely to come out of it better (as mistakes they make are covered by their insurance).

TurboTax, on the other hand, mechanically does what a CPA would do, but any programming errors are not covered by Intuit Software, even if they trigger an audit. In addition, people who game the program are much more likely to be unaware of what will immediately trigger an audit, and thus they will tend to take deductions they are marginally qualified for (or completely unqualified for). Of course, if they don't get audited, they will think they were in the right; but, odds are they are only in the "not high enough priority to catch" pool; except that when they do get caught, they get audited for many years of systematic cheating (and have to find lawyers that don't have their CPA licenses on the line, because it wasn't them signing the tax return).

Re:TurboTax

[HappyDrgn]

If you need to do advanced tax preparation you're probably better off having a CPA do them and avoid the software altogether. A CPA is worth their weight in gold.

Re:TurboTax

[Anonymous Coward]

Intuit's pulled enough funny stuff in the past that I wouldn't use TurboTax. But, in general you've got it. The _only_ thing I need Windows for any more is tax prep software, and my taxes have just simplified enough that I may be able to get away with online tax prep this year. Just in time to discard Windows entirely thanks to the telematics crud.

Re:TurboTax

[TemporalBeing]

If you need to do advanced tax preparation you're probably better off having a CPA do them and avoid the software altogether. A CPA is worth their weight in gold.

My wife is a CPA who specializes in taxes. :) Nearly all the software she uses is Windows only and has significant license costs.

Re:TurboTax

[therealbev]

1. Tax stuff is serious shit. I want it HERE on MY computer, not in some ephemeral cloud only available when I actually have internet access or where somebody else might hack into it. I also save .pdf files in several places. I print only enough paper to make it easy to deal with next year (for extremely low values of 'easy').

1a. One year I tried to submit electronically via TurboTax on April 13. I got ambiguous acknowledgments back, so I sent paper forms -- I checked later and the electronic version never got through. Never again.

2. California charges $20 to submit tax forms electronically. This is insane, but so is the rest of our government.

3. I'd rather have my tax software on linux than windows. I trust windows as much as I trust the cloud.

Microsoft Paint

[Spy Handler]

the choice of oekaki artists

Re:Microsoft Paint

[Tablizer]

GIMP is indeed overkill for many tasks or users. A light-duty image editor would be nice.

However, please add local and general blurring, brightness/contrast/alpha tuning, and basic color adjusting with red/green/blue channel shifting (alpha curve). Don't need layers.

Re:Microsoft Paint

[wonkey_monkey]

oekaki

Ohhh, no, I ain't googling that.

Re:Microsoft Paint

[omnichad]

How light-duty? F-Spot is more like Lightroom than a simpler Photoshop.

Re:Microsoft Paint

[CronoCloud]

Surprisingly the term itself is "safe" From wikipedia:

"Oekaki on the Internet refers to a bulletin board system allowing artists to draw online and share their pictures. The drawings are generally not uploaded; pictures are done using an online drawing program inside the web browser. "

It is probably a "weeaboo" thing outside of Japan.

Re:Microsoft Paint

[dotancohen]

GIMP is indeed overkill for many tasks or users. A light-duty image editor would be nice.

However, please add local and general blurring, brightness/contrast/alpha tuning, and basic color adjusting with red/green/blue channel shifting (alpha curve). Don't need layers.

You want KolourPaint:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

It is part of KDE. Install it on *buntus with:
$ sudo apt-get install kolourpaint4

Re:Microsoft Paint

[UnknownSoldier]

Or true masters ...

"How to paint he Mona Lisa with MS Paint"
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Microsoft Paint

[cbhacking]

KDE has a load of dependencies to just install one tool. It's a good experience if you're just using the whole environment, though.

Except, Kubuntu isn't even the red-headed stepchild of the family. It's more like the sickly foster kid you keep locked in the basement except when the social worker comes around once a month. It's got egregious bugs, in both current and LTS versions, which basically never get addressed (admittedly, I don't know of any that impact kolourpaint; I haven't used that in years and it wasn't on Ubuntu). Nobody gives a damn. I recently tried to get kmail working on Ubuntu for around five hours, then concluded it would be easier by far to replace the OS with a half-decent distro.

Re:Microsoft Paint

[Anonymous Coward]

Oekaki, AKA Nonograms, AKA Griddlers, AKA Picross. It's a type of picture based puzzle game, and yes KolourPaint is very much like MSPaint on steroids. It has all the simplicity of being a basic, straight forward, painting program without all the extras.

Re:Microsoft Paint

[radish]

I see that one of their main highlighted features is support for easily creating Photo CDs! I've been waiting years for this - where do I sign?

Re:Microsoft Paint

[Gunstick]

http://pinta-project.com/

Re:Microsoft Paint

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, the only thing I've ever wanted was a light duty image editor (like MS Paint) with layers. I don't need blurring/tuning/adjusting/shifting... Just something simple for pixel art and the likes.

Re:Microsoft Paint

[cb88]

mtpaint is my favorite light duty editor... http://mtpaint.sourceforge.net/ it would be nice if someone ported it to FLTK though.

Re:Microsoft Paint

[Reziac]

Thanks. I'm not a regular linux user but when there I do prefer KDE, and I usually like the K-apps... yet had somehow never noticed this little program exists.

The Windows program I can't live without? Corel PhotoPaint, which runs rings around Photoshop for usability. I use v8 by preference, but any version would do. There was a 'native' linux version at one point but I never got it to run.

Re:Microsoft Paint

[gstewart]

oekaki

Ohhh, no, I ain't googling that.

It made the mistake of googling it, and got results for Santorum

Re:Microsoft Paint

[Anonymous Coward]

AzPainter

Tools

[dennis_k85]

Ufnfortunatly most of the programing tools I use for embedded systems are windows only. Some are just becoming availible for MAC, but for the most part are not availible for Linux. The one current exception is MPLAB-X which is fairly new and java based. But being new it is barley usable, currently even on windows.

Re:Tools

[Anonymous Coward]

You are doing it wrong. Use embedded Linux.

Re:Tools

[FranTaylor]

You are doing it wrong. Use embedded Linux.

embedded linux doesn't run on AVR or ARM Cortex M0

Re:Tools

[LWATCDR]

Or PIC or...

Re:Tools

[Anonymous Coward]

I do all of my ARM development under Linux.
Granted, I've only done V5, V7, V8, Cortex M3 and M4 but that covers just about anything you'll find.

Re:Tools

[CurryCamel]

Ufnfortunatly most of the programing tools I use for embedded systems are windows only.

Wait wat?
Which embedded systems do you target? I've been doing embedded systems for 10+ years now, and the only tool I need Windows for is Excel - to fill in the company travel expenses.
Synopsys, Mentor, Xilinx, Altera, TI, ARM - they all run on Linux. Plus all the compilers for the microcontrollers tend to be gcc based anyways. And the small startup companies' embedded system IDEs seem to invariably be built on Eclipse.

Have I just been lucky? Or do we define 'embedded' diferently?

Re:Tools

[Anonymous Coward]

A spelling checker. Your comment is "barley" readable.

Re:Tools

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux has a number of tools for programming PIC.

Re:Tools

[Anonymous Coward]

uClinux is what you are looking for.

No MMU required.

Re:Tools

[OzPeter]

Have I just been lucky? Or do we define 'embedded' diferently?

Well there is this Windows CE embedded OS from a company called Microsoft. You may have heard of them.

Re:Tools

[TemporalBeing]

It probably depends on what tech stack you're working with.

At a former employer, we did a lot of embedded stuff, but the tools were only Windows-based. Some of the vendors had started a Linux port of their toolchain, but it depended on which version of the tool-chain you licensed as to whether or not you got access to that port, which also was determined by what hardware you purchased.

So for large embedded shops, they're probably all supporting Linux as they have a very large customer base since Linux is extremely popular for embedded work; but the smaller shops that don't have a lot of turn over[1] then they probably are on the trailing wave of the ports.

[1] My former employer purchased cameras from one such shop. We bought one camera to test with and see if it could do what we wanted; 1.5 years later when we bought them for the lab and customers, the serial numbers had barely moved - I think it was a delta of 20 or so. Good cameras, but low volume. They were on the trailing edge; sadly we didn't purchase the right edition to get the Linux support.

Re:Tools

[Anonymous Coward]

You may have been very lucky. My brother works on embedded software for pumping systems, and the stuff that runs on those systems has to be clicked together in a Windows-only GUI where all the logic is represented schematically by graphical elements. The project files are all stored as binary blobs as well. These vendors appear to dominate some very specific hardware niches.

Re:Tools

[inasity_rules]

I'd add to this:- All PLC and SCADA systems. Please!

Re:Tools

[ichthus]

He didn't say there's no tool chain available for Linux. He said the tools he uses (eg. Keil uVision) have no linux versions available. I'm in the same boat. The rest of the firmware team I work with use uVision. I could use gcc, but then I wouldn't be working with the rest of the team and what they have all chosen.

Incidentally, I have gotten uVision working under WINE, I just can't get the ST-Link (debugging/programming) to work.

Re:Tools

[goose-incarnated]

Ufnfortunatly most of the programing tools I use for embedded systems are windows only.

Wait wat? Which embedded systems do you target? I've been doing embedded systems for 10+ years now, and the only tool I need Windows for is Excel - to fill in the company travel expenses. Synopsys, Mentor, Xilinx, Altera, TI, ARM - they all run on Linux. Plus all the compilers for the microcontrollers tend to be gcc based anyways. And the small startup companies' embedded system IDEs seem to invariably be built on Eclipse.

Have I just been lucky? Or do we define 'embedded' diferently?

You have been lucky. You've been lucky not to have coded for that software-crippled, anti-OSS platform known as PIC micro. The last I used it (MPLAB 5.5?) I had to hunt around for a windows machine just to run the damn IDE, which wouldn't let you use your own editor and you were forced to use the crappy less-features-than-notepad editor. It generated the hex files in ram, not on disk, so that the IDE alone (which generated the hex files) could program the dev board (pickit?).

I've worked on only one project using PICs. I will never work with them again. Luckily, I never have to as they are increasingly sidelined by superior dev environments :-)

Re: Tools

[Anonymous Coward]

All replies to the OP in this thread are either bone heads or are deliberately misinterpreting the post. The subject says tools and you guys are recommending embedded kernels? Come on.

Re:Tools

[Anonymous Coward]

IAR EWARM
PSOC Creator

Props to Microchip for providing a Linux version of Mplab X

Re:Tools

[Anonymous Coward]

Embedded linux does run on AVR (in an ARM5 emulator) with a 16MB 30 pin SIMM and SD card. The emulator isn't very performance optimized but you can be booted to a shell in a couple hours (with some intelligent savestate startup it could actually be booted as quick as the data could be loaded to RAM, but this isn't implemented).

http://dmitry.gr/index.php?r=0...

Microsoft Excel

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft Excel
Free Libre/Openoffice versions suck balls.

Re: Microsoft Excel

[Anonymous Coward]

Why when Microsoft hates it and has been trying to kill it for more than two decades? If you e ever read Code Complete you'll understand why it is the only non-garbage price of software Microsoft makes. Also, they stopped allowing fixes to it around 1990 when I left Microsoft. Just look at how broken copy/paste is Nd how it assumes you are not doing math. It is an antmath spreadsheet!

Re:Microsoft Excel

[GameboyRMH]

This would make a big difference to accountants. To most of us, LibreOffice Calc does the job, but it's missing a lot of little features that heavy users depend on, and working around them would be too much of a PITA.

Re:Microsoft Excel

[TemporalBeing]

Microsoft Excel Free Libre/Openoffice versions suck balls.

Funny since LibreOffice/OpenOffice have better mathematical formula support than Excel does. Please be ware that most Excel users do not know that there are major short-comings in the mathematical functions in Excel, some of which can have huge impacts on businesses.

(Note: see the OOXML debacle regarding the accuracy of the Excel formulas, and check how FLOOR() and CEILING() work with negative numbers with respect to their mathematical definitions.)

Re: Microsoft Excel

[Anonymous Coward]

> it assumes you are not doing math

This. My god, this. I hate how Microsoft made the decision that if someone enters "2+2" then they do not want to do math even though you're using a spreadsheet. This is their typical arrogance.

Re:Microsoft Excel

[buchner.johannes]

Gnumeric is so much better than Libreoffice Calc.

Re:Microsoft Excel

[Anonymous Coward]

The FL/OSS versions suck because they're clones of Excel and Excel sucks.

In my experience, Excel is only used in industries that are technologically behind and refuse to use appropriate tools. Excel is NOT a database, stop trying to use it like one. Excel is NOT an adequate statistics app, stop trying to pretend it's one. Excel is NOT an adequate user-interface, make a web app or rich-client instead. Etc.

Re:Microsoft Excel

[Anonymous Coward]

Having to run Microsoft Access is one of the very few reasons left that I run Windows (now in a VM). LibreOffice Base doesn't even come close to the power of that swiss-army knife that is Microsoft Access. Want to import a CSV? Link it to another table over ODBC? Merge the results in a local table, then write the contents to a different DB server? It's extremely clunky, if not downright impossible, in LibreOffice Base.

Then there's the choice of HSQL for the embedded LibreOffice Base database engine. It's syntax is horrible and very "anti-SQL". Which makes it impossible to copy/paste a query between pgAdmin III or MS SQL or any standard database that speaks mostly standard SQL.

Re: Microsoft Excel

[Anonymous Coward]

How is the parent comment insightful without any examples?

Re:Microsoft Excel

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh bullshit. I used to create very large documents (about 3,000 pages), with integrated spreadsheet elements. MS Office sucked at this task. Integration between word and Excel sucked horribly, and the tools for managing sections, numbers, headers also sucked. Add in the fact that Excel had mathematical errors doing calculations, I could not use Excel.

Sorry, but what you said may be true for your use case, but it wasnt for mine.

Re:Microsoft Excel

[Anonymous Coward]

How does it suck?

Re:Microsoft Excel

[Anonymous Coward]

I was surprised that the Windows version of Gnumeric is no longer available.

Re:Microsoft Excel

[Anonymous Coward]

I like Gnumeric better than LibreOffice/KCalc etc.

Re:Microsoft Excel

[hughbar]

Yes agree. I do a fair amount of work with small non-profits in the UK and this is the main thing that they use. Nearest thing for one table [forgetting Ruby on Rails] is http://www.phpmyedit.org/ with https://www.apachefriends.org/... for example, but it doesn't deal with anything more complex.

My feeling is that Access applications should be re-coded as web, give them more reach and a saner architecture, but non-specialists can use [and make a mess with] Access. Maybe we need a migration toolchain, convert to MariaDb and generate web forms? That would still leave some manual work though.

Re:Microsoft Excel

[Anonymous Coward]

Use pandas: http://pandas.pydata.org/

Use it in a script, or collaborate via a jupyther notebook for example sagemath: https://cloud.sagemath.com/

You really should split data - manipulation - visualizations in different layers if you want to do it right

Re:Microsoft Excel

[Anonymous Coward]

This. Also, the Windows XP shell.

And I want sound, hibernate and sleep to work on my laptop. I know, not apps per se, but unless those things start to work I don't care how many apps Linux supports.

Re: Microsoft Excel

[cyber-vandal]

The popularity of Excel for such things is mainly because IT is too busy to build something decent.

Re:Microsoft Excel

[TheRaven64]

I've not used Access since it ran on Windows 3.11, but I recently tried OpenOffice / LibreOffice Base and was amazed. Their form builder is incredible. Even simple joins in the UI require writing SQL by hand. How anyone can ship that as a GUI database tool, I have no idea.

Re:Microsoft Excel

[thinktanknl]

I use WPS Office Suite, perfectly compatible with the MS formats and works great.

Re:Microsoft Excel

[Anonymous Coward]

This would make a big difference to accountants. To most of us, LibreOffice Calc does the job, but it's missing a lot of little features that heavy users depend on, and working around them would be too much of a PITA.

If you must use MS Office, Wine works very well to the point it feels very native.

Re:Microsoft Excel

[Fudoka]

In fact, the whole of MS-Office. It doesn't matter how crap it is so many businesses are based on it and if that's what you use all day at work it's what you want on your home PC as well. It's the lack of MS-Office that stops a whole bundle of businesses from running Linux (or even Macs for that matter)

Re: Microsoft Excel

[PPalmgren]

Deserves 99 recs but I aint got one.

You should see the kind of quotes we get for building insanely simple things from IT. Stuff I can create a one-click workaround in two hours with excel, they want to charge 6 figures. Then charge us again if we initiate a change request.

Excel is popular because it allows people to get things done without going through a 6 month mess with IT.

Re:Microsoft Excel

[Anonymous Coward]

Just use Google docs.

CEIP

[Anonymous Coward]

What else?

Games

[Snotnose]

Steam is getting there from what I've heard, but as a hard core gamer I need games.

Embedded toolchains would be nice too (esp ARM), but that's my boss' Windows box, not mine :)

Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop

Definately

[Anonymous Coward]

3D Pinball for Windows – Space Cadet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_Tilt!_Pinball#3D_Pinball_for_Windows_.E2.80.93_Space_Cadet

Re:Definately

[Anonymous Coward]

Download from here: http://www.groovypost.com/howto/windows-7-3d-pinball-space-cadet-game/

Works great on Linux under Wine!

Re:Definately

[jfdavis668]

I saved a copy from XP and still play it to this day. It's a little small at modern screen resolutions.

foobar2000

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm startled to realize I've been on Linux fulltime for nearly 10 years now. Wow.

The only thing I still think back at fondly is foobar2000. gmusicbrowser makes for a decent alternative, but still...

Oh, and Photoshop. CS2 run decently under wine, and is enough for most of my needs, while darktable picks up the rest, but it sure as hell would be nice if there just was a native Linux version of Photohop.

Re:foobar2000

[erapert]

Have you considered Amarok to replace Foobar2000?

Re: foobar2000

[Anonymous Coward]

Amarok is not even close. Fb2k is in a league of its own.

Fortunately, the devs are currently porting it to mobile. As side products, we may get Linux and OS X versions eventually (so says Peter, the main dev)

Re:foobar2000

[occasional_dabbler]

+1 for Foobar, but on Linux why not try Clementine, which can be configured to be bit-perfect in a similar way to Foobar, and has the benefit of a neat remote control app for Android?

Re:foobar2000

[sound vision]

I've never used foobar for bit-perfect playback, and from what I've seen on the foobar support forums that's not a very common scenario for foobar users either. The reason foobar is so far beyond the competition is because of its simple but highly customizable scripting features - particularly relating to file management and tagging. It's also got a huge list of smaller features that don't come together in any other player / library management software... ReplayGain scanning, applying RG to MP3s without re-encoding (useful for devices that don't support RG tags), a nice way to assemble stats on pretty much any aspect of your library or tracks you select in any combination (sample rate, bit rate, codec, running time, file size...). or to sort by any of those in the playlist view. The converter functionality is great too, you can use any command-line encoder with it. Processing with DSPs during the encoding process... being able to script the file name and folder path during the encoding process. I could probably go on for quite a while.

Other players might have a subset of these features, but they're all missing big chunks of what foobar does, and almost all of them use way more system resources. I checked out the latest version of Amarok recently, and got blasted with a gaudy inefficient UI and the program trying to connect to something over the internet for some reason, without me even having clicked anything yet. There's really nothing to compete with foobar on Linux (or on Windows for that matter). It's in a class of its own and has been since at least 2006 when I started using it. I'm frankly surprised there is no open-source equivalent - all the OSS developers seem to be stuck emulating Winamp or iTunes.

Re:foobar2000

[Foresto]

Does Audacious do what you need? That's what I used to replace foobar2000 when I dumped Windows.

Re: foobar2000

[Anonymous Coward]

This! I love audacious!

Linux brouhaha

[Anonymous Coward]

With the current brouhaha about systemd perhaps you should skip linux and aim for pc-bsd.
(Half joking)

Re:Linux brouhaha

[JSG]

Why, to be honest I've pretty much forgotten what init system I've got running on my laptop and desktop. They just work. I very rarely have to bother with systemctl, KDE even has a GUI for it but a quick spell at the bash prompt is quicker.

I have to manage sysvinit, upstart, openrc and systemd based systems. systemd sucks less than the rest in general although I hate the verb in the middle thing. I once had to write a openrc script which was a bit of a pain, now I just copy a unit from wherever I fancy and tweak it a bit.

I think you'll find the brouhaha has near enough expired and people are cracking on with doing stuff.

Re: Linux brouhaha

[quintus_horatius]

I think you'll find the brouhaha has near enough expired and people are cracking on with doing stuff.

You must be new here

None of them

[Anonymous Coward]

Open-source equivalants, sure. But proprietary software? No thanks. That fits in with an open source OS like a drunken bum fits in at a wedding. They don't follow the rules, and the result is (as expected) a string of empty beer cans leading up to one obnoxious drunk.

Re:None of them

[armanox]

Except, of course, the large amount of proprietary software that does run on Linux just fine - Oracle software, Matlab, Steam, C-Forge IDE, shall I continue? There is nothing wrong with proprietary software - it should be the user's choice if they wish to use it.

Re:None of them

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a bunch of assholes who cannot understand business. People pay for Office because it's better.

No, people pay for Office because they have to. Nobody actually thinks it is better.

Re:None of them

[MagickalMyst]

"People pay for Office because it's better."

No, people pay for Office because they are sheeple and don't know any better; and because Micro$oft has a stranglehold on the market.

On the plus side, if you used an open source office suite instead of wasting hundreds of dollars on M$ Office, you could save enough to get your dick properly sucked by a professional and not have to resort to lame, unsatisfying blow jobs by open source asshole dickwads.

Re:None of them

[mark-t]

People pay for Office because other people actually use Office at work, and at least 3/4 of the time, trying to port documents that are created in Office between it and Open/LibreOffice is only going to lead to gratuitous quantities of pain as formatting gets fucked all to hell.

Re:None of them

[TWX]

You're a bunch of assholes who cannot understand business. People pay for Office because it's better.

No, people pay for Office because they have to. Nobody actually thinks it is better.

It was better. Then Ribbon and Metro screwed it up royally. It was like Microsoft Bob got applied to Office.

I find LibreOffice is a lot faster to work with for the vast majority of what I do. Only problems I have using it are when someone takes custom documents/templates too far and they don't want to work right because they're so locked down that they even don't always work right in MS Office.

Re:None of them

[Dr_Barnowl]

Office is better.. at being compatible with Office. And since that's what everyone (mostly) uses, that's it's killer feature now.

I hate having to use it, but I keep a Windows VM for Office (and the few other Windows programs I need to use), LibreOffice just isn't capable of writing MS Office documents well enough not to embarrass you when your boss opens it.

Re:None of them

[westlake]

People pay for Office because other people actually use Office at work

Microsoft makes using Office at home ridiculously affordable for those using it at work.

This is just one example:

The Microsoft Home Use Program (HUP) is available to Volume Licensing customers with active Software Assurance benefits. Eligible employees may purchase qualifying Office software for use at home through an assigned Program Code provided by their organization.

Home Use Program

The Power of Office in Your Home Only $9.95

No one in FOSS has come close to integrating a credible alternative to Outlook into a "free" office suite.

The stand-alone desktop office suite is a product for the nineties. Both Google and Microsoft see the future as tightly integrated office systems with components built for the client, the server, and the web, and mobile is not an after-thought or also-ran.

Re:None of them

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Libreoffice at work, because Microsoft Office can only do spell-check in one language (it would cost about double if I added Dutch and German), and LibreOffice Calc (spreadsheet) can switch formula language and menu language independently, making it very simple to follow examples from different languages for Microsoft Excel.
I rarely try opening documents in Microsoft office, before sending files to clients, No formatting issues in recent years.
(Formatting issues between different versions of Microsoft Office, or even saving as an older version, and then opening the file with the SAME Office version that write the file is more likely to screw op formatting than using LibreOffice.)

Re:None of them

[Anonymous Coward]

It was better. Then Ribbon and Metro screwed it up royally. It was like Microsoft Bob got applied to Office.

Absolutely what I've been saying for years. I'm truly surprised that nobody's come up with a good way to bring the menus back. I have seen a couple hacks, but they didn't work all that well, unfortunately.

Re:None of them

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate trying to work with both LibreOffice and Microsoft Office... exporting as PDF helps when the receiver is just viewing the documents.

I don't really blame the FOSS developers because Microsoft has intentionally obfuscated almost all their file formats over the years. To the point they have trouble working with their own damn formats.

Re:None of them

[Anonymous Coward]

I still find MS Office nicer to use even in its horrible bastardized interface form. My fav. interface was from the Office95 to Office 2000 era; The interface started going down hill from there, with nice dialogs in being replaced with horrible sidebars in 2003, and menus (And thus the ability to learn shortcut keys) being killed off in 2007 onwards.

But they retain some of the nice 'little detail' tricks from the earlier versions that, so far, no Office clone I've seen is able to implement.

Off the top of my head, two I use frequently are CTRL+> and CTRL+< to grow and shrink font sizes.
The other is Alt+Drag-Select, which allows you to do a block select which is great for cutting out columns of stuff.

I did love in pre-2007 how you could radically alter the interface, from the menus and short-cut keys to the toolbars too. I had a custom set I brought in from Office 6 all the way to 2003 which I really miss now :(

Libre and Open Office have a degree ot UI customization but it's very very limited compared to pre-2007 MS Office. Last time I tried, I found half the stuff I wanted to change wasn't supported, or the key binding I wanted to use wasn't in the stupid list (As opposed to being able to, y'know, just PRESS the keybinding you want to use!)

Re:None of them

[Anonymous Coward]

People pay for Office because other people actually use Office at work, and at least 3/4 of the time, trying to port documents that are created in Office between it and Open/LibreOffice is only going to lead to gratuitous quantities of pain as formatting gets fucked all to hell.

No it doesn't. If you use office properly, separating content and style, it's a complete non-event working with the two suites. The problems occur when people start pissing around with style mid-document, which MS themselves have lost control of in binary blobs. If you're having problems, you need to learn to use the tools properly and not like a child the first time they're shown how to change colors on some crap they're bashed out on the keyboard.

Re:None of them

[Anonymous Coward]

the same is true for porting bewteen different versions of MS Office
and sometimes even with the same version when different print drivers are installed

Re:None of them

[mark-t]

. The problems occur when people start pissing around with style mid-document, which MS themselves have lost control of in binary blobs.

When the problems occur is not as important an issue as that they occur in the first place, and make the software behave in ways that the user does not necessarily expect.

Re:None of them

[Anonymous Coward]

Excel 97 is the pinnacle of spreadsheet software.

Re:None of them

[Anonymous Coward]

trying to port documents that are created in Office between it and Open/LibreOffice is only going to lead to gratuitous quantities of pain as formatting gets fucked all to hell.

What? Office to Office has that problem.

Ever imported a form made in Word 95 into Office 356?

For those of us who remember WordPerfect verses Office, today's Microsoft MBA Monoculture Mindset is both saddening and perverse. The 21st Century Office was supposed to be a bright and awesome future. Not Brazil in Cyberspace.

Now excuse me, I've got to fight a header that looks like the stylesheet's format but clearly is just a manual fake version that won't reflow correctly. (At least the Table of Contents wasn't manually entered on this one so I can spot it.)

Re:None of them

[mark-t]

What? Office to Office has that problem.

True... but it's less often if only because people tend to use the same version of the software consistently wherever its available.

Re:None of them

[Anonymous Coward]

It was better. Then Ribbon and Metro screwed it up royally. It was like Microsoft Bob got appointed to Office.

Fixed that for you. It was some sort of demonic deal gone wrong, and In the aftermath...there were no winners. Only the abomination.

captcha:animates. Yes, Microsoft Bob certainly animated the process of using Microsoft Office.

Re:None of them

[higuita]

on each libre office release the compatibility improves a lot. I now almost don't have any problem

Re:None of them

[kbrannen]

"People pay for Office because it's better."
> No, people pay for Office because they are sheeple and don't know any better; and because Micro$oft has a stranglehold on the market.

Some people are sheeple, but some of us want/pay-for Office because it has programs that there are no equivalents for on Linux. Someone above mentioned Outlook (personally I hate Outlook with a passion). For me, it's OneNote; nothing in the OSS world comes close and I've looked. Even Evernote, which is about half of what OneNote is doesn't even have a native Linux app.

A more interesting question...

[realmolo]

What Linux-only apps would you like to see available on Windows?

I honestly can't think of any. Almost all the useful apps available for Linux are available for Windows, too. And what's left is mostly Linux-specific system-management stuff.

And THAT is the problem with Linux on the desktop. There simply aren't any compelling applications that aren't ALSO available for Windows or OS X. Yes, security is good (though ACL support still sucks, which is ridiculous), and not having to worry about viruses is nice, too. But those are secondary concerns, honestly.

Re:A more interesting question...

[Anonymous Coward]

What Linux-only apps would you like to see available on Windows?

I honestly can't think of any.

Fontforge.

Re:A more interesting question...

[coldsalmon]

Duplicity, and by extension rsync. I tried using Duplicati on Windows for a while, but it didn't really work, so I migrated my server to Linux to get a more robust backup solution. It is true that this is a server and not a desktop, and all of my office and home desktops still run Windows. Microsoft has really improved Windows a lot in the last 10 years, and I don't miss Linux on the desktop at all anymore -- except for rsync. And if I really wanted it, I suppose I could use Cygwin.

Actually, I also miss Debian package management. apt-get is so incredibly easy and elegant. Nice try, "Windows Store."

Re:A more interesting question...

[cbhacking]

I actually have a response to this: I would really like to see the KDE-on-Windows (http://windows.kde.org/) project picked up again. KDE has some nice utilities, but the last version of them that was built for Windows is now years old. There is, of course, no reason why this *couldn't* be done; it was done before, and the build scripts may well still work. I could probably get it building again myself, at least on MSVC. Without making it easy, though, I probably won't make the effort for the relatively few tools (Kate, maybe Amarok, maybe Kopete, used to use Konqueror but probably wouldn't now) that I'd like to get out of it. Part of that is because the alternatives have improved, but a lot of it is just because any given KDE utility has a slew of dependencies that really want to be built as part of an automated and comprehensive build process.

Re:A more interesting question...

[Gavagai80]

For me to use Windows, I would need Synaptic, Konqueror (as an FTP/SFTP client, haven't seen any others that don't frustrate me), Kate, Yakuake, kcolorchooser, and some of kwin's handy features like zoom and stick to top. I suppose most of those have Windows equivalents, but without Synaptic I wouldn't be able to easily find a safe trustable non-invasive equivalent.

Re:A more interesting question...

[TyFoN]

Darktable and Kdenlive.
I use both quite a lot and there are no builds of them for windows.

Re:A more interesting question...

[chispito]

What Linux-only apps would you like to see available on Windows?

I honestly can't think of any.

That's because Open Source.

Re: A more interesting question...

[Anonymous Coward]

Give chocolatey a try, its a psudeo apt-get for windows, and it works quite well, https://chocolatey.org

Re:A more interesting question...

[omnichad]

These are system management, but not Linux-specific (other than system requirements).
GParted and ddrescue. I don't use Linux full time, but these are the two that I boot into Linux for time after time because there's no suitable alternative.

Re:A more interesting question...

[gsliepen]

apt-get

Re:A more interesting question...

[occasional_dabbler]

Synaptic, or any other package manager for that matter are one of the marvels of modern Linux distros. They had to be to fix the dependency hell problems we had previously. The original 'App Stores'

Notepad++ is one of the nicest text editors around, is Windows-only and open-source. I prefer it to Kate and let's just not go anywhere near Gedit.

Re:A more interesting question...

[TWX]

What Linux-only apps would you like to see available on Windows?

I honestly can't think of any. Almost all the useful apps available for Linux are available for Windows, too. And what's left is mostly Linux-specific system-management stuff.

And THAT is the problem with Linux on the desktop. There simply aren't any compelling applications that aren't ALSO available for Windows or OS X. Yes, security is good (though ACL support still sucks, which is ridiculous), and not having to worry about viruses is nice, too. But those are secondary concerns, honestly.

A good command-line SSH program that fits into the command-prompt like the telnet program does. I don't want to navigate dialogue boxes when I just want to ssh to a given IP address or hostname.

Re:A more interesting question...

[Anonymous Coward]

What Linux-only apps would you like to see available on Windows?

I honestly can't think of any. Almost all the useful apps available for Linux are available for Windows, too. And what's left is mostly Linux-specific system-management stuff.

And THAT is the problem with Linux on the desktop. There simply aren't any compelling applications that aren't ALSO available for Windows or OS X. Yes, security is good (though ACL support still sucks, which is ridiculous), and not having to worry about viruses is nice, too. But those are secondary concerns, honestly.

how about the cost? Linux is free. Even if it doesn't have exclusive programs (which I personally hate. If every OS had every program I could judge an OS by it's OSness. Instead though I love OS X I can't use it because the programs I need are on windows and no amount of Windows spying or Mac praising can get me to change)

If all the OSes were equal then at least Linux would still be free and I know a lot of Slashdotters don't mind shelling out a few hundred for a new OS every 5 years like they change phones every few months but some of us can't afford that. I've had the same phone for 2 years. It sucks but it still works and when it breaks I'll waffle back to an even older phone until I can afford a new one.

My computer screen cracked and I'm computerless. I'd love to buy a cheap machine and put Linux on it to even try it out. I've tried live discs but the computers I buy are slow i guess and they run horribly. The programs I need to use are on Windows and that's not choice that's obligation. How would the market look if people actually had choice? If we could realistically tell our parents or technophobe relatives that they can use this Linux at a fraction of a cost and get everything they want as they want it?

Re:A more interesting question...

[Baki]

It depends. If you are used to linux workflows (often involving the command line) then there is no way you can have that good enough in windows. cygwin is not good enough. For many users today (but still a small minority, I admit) linux is nicer and there is just a few apps "missing", which is the question of this article.

Personally, I get by with wine for the 2 missing apps (3d games). The rest (games) is available on steam today. There is no windows "productivity" app that I would need, but that is just me of course.

But to anser your question: I would like to have a complete linux-shell with all tools that truely feels native under windows. I don't think that is possible today.
OSX on the other hand sometimes combines the best of both worlds (but has other quirks).

ACL's: often they are used "brute force" (creating long-term maintenance issues) instead of using more elegant mechanisms or setups.

Re:A more interesting question...

[Anonymous Coward]

K3B

Re:A more interesting question...

[Flavianoep]

XKB.

While KDE is my first answer why I won't switch to Windows, although I thought that Win 7 was a decent OS, the keyboard layouts in Windows are what makes it harder to work for me in practical terms.

If you write in a single language, they're OK, but having to change layout to type in German looks like too much for too little. Also, the Greek (polytonic) layout in Windows is harder to learn, as you can't just combine diacritics. Typing IPA is also horrible and the workarounds my colleagues use cause a lot of incompatibility and produce unreadable text sometimes.

With XKB (part of X, I know), however, if the available layouts, and key combinations, do not suffice you, you can modify them or, at least, create your own pattern of key combinations. Even if there is, or was, a tool for that on Windows, the system has went on a trend that make customization always harder, so, I do not want.

Re:A more interesting question...

[cbhacking]

You can easily install a SSH client on Windows. There's no lack of them, really, unless you specifically mean one built in. For myself, I used to use OpenSSH on Interix (Subsystem for Unix Applications), but after Microsoft canned SUA with Win8.1 I switched to just using the client that comes with the Git for Windows package.
ssh -V
OpenSSH_6.6.1p1, OpenSSL 1.0.1i 6 Aug 2014
Server is harder, though you can find it. Interix supported SSHD as well as the client, as does Cygwin, and there are probably others.

Powershell will be getting SSH (apparently both client and server) sometime soon as well. Not here yet though.

Re:A more interesting question...

[rnturn]

``A good command-line SSH program that fits into the command-prompt like the telnet program does.''

What about Cygwin and the software package/subset that includes ssh/sftp? (AFAIR, it's not installed by a basic installation and, sorry, I've forgotten which one you need.) I'd much rather have that on a Windows box than Putty.

Cygwin runs fine on the missus's Win7 laptop. Not sure about anything newer.

Re:A more interesting question...

[Anonymous Coward]

MSKLC:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/goglobal/bb964665.aspx

Re:A more interesting question...

[Greyfox]

I use cygwin for that. You can install an ssh server as well, which is handy if you need to copy files to/from the machine and don't want to dick around with setting up samba. Cygwin actually makes for a pretty decent working environment. I set it up with Emacs, X.org and a bunch of network utilities that Windows doesn't come with.

Re:A more interesting question...

[Major Blud]

"What Linux-only apps would you like to see available on Windows?"

systemd.....err, wait.....

Re:A more interesting question...

[Anonymous Coward]

> What Linux-only apps would you like to see available on Windows?

The kernel.

Oh, and the rest of Linux, too.

And GParted... Mmmwahahaha...

Re:A more interesting question...

[Anonymous Coward]

What Linux-only apps would you like to see available on Windows?

A terminal multiplexer.

Re:A more interesting question...

[Wolfrider]

> But to anser your question: I would like to have a complete linux-shell with all tools that truely feels native under windows.

--Look into MobaXterm - it comes close.

http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/

Re:A more interesting question...

[MrKrillls]

I've got to the point that I just don't care anymore whether some application is not available for Windows. I wouldn't use Windows unless forced to. That sounds way more "hatey" than I want. I just like using Linux more.

Re:A more interesting question...

[Anonymous Coward]

Valgrind

Re:A more interesting question...

[TWX]

I want something that doesn't require a new environment started in order to use it. I want to Win-R, "cmd" enter, "ssh user@host" and be on my way.

There is no reason for it to have to be embedded in a subsystem.

Re: A more interesting question...

[Anonymous Coward]

Go buy a Raspberry Pi 2. That's my main machine these days! It is a little slower than I would like but for $50 can't complain.

Re:A more interesting question...

[Anonymous Coward]

What Linux-only apps would you like to see available on Windows?

Two we've been missing at work:

TURN server. There are a few specialized ones, that are hard coded to accept certificates from some other company's products, but I've been unable to find a plain TURN server. We are a Microsoft shop, with some IOS and Android development, but we have a Linux server that nobody installs (security) updates for, because we don't have anybody who'd want that job, and our hosting provider also only does Windows.

XMPP server. There are a lot that claims Windows support, but it's always half-baked, usually started up via an icon on the desktop, with an actual Windows service being "work in progress". Sorry, but that's not how things work on a server, the desktop is something people see when stuff doesn't work, not something you log in to in the morning.

Re:A more interesting question...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit! cygwin has access to all the GNU tools that your standard Linux distro has. Linux is the kernel, GNU makes the terminal access as effective as it is. Sounds like you're full of shit. Another dweeb super-user that lives in a MS world knowing fuck all about UNIX like OSes.

Re:A more interesting question...

[mikrus]

What Linux-only apps would you like to see available on Windows?

I really love my wobbly windows on linux. Not necessarily an app. But there is something about the wobbliness that I really like. Even the name is perfect. :)
It would be great if it became available on MS windows.

Re:A more interesting question...

[basecastula]

Pacman package manager

Re:A more interesting question...

[basecastula]

Compiz?

Re:A more interesting question...

[Shinobi]

Add putty.exe to your path, then you can just do Win+R, putty -ssh user@host. It won't be inside CMD's window, but rather a window of its own, but hey, it works

Re:A more interesting question...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can think of a ton of command line apps I want on my windows box at work or any windows server I log onto to have, and yes I know about cygwin. I mean real windows apps, that ship with windows.

I can;t install cygwin on the windows servers.
I miss the days when I had a linux box in that network where I could just mount the drive and use my regular tools :(

Re:A more interesting question...

[armanox]

For a while there I was using KDE on windows. I think the project might be dead though.

Re:A more interesting question...

[Anonymous Coward]

Darktable.

Cygwin

[Anonymous Coward]

Cygwin

Re:Cygwin

[brokenin2]

Oh I wish I had some mod points today! +1 funny does not do this justice!

Re:Cygwin

[ClickOnThis]

Well, in all seriousness, you could run it under Wine. Emphasis on could.

Re:Cygwin

[occasional_dabbler]

Indeed! Well done AC, should have logged in today.

Re:Cygwin

[MakerDusk]

You definitely got a laugh out of me!

Re:Cygwin

[MyAlternateID]

Oh I wish I had some mod points today! +1 funny does not do this justice!

It just wasn't that funny.

Does everyone here have a sense of humor like Ned Flanders? I suppose you also think "darn it" is terribly harsh language?

It would explain the stupid memes that constantly get +5 Funny after being repeated ad nauseum for (literally) years. The latest Austin Powers movie was what, 13 years ago?

Re:Cygwin

[Anonymous Coward]

Won't it run under Wine?

Re:Cygwin

[cryingpoet]

Being able to run cygwin in Linux should be a release test for Wine. It would sure make scripting some of the unit tests easy. Great idea.

Re:Cygwin

[hcs_$reboot]

It is funny, but you have to know why.

Re:Cygwin

[aNonnyMouseCowered]

Download a Windows VM, and use QEMU. Problem(?) solved.

Re:Cygwin

[Anonymous Coward]

The latest Austin Powers movie was what, 13 years ago?

Oh behave.. ;P

Current Adobe Flash support...

[kyubre]

Just kidding. What I really wish for is platform independent, standards based browser support by all web content. Time to kill the promise that became a curse called "Java" as well. Write once, run everywhere my ass....

World Of Warcraft

[Anonymous Coward]

N/T

Re: World Of Warcraft

[Anonymous Coward]

My private server is an x64 Windows binary, so it can't even be shoved off to an old XP box, but it's Trinity based so it's open source and the binary runs on MySQL.

It's also WOTLK era, so runs on a really old version of wow.exe (3.3.5a) which should run fine in wine...

Or did you mean multiplayer WoW? I hate that crap.

Music/DAW software

[Wain13001]

If I can't use Finale, DP, maybe Cubase and Protools, not to mention all the VSTs and pro audio hardware, I can't move to a different OS.

Re:Music/DAW software

[bobdehnhardt]

I'll second this. Muse is nice, but it doesn't match Finale or (my preference) Sibelius. I can do around 90% of my stuff in Linux; I only have dual boot for a few games and music composing/editing.

Re:Music/DAW software

[CronoCloud]

I take it Rosegarden+LilyPond and/or Muse or Ardour don't meet your needs?

Re:Music/DAW software

[frank_adrian314159]

You ever try to use them? Compared with even prosumer-grade DAWs (like Reaper, Sonar, Cubase, ProTools, etc.), the functionality and built-ins just aren't there. Hell, just getting normal audio hardware up and running on Linux is usually a nightmare, let alone dealing with things that don't exist on Linux at all (like a driver for my MOTU 24i/o audio interface unit). And try finding any sort of expandable audio interface that has a Linux driver... you won't. Hell, some vendors don't even have Windows drivers (Apogee, I'm looking at you).

Re:Music/DAW software

[Wain13001]

The problem is I need *everything*; meaning I also need the East/West Libraries, and the Komplete Native Instruments packages in addition to the DAW (and several other VSTs/plug-ins). I also need to be able to save my projects and bring them to other locations and set them up on other machines/studios.

On top of all of that, I do not have the time to sit down and learn another set of software from scratch, or struggle with a driver interface I know nothing about for the hardware. I'd be willing to take one thing on as a learning curve, possibly two, but I can't afford the downtime of using all new software and *maybe* having working audio hardware, even if I had the interoperability working between systems and didn't have to worry about the studio I'm moving to being on Protools, or some other DAW.

Re:Music/DAW software

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd really like Reason to run natively under Linux.

Re:Music/DAW software

[Anonymous Coward]

In my experience, drivers for I/O hardware is probably the #1 complaint I have in this area.

I have a couple of perfectly functional Digidesign 888|24 boxes and the PCI cards that host them and provide DSP for them. There are drivers for Classic MacOS and Windows XP. That's it. The "drivers", if you can call them that, are simply API's used by ProTools. Under XP, they also stub in a fake device driver to instruct the device manager to stop whining about missing drivers for detected PCI hardware. So these aren't really drivers so much as a driver shim that allows direct hardware access from user-space software. (Classic MacOS never got in the way of that, so there's not even a shim there.) Pathetic. Avid/Digidesign lost a customer when they screwed that particular pooch.

I will never again buy an audio I/O that doesn't either support Linux or make itself available through a standard generic audio interface, like "USB Audio Device" or its equivalent for other device buses.

Re:Music/DAW software

[Anonymous Coward]

This kind of thing is mentioned by Linux fanboys all the time. For people who actually do pro-audio work, everything which exists on Linux is an amateur-ish unusable joke. The only exception is Ardour, and then it's only useful for stable multitrack recordings and not so much MIDI and production. It may have _some_ features related to these things, but it is just nowhere near professional quality.

Re:Music/DAW software

[Anonymous Coward]

You ever try to use them? Compared with even prosumer-grade DAWs (like Reaper, Sonar, Cubase, ProTools, etc.), the functionality and built-ins just aren't there. Hell, just getting normal audio hardware up and running on Linux is usually a nightmare, let alone dealing with things that don't exist on Linux at all (like a driver for my MOTU 24i/o audio interface unit). And try finding any sort of expandable audio interface that has a Linux driver... you won't. Hell, some vendors don't even have Windows drivers (Apogee, I'm looking at you).

I so hear that!

As a longtime Linux fan/Sysadmin and part time musician I've never found a suitable DAW replacement for Cubase under Linux...let alone support for my MOTU :(

Re:Music/DAW software

[Dutch Gun]

prosumer-grade DAWs (like Reaper, Sonar, Cubase, ProTools, etc.),

If those tools are "prosumer-grade", I'm curious what DAWs you'd identify as "professional-grade"?

Re:Music/DAW software

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not have the time to sit down and learn another set of software from scratch

This is a very telling quotation. Many well-meaning free software nerds respond to these kinds of things with great alternatives, and get into arguments over whether LibreOffice can replace Microsoft Office or Krita can replace Photoshop, but the fact is it doesn't matter whether or not free software can do everything the proprietary stuff can.
Just like Grandma's staying on Internet Explorer because she knows where to click, there's a lot of experienced users who aren't leaving their proprietary software just because they're used to it. And free software evangelists should give up on converting those people.

Re:Music/DAW software

[Anonymous Coward]

AMEN! The *JOB* is getting the recording or editing or mastering done. There's plenty of futzing around necessary there, though the software itself needs to Just Work. Futzing around with the software itself and the underlying system, especially with getting drivers to work right (if at all) with The Good Hardware, is not part of the job description. Linux needs to have the ability to 1) support ALL the professional-quality hardware and plugins; and 2) have either a direct port of The Professional Software from Windows, properly validated and working, or something that's so obviously equivalent that the learning curve is minimal. Then, we might think of trying it out on a testbed for low-value projects done by interns. Maybe.

Re:Music/DAW software

[frank_adrian314159]

OK, ProTools there, but hardware units like RADAR and actual tape decks count, too.

SolidWorks and Word

[blind biker]

I could do pretty much all my research on Linux, if it weren't for SolidWorks and the damned Word.
Regarding Word: I like LaTex a lot, and use it whenever I can, but I research in a multidisciplinary environment and am first author for articles submitted in such a multitude of journals, that Word is, sadly, unavoidable - there's plenty of journals that only accept Word docs.

And regarding SolidWorks: yes, I know there are other 3D CAD packages that can do similar things, but I am so proficient with SW that I am not going to switch to something else. There's a lot of time and money invested in my rapidity with SW.

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[LWATCDR]

Solid Works for sure but also Office Photoshop, Visual Studio, and Flight Simulator X.
  There is not a single 3d FOSS CAD system as good as Solidworks.

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[Anonymous Coward]

Word is, sadly, unavoidable - there's plenty of journals that only accept Word docs.

Is the OpenOffice/LibreOffice compatibility so poor that it can't be used in place of Word?

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[Anonymous Coward]

That is sad, in physics and computer engineering they always accept LaTeX (they even give you the templates).

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no other closed source CAD system that's as good either.

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[stasike]

Have a look at the recent versions of FreeCAD.
I was very surprised how much progress they have made since I have last looked at the project.

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[FlyHelicopters]

Is the OpenOffice/LibreOffice compatibility so poor that it can't be used in place of Word?

Yes, it is...

Don't misunderstand, it is close, but close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and nuclear weapons...

When it comes to professional submissions to journals and other business uses, close isn't good enough...

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[jonnythan]

Yes, it's not even close when you get to anything other than very basic formatting. I tried to open a few lab reports in OpenOffice recently, and the formatting was completely incomprehensible. It's laughably bad.

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[FranTaylor]

When it comes to professional submissions to journals and other business uses, close isn't good enough...

you are correct, LaTeX is really the only choice here

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[cbhacking]

Do the journals only accept Word docs, or merely only accept document formats that Word can open? Word has had support for ODF files for years now (I think it was a plugin for 2007 but it's been standard in versions since). Try saving as "OpenDocument Text (*.odt)" format and see if they can accept that. If so, you should be able to use Open/LibreOffice (Word's support for ODT should be better than Writer's support for DOCX).

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[Anonymous Coward]

No, there are just a lot of people too stupid to figure out how to get around the differences. I've been using those two options for over a decade without ever having to resort to using an MS version.

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[sanf780]

The thing is the poster knows his way around SolidWorks, and he reckons he is fairly efficient working with that tool. Learning a tool like FreeCAD is not a trivial task, so it definitely has to be better than SolidWorks in order for him to consider the switch. It also needs to be as stable as SolidWorks. We are talking about money not gained when any software crashes for whatever the reason.

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[thegarbz]

Unless it's not a choice at all, which quite often is the problem.

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[Anomalyst]

Any chance you forwarded the documents to LibreOffice support, perhaps with a word PDF export to show the desired result? They caant fix it if they dont know there is a problem.

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[Anomalyst]

For the lazy http://freecadweb.org/

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[Drethon]

LibreOffice works good if you are not concerned with formatting, such as publishing papers in a particular format. I thought it would work good for a PowerPoint alternative but LibreOffice removed all of the nice backgrounds and font colors the provider of the PowerPoint did everything in and half of the slides were unreadable.

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[HydrusZ]

I could do pretty much all my research on Linux, if it weren't for SolidWorks and the damned Word. Regarding Word: I like LaTex a lot, and use it whenever I can, but I research in a multidisciplinary environment and am first author for articles submitted in such a multitude of journals, that Word is, sadly, unavoidable - there's plenty of journals that only accept Word docs.

Word Online has been available for free for over a year. Just sign into OneDrive on any platform and create/edit/save a Word doc.

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[lexman098]

I don't know what you're waiting for then. Last time I checked Word and SolidWorks work great under wine. It's unfortunately only games that aren't worth the performance hit running in wine.

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[FlyHelicopters]

you are correct, LaTeX is really the only choice here

While that sounds nice, and it may be true sometimes, it isn't true when the place you're sending your "whatever" to asks for it in MS Word format.

When people send me documents, they are either in PDF or DOCX format. When I send documents out, they are usually in DOCX format, sometimes in PDF depending on what I'm sending (sometimes password protected PDF).

I can't recall the last time someone had a problem with either format.

---

I've tried OpenOffice, it butchers some documents, makes minor changes in others. Only very simple documents remain the same.

But try this... Create a 10 page Word document with some detail and formatting to it, save it to DOCX format, then open it in OpenOffice, make some editing changes, move things around, add a page between page 3 and 4, resave it in ODT format. Then open that ODT file in LibraOffice, make some more changes, save it in DOCX format, then open THAT file in MS Word.

Let me know if you get something useful out of it. I wouldn't expect it, at the very least...

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[blind biker]

Have a look at the recent versions of FreeCAD.

Quoting my original post:

And regarding SolidWorks: yes, I know there are other 3D CAD packages that can do similar things, but I am so proficient with SW that I am not going to switch to something else. There's a lot of time and money invested in my rapidity with SW.

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[blind biker]

Word is, sadly, unavoidable - there's plenty of journals that only accept Word docs.

Is the OpenOffice/LibreOffice compatibility so poor that it can't be used in place of Word?

OpenOffice's compatibility isn't really bad (LibreOffice does seem to have some huge bugs, though . it's why I switched back to OpenOffice). In fact, it's pretty good, all things considered. The problem is that some editors will reject your manuscript for a formatting pet-peeve of theirs, and you never know which one. If you have too many formatting problems in your manuscript, you're playing with fire.
Also, I use Zotero, and OpenOffice's integration with Zotero _is_ indeed poor.

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[blind biker]

The thing is the poster knows his way around SolidWorks, and he reckons he is fairly efficient working with that tool.

Bullseye! And there's also this, extremely important, question: say I invest the necessary time to be as proficient with FreeCAD as I am with SW (let's ignore the fact that SolidWorks can do a whole lot more than FreeCAD). Is it sure that one can be as fast working with FreeCAD as he/she can be with SW, once achieved parity of skill? You know that some 3D cad packages just don't allow for the same speed of work.

In other words, I am not going to go through the same amount of training I did with SW, just to find out that FreeCAD doesn't allow for such fast work as does SW.

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[Baki]

You should have chosen another field of study, where you can submit everything in Latex :).

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[blind biker]

SW works under Wine? You know that's bullshit, don't you?

See SolidWorks 2012 (the one that has GOLD compatibility with Wine):
https://appdb.winehq.org/objec...

Let me quote:

What works
Installer (partially), see notes

What does not
Creating a new file (File -> New.

So there you have it - the most Wine-compatible version of SW can't even be used to start working.

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[Anonymous Coward]

When it comes to professional submissions to journals and other business uses, close isn't good enough...

you are correct, LaTeX is really the only choice here

Unfortunately, not every journal accepts LaTeX, or even knows what it is (!). But even if they do accept LaTeX... that's all well and good if you work in something like physics, comp sci, or math and only associate with others who do as well. What are you going to do when you need to do multidisciplinary work with a chemist or biologist who can't even spell LaTeX properly, and you don't have enough time to do the research and write the paper while trying to teach him or her how to use LaTeX? And what about paper revisions? Tracking changes with Word and/or multiple files is simple, if a bit clumsy. I know one group who does all their paper writing in LaTeX and uses git for both collaborative writing and version control. Your average group of researchers won't have anywhere near that level of tech savvy. Ask me how I know this.... :(

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[Anonymous Coward]

Not trying to move you away from SW, but those that are interested in professional grade CAD, native on Linux, should look at www.bricsys.com

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[Anonymous Coward]

Using Git for collaborative writing is more or less accepted practice in physics. It's an easy and safe way to track changes and it makes it easy to keep graphs and images up to date for all collaborators.

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[lexman098]

You're quoting from the 2012 version (which is rated gold btw). From the 2014 version (bronze for some reason) it says:

What works

Almost everything, the core modeling functions are usable for production work.

It's true though, the program is not made for Linux and will always have some issues (minor or not). Upgrading will be a pain etc. My point was just that you could use it as a daily-driver OS if you were stubborn enough, and that games are really what requires full support.

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[Anonymous Coward]

I use linux exclusively, and am a mechanical engineer. The state of CAD tools on linux makes me sad :(

And yes, I've looked at many linux CAD alternatives, including FreeCAD.

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[Anonymous Coward]

Open/Libre/XYZ-Office can export Word format. Why bother with Microsoft anymore?
Agree that CAD is one area where Linux still has fairly glaring gaps. It takes $$$ to develop decent CAD software :( and then you give it away as its the GNU way...

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[Anonymous Coward]

Using Git for collaborative writing is more or less accepted practice in physics. It's an easy and safe way to track changes and it makes it easy to keep graphs and images up to date for all collaborators.

Like I said, throw one non-physicist in there for a multidisciplinary project (something along the lines of materials science or biophyiscs, for exampe), and it all goes out the window. Mention git to some of these people and you'll have to spend 10 minutes convincing them than you weren't just calling them names.

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[Anonymous Coward]

LibreOffice works good if you are not concerned with formatting, such as publishing papers in a particular format. I thought it would work good for a PowerPoint alternative but LibreOffice removed all of the nice backgrounds and font colors the provider of the PowerPoint did everything in and half of the slides were unreadable.

I have seen the exact thing happen once during a Ph.D. thesis defense when the presenter brought a presentation created at his apartment on a Windows computer with MS Office to a presentation room computer running the same version of Windows and MS Office. The whole thing was a garbled mess. Fortunately, he was given a week to redo the presentation. Know what he did? I remade the entire thing in LibreOffice, then brought Portable LibreOffice in with him to the presentation room computer.

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[cbhacking]

What if you open the ODT in Word? MS Office supports the Open Document Formats, and has for most of the decade.

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand why any of that would matter for a submission to a journal. Surely they are ultimately going to format it using the journal's standard formatting anyway, in which case all that matters is the semantics. Now, if they're using some sort of automated, macro-ified wizardry to convert incoming articles into their in-house style, then I can see how it might be a problem if LibreOffice butchered your cross-references or something. But, personally, if I was running a journal and I had to accept submissions in Word format, I don't think I would be able to get submitters to reliably encode semantics in a predictable way in the first place, rendering such an approach useless even without the help of non-Microsoft office suites. I would just employ someone to manually convert from Word to the required format (which I suspect, for many journals, is probably some manually-adjusted InDesign layout) and be done with it, in which case it wouldn't make the slightest difference what your ODT antics had produced.

Alternatively, if the document is being sent/submitted for some purpose for which presentation genuinely matters, then it is most likely a finished item, and is best off being sent in PDF format, which handles formatting in a much more predictable and reliable manner than any Word document, and also looks considerably more professional. There is little point in fussing over formatting for an unfinished document; you'll only have to do it all over again when somebody decides to insert a paragraph somewhere, causing Word to rearrange your illustrations and mess up a table or two. (Hence LaTeX.)

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll second FreeCAD. My only experience up to trying it had been with SolidWorks, and I found the transition to be relatively painless. However, I should also note that I only had the barest amount of SolidWorks experience to begin with (just enough to make things on the college laser cutter).

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[Anonymous Coward]

Try doing the same, but going to/from DOCX and DOC on multiple versions of Word, and see if what happens is any different.

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[blind biker]

To be honest, I am intrigued by BricsCAD. Thank you for pointing it out.

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[Anonymous Coward]

> But try this... Create a 10 page Word document with some detail and formatting to it, save it to DOCX format, then open it in OpenOffice, make some editing changes, move things around, add a page between page 3 and 4, resave it in ODT format. Then open that ODT file in LibraOffice, make some more changes, save it in DOCX format, then open THAT file in MS Word.

I do that all the time.

My documents are usually about 5 pages, but 10 is not that uncommon. It works so well I'm usually the guy who finishes text prior to release.

Sometimes one has to fix some little change, but it has been a greater problem between Office versions than between Libreoffice and Word. Using the same font (eg Arial) solves 99% of the problems.

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[Angstroman]

Many posts here talking about retraining time and familiarity. I have used SW for five years and PTC CREO/Wildfire/Pro-E for more than twenty. The simple fact is that while FreeCAD is a nice try and has some useful features for very simple work, it is not even in the same discussion group as "real" CAD software. A similar thing can be said regarding program for FEA and CFD analysis. The irony is that Pro-E was actually developed for Unix (OK, Solaris) and abandoned that field. A sign of hope is some of the newer programs, like Abacus, will run in a linux environment. But there is no indication that any of the full-feature CAD and analysis combination packages are even remotely thinking about running in linux. I manage better than most commenting here with LibreOffice replacing Word and exchanging documents with my Microsoft-laden friends. But there is a Win7 workstation under the desk to run SW and CREO that I would love to replace but cannot.

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[MeNeXT]

No, it is not.

Not sure what you are talking about but I've had compatibility issues with Word on Word documents worse than OpenOffice/LibreOffice. Word documents do not always display the same on all systems and all versions of Word. You can never be positive that a Word document will be represented identically on two different systems. Them very well may but they very well may not.

Word and Excel are good tools but for long term document management they are a complete disaster. One day you may need to deal with older documents 5, 10, 20, 30 or even 50 year old documents. If your choice was Word, trust me you will be lost. I know this from experience. Not sure how ODT will fare but since it's an open standard I can at least write a program which can open them. I have old text, jpeg, pdf, and eps documents and I'm hoping that these will be supported in some form for some time to come. All the wp and doc files that are over 10 years old I have to convert. In most cases if you upgraded Windows and Word as they come out 5 year old documents do not display as they were created/printed in the original.

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool. But not even in the same league as Solidworks. And Solidworks is considered cheap professional grade CAD. $4k for the basic version. I just had to spend about $15k for the full shebang (including non-linear dynamic analysis). This is compared to $100k per seat (including hardware and software) for the systems I used as recent as 15 years ago.

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[FlyHelicopters]

Word 2013 documents will open properly on Word 2013...

You're correct that Word 2003 documents won't always look right in Word 2013, and so on...

So... if you're a professional, get on the latest version... There is no excuse for being out of date on your MS Office version by more than 1 version. Office 2010 generally is fine, but yes, go back to 2003, 2002, or 2000, and you'll have issues...

BTW, to open those documents, I still have a system with Windows XP on it and Office 2003 on it, for just that reason. Large companies, if they have any brains, do the same thing.

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[blind biker]

After having a second, and third look at that CAD package, I am.... I am kind of totally sold on it!

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[blind biker]

There's no other closed source CAD system that's as good either.

Sure there is - CATIA for one.

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[Anonymous Coward]

Word Online has been available for free for over a year. Just sign into OneDrive on any platform and create/edit/save a Word doc.

You forgot to write your password.

I'm pretty sure creating a Microsoft account is not considered an option by the people leaving Windows because of the surveillance and forced Microsoft account stuff in Windows 10.

Heck, I have a Windows 8.1 tablet that I'm trying to get rid of for the same reason (can't even access the store without a Microsoft account), and can't even give away, everybody I've asked says "nope" as soon as they hear it's a Windows tablet.

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[fgouget]

Just something to keep in mind: SolidWorks 2014 seems to work in Wine and/or CrossOver. Whenever OpenGL is involved this can depend a lot on your graphics card and driver. Word 2010 or older should definitely work just fine.

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[q4Fry]

XPlane as a substitute for MS Flight Sim X?

Re:SolidWorks and Word

[q4Fry]

Same outcome, sadly. If you try to do certain kinds of footnote formatting, the document is not going to look the same in Word and LO/OO, no matter which file format you specify.

I wish as much as anyone that it were otherwise.

Microsoft Word

[Ecuador]

Ok, I kid, I kid, although it would be nice to be able to open a word document and have it layout exactly as the Windows-based writer intended it...
My vote goes to Photoshop.
Also some specialized software that are popular for processing astrophotos like Deep Space Stacker, Registax etc would be nice to have in Linux, but I'd be generally happy with just a native Photoshop.

Re:Microsoft Word

[erikscott]

Word doesn't even completely interoperate with Word for Mac, as far as that goes.

Re:Microsoft Word

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, I kid, I kid, although it would be nice to be able to open a word document and have it layout exactly as the Windows-based writer intended it...

I can't even do that in Windows half the time

Re:Microsoft Word

[Anonymous Coward]

Office 365 Online should take care of any MS Office Issues.

Re:Microsoft Word

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Word doesn't even completely interoperate with Word for Mac, as far as that goes.

Word on Windows doesn't even completely interoperate with Word for Windows, as far as that goes.

Re:Microsoft Word

[cloud.pt]

Only it doesn't. I'm a long time Sharepoint user, and I can tell you, if it's anything close to that, might as well stick to Open/LibreOffice compatibility-wise (and it still sucks balls), or Google docs collaborative-wise (and you will still have the finnishing overhead when the collaborative part ends and you need it printed/PDF'd and you want to add that camera-ready Word look, those fancy Excel formulas and dynamic pie charts, or present in that old amphitheater computer that only supports _true_ ppt formatting). If they can do it for MacOS, they can do it for Linux. They just don't see the (commercial) point, so it won't happen. Office 365 is nothing more than a desperate shout which can faintly be discerned as "we are still here, doing our best for you to go back to that Windows version of Office, even though you moved 50% your dayjob routine to Unix-like using portable platforms such as Android and iOS".

Re:Microsoft Word

[Anonymous Coward]

Word (for Windows) does not even completely interoperate with Word for Windows -- my neighbor had a Word DOC that he couldn't open, even though he created the DOC in MS-Word for Windows on the same PC.

I installed OpenOffice for him, and it opened the file just fine (he was able to recover his work).

Re:Microsoft Word

[Anonymous Coward]

We just rewrote the image processing algorithm from the papers, but Word would be a huge improvement.

Re:Microsoft Word

[Anonymous Coward]

> I installed OpenOffice for him, and it opened the file just fine (he was able to recover his work).

I had Libreoffice at work. We are a 100% MS Office users, but everyone came to me to open their files because they thought I was sort of a genius.

And no, I couldn't suggest that they use Libreoffice... only TI could do that.

Necessary tools.

[Anonymous Coward]

OrCad Schematic Capture Tool.
Alegro board layout tool.

native ms office that really is cross platform

[Anonymous Coward]

working in a company where people use windows ms office, mac os ms office and, linux libre office really makes for some fucked up documents

Visual Studio

[Anonymous Coward]

I run a VM just for that.

Remote WMI

[selectspec]

It would be nice if a fully supported and working version of remote WMI worked on Linux. That way you could manage and monitor windows servers from Linux.

Re:Remote WMI

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be nice if a fully supported and working version of remote WMI worked on Linux. That way you could manage and monitor windows servers from Linux.

It's called WMIC and comes standard with monitoring software such as Pandora FMS, it uses the same querys as as wmi in windows.

Re:Remote WMI

[Anonymous Coward]

RHEL7 already includes OpenLMI

http://www.openlmi.org/

Hardware Specific Proprietary Software

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't even call it "drivers" anymore, as most devices nowadays conform with standards or even come with Linux drivers. However, think of the camera that has some really cool hardware-features that unfortunately require proprietary software, be it as a WiFi remote control or for post processing (I'm talking of e.g. stereo cameras with 3D). Also my GPS device came with a really nice and well thought out data-transfer and recorded track editing software, that works in Windows only. These sort of things.

There are sometimes alternatives in Linux, which are generally not as mature. Wine & Co also help to some extent, but when it comes to advanced hardware specific features they usually break.

None

[Anonymous Coward]

If you need to run a Windows app, run Windows.

Re:None

[yuhong]

Why do you dislike it so much?

Re:None

[Anonymous Coward]

Because he has nothing to hide but should not be forced to run nekkid thru the woods.

and fuck you.

Re:None

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you not been reading the news about Windows telemetry lately? The privacy implications of using Windows just because too much to stomach. There are "hacks" you can do to minimize the gathering and sending of info, but an OS that would make privacy that difficult is one that I would rather part ways with and use something that respects my privacy and settings and will not reset them when the system updates. At the moment, the most privacy-friendly OSes are FreeBSD and OpenBSD. Linux comes a close second, depending on distro, but I dislike systemd and its binary nonsense.

Re:None

[Anonymous Coward]

lmao your computer is broadcasting an IP ADDRESS RIGHT NOW

Re:None

[yuhong]

But OP also mentioned switching to Fastmail too. SQM is not new and I know about the forced telemetry on non-enterprise editions, but I do feel bad about in particular the hosts file bypass BTW if it is actually true.

Re:None

[Anonymous Coward]

Computers only send their IP addresses to other computers you tell them to send it to. They do not broadcast them beyond their local network. L2Network.

Re:None

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you never heard of a proxy server, my friend? Easy to set up and use. The poster below correctly indicated that an IP is useful only if you want it to be. I'm in the US, but for all intents and purposes, I'm in the Netherlands.

Re:None

[LVSlushdat]

I suffered with using/supporting Windows during my working life, from 1991 to 2010, and I decided that, once I retired, I'd skip the hassles and malware vulnerablities of Windows and move my computers to Linux. Having started working with Linux in 1995, with Slackware, this move was not particularly hard.. I tried out the Windows 10 previews and thought it looked pretty good, but when it became clear what a privacy nightmare it was, and even when you were able to disable certain of the especially egregious parts of it, they continued to "phone-home" to MS, I decided then and there that I will NOT allow any MS OS on my home network... It just isn't worth it...

Re:None

[Anonymous Coward]

clearly he has something to hide...

Internet Explorer

[Anonymous Coward]

For the same reason I support gay marriage. Everybody should suffer equally.

IE for everyone. There should be an IE for mainframe.

Re:Internet Explorer

[crow]

I was thinking of posting this as a serious answer. There are far too many web sites that require IE. These are mostly internal corporate sites where the developer can say that IE is the corporate standard, so it doesn't matter if it doesn't run on anything else.

So yes, I find that IE is the most common reason I boot Windows (in a VM under Linux).

Re:Internet Explorer

[armanox]

Well, there used to be Internet Explorer for Solaris, HP-UX, and Mac OS....

Notepad++

[Anonymous Coward]

Still have to find a similar tool.

Re:Notepad++

[HornWumpus]

Emacs has a vi built in, it should also have a notepad++ built in.

Re:Notepad++

[dahlellama]

I love Notepad++. I have been looking for a good replacement for awhile.

Re:Notepad++

[Anonymous Coward]

Try Kate.

Re:Notepad++

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can get past the java ick factor, jedit isn't that bad. You might find yourself editing the source to take out the "arrow past edge of buffer" beeps if you don't have a way to mute it on your sound card.

You can define your own syntaxes for coloring, and it can do rectangular selection and I really like their text search system.

It's missing any kind of deep interlink with the languages though - best you get is syntax highlighting, no "here are all the methods for x object" dropdown list.

Re: Notepad++

[Anonymous Coward]

Been there. The closest I could find was Geany, which I still use daily.

Re:Notepad++

[Anonymous Coward]

Or better yet, Crimson Editor. But, sadly, it won't happen. Emerald has taken it over and made it shitty, and it was always Windows-only.

Re: Notepad++

[Anonymous Coward]

Ultra Edit with Beyond Compare.

Re:Notepad++

[GameboyRMH]

Tried SciTE? It's based on Scintilla like Notepad++

Re: Notepad++

[Anonymous Coward]

Try notepadqq it is a notepad++ alike for Linux

Re:Notepad++

[erapert]

If there's one thing that Linux has plenty of choices for it's text editors. Here's some I've tried that are similar to NP++:

• Kate (as the AC mentioned)
• Gedit (not bad, just a little lacking in plugins and cumbersome to install color themes for)
• Sublime Text 3 (I personally use this)
• Lime Text (an open-source replacement for Sublime Text)
• Atom (rather heavy weight and a bit buggy)
• Vim (there are a bazillion different flavors and versions with gobs of plugins)
• Emacs
• Genie (sort of a mini IDE)

Re:Notepad++

[erapert]

I forgot to mention: NP++ runs very well for me under WINE.

Re:Notepad++

[Hognoxious]

systemd has all three, plus IBM PE.

Re:Notepad++

[Anonymous Coward]

gedit was good before the UI jumped off a cliff, but it still somewhat usable. Or, Kate.

Re:Notepad++

[Foresto]

I'm think you must mean Geany. It's one of the best lightweight programmer's editors I've ever used.

Re:Notepad++

[Anonymous Coward]

SciTE? http://www.scintilla.org/SciTE...

Re: Notepad++

[eneville]

vim.

Re:Notepad++

[Zontar The Mindless]

Kate isn't bad, but one of the 3 things* I still miss about Windows is UltraEdit.

*Node.JS might take care of one of these, and a port of 3D Space Cadet Pinball would be nice as well. I can't believe in 2015 there are STILL no decent pinball games for Linux.

None

[Anonymous Coward]

What with the Windows telemetry nonsense, non, merci.

My wife was the lone Windows holdout until this telemetry business. She has now seen the light of day and the privacy nightmare associated with using Windows. I finally convinced her to move to Fastmail for email, as she is now a customer and not a product.

FreeBSD or Linux in my house. I will now not allow anyone to connect to my home network with a Windows machine. Harsh? Maybe. I dislike being tracked. I dislike my friends and family being tracked.

Only one

[Anonymous Coward]

MS Paint.

MS Money

[Anonymous Coward]

Been using it for 12 years, so I have a lot of historical data that I don't want to give up (yes, I'm a digital hoarder). Even though it's no longer supported, it still does what I need it to do.
Also, the budgeting tool is much easier to use than GNUCash, such as adding up category subtotals which I could never get to work correctly. Although I do love the ability of GnuCash to have a different budget each year.

Re:MS Money

[FranTaylor]

Been using it for 12 years, so I have a lot of historical data that I don't want to give up (yes, I'm a digital hoarder).

if you don't have a backup that you can restore onto another computer, you are guaranteed to be totally screwed when your computer has a hardware failure

Re:MS Money

[Anonymous Coward]

I do have backups and it's super simple to restore from a backup.
When I get a new computer, I just have to copy the file over, install Money Sunset version and open up the file.

Re:MS Money

[Anonymous Coward]

I do have my data backed up (I don't see how my post indicates that I don't). MS Money and GNUCash both make it super simple to restore from a backup so that's not really a differentiation between them.

Re:MS Money

[camperdave]

Been using it for 12 years, so I have a lot of historical data that I don't want to give up (yes, I'm a digital hoarder).

if you don't have a backup that you can restore onto another computer, you are guaranteed to be totally screwed when your computer has a hardware failure

You mean a backup that you can restore onto a virtual computer, right?

Re:MS Money

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry for the double post but it's been a long day and my first comment wasn't displaying.

Re:MS Money

[ClickOnThis]

In my experience, KMyMoney is easier to use than GnuCash. I haven't used it lately, though.

Re:MS Money

[tepples]

But can you restore a Microsoft Money backup into GnuCash?

Visio

[lazlo]

Just about everything else I've found good alternatives for, and maybe there are some good alternatives for Visio and I just haven't found them, but the real deal certainly does seem nice. There have been times when I've needed to use it fairly often, these days it's pretty rare actually, maybe once a year or so...

And while there's lots that's nice about it, I'm not even sure it's the application that's really the killer for me, but the large available base of existing stencils, and I think that's causing a feedback loop: no one makes stencils in any other format because there isn't a widely accepted alternative format, and no apps can get a foothold because of the lack of stencils. So it's really the format wars all over again, but in a smaller niche.

Re:Visio

[Snotnose]

Try LibreOffice's Draw to replace Vizio. Haven't used Vizio since Microsoft bought them (not a decision, just didn't have access to it), for my personal stuff Draw does everything I need.

Re:Visio

[Anonymous Coward]

You could also try Calligra Flow (FOSS). I'm thinking to try it myself once I have some free time... along with a few other (less likely) candidates like LibreOffice Draw, and Balsamiq (through Wine)

Re:Visio

[Anonymous Coward]

Draw sets itself up as more of a Powerpoint competitor with some "artistic" tools thrown in to compete with Illustrator.

Visio is far more of a 2D-only CAD package than a vector art program. Sure, they have some similarities, but there really is no comparison for Visio (except maybe a full-on CAD package) when it comes to drawing detailed floorplans, flowcharts where everything lines up properly, or custom reusable drawings.

Visio still needs a FOSS competitor. Badly.

Re:Visio

[GameboyRMH]

Tried Dia? I know it does flowcharts and UML but I just use it for network diagrams, it works well for that at least.

Re:Visio

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been looking for a good alternative to Visio on Windows.

Re:Visio

[Anonymous Coward]

It works marginally OK for very simple diagrams. It doesn't work for the kind of diagrams required for significant architecture drawings for networks etc.

Visio is unique and does what it does, and nothing else does yet.

Re:Visio

[pacman on prozac]

Agree with this, I do network designs and have never found anything to replace Visio and it means I always need a Windows VM on my laptop.

Inkscape came closest but just wasn't as slick and took far longer, especially with complex layouts, I ought to try it again really as it's been a few years.

Re:Visio

[Anonymous Coward]

There are several apps now that can read Visio file relatively well, but I have yet to find one that can write them at all. If I can't receive a Visio drawing, update it, and send the updated drawing back to the creator in a form that he can read, it's not worth the effort.

Re:Visio

[hcs_$reboot]

Even the latest visio on windows is not as intuitive and use friendly as used to be the older versions. But with the web, now, you can easily find google images -> line drawing about whatever you need and arrange them the way you want on a page.

Re:Visio

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried yED?
It has a few quirks of its own (like having to composite objects by converting to label) but I now much prefer it to visio. For complex arrangemets like the elevations of whole rows of computer racks, yED consumes far less memory and as a result the program is much more responsive. Plus, it uses SVG so you can easily integrate the result with a web dashboard, for example.

Doing tables is a bit dodgy but I find flow diagrams and the like better and easier to do than in visio.

YMMV.

Re:Visio

[Anonymous Coward]

Try Dia or Calligra Flow as replacements for Ms Visio

Re:Visio

[Anonymous Coward]

Try Dia or Calligra Flow as replacements for Ms Visio

I have. They both suck at present. They feel like amateurs at UI programming wrote them. The programs are sluggish and missing basic / obvious capabilities. Given them ten years and perhaps they'll be usable for non-trivial stuff.

For some reason, the open source programming community is really bad at user interface stuff. I have yet to figure this out. Perhaps it just isn't considered sexy. Or perhaps the connection to the Mac legacy simply turns off people. Or perhaps people are too focused on coming up with something new and different, and they don't understand the importance of getting basic things right.

This problem, along with the driver problem, seems to be a real hurdle to adopting Linux more generally.

I use Linux every day at work, as well as Windows, and it would be a lot simpler if I didn't have to go to Windows to do any engineering tasks, since the lion's share of the advanced commercial engineering tools (stuff I need to use for things other than basic CAD tasks) run on Linux. I could stay on Linux for all the things I need to do if it wasn't for a few tools only available on Windows such as Visio.

It's a shame Microsoft bought Visio, because it's a lot more likely we would have a Linux version by now if they hadn't. Most of our engineers use Linux every day for the vast majority of the tasks they do, and from what I hear that's the norm in my industry, so there's clearly an engineering demand. Given what we pay for licenses for the specialized CAD tools, they could have charged a whole lot more for a Linux version of Visio then they do for the Windows version, and still had lots of companies buying lots of licenses.

Octave and LibreOffice are great within their limits, but there's a lot of capabilities they don't have. Unfortunately, open source CAD in general sucks. Even the 2-d stuff is awful, which is surprising considering what an old technology that is.

Given how many people buy Windows programs that are essentially CAD programs for all kinds of ordinary non-engineering tasks (such as planning a landscape or garden, or planning a house they want built, or doing interior design), this is clearly not a case where there aren't enough potential users to justify doing the work. A good open source CAD program would be usable for all those things, it wouldn't be something limited to use by just engineers. Getting us away from the abusive licensing practices of some vendors would be a worthwhile thing in its own right.

From the more limited engineering perspective, an open source tool that combined elements of Visio, MathCad, and AutoCad would be a wonderful thing. It wouldn't have to be a look-alike: there's lots of room to improve on those tools in a host of obvious ways, such as having revision control (such as GIT or SVN) considered as part of the design from day 1.

I would love to spend a few years writing that tool, but my employer would never pay for it.

Re:Visio

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely. Visio. Especially if it's a pre MS involved version. Before it became a monstrosity absorbing any and all available resources. Back when it was a ridiculously versatile program with multitudes of stencils available.

MS Visio

[djrok212]

I know there are alternatives, but none can match up against Visio.

Re:MS Visio

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, that's exactly what I thougt also.

Sony's Sound Forge and Vegas Video

[QuietLagoon]

Those two are among the best in their respective class, if not the best.

.
The current offerings for audio and video editing in Linux are not close.

Re:Sony's Sound Forge and Vegas Video

[dfsmith]

I second the Sony Vegas suites, and add Quickbooks (which is bizarrely feeble under Wine, even though it's a "simple" application).

Re:Sony's Sound Forge and Vegas Video

[tulimulta]

What's wrong with Lightworks? For audio, there's Bitwig Studio (among others) for your DAW needs and Audacity for sound editing. Vegas and Sound Forge were the crème de la crème like 15–20 years ago.

Re:Sony's Sound Forge and Vegas Video

[Anonymous Coward]

This. Plus Avisynth/VirtualDub. And no, AVIdemux isn't good enough.

Re:Sony's Sound Forge and Vegas Video

[QuietLagoon]

I've used Audacity, and it's no Sound Forge. If you're an amateur, perhaps Audacity is adequate.

.
Sound Forge still is the crème de la crème. By a long shot.

As someone recent converted to Linux

[torqer]

I've been using linux full time for about 6 months now. There definitely have been a few gotchas that I've come across. Most of them are resolvable, but I would still put Outlook as an program that needs to run on Linux. I can make do with Open Office for the rest of the MS Office suite.

I've used Evolution and Thunderbird as replacements, and they can for the most part function as email clients, neither of the calendar options are anywhere near "Excellent"

While I have run across a few issues with in Calc (it has a lower limit of columns than Excel does), None of them are show stoppers.

I work in the Call Center industry so I'd like Avaya's applications to run natively as well. CMS Supervisor and One-x Agent to be specific. Those I have resorted to a WinXP virtual machine.

All in all, I'm 99.9% functional in Linux... But as far as my own stats go... I was probably only 99.9% functional in Windows too.

Re:As someone recent converted to Linux

[torqer]

Oh I want to add Skype as well.

It works, yes... as long as you don't want to view someone else's screen. It's horribly blurry trying to view someone's desktop.

Re:As someone recent converted to Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Outlook is an easy solution if your office is on Exchange 2013 especially, but even 2010. OWA is very functional. About the only thing you need the desktop Outlook for is PST files, which are bad juju anyway.

Re:As someone recent converted to Linux

[jerpyro]

OWA is ok for reading your email and that's about it. Some of the advanced functionality, integration tools, plugins and company specific items (aka sharepoint integration) you *need* to have the desktop copy for.

Re:As someone recent converted to Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

KMail 1.2 was the *perfect* email client, and kontact provided pretty nice integration. Unfortunately the brain trust at KDE fucked it all up with KMail 2 and its horrific database backend, which to this day still can't scale (and it never will because the issue is fundamental.)

Adobe CreativeCloud & BlackBerry Blend

[benmhall]

I'd take BlackBerry Blend and Adobe's Creative Cloud. (Specifically InDesign.)

Pale Moon Browser

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately I can't help you with any Linux specific software, but I do know that there is an official Linux version of Pale Moon, available at http://linux.palemoon.org/

Killer apps

[Anonymous Coward]

All the killer apps:

Adobe Creative Suite and all the individual pieces
MS Office (must have Outlook for business email)
AutoCAD ...and anything else that is a business critical application.

The latest version of Windows, while asthetically improved, has all those privacy concerns, price/subscription costs, heavy handed update requirements. I want out of Windows but those and some other issues are have forced me to stick with Windows.

Re:Killer apps

[labnet]

Altium
Creo
Outlook
Visual studio
Office
PSoc creator

Re:Killer apps

[Gumbercules!!]

Visual Studio for Linux (kind of): https://code.visualstudio.com/...

.NET is also supported on Linux, now. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dotnet...

Endnote

[Anonymous Coward]

Endnote. Nothing else compares. DO NOT try to tell me about Zotero bibtex blah blah blah. Endnote with Word integration is keeping me running Office 2000 (yes no kidding, under crossover) because nothing else offers that level of functionality in the linux world. I'm a STEM professor. The next step is to buy a dedicated windows machine *just* to run endnote/word in a more modren version. Libre 5.0 has just passed the level of functionality where it's usable for thesis-length documents (which Word 6.0 for DOS did just fine in 1990) without crashing, BUT still has no useful bib functionality. Again I *know* about the builtin bibliography functions in Libre, they are a joke, not even Endnote 1.x level.

When I did beta testing for Endnote BITD, they told me they have an explicit no-linux-ever-nohow-noway policy. Wish we could get that changed.

Re:Endnote

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhhm, people in STEM use LaTeX for articles and theses.

Re:Endnote

[erapert]

Why not use LaTeX?

Re:Endnote

[Elendil]

Have you heard about Zotero http://www.zotero.org and Mendeley https://www.mendeley.com/ ? They're both much better than Endnote IMHO.

Music apps

[rhintintin888]

Foobar and Traktor Pro I'd have gone years ago if it wasn't for these two.

Re:Music apps

[erapert]

Foobar2k --> Amarok (there's tons of other music players on Linux)
Traktor Pro --> Mixxx

Windows only apps? What is this? 2003?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't think of a single "Windows Only App" that's relevant to anyone...Hell, mother fucking Amazon has better exclusives than Windows!

Re:Windows only apps? What is this? 2003?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because you're not thinking. You're reacting.

Re:Windows only apps? What is this? 2003?

[Anonymous Coward]

99% of the shit people are listing as "Windows Only" is available for OSX. And things like "Visual Studio" don't make sense on OSX where you would obviously use Xcode. Just look at the top suggestion: Photoshop. That used to be Mac exclusive, the Windows version is a port. This story is stupid.

Re:Windows only apps? What is this? 2003?

[Anonymous Coward]

I only read

I can't think

Delphi

[spudnic]

A fully compatible version of Delphi so Christian can write Total Commander for Linux to run natively.

Re:Delphi

[LWATCDR]

I wonder how well it would work compiling it under FreePascal?

Re:Delphi

[neiras]

A fully compatible version of Delphi so Christian can write Total Commander for Linux to run natively.

Not quite, but maybe close enough?

Re:Delphi

[Anonymous Coward]

As a total addict to Totalcmd, I find krusader a very good replacement tool for it in Linux. It is even recommended by Christian on his web. Which features are you missing?

Re:Delphi

[Anonymous Coward]

A fully compatible version of Delphi

Seems you are about ten years too late for that.

Re:Delphi

[Anonymous Coward]

I find Double Commander as a better replacement for Total Commander than Krusader.

Exchange

[Nkwe]

And by "Exchange" I mean software that provides all the functionality of Exchange beyond simple email. Calendar and contact management; synchronization of mailbox folders, calendar, contacts with mobile devices; user specific server side email processing rules; replication of mailboxes (email databases) for high availability; security model that allows administrative assistant and other delegations; etc.

In short the features that cause large companies to choose Exchange and therefore Microsoft Office.

Re:Exchange

[Ynot_82]

Check out Sogo
http://www.sogo.nu/

Highly recommended

Re:Exchange

[gQuigs]

Give Zentyal a try - http://www.zentyal.com/

Re:Exchange

[Lorens]

And by "Exchange" I mean software that provides all the functionality of Exchange beyond simple email. Calendar and contact management; synchronization of mailbox folders, calendar, contacts with mobile devices; user specific server side email processing rules; replication of mailboxes (email databases) for high availability; security model that allows administrative assistant and other delegations; etc.

That would be Zimbra. It has all of that except *maybe* "mailbox replication for HA", which is either useless (run it off DR-enabled VMs running on a replicated SAN) or in the future "cloud" version.

Re:Exchange

[Anomalyst]

Zentyal is not FOSS, it does have a free trial if you think you can add it to your budget.

Re:Exchange

[gQuigs]

It's GPL. The community page makes that a bit clearer. Now I do believe they have some proprietary extensions for something but I can't seem to remember what now...
http://www.zentyal.org/server/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://github.com/Zentyal/zen...

Re:Exchange

[Anonymous Coward]

Zimbra is a dead project and doesn't scale well when you get to thousands of users.

Re:Exchange

[Anonymous Coward]

Zimbra

Re:Exchange

[Anonymous Coward]

CommuniGate Pro is a better Exchange than Exchange. Plus it runs on multiple architectural variants of about 21 different Operating Systems.

Re:Exchange

[Fencepost]

Given its history of being acquired, sold, etc. and its most recent acquisition by Synacor I'm not sure I'd call Zimbra a "dead project," but it doesn't fill me with a feeling of comfort either. I get some feeling of "we can pull some cash out of this thing," though given the money involved in the purchase I can't see them doing it just to let it die.

I'm not 100% sure that all the features you're looking for are there, but it might also be worth looking at Kolab - I think much of it is there, but the folks we have using it are mostly just interested in the email side, so I don't have a lot of experience with other parts.

Re:Exchange

[Anonymous Coward]

And only if you go with Professional which is almost as expensive as Exchange but not as capable. It is close but it isn't going to cut it.

Re:Exchange

[aybiss]

You mean like the feature where I as the *end user* get 12 emails a night about synchronisation problems. TEMPORARY synchronisation problems.

Or perhaps you're referring to the way its client can't remember the extra calendars I've opened or that I want to see them in full week view?

Or is it the way that Outlook screws up drawing your list of messages, so you go through your inbox deleting stuff and you're off by one but can't tell.

Oh I know, it's the way that when you're typing near the bottom of the email it thinks you're in the signature area and stops spell checking and showing paste options?

People crap on that they need this and that from Microsoft. Bullshit. What the human race really needs is at least one properly functioning office suite.

Re:Exchange

[Anonymous Coward]

Simply amazing. My post was removed since it exposed the truth. Open source zealots are just simple cowards when exposed to the truth.

Re:Exchange

[Anonymous Coward]

zimbra and zarafa can be used as exchange replacement. and high availability can be addressed with replicated filesystems like gluster and with mysql replication or postgresql streaming. if you -really- know exchange, you can do this...

Re:Exchange

[Anonymous Coward]

We actually do have full-scale Exchange equivalents. A sister comment mentioned Sogo, which is also an outstanding product, but let me draw your attention to Zentyal – an almost drop-in replacement for Exchange.

Re:Exchange

[jez9999]

Good luck with that.

Literally every time I have asked about something like this I get exactly the same response: bundling all this functionality together is "not the unix/linux way". Literally. Every. Time. No-one in the Linux world seems to have any other opinion.

So the only recommendations you'll get from within the community are a combination of Postfix, Dovecot, Squirrelmail, and a few others.

MS Office

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft Office. LibreOffice is good but it is no replacement. It will usefully let you read office documents but not edit and return.

Onenote

[happyhungarian]

It doesn't have a worthy alternative except Evernote, which not only lacks free floating textboxes, images, etc., but is also Windows and OSX exclusive. I would totally donate to a Kickstarter campaign promising to create an open, cross-platform Onenote clone...

Re:OneNote

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

It must be extremely frustrating to write music with such a program.

Pale Moon does work on linux

[Xenolith0]

Also, I currently use PaleMoon fork of Firefox as my main browser, but there doesn't seem to be a Linux variant.

Pale Moon does work on Linux, just fine a I might add. You can even copy over your profile from windows to Linux and everything will continue to work:

http://linux.palemoon.org/download/installer/

Re:Pale Moon does work on linux

[aNonnyMouseCowered]

Nowadays a browser is the least reason you'll have for not switching. Except for IE pre-7 all of today's major browser present pretty much the same user experience. Graphical browsers fall into three or four major camp, Webkit browsers like Chromium and Safari, Gecko-based browsers like Firefox, and the Microsoft browsers. Recent Microsoft browsers tend to be standards compliant enough for a web developer or web site to ignore. The major problem nowadays is whether to code for the desktop or for mobile, which is dominated by whatever browser engines Apple and Google use.

Cad/Parametric Modeling

[Anonymous Coward]

everything available on linux so far is a joke. Would love to see AutoCad/Revit but that is never going to happen.

Anybody with a job probably needs Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously the author uses his computer for browsing the web with his custom fork of firefox (eye roll) and considers himself a hot shot power user computer whiz because he uses Norton Commander in tyool 2015, but by and large people with work to be done can't do it on linux.

You don't have to look hard to find that the tools people use don't work on linux, and any open source "replacements" are just not up to the task.

Visual Studio, Photoshop, Pro Tools, 3D Modelling tools, Office

Notepad ++

[Anonymous Coward]

Notepad ++ is my favorite text editor. It would be awesome if it were cross-platform. Atom or Sublime text look like they would be reasonable replacements, but neither of them can be easily installed without root. For someone who largely works on remote boxes that you don't administer, this is a dealbreaker. I don't get why more linux apps don't get that. If you don't need root for the required functionality, there's no excuse for requiring it for install.

Re:Notepad ++

[Anonymous Coward]

This times 1E499 . Seriously, I have yet to use any text editors that are as nice as Notepad++

CAD

[Anonymous Coward]

There are no good CAD apps in Linux. Don't pollute the ecosystem by porting some proprietary crap. We need a decent F/OSS CAD app.

Excel.

[Anonymous Coward]

Excel. I use it all the time, and the competitors are so far behind on features there really isn't a substitute. I've tried replacing it with Open Office, Libre Office, and Google Sheets, but I've ended up needing to export from those into Excel to get some things done, or at least done without long and complicated workarounds that still aren't as functional.

Yes, there are problems and annoyances with Excel, but the functionality and feature list is staggering.

Re:Excel.

[Anonymous Coward]

gnumeric?

Re:Excel.

[aybiss]

I'm not sure if you're joking or not when you talk about a 'functional' spreadsheet program that by default prevents you from looking at two spreadsheets at once. :-P

I'd also love to know just what Excel does, apart from blindy executing native code it finds in a spreadsheet, that the others don't do. Isn't that in fact the problem? That nobody else would be stupid enough to allow embedding DLLs into spreadsheets or executing them without asking?

I mean there's only so many sorting, summing and graphing options you need on a normal day, so either it must be the scripting that people miss, or since I checked out OoO it has removed hundreds of already working features.

InDesign

[danieldids]

I'd like to have InDesign for Linux. Scribus is just ok (at least in the last time ive used it), but doe's not compare at all with InDesign. Version CS3 would totally be ok for me, for later version are only slightly better and CS3 already has JS support. For ME, linux versions or generic versions (libreoffice vs ms office, gimp vs ps, inkscape vs illustrator, and so on) of softwares are very good tools already. One can already do anything using linux.

Re:InDesign

[spiffyspiff]

this.

I just need Indesign (CS6 ideally) and PDF preflighting, plus decent cmyk support in The Gimp. As it is, i only run windows in a vm anyway, for those two things.

everything else in linux works great for me. :-)

The ones I use in VirtualBox/XP

[AntronArgaiv]

Exchange (or Fully Compatible Linux App)
MS Project (or FCLA)
Adobe Lightroom Pro
Starry Night
iTunes

RDP, dopus

[Anonymous Coward]

An equally fast RDP 8.0 server and client, Directory Opus, foobar2000, AutoHotkey, a per-executable outbound firewall, Process Monitor

Re:RDP, dopus

[jomcty]

Ditto for DOpus.

SketchUp

[dahem0n]

I currently use it with wine, but still have some small issues

Re:SketchUp

[TommyNelson]

Yes, a Linux version of Sketchup would be really nice. I use it professionally and its pretty much useless with Wine (Sketchup itself has issues, then plugins won't work, LayOut is a mess...).

Re:SketchUp

[serbanp]

Yes, yes, yes! SketchUp running in Linux would be very nice.

Chessmaster

[Anonymous Coward]

Or some equivalent, if there is any.

http://chessmaster.com/

Re:Chessmaster

[Anonymous Coward]

Or some equivalent, if there is any...

...the poster ironically queries, speaking about a board game that has been around for over a thousand years.

Gotta wonder how the fuck they ever played the game before Bill Gates came along.

A real device manager

[pyster]

A real fucken device manager as robust as what we see in windows.

TurboTax, H&R Block, other complete tax softwa

[Anonymous Coward]

Tax time is the only time all year when I have to fire up a Windows VM, to run the tax software.

Photoshop

[future assassin]

I've a Linux lover and pusher but not a zelot. Sorry to say but GIMP tools and icons are just way to awkward. to use. I did manage to get some use out of it when I found this theme http://ubuntuforums.org/showth... but could not get past the way the tool work and how they are manipulated. Yes I had a hard time switching from Windows to OpeSuse when I went full Linux in 2007 but that only took a few weeks with GIMP I just can't vs Photoshop.

tortoise SVN!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

No comment to add. Tortoise is so great, no linux tool get close to tortoise svn!

Re:tortoise SVN!!!

[erapert]

Tortoise Git is fantastic on Windows as well. Check out Rabbit VCS

Re:tortoise SVN!!!

[drkstr1]

No comment to add. Tortoise is so great, no linux tool get close to tortoise svn!

Came here to say this, but you beat me to. I do a lot of SVN tasks from within my windows VM because Tortoise is such a joy to use!

Paint.NET

[Anonymous Coward]

Paint.NET. It doesn't work AT ALL in Linux/WINE, and is fantastically easier to use for simple tasks than GIMP.

Re: Paint.NET

[kubis]

Try Krita

Re:Paint.NET

[CronoCloud]

Pinta? xpaint? mypaint? mtpaint?

Re:Paint.NET

[Bathroom Humor]

Pinta is probably the closest thing to Paint.net available for Linux. I use it often, and I'm thankful it is around. But it is no replacement, even though one of the goals was to be. It simply lacks developer time needed to make it as useful as Paint.net.
I hope that changes in the future, but considering how few people are working on GIMP, I find that doubtful.

MEDIA PLAYER CLASSIC HOME CINEMA

[Anonymous Coward]

thank you for all the caps

and yes, this app should be available on linux!
VLC is nice, but sometimes wanting and lacking.
mplayer and all its front and backends tend to just be another pain in the buttocks.
not to mention all the other video related shenanigans that go on in linux.

so many years ago it was all about fear uncertainty and doubt, and deceive, en veil and obfuscate. and you know what.... it all happened. you're just another COW
MOOOOO MOOOO MOOOO
urgh

[wdw]

MS OFFICE

[Anonymous Coward]

Just say it! Office!

Sorry, but Libre, Open, and other FOSS solutions don't cut it.

I tried using them but I have better uses for my time - and the $159 is worth it - than doing all the work arounds. And Adobe is complete shit - don't get me started.

Video Editing Software

[Art3x]

Video editing software, like Sony Vegas or DaVinci Resolve.

In my limited experience, the editors on Linux are either unstable or limited in advanced features like picture grading and audio clean-up (dynamic range compressors, frequency filters, etc.).

Re:Video Editing Software

[Anonymous Coward]

Cinelerra's got everything, so long as you don't need to use the program for more than 30 seconds at a time.

Re:Video Editing Software

[Anonymous Coward]

Sony Vegas, yes please. Only thing other than games that I run Windows for.

Re:Video Editing Software

[im_thatoneguy]

Uhhh... DaVinci Resolve is available for Linux.

Platform
[ ]Mac OS X [ ] Linux [ ] Windows

In fact the Windows version is the port from Linux. Hence all of the oddball drive mounting features in the media browser.

Re:Video Editing Software

[Anonymous Coward]

It is available for CentOS 6.4 and above only.

Re:Video Editing Software

[Anonymous Coward]

But only the $29,000 version is available for Linux. The free "Lite" version is only Mac and Windows.

Re:Video Editing Software

[Anonymous Coward]

So? How is this piece of information important?

Windows!

[Anonymous Coward]

Then everything else just works! Then we'll FINALLY HAVE THE YEAR OF LINUX on the desktop! Until that happens we are all screwed!

Notepad++

[Anonymous Coward]

Notepad++ is a surprisingly useful editor. It's fairly simple to work with, yet at the same time it has easy access to more advanced features and macros and well as syntax highlights for more or less anything, including making your own for custom languages. This mean it is usually enough for any scripting language and the no setup approach is a timesaver, which is just what I need for any small or mid sized script. I usually don't use it for languages, which needs to be compiled though.

Regedit

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on, Poettering, you can do it.

Re:Regedit

[Anonymous Coward]

He'll consider it, decide the software is too complicated, and write his own version into SystemD.

Re:Regedit

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey now, GNOME's had their gconf/dconf thing for years! But do you know what Windows desperately needs? Unnecessary filesystem abstractions!

Re:Regedit

[Anonymous Coward]

miguel already did, it's called gconf.

miguel's the Microsoft fan. systemd is only compared to "Microsoft" because people want to hate on it, it's completely un-Microsoft-like.

Re:Regedit

[jez9999]

You jest, but the Windows registry is quite a nicely organized way of storing settings (and easier for programs to interact with) compared to the 1001 variants of Linux config files scattered about all over the place.

Re:Regedit

[Anonymous Coward]

this post needs a 'Funny' modifier tho

Re:Regedit

[Saija]

Stop giving any ideas to the man!!

Real OS question

[krisbrowne42]

I don't care if it's ported to Linux, I'm more concerned if it will run in my OS of choice, Emacs....

Re:Real OS question

[Anonymous Coward]

Emacs is a pretty decent OS, I just wish it had a good text editor...

Re:Real OS question

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry but it runs on systemd, but I am sure that it can emulate Emacs. Now all you need is a decent text editor.

Re:Real OS question

[purpledinoz]

I'm waiting for notepad to be ported to Emacs

Re:Real OS question

[Anonymous Coward]

Emacs is a pretty decent OS, I just wish it had a good text editor...

you can always M-x term and run nano.*

* figured I could piss off the emacs AND vim crowd at same time with that one. :)

Nvidia/ATI driver quality equal to or surpassing..

[TheBilgeRat]

along with the entire Steam library over on Linux. DirectX as well.

My listing

[Ol Olsoc]

I'd like SmartSDR, a Software defined Radio program. If I had that, I wouldn't need Windows at all.

Re:My listing

[jandrese]

I suppose Gnuradio is out of the question? It probably is given how awful the user experience is with Gnuradio.

Re:My listing

[Shinobi]

There is no comparison

You use GnuRadio for the FOSS religion fuzzy feels, or if you're a masochist.

Outlook Clone

[tacokill]

How about an Outlook clone that can handle email, contacts, calendar, and the rest of Outlook? Use with or without Exchange and it's linux clone.

Do that well and corporate linux users will take notice.

Re:Outlook Clone

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried Evolution?

Re:Outlook Clone

[pr0fessor]

I could switch to linux on my personal box anytime I'm not a gamer and all the software I use is open source and cross platform. At work on the other hand outlook would be the top of the list... they have it working mac shouldn't be that great a leap.

Re:Outlook Clone

[Anonymous Coward]

Zimbra?

Re:Outlook Clone

[varkk]

Evolution is pretty close for this. It can connect to Exchange. Only thing lacking I found was connecting shared calendars was a bit clumsy.

Re:Outlook Clone

[Anonymous Coward]

Thunderbird?

Re:Outlook Clone

[Anonymous Coward]

Kontact is pretty damned awesome. I liked it more than Outlook the last time I was coerced into using Outlook.

There is a version of Palemoon for Linux.

[trparky]

http://sourceforge.net/project...

Re:There is a version of Palemoon for Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just use the one at the official site http://palemoon.org?

DirectX

[Anonymous Coward]

only thing i need to get rid of windows completely... DirectX.

If I had to pick just one

[ShieldW0lf]

If I was going to port just one piece of software to Linux, it would be the Windows 7 Desktop Environment.

Re:If I had to pick just one

[FranTaylor]

If I was going to port just one piece of software to Linux, it would be the Windows 7 Desktop Environment.

I know, right? I love it how you double click on an application in Windows explorer and the whole computer becomes unusable for several seconds. No other desktop environment has this feature.

Re:If I had to pick just one

[brokenin2]

Ewe...

I've found that configuring the heck out of Compiz lets me create an environment that suits me well.. One that I have never been able to even remotely come close to under any version of windows.. Some versions of Compiz (or it's plug-ins) could be more stable though.. They're generally fine when just being used, but sometimes I get crashes when re-configuring..

Try installing "ccsm" (compiz config settings manager) and see if you can adjust things to your liking..

Re:If I had to pick just one

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE 4.0 was great at that, but there was a regression in later updates.

Re:If I had to pick just one

[Anonymous Coward]

I need Excel, Word, and Viseo. The OLD versions, like around the xp years, before Microsoft tried to "improve" them and f---ed everything up so it's unusable. I use a specialized CAD program which can only live on windows due to their licensing model...and BTW, they have warned me in the strongest of terms "whatever you do, do NOT upgrade from Win7 to 8 or 10". And they're an MS developer....... Actually, so many people HATE the "new" versions of Excel, Viseo, etc... that supporting the older versions they knew and liked, under linux might be a big, and very popular idea.....

Re:If I had to pick just one

[Anonymous Coward]

Happens to me if Linux is swapping and the Disk I/O is maxed out, on Cinnamon DE.

Re:If I had to pick just one

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the virus you installed to deal with viruses.

Re:If I had to pick just one

[Anonymous Coward]

Except Cinnamon maybe, when you transfer to/from a USB device. :P

Re:If I had to pick just one

[meloneg]

That shows what you know! SlackWare had this feature back in the days of 386SX vs DX.

Re:If I had to pick just one

[Kjella]

Really? Because I find there's plenty "good enough" Linux clones when it comes to the basic OS interface. It helps that I think anything past Windows 95 is perfectly usable. Unless by that you mean the whole bells and whistles with DirectX, Active Directory and everything else except the applications. Personally I'd go with MS Office Professional, though technically that's a suite not an application but it's sold under one highly discounted sticker price and the only one they'll push in volume licensing agreements. Why? Because the "pro" version with Outlook is the lifeblood of most companies. If you could replace that, Windows as the "must have" OS would disappear in a puff of smoke and you'd see far more professional apps support Linux, which would bring workstation users over and it'd just spiral from there. Of course trying to kill a >$10 billion/year money machine is a lot harder than it sounds...

Re:If I had to pick just one

[Anonymous Coward]

Mint Cinnamon comes damn close. Its the first time I had to double take to check what OS I was staring at. That said, the file context system (still) needs work.

Re:If I had to pick just one

[cbhacking]

The Win10 one supports virtual desktops and improved Aero Snap. There's plenty of room to make the Win7 DE better. With that said, yeah, the current crop of Linux DEs all seem to leave something to be desired as well.

Re:If I had to pick just one

[Anonymous Coward]

That is interesting. I am the complete opposite. At work I specifically run Linux in a VM so I can do my real work from, what is for me a better desktop environment. I can't live without virtual desktops, and add ons that I have tried for Win7 just don't cut it.

Re:If I had to pick just one

[jez9999]

If I was going to port just one piece of software to Linux, it would be the Windows 7 Desktop Environment.

Yep, this is a biggie for me. Here's some things that most (maybe all) linux GUIs get wrong:

- The close icon in the top-right should go all the way to the top-right pixel to make it "infinite in size".
- The start menu's layout should be determined by the file system and not a bunch of .desktop files in 100 different locations.
- There should be a system tray with a well-defined API for applications to add themselves to it.
- Window borders should be several px wide and not 1px wide.
- There should be one unified clipboard (in my dreams).
- There should be a decent file explorer bundled (nothing comes remotely close to Explorer)
- Every "file select" dialog should be an instance of that file explorer, allowing on-the-fly operations when selecting a file such as "create new folder" and "create new file" (I'm not joking, having a unified Explorer interface is massively useful)

Re:If I had to pick just one

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried the XFCE UI? I have been using Linux/XFCE ever since Gnome went... bad (3.0).

Outlook

[rrohbeck]

It's the only reason I run a Windows VM. Corporate processes :(

Re:Outlook

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen. I have found out that at work I run only Outlook and VMWare in Windows, rest is done in a Linux guest.

Re:Outlook

[JSG]

Evolution with the EWS connector works very well for me and the missus. Calendars, address lists and all. You can't create/edit Exchange rules but Evo has its own rules system and you can always create them on Outlook and the server will run things for you anyway.

Unfortunately you have to miss out on all that rebooting after each update.

Funnily enough, you can get your Exchange system to be PCI DSS 3.1 compatible via HA Proxy but for those blasted Outlook Anywhere clients, OK and pre Lollipop droids (they wont do TLS 1.2) ...

Re:Outlook

[Anonymous Coward]

so, what you're essentially saying is, you just want something that will access the internet.

have you looked into a chromebook?

I mean, because, you literally cannot use linux to do anything else with any solidity. I guess you're just one of those people who really enjoys digging through log files to bug fix every time you want to do something. In that case, more power to you random autistic internet bro.

Re:Outlook

[rrohbeck]

Wat?

How about ...

[fahrbot-bot]

... all the new-fangled Telemetry stuff? :-)

Re:How about ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you can install Debian's popcon?

Re:How about ...

[Anonymous Coward]

how about svchost.exe?

oh, wait...

Industry-specific applications

[coldsalmon]

There are a few application that I use in my business which are specific to my industry. My office can't function without them, and they only run on Windows. Many businesses have similar software that caters to their niche. The developers probably only sell a few dozen licenses every year, so it doesn't make sense for them to port to a different OS. I'd love to use Linux on my office desktops (my office server runs Linux), but I need to be in Windows for these applications, and they are definitely never coming to Linux.

Re:Industry-specific applications

[Anonymous Coward]

Run that software in a Windows-KVM under Linux then. You are much better off letting Linux deal with the bare-metal, and let Windows flounder around inside a VM (which lets the Linux kernel optimize all the Window VM's I/O).

Re:Industry-specific applications

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a few application that I use in my business which are specific to my industry. My office can't function without them, and they only run on Windows. Many businesses have similar software that caters to their niche. The developers probably only sell a few dozen licenses every year, so it doesn't make sense for them to port to a different OS. I'd love to use Linux on my office desktops (my office server runs Linux), but I need to be in Windows for these applications, and they are definitely never coming to Linux.

My question there (because it's coming for me as well, sometime around 2020) is this:

What will your business do when you can't hide from Windows 10 any longer, and perhaps your legal department isn't comfortable with the amount of spying Microsoft is capable of doing inside your company firewall?

Unless you are running Win 10 Enterprise and/or blocking every. single. IP range and DNS name that Microsoft uses (with an external networking device, not with the Windows 10 network traffic options, obviously, and ALL of them, not just the ones you know about so far), you can never really be sure of what company information may be leaking out. The EULA of Windows 10 grants Microsoft permission to even view the contents of your local hard drives. How does that jive with HIPAA, with EU data protection rules, etc. etc.? And since you have little to no control over Windows 10 updates, there's no telling how the OS your are using at any point in time might subtly differ from the one you will be using 6-12 months from then. You may not even be provided changelogs to help you.

Re:Industry-specific applications

[Anonymous Coward]

I have the same problem (Stage Lighting Industry) which is ironic because the main Lighting control system we use runs on a proprietary linux kernel (MA Lighting's GrandMA2 controllers) but the software that we use to interface with it / use it when we don't have access to the $30k-$60k hardware, only runs on windows. It's basically emulating linux on windows.

Also some sort of drafting / CAD software that can at LEAST match the data management capabilities (arbitrary meta data can be attached to objects at will in this software) of Vectorworks.

Re:Industry-specific applications

[higuita]

most of those apps can be rebuild for running in the webserver... not only you get the app working in linux, but tablets also
so nag the companies to support tablets and you will get the rest :)

doesn't work all the times, but some companies do agree with this
of course all depends of the apps... i had apps running still in windows 98 and windows 2000, just because old software is always a big anchor for progress in companies

My list

[acoustix]

Microsoft Office + Visio (yeah yeah...I know)
MSSQL Management Studio
VMware Client (I know it's on the way out, but I like it better than the web client)
Cisco Jabber
Cisco UC tools
Sophos EC

I'm sure there are others too, but that's a start.

Need for speed

[aj_jaswanth]

I would like to see this game running native on linux.

Looks a gFTP type program

[calarndt]

From the screenshot on the total commander website I see all the functionality I used to use in gFTP. Really tho I don't use an program of that nature any more. Tar wget rsync and dd do it all for me nowadays!

Visio only

[DFDumont]

This is a key tool in every networking group. The only other Win-only piece of software I use is Turbo Tax but I suspect their online version will soon include the schedule C I need.

MobaXterm!

[Anonymous Coward]

I switched to Linux mint, and cannot find a Linux alternative to MobaXterm that is even close!

Though there are lots of alternatives that still get the job done.

Re:MobaXterm!

[Zontar The Mindless]

What are you lacking other than a tabbed terminal? Yakuake.

Unity 3D Editor

[bluefoxlucid]

64-bit Linux native Unity 3D Editor in an Ubuntu Partners repository.

Re:Unity 3D Editor

[Anonymous Coward]

Already out, although in a very buggy form and not in the repository.

Re:Unity 3D Editor

[Dr_Barnowl]

They just released a beta build (with a .deb) last last week.

http://blogs.unity3d.com/2015/...

Re:Unity 3D Editor

[Anonymous Coward]

Well shit. Now we don't read the summary, we don't read the story, and we don't read the other replies before posting.

Smooth move, Ex-Lax.

LightRoom

[Anonymous Coward]

Adobe Lightroom it's probably the application that I would miss the more, I didn't look for an alternative, I have even a very specific version wich I happend to like (v3.4 irc). I'm not a photo professional, but as a hobbist, the speed and features that it have is perfect for me.

I was "promoted" to Windows 10, I didn't like it at all, at least for my humble notebook (AMD E-350, 6GB Ram, 250gb SSD),
so I take the oportunity to backup all the personal stuff and test a dual boot with freshly installed Linux Mint 17.2 (64bits) and Windows 7 pro (64bits).
Before that I already had a dual boot, win 7pro (32bits) and Xubuntu (32bit) (I upgraded ram just recently).
I didn't test Windows 10 on my (much more powerful) desktop PC, but I probably will not doing it either, wich of course, that leaves me
in a easy to see full switch to a all linux future.

So I was testing my notebook on how Eclipse IDE on Linux Mint vs Windows 7 performs, and I'm very pleased with the performance of it in Mint.

Appart from Lightroom, probably just games, that nowadays didn't use to play that much.

Re:LightRoom

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure what your Lightroom workflow is like, but have a look at DigiKam.

Re:Nvidia/ATI driver quality equal to or surpassin

[Arkh89]

For as much as I use Windows, I find that the NVidia driver on Linux is way better than its Windows counterpart in terms of stability and ease of installation (using binary straight from NVidia).

TAX SOFTWARE! even if it uses JAVA!

[Anonymous Coward]

TAX SOFTWARE. I have to use a windows VM to do my taxes. I want tax software. The web stuff locks you in and won't give you data that can be imported to alternate tax software.

Skype, Quicken, Outlook

[salnikov]

This are 3 apps that keep me on Windows.

There is Skype for Linux, but it looks ugly and camera support is very random.

I tried all sorts of money management apps for both Linux and Windows, nothing gets close to what Quicken can do, so I'm stuck there (even though I hate Quicken the alternatives are 10 times worse).

I can probably survive without Outlook but there is no real alternative for using best features of Exchange server, without Outlook I feel like I'm back to nineties.

Re:Skype, Quicken, Outlook

[camperdave]

I went from Quicken to Gnucash. Now I'm on YNAB, which is about budgetting, not money management; focussing on where your money is going to go rather than where it went. Sadly, YNAB isn't linux native. It runs in WINE.

Quicken

[Anonymous Coward]

That's it. just Quicken.

What other software...

[FlyHelicopters]

What other software would you want to transplant to Linux, if any?

You mean besides MS Office?

Well, I use Quickbooks for accounting, I use TurboTax for my taxes, I use AmazonMusic to listen to music, etc.

Actually, let me focus on that last one for a minute...

http://www.amazon.com/gp/featu...

There is the download page for the desktop version of Amazon Music, a wonderful free app that lets you listen to both your own music (either downloaded or streaming), as well as a large collection of Prime Music, either specific songs or "stations" similar to Pandora.

They have a Windows version and a Mac version, but no Linux version.

It is a small example of the problem with Linux. Even if you find a replacement for MS Office (hard to do for a business, it really isn't the same), Quickbooks (fine if you're not invested in it already and don't have a CPA that you have to send the files to), etc.

There are many small programs that really only have a Windows version, and sometimes a Mac version. Yes, you can play your music in a web browser, but it isn't the same.

---

Linux is a nice idea, and on a techie site like this people love to talk about it, but it isn't really an option for most people because of the above.

My #1...

[Lumpy]

Sony Vegas or AVID.

I want a pro video editing suite not the useless buggy toys we keep getting. I would happily pay a lot for it as well.

After Effects would also be nice, but I have been doing a lot of compositing in Blender lately.

And no Blender is NOT useable for video editing, it's a kludge.

Re:My #1...

[Anonymous Coward]

Lightworks?
https://www.lwks.com/

Visio

[Anonymous Coward]

Visio and a solid Outlook replacement are the barriers to shutting down my Windows VM at work forever.

MathCAD, LabView, Livescribe

[Anonymous Coward]

All work in VirtualBox/XP.

BSOD

[Muntzsky]

That cool one which stops you at random intervals and makes you reexamine your life.

UX/UI of the OS

[darkain]

For me, it isn't the applications themselves, it is the UX/UI of the Linux desktops themselves. Microsoft did something very VERY nice in the early 90's, and that was building Common Dialog Box API. This handles file open/save, printing, color picker, and a few more. With most applications relying upon this one single API, as the dialog's interfaces are upgraded, the applications gain the same upgrades. All applications have the same dialogs, regardless of which application they are or who made it. Open a Windows 95 era application in Windows 7 or newer, use the open/save dialog boxes, and they'll have all the modern file browsing features of the current OS. These windows are resizable and easy to navigate. They're quite feature rich, and generally keep getting better and better with each release of Windows, thus making the applications that use them better and better.

Re:UX/UI of the OS

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the OS doesn't have a UI. Neither does NT.

But on Windows there's exactly one desktop environment/window manager. And you have no choice but to use it. On linux there are multiple. And there are multiple libraries developers use to develop their applications.

But, largely, you'll see two on linux: Gtk and KDE's open/save file dialog. It's the Gtk one that looks foreign. Occasionally you'll see Tk's, and it's a steaming pile of crap, and they're very sorry, but they're too tired to make a good one.

You end up getting used to them and end up with a favorite (obviously). TBH, I hate pretty much every open/save dialog there is. They're just terrible. The operation is already nebulous (how many files are you opening/saving, or are you selecting a directory this time?).

It would be so nice if the KDE guys got with the GTK guys and said "hey, let's throw our differences aside and make our browse dialogs work the same. And while we're at it, let's agree on the order of OK and Cancel." But it's not really a big deal. And if you think it is you're suffering from a lack of real problems.

Intertia

[Dega704]

MS Office(preferably not like the awful OSX version) and Adobe CS are the ones I would most like to see; not so much because I use them extensively myself, but because they are the biggest killer apps and would give a significant boost to Linux. Then there is the plethora of Windows-only enterprise applications that make it impossible to switch to Linux on the business side, even when you are dependent on Linux VMs to do your work. That pendulum swings both ways, after all.

Multimedia

[supertall]

Adobe Lightroom/Photoshop, Ableton Live, Native Instruments Apps, anything using VST plugins; Sony Vegas Yes, there are Linux alternatives but they are just not as good.

It's about those last few that tie you to Windows

[mr_mischief]

Different people have different things tying them to Windows (or Mac, or Windows/Mac). Many of them have mostly equivalent software that does run on Linux, but require retraining people or missing features some people actually require.

Quickbooks
Peachtree
Oculus
lots of games
Exchange
MS Office
Adobe Creative Suite
Filemaker Pro and software built around it
Alpha Five and software built around it
Lots of business-specific apps built in older Visual Basic versions, or with VBA, or even QuickBasic
Many things put together using C, C++, Pascal, or other libraries that are thin wrappers around Windows-specific libraries without a lot of abstraction.

There's a lot of legacy apps that people run once in a while that could be made to work elsewhere if there was still development around them. Many of them aren't developed at all any longer. Some will run under Wine, or with faked up shim support libraries, or could be reimplemented in more modern and more portable ways if there's enough interest in doing so.

Informative

[cbhacking]

This should be modded higher.

On the other hand, it sounds like the Linux version is still a little clunky, at least to install. It really should be available as a set of .DEB/.RPM/whatever packages, or ideally already in the standard repositories. By all means continue to have a version that is independent of package management software, but a tarball and an install script... well, that's not really what people are looking for.

Re:Informative

[nickweller]

@cbhacking: "it sounds like the Linux version is still a little clunky, at least to install"

Seems pretty straightforward to me, download pminstaller-0.2.0.tar.bz2, extract into your home dir and type ./pminstaller.sh else use one of the Contributed builds of Pale Moon ...

Re:Informative

[cbhacking]

Contrast
sudo (apt-get|zypper) install palemoon
  though... Plus then you can uninstall it equally easily. Good to know the contributed builds exist, but the whole thing could definitely still be better.

Re:Informative

[Anonymous Coward]

Running random executables off the net... That's how Windows users get 90% of the viruses that may end up getting them to look at Linux as an alternative to Windows.

Not for me...

[nine-times]

It's not for me, but as a IT guy, it'd be nice to be able to run Adobe Creative Suite and Microsoft Office on Linux, since a large number of people at any given client live in those two office suites. Tell me about FOSS alternatives all you like, but telling 50 professional graphic designers that they need to switch from Photoshop to the GIMP is only going to get me fired from that client.

It'd also be nice if the UI looked nice and professional, didn't include garish greens, pinks, or oranges as the primary colors. Also, ideally the GUI will hide most of the unsightly filesystem. Do Linux distros still have problems with proper text kerning?

I know, it's all superficial stupid shit that you don't care about. My clients, though... they don't care what compiler or bootloader their OS uses. They want something that's pleasant looking, easy to work with, and had Photoshop and Outlook. It's hard to get around.

Re:Not for me...

[armanox]

Professional looking UI? Perhaps you've missed recent changes in the UI in Windows and OS X?

Total Commander?

[CronoCloud]

Gee there's been Total Commander clones on Linux for years: mc, tuxcmd, Krusader.

Besides there is no "best", only the one that works "best" for YOU.

Re:Total Commander?

[psergiu]

And the official GNU Norton Commander* clone: https://www.gnu.org/software/g...

Of course, with Emacs keybindings (Ctrl-X,Ctrl-C to exit)

* Total Commander is a Norton Commander clone.

Re:Total Commander?

[Anonymous Coward]

* Total Commander is a Norton Commander clone.

This. Why is it buried somewhere down in the comments?

Re:Total Commander?

[rduke15]

I use MC and Krusader since I switched to Linux several years ago, but I still miss Total Commander. None of the Linux equivalents are as rock-solid or as feature-rich. In fact, if Windows had Bash and the GNU tools, (and apt-get), I probably would go back to Windows as my main OS.

Re:Total Commander?

[rduke15]

* Total Commander is a Norton Commander clone.

Well, sort of, yes.

Except that version 1 of Windows Commander (as TC was called at the time) was already so much better than the latest version of Norton Commander or Symantec's miserable attempt at a Windows version.

Re:Total Commander?

[TeknoHog]

If you expect a *commander equivalent to be your main interface with the OS, you'll miss the point of Linux, unix and open source. I can almost understand the need for that one single Windows-only app, but it's best to open up to a new kind of OS rather than expect a free Windows clone.

Re:Total Commander?

[Anonymous Coward]

Many years ago, when I was looking for alternatives, none of them came even close. Total Commander is powerful, fast, reliable, usable (for a power user). All the alternatives I tried failed in one of these categories. I actually switched back to Windows because of Total Commander. I'd rather have one solid app available rather than 10 half-assed alternatives.

Re:Total Commander?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try Double Commander, comes close to Total Commander.

We don't need more software for Linux...

[Anonymous Coward]

We just need to wait for systemd to assimilate it.

Wine ( and CrossOver) run Total Commander great

[Anonymous Coward]

Total Commander gets the highest ranking for running in CrossOver from Codeweavers:

https://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/crossover/total-commander

fwiw.

Games.

[Anonymous Coward]

specifically Trion's Rift and Riot's League of Legends.

Those are the ONLY reason I have a Windows system in my home.

(yes i know you can get them to run on Linux with WINE, I'm working on it but having issues getting the right version of WINE installed)

Re:Games.

[GameboyRMH]

Games in general are why my gaming PC still runs Windows. Last Windows computer I have.

Big Hitters

[Anonymous Coward]

Adobe Creative Cloud
Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook)
Microsoft Visio
Microsoft Project
Microsoft Access
Microsoft Visual Studio
Some kind of reasonable OCR software for a scanner (ocrad is not good enough)
Quicken / QuickBooks

Re:Big Hitters

[cryingpoet]

+1

Re:Big Hitters

[Anonymous Coward]

For OCR try OCRFeeder or the proprietary Qoppa PDF Studio.

TomTom Mydrive Connect

[Anonymous Coward]

TomTom Mydrive Connect. As a cabby I have to have the latest maps etc. on my TT. Alas, they refuse to bring out a version of their MtDrive Connect program, neccessary for updates, for Linux. So I had to infect one laptop with Windows, just to be able to use my TomTom and it's the only thing I (am forced to) use Windows for.

PCB Design Tools

[Anonymous Coward]

Things like Altium Designer, Mentor's PADS or DxDesigner, etc. It's amazing to me that as much of an engineering powerhouse as Linux is and most boards are still designed on Windows.

Don't get me started on the myriad shortcomings of packages like Eagle, gEDA, or KiCAD. Eagle is "okay" for hobbyists things but doesn't scale to larger projects. gEDA and KiCAD are toys at best.

need a way to sync iphone

[Anonymous Coward]

Itunes

Re:need a way to sync iphone

[cloud.pt]

Linux might not run iTunes. But it boots and runs just fine with an iSheep between chair and computer. Profit.

Re:Photoshop - Framemaker

[Old-Claimjumper]

GIMP can handle the pictures. Now FrameMaker would be cool.

Way back when... I was a heavy Framemaker user on our Sun Workstations. I was bringing in Linux on 486s. I served as a beta test site for Adobe Framemaker on Linux. It worked flawlessly and I was ready to fork over similar license fees as I paid on my Sun Workstations. Then Adobe axed the release with some statement about how Linux users only wanted free stuff. My take away was, and remains, that Adobe is the most anti-linux shop out there. Way more of a problem than Microsoft.

What Windows App?

[MagickalMyst]

What Windows only app would I like to see on Linux?

None.

That is why I use Linux.

Re:What Windows App?

[haroem]

that makes no sense at all. You use linux because you hate windows apps and don't want to use any of them? Nothing about Windows itself, just the apps that run on Windows? "nah dude, I don't want to deal with that library of 100,000 vinyl records... I have the best 20 records right here and you probably have a bunch of scratched ones in your collection anyway." Yeah, those are the words of insanity. With that logic I'm really surprised linux desktop apps aren't just bursting at the seams. /s

Re:What Windows App?

[TeknoHog]

The real question should be, what is it I want to do today? If you're dead set on using that one app, chances are you'll also expect Linux to act as a free clone of Windows. You could probably run it on Wine, but in any case you'd miss the whole point of unix and open source.

wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear blizzard...

Come On!

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't used Vizio since Microsoft bought them

So, you haven't used Visio for over fifteen years, but you think you know something about it and can make a recommendation? You're part of the problem that holds open source software back, utter classlessness wrapped in cocksure attitude.

Libre Office Draw is a steaming pile of shit! That's just generally speaking. More specifically, it is in no way shape or form anything at all like Visio and it cannot produce anything the is similar to what comes out of Visio. You'd be better off trying to use Gimp as a Visio alternative than Draw. But, don't even try that because Gimp is not even close either.

Presently, the closest thing Linux has to Visio is Dia. But, DIa is a steaming pile of fail as well. It compares (poorly) to Visio 2000 and is not worth comparing to any of the last four versions of Visio.

Visio is diagram and mapping software, project management, asset management, network discovery and whole boatload more.

Neat receipt scanner

[Anonymous Coward]

Other than games, it's just my Neat scanner holding me up. I assume there are other options, but 5 years of scanned bills and no hardware driver keep me booting into Windows.

Pale Moon?

[chill]

Uh, what? I use Pale Mon on my Ubuntu system at home. What makes you think there is no Linux version?

Evernote, SketchUp, Outlook, WinMerge, Acrobat

[silentquasar]

Some of the above work OK in Wine or have passable native alternatives, but those are some I've recently wished for in my day-to-day work and hobby time.

Quicken

[Anonymous Coward]

Quicken seems to only run on Windoze, currently.

Re:Nvidia/ATI driver quality equal to or surpassin

[jandrese]

It depends. Ubuntu is terrible at keeping the driver up to date, which is a problem when you run into games that specifically require a newer version of the driver. There is also the longstanding bug where every time the kernel is updated (about twice a week) it breaks the nVidia driver and the devs just don't seem to care. They even know it's a major problem because the webpage it forwards you to tells you that it's a very frequently reported bug and to not comment because it would break the comment system.

Luckily other distros are better at managing binary drivers, but Ubuntu is the one that's supposed to be user friendly.

The Registry, and Event Log

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh wait, we have that. It's called systemd.

Also Notepad++

[silentquasar]

How could I forget Notepad++? I write all my Bash scripts with it at work. Also, some of the alternatives I might want require KDE and I need to stick with XFCE for my older hardware, so no go there. (e.g. Okular)

MS Accsss

[Anonymous Coward]

and for linking local data source with MULTIPLE data sources for adhoc small scale queries and ETL.

local tables vs 3-4 different postgresql dbs and an oracle db all being able to be linked and updated in the one view/query

when you need to get stuff done quickly.....

ACD Canvas!

[Anonymous Coward]

The easiest-to-use graphics-publication-GIS suite that nobody but Boeing has heard of. Has been around since before Mac System 6, and moved to Windows at v. 3.5. Now at v.16 in Windows 64-bit guise (15 for 32-bit), but never completely lost the ease of use that came with originally being designed for Mac. This and some olde games are the only things I currently use on Windows that aren't also available for Linux.

Was still available for Mac until v.11 came out, though there are rumors of a Mac version reappearing soon. If it can be done for Mac, how hard would it be to port to Linux (except for the fact that they couldn't charge the big bux for it there)? Actually, there was a Linux release many years ago, but it was never completed and long since abandoned.

That's easy

[Minwee]

I forget just what it's called, but I would really like to see that software that samples ambient sounds from the microphone, records keystrokes and queries the location service for my current position, then sends everything it finds off to a server in a foreign country where it can be used to "improve my experience".

Without that, obviously my experience will be unimproved, and that sounds bad.

Metal Gear Solid 5

[cloud.pt]

Linux is nothing without the self-entitled "last true closs-platform cross-gen AAA" game. Especially when it's that good.

Seriously, this game has a Steam (cardboard) Box inside yet it won't run on a real Steambox with SteamOS. What gives?

Is this real life?

A modern IDE and a consistent API

[Qbertino]

I'd love to develop applications for linux. The fuss of developing a half-decent GUI app on and for Linux is a huge turn-off though.

Anjuta crashes on me, code blocks doesn't run and gives me awkward compiler messages, Kdevelop requires a bazillion libs and still looks really tacky around the edges. The only two IDEs that are halfway professional for sorta-kinda native Linux apps are Monodevelop/Xamarin and QT Designer - ironically both commercially supported x-plattform kits - all though I think the latter also got pissy with me upon compiling.

This is all on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS on a neat Lenovo W510 Thinkpad.

The plain and simple truth is, development and deployment on Linux is a freaking mess.

Developing useful GUI stuff for Linux is a complete and utter disaster, with no way to know how your programm will compile, let alone run on the countless distros out there. Until that is fixed and Gnome, KDE and whatnot finally get their shit together, unify and fix this, it will remain to be seen as a toy in the desktop/gui department.

Re:A modern IDE and a consistent API

[Yosho]

So... first, an IDE is not a compiler. If you can't compile your program cleanly with no IDE at all, you've set it up wrong, and no IDE is going to fix your problems.

I've done a fair amount of GUI development on both Ubuntu 12.04 and 14.04, and in general Qt Creator is great, even for non-Qt projects; I'd be curious how it "got pissy" with you, if you had a project that compiled cleanly from the command line. Lately I've also been liking CLion a lot, which is very powerful, although it's also pretty new and has a few rough edges. (boost accumulators give it a heart attack)

Given how widely various distros differ, it's impossible to have a single build that targets everything, but you can certainly write a CMake build file that will work in most scenarios and fail cleanly if dependencies are missing (and it's not like any other platform is better at dealing with missing dependencies). You don't need to write a program that will run on all of the "countless distros" out there, just the specific one you're targeting, and Ubuntu (and other Debian variants) are generally stable targets.

Wider support for AD integration and Smart Cards

[Anonymous Coward]

Wider support for AD integration and Smart Cards - it would be nice if boat load of $$$ got dumped into the FreeIPA project

Office

[Barlo_Mung_42]

I'd be happy with just Outlook, Word and Excel. Don't need Powerpoint so much but might as well ask for that too.

systemd

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish systemd was a Windows-only app that I couldn't run on Linux.

Re:BSOD - screen saver!

[Anonymous Coward]

One like this from Sysinternals. Unfortunately, it does require (older) Windows.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897558.aspx

Business applications

[MatthewWalker]

We are married to QuickBooks and United Parcel Service WorldShip. Without them, we cannot function.

If I attempted to convert this office to Linux without them, I would be humiliated, publicly flogged, and my bones left for the crows to pick on.

Autodsek software

[Anonymous Coward]

Autodesk software

Diamond Cut

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, Audacity can do most of the same things, but I like the user interface and toolset in Diamond Cut for cleaning up and re-mastering old recordings. Of course, would need good sound card support too - what's Linux status for that?

VMWare client

[Anonymous Coward]

VMWare Server was a really good linux client.

Clippy

[tgibson]

[drops mic]

Re:Clippy

[Wolfrider]

--Been done.

http://community.linuxmint.com/software/view/vigor

/ *MIC DROP* // slashies :b

There's many but one would make my day

[gencom]

Skype (Because not all remote teams will use Hangouts), While you're at it.. Facetime for completeness
iTunes
Sketchup
Adobe Creative suite (But at least the Mac crowd can work with this better than Windows)

And something still completely surprising to me:

Scanning software like the one included in the ScanSnap products ... These device can be used from Linux, but the automatic side/colour/size detection with automatic feedback (for jams and misfeeds) from the scanner AND automatic OCR really make it worthwhile to launch virtual box to use it.

But all in all, just the Blizzard games (SC2) would be still make my day.

Re:There's many but one would make my day

[woobieman29]

Skype is available for Linux, FYI.

Re:There's many but one would make my day

[woobieman29]

I probably should have mentioned that it lags behind the Windows version by a substantial amount, but hey - it does exist.

Re:There's many but one would make my day

[gencom]

Yes it is, but it's stuck at version 4.3 and is becoming increasingly unstable when talking to the new versions. It looks like version 6.x, which has just been released on iOS, may finally break it.

Avisynth

[GuB-42]

Well Avisynth may not be the most important windows-only app around, however I feel like it is a special case.
Avisynth is basically a script-based video editor popular with people encoding movies or anime. It is possibly the most powerful tool for this job. What makes it special is that it fits very well within Linux philosophy, yet it is Windows only :
- It is opensource
- It is script-based, no built-in GUI. It is a frameserver, so it will work with an external video player / encoder.
- It is highly modular, plugin based

There are linux ports but they are incomplete.

Most professional tools

[Anonymous Coward]

Just from my own library I would love to see any of these in a Linux flavor:

Rhino 3D
3DSMax
Maya
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Premiere
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Lightroom
Adobe Audition
Keyshot
Brazil
Vray
Zbrush
Focusing software for DSLR cameras
3Dconexxion software ( 3d mouse )

Just to get away from Microsoft would be nigh impossible for me. When I'm forced to upgrade eventually, I'll just air gap the workstation after the initial registration.

Re:Office - Libre or Open?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not Libre or OpenOffice? Libre in particular seems to be actively maintained, and unless you do some really esoteric things is more capable and more (older versions of) MS-Office compatible than MS Office. Also has a surprisingly capable drawing component that MS never got around to providing for Office.

Lets just start with AutoCAD

[onkelonkel]

If someone were to come up with AutoCAD for Linux, I might be able to get work done on Linux. Until then Windows is the only option.

Notepad++

[Anonymous Coward]

Notepad++. Why are all the Linux text editors so awful (aka, stuck in 1978)?

Fujitsu scanner driver + OCR

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a scansnap scanner which has helped me make enormous headway through my mountain of paper records. Stuff paper in feeder, scans, OCRs, and converts to searchable PDF. They have bundled/integrated a 3rd-party OCR that is callable only from the scanner driver. Windows only (so I run it in a VM). It means I can't scan in bulk first and then batch-run run the OCR on it later.

The 3rd party OCR is available separately as a linux binary, for a fee, but of course the scanner driver does not run on linux. Yes, I know about sane and the various free OCR s/w, it's just that I don't have time to engineer an integrated solution that "just works" as well as what the scanner vendor supplies.

Re:TurboTax, H&R Block, other complete tax sof

[omnichad]

Why not just use a web-based system? You have to send the data online to the company to e-file anyway.

Agreed: A return of "Kylix"... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: 110% agreement - It would complete Delphi (it used to do Linux via Kylix but Borland killed that unfortunately)... & Delphi DOES pretty much DO every major platform there is, as is, now (Win32/64, iOS, MacOS X, & ANDROID (oddly a Linux variant in & of itself, no less).

* :)

(It'd make porting this to OTHER platforms easier than doing FreePascal + the Lazarus IDE for it -> APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-2 32/64-bit http://start64.com/index.php?o... )

ONLY THING HOLDING ME BACK FROM PORTING IT TO OTHER MAJOR PLATFORMS? Delphi itself... it'll happen.

APK

P.S.=> It's written in Delphi (taken it thru Delphi 2.0, 3.0, 5.0, 7.0 in 32-bit, & more currently into Delphi XE/2 & XE/4 code)... apk

Visual Studio 2015.

[Fragnet]

No, I'm not joking. For a developer it's best in class.

Re:LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

At least in the Windows version, LO does a pretty good job of editing and returning documents from/to MS Office. Main issues I've had are when somebody uses the commenting features, which don't seem to transfer well in either direction, or when you try to send it back as .docx with any more than simple formatting (use .doc instead).

Avisynth with all it's plugins&filters

[Selur]

Avisynth (not Vapoursynth) is the main reason I use Windows nowadays, since running it through wine isn't that good.

use the right terminology, ffs

[Anonymous Coward]

"apps" are the crap that run on your phone or tablet or other touch-centric device. usually one hit wonders, casual games, or web site specific. they're usually ad supported and have ads plastered on them. and they often demand more permissions on the device than they need so they can spy on you even more effectively than they would otherwise. of those that happen to be windows only, NONE need be ported to linux.

"applications" are the real pieces of software you run on a real computer... of those, there's a LOT that would be missed on linux...

Re:use the right terminology, ffs

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

But

"apps" is just short for "applications".

Maybe you meant programs?

Re:use the right terminology, ffs

[riondluz]

Actually, ffs, the terminology is prob correct.
Apps got hijacked by marketdroids bec applications is too long by 3 sylables.
From the hardware firmament, its programs all the way down

Tax Return Software

[jwbales]

The only reason I keep a Windows partition is so that I can once a year run H&R Block's tax preparation software. Their software does not run under either wine or Crossover.

Outlook & Lync/Skype

[butchersong]

Only reason I have to maintain a Windows VM at work is for these.

How about a version of Active Directory

[gestalt_n_pepper]

With user messages in English that describe the actual problem instead of misleading the user entirely. One that actually works consistently?

But that's just crazy talk...

Linux variant of PaleMoon browser ..

[nickweller]

You can get a Linux version of Pale Moon for Linux here ..

SolidWorks!

[Anonymous Coward]

... or any other mainstream CAD/engineering software. The open source versions are mainly targeted at graphics not parametric modeling. It doesn't even run great in a VM of Windows on Linux.

BSoD

[zapatero]

Several years ago I tried to port the Windows Blue Screen of Death, but just couldn't get it right... couldn't get that rich marine blue hue just right. Gave up ultimately. I think Windows 7 BSoD is a masterpiece, and would really like to see it on Linux where the primitive black/white just doesn't cut it really - and window's rows of hex values on the BSoD is really aesthetically pleasing. I miss that on Linux.

TurboTax!!

[CharlesRHead]

Our family return is too complex to allow us to use the on-line version of TurboTax. Thus, I'm stuck with running the Windows version, and maintaining a Windows box on which to do it.

Re:TurboTax!!

[Admiral_Grinder]

Same here, it would be great. I could run it in VirtualBox but I dualboot anyways. However, in that case it causes me to use Dropbox for more stuff than I want.

Wine

[HannethCom]

Ironically, using Wine in Linux causes Office programs to run faster and more stable.

Download it here:
https://www.winehq.org/

OneNote

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't matter if it's a Microsoft product - it's damn good at what it does, and nothing else comes close.

Ehh

[Anonymous Coward]

Midnight commander works just fine, try it =)

Winamp

[Admiral_Grinder]

Seriously, it was the best music player I ever used. Sure it had some bloat, but the basic stuff was easy as hell and feature rich.

Re:Winamp

[Wolfrider]

--Look into deadbeef. I too like Winamp / xmms from the old days, and it is the closest I've seen for Linux.

http://deadbeef.sourceforge.net/

Re:Winamp

[kbrannen]

The best Winamp clone I've found so far is "qmmp".

Re:Winamp

[toddestan]

Winamp is a big one. While there are a few clones for Linux, I've yet to see one that can also do video like Winamp does. Winamp is my favorite video player because you get the exact same playlist editor for video files as you do for audio files, and that video window is separate from the rest of the program which is great for dual monitors. The only other program that's close is Zoom player, and that's also Windows-only too.

I know that both Qmmp and Xmms have a plugin architecture. One of these days I need to see if it's possible to make a plug in which would hand off video files to mplayer to play them back in a second windom.

World Of Warcraft

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently there's a test build internally, but they don't want to have to support it. You can make it work, but it's a pita. Not to mention prone to breaking frequently.

Bulk Rename Utility

[Anonymous Coward]

Bit of a learning curve, but powerful. Regex on Windows: yay!

CLion

[PatientZero]

Have you tried CLion, the C++ IDE from JetBrains? It is built on the same base as IntelliJ and their other IDEs which are all cross-platform and work very well. They also developed the ReSharper refactoring VS plugins for C# and C++, so I gotta figure they know what they're doing with C++. :)

Most of my experience is with PhpStorm and WebStorm as our Java projects were already using Eclipse, and they are very good IDEs. If you haven't, check out CLion and see how it compares to VS.

Logitech Setpoint

[Anonymous Coward]

Logitech setpoint!

The Windows-only app would I like to see on Linux?

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

Mac OS X Quick Look, of course!

Visual Studio

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the best tool for development.

None.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would I want to migrate from one unstable platform to another.

Linux isn't stable enough for long term use as it doesn't have a "real" memory manager. Linux pretends that it's okay to "guess" how much memory is available, and when it fucks up it just randomly kills processes to free up memory for the next program to use. Fucking useless.

Add to that the likelihood of a minor dot rev increment killing off a major piece of functionality, rather than waiting for the next major release leaves many companies looking at their Linux kernel based OS vendors with "angry" eyes.

Now, if you were asking "What Windows app would want ported to a real UNIX operating system, like say, Solaris or even one of the BSD variants, we could start to talk.

But please, don't ask to go from worse to bad, let's skip bad and go to good.

The Atmel Arm development enviroment...

[Anonymous Coward]

is windows only despite using gcc as the compiler! They maintain the lock with the
flash programming tools, which are bundled into the windows version.

TreeComp

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the only program I miss from Windows. Yes it runs under wine but it's not that stable...

BKReplacem

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

If there was a tool like BKReplacem (now called "Replace Text") for Linux, that would be damn handy.

(There may be one for all I know, I'm just not aware of one.)

GUI for HMA

[freeasinrealale]

Windows has a GUI for HMA pro to setup/change VPN locations. Linux has a terminal/shell command line screen only. Too techy for the missus who now has become a linux convert and refuses to go back to windows. C'mon HMA.

Visio

[Anonymous Coward]

Visio is the one

magnum opus

[Anonymous Coward]

- Directory Opus: the closest thing to it is Dolphin, which is damn nice, but dolphin is not nearly as wicked configurable. Nothing really touches Dopus.
- Everything Search: it's so convenient and fast. Considering how simple it is I'm surprised there is *still* nothing equal to it in Linux. An Everything-like front-end for mlocate would be fine, one that monitors disks and updates the database when changes occur.
- Adobe: Of course, of course. Until Linux gets Photoshop, Illustrator, and Indesign I could never make the move. Which pisses me off, as I love me some Arch.
- MusicBee: Simply the best music management software, and *every* music management player I've used on Linux is shit. Every single one.

Visual studio

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never found a linux IDE that was as feature-rich and where you didn't have to care about the command line

Calculator.

[Anonymous Coward]

Calculator.
Give me calculator.

I couldn't get the linux one to compile.

I want a decent mouse configuration GUI.

[Yosho]

I've been using Linux for decades. I think its modern GUIs have shaped up quite nicely (in particular, I'm a fan of Cinnamon) and offer a good level of polish with regards to configuring almost everything that an average user would need to touch.

Pretty much everybody nowadays has a fancy multi-function mouse, right? Sure, your desktop computer come with a cheap optical mouse that just has two buttons and scroll wheel, but the first thing you do is shove that in a bag somewhere and plug in a nice wireless laser mouse, and it probably also has three or four extra function buttons and maybe a tilt wheel.

And then, you run into the exact same problem in every Linux distribution: there is no way to configure what all of your mouse buttons actually do. Every couple of years I look around to see if anybody's made a decent GUI yet, and nope, there's still none. I know it's possible -- I've written more than my fair share of .xbindkeysrc files. No "normal" user is going to do that, though. Why isn't there a GUI that gives me a list of mouse buttons and lets me pick a key or event to associate with them?

There isn't really a common Windows app for this, because every mouse manufacturer provides their own; since the Logitech one supports all the Logitech mice, the Microsoft one supports all of the Microsoft mice, and so on, there's not really a need for a unified one since you won't be switching mice very often. But surely it's not that hard to just write a generic one?

Re:Photoshop ... Adjustment layers

[Anonymous Coward]

Gimp in no way is a replacement for Photoshop until it gets Adjustment layers. AKA:Non destructive layers.

Convert games to OpenGL

[Anonymous Coward]

Just games... Convince major game makers to write openGL compatible code and there'd be no more need for Windows

Double Commander

[Anonymous Coward]

> One program I would really miss though is Total Commander file manager, which is basically my interface to the whole OS. So, I know there are Linux alternatives, but which one is the best?

Double Commander is the closest I get: http://doublecmd.sourceforge.net/

Re:Double Commander

[Anonymous Coward]

And why Anonymous Coward? I am logged in?

Windows...

[rgbatduke]

... as a VM. Then you can run anything you like (but high end games) from under Linux.

This is by far the best solution. I've been using it since early (still free) vmware days. It also lets you keep functional images of multiple versions of Windows and run WINDOWS software that doesn't run on Windows (any more). I have XP-Pro frozen and encapsulated, virus free, ready to run should I need it or anything inside. I have Windows 7 frozen and encapsulated ditto. I can laugh at broken Vista, my-laptop-is-not-a-tablet Windows 8, and preserve all the work that went into making them semi-functional.

But I've been using Linux as a primary desktop since SLS and Slackware (somewhere in the late 90's?), and I personally almost NEVER boot a Windows VM unless it is to run some very specific application that simply doesn't exist under Linux. Do this and you don't NEED to port Windows apps (except for high end games) to Linux -- they are already there!

rgb

Power Director

[rlumpy]

I have a WIndows machine primarily to run video editing, Power Director. KDEnlive almost does what I need, but frequently crashes. I am also disappointed that Hulu and Amazon Video don't run in Linux. (Netflix does run in Chrome, but not in Firefox.)

Notepad++

[Anonymous Coward]

notepad ++
runs fine with wine, though

Amateur Radio applications

[Anonymous Coward]

Specifically:

- RMS Express, used to access the Winlink 2000 system - heavy reliance on .NET, and some of the software interfaces
are not published, and even if they were, would be arduous to implement on Linux and/or Mac OS X.

- Ham Radio Deluxe, a suite of programs that provide computer control of a transceiver as well as provide soundcard modes,
such as PSK31, RTTY, etc. Much of HRD's capabilities can be performed by other programs that do run on Linux and Mac OS X,
such as FLdigi, but the integration and esthetics within HRD is superb.

- Outpost Packet Message Manager, which automates/simplifies message handling through VHF/UHF BBSes using a TNC. It's
not that complicated, but it would take a fair amount of effort to write a Linux or Mac OS X version from scratch.

I'm sure there are others out there that other operators might prefer more than these, but these are the "heavy lifters" in my shack.

Adobe acrobat

[WarJolt]

I can't fill out forms on Linux and the acrobat for Linux is so old and doesn't support forms. Open source pdf readers don't work either. Fix the chrome pdf reader on Linux might work or a working web version.

Pdf on Linux is so far behind.

irfanView

[safetyinnumbers]

I know that there are plenty of other image viewers, but I find it fast and easy to use, while having a lot of useful features for tasks that fall short of requireing a full image editor (e.g. view EXIF info, brightness curve editing, rescaling, lossless jpeg 90-degree rotations).

Re:irfanView

[cpufrier37075]

+1 for iview

Re:irfanView

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried XNView? I prefer it to IrfanView on the Windows side and I know there's a linux version as well.

Re:irfanView

[Anonymous Coward]

Google suggests gThumb as an equivalent; but ISTR that all the features you mention are in Ida (fbida package, www.kraxel.org/blog/linux/fbida).

-idunham, not logged in

Media Center / Cable CARD Tuner Support

[Anonymous Coward]

Subject says it all I want to have the same or better support in Linux for cable card tuners and be able to watch and record what ever content I subscribe to..

Everything

[zedaroca]

Not everything that windows has, the search software Everything. There is no real substitute, just very poor alternatives. It is so fast to find stuff with it. Way better than navigating folders. I gave up linux twice because of this one. Time to try again now that windows telemetry rolled out.

Re:Everything

[brad3378]

^^^ THIS

I logged in just to mention Everything.
It's my favorite free program for Windows and and I don't care what the zealots say. There is NO comparable alternative for Linux.

One nice feature on Everything is the ability to add text files containing file lists to your search.
I use it to search multiple computers simultaneously and this way they can even be powered off.
The external file lists can be stored and synced on Google-Drive or an equivalent cloud storage.

I haven't tried it yet, but I might try creating a daily cron job that generates a text file list of all of my linux files and then try to use Everything via Wine as a viewer. It's a very clumsy alternative, but that's the best alternative I can think of.

Gitextensions

[NeoXon]

I would like a native port of Gitextensions for Linux. It is currently a pile of crap on Linux with Mono, but a pretty good software on Windows.

Documentation, and ease-of-use

[obarthelemy]

Not really an app, but what scuppers all my Linux attempts is documentation. Case in point: I'm trying to set up a RAID server with heterogeneous drives of various sizes. I had to have someone tell me to look at mdadm and LVM, which I am now doing, but most articles seem to pertain to older kernel versions (2.6/2.8, ArchWiki doesn't even seem to have a date on articles) and I have no clue if such older info is still relevant, outdated, in-between... I'm stuck.
My last try before that, I had to resort to trial-and-error to create upstart jobs (is there a user doc, anywhere ?), and ended up using the wrong virtual terminal software (there was mux, and.. xterm, I think ? can't remember) because that's what Google came up with, and I had no clue where else to start.
And before that, I had to spend hours trying to get dual-screen to work acceptably, and in the end I couldn't (something about having 1xATI +1xnVidia card w/ different-definition screens, and wanting to watch videos, brought the whole house down)

So... not sexy... not peer-reputation/hacker-cred enhancing... but I'd strongly advise to work on documentation, not apps.

Re:Documentation, and ease-of-use

[Yosho]

For what it's worth, typing "man mdadm" or "man lvm" in a console should provide you with the documentation for those tools, as it will with most command-line utilities. Consider GParted or system-config-lvm if you need pretty GUIs, both of which have help built into them. "man upstart" works as well, although if you want something with pretty formatting and extensive examples, searching Google for "upstart manual" results in this as the first hit: Upstart Intro, Cookbook, and Best Practises

I don't think there really is a "wrong virtual terminal". Use whatever you like. xterm is pretty bare-bones; konsole also works and is more powerful, among others.

Out of curiosity, what distribution are you using? It sounds like you're trying to do some pretty complex system administrative tasks, and, well, I don't think it's unreasonable that those would be difficult to do for somebody who is unfamiliar with Linux and doesn't know where the documentation is.

I will say that generally, modern distributions with a focus on usability make it simple to configure multiple displays... but trying to get a single desktop working across multiple video cards (especially ones that use different drivers!) is either very difficult or impossible. You're better off using a single video card that has multiple outputs.

Re:Documentation, and ease-of-use

[obarthelemy]

Thanks for the advice. It's a bit overwhelming though, I get the feeling you have to either be an expert, or shut it down. That's frustrating.

That was all a few years ago, frankly, I've given up on Linux, the learning curve is to steep for me, especially for stuff that Just Runs (tm) in Windows (ie multiple different screens on multiple different graphics cards, autoruns...) Windows has nothing for my RAID issues, so I'm wondering again if Linux both can do it and can do it w/o my spending days trying to figure out how.
For the upstart jobs and terminals, I was using text-based Ubuntu on an ARM netbook. Had to have a friend recompile the kernel to add SMB support. Very reliable once I got it to work, and then fun to hotkey between the different terminals from my remote Windows console, which were mostly displaying daemon status info. I think I even got it to tile (non-overlapping) several terminals onto its screen. Went back to Windows though because I kept forgetting the CLI commands.
For the multi-screen, that was my main PC at the time, an ATI APU mini-ITX, with a entry-level nVidia card for the second screen. Still running at my parents', but under Windows.

Tortoise SVN

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't found another Subversion client that's as nice as Tortoise SVN for Windows.. Granted I haven't looked very hard.

Re:Tortoise SVN

[guus_deleeuw]

I second that. One of the most useful tools I miss on Linux.

Or TaxAct

[Anonymous Coward]

TaxAct offers much better customer support than TurboTax, is a WHOLE lot cheaper, and features are equivalent (in some cases superior).

TaxAct has an online offering that I don't use...I am talking about their download-run-locally offering. They should make a Linux version of that.

CommDlg.dll

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually what I'm calling for is the microsoft equivalent of usability standards. Way back in the day Microsoft wrote a usability book that defined WIMP (Windows Icons Menus Pointer). They've since decided to pass the book through the MS Office, Windows 7,8 shredders until there is very little left.
Can you imagine what windows would be like if every application pulled an MS Office?
Oh wait: that's linux.

Notepad++

[Anonymous Coward]

A windows-only app that is better than the normal linux text editors

Autocad

[Doke]

Autocad, at least a decent viewer.

Personal Finance

[Anonymous Coward]

Quicken and TurboTax for Linux.

That's it, slashdot is dead

[Eunuchswear]

What the anti-systemd trolls couldn't do this topic has done.

See you next year in Abidjan.

MS Office, Adobe Stuff, Finale, Cubase, Kontakt

[execthis]

Here's my list:

MS Office
Canon Printer Software/Drivers/Utilities
Adobe: Photoshop, Premiere, Dreamweaver, Acrobat Pro
MakeMusic Finale
Cubase
Kontakt

Rhino3D

[Anonymous Coward]

Rhino3D. Even for 2D drawing work, it's much nicer than Autocad, mostly because of speed, maintaining selections through many drawing commands, and a consistent command set, where almost any command works on any object type. Read and write support for almost any 2D/3D format is also light-years ahead of Autocad, for example build-in support for reading most vector formats, including PDF's. Python scripting, flexible (network)licensing, no hassle 90-day fully working demo's, cheap upgrading from very old versions, simple printing to huge bitmap files (instead limiting bitmap output to screen resolution like Autocad), etc.

MS Office

[erp_consultant]

Open Office, while free, doesn't come close to Office in overall functionality. MS Project, although I don't use it that much, does not seem to have anything open source that works well.

SharePoint sucks big time but it seems that every place I go to uses it. If you use Linux or a Mac you are out of luck, unless you want to spin up a VM with Windows. In which case you might as well just use Windows.

Quicken/QuckBooks

[snadrus]

Not-only would this move over a huge number of accountants (and back-offices), but also: isn't your company's financial data a good place for security?

No PaleMoon for Linux? Not true!

[rnturn]

``I currently use PaleMoon fork of Firefox as my main browser, but there doesn't seem to be a Linux variant.''

Huh? There's a PaleMoon executable for Linux. At least there was a copy on my systems when I was running openSUSE 12.2. I don't see it as available via the software manager in YaST but it's definitely downloadable off the 'Net.

Evernote and Google Drive clients

[walterbyrd]

I can hardly believe they don't have them.

Re:Photoshop, GIMP, and batch conversions

[rnturn]

I'm not sure just what you needed to do to hundreds of icons but the first tool I would have looked at to perform a batch operation like that would have been ImageMagick and a simple shell script.

Quickbooks is the killer app

[tanstaaf1]

The one app which has kept me -- and virtually all small to middle-sized businesses -- locked to Windows for the past twenty years is Quickbooks. It used to be Microsoft Office, but not so much any more. GnuCash could be a contender, I believe, but for some reason I can't comprehend, its interface and flexibility, particularly in setup, remains stubbornly ugly and clunky. It's like the GnuCash programming leadership has never seen Quicken/Quickbooks, remains oblivious that Quicken/Quickbooks runs circles around them in terms of usability, or just doesn't care. But if they really don't care, why do they keep rolling out updates? But if they care, why don't they seem unable to learn from history... pretending that Quicken/Quickbooks didn't change the game more than 20 years ago? Just as LibreOffice has, finally, and quickly become a contender to Microsoft Office by focusing on usability and interface, GnuCash could do the same. GnuCash should strive to COPY Quickbooks as much as possible. Make it trivial to jump from Quickbooks to GnuCash by copying the interface. In particular Quicken/Quickbooks uses a dynamic "outline" interface for setting up and changing accounts and subaccounts. In Quickbooks you can change nearly anything with a simple drag and drop. You can make an account a subaccount or a subaccount a top level account. You can even drag and drop to move an account (with subaccounts) from, say, an asset to an equity account. You see the change and all the accounting is taken care of behind the scenes. I really want to be constructive. And I really want to flee Microsoft and Intuit (look at Amazon reviews and you'll notice that a huge percentage of Quickbooks users really are upset with Intuits' predation and really want to find an alternative..but feel trapped. GnuCash isn't that alternative. And it will NEVER be that alternative until they "get it" that Quickbooks changed the game on accounting software at least two decades ago. And, again, they COULD become that alternative in, perhaps, one version upgrade if they would get their heads in gear and pay attention to their competition. And you you know what? If GnuCash would undertake that self examination and change their development focus, they could change the whole Linux dynamic almost overnight. And if the GnuCash crew is too ossified or arrogant to undertake that self-examination and change, it would be nice if someone would fork GunCash. Maybe the Libre people could undertake that?

Re:Quickbooks is the killer app

[tanstaaf1]

I want to point out one other thing: The business users who would jump to Linux BECAUSE OF a good Quickbooks alternative would be high quality, influential new users. They would bring money and, commonly, would convert their entire office over to Linux. So bringing GnuCash ALONE out of the interface/usability stoneage, or replacing it entirely if necessary, with a real Quickbooks competitor would likely add millions or tens of millions of new, and unusually high quality end-users to Linux. Strategically it would be brilliant. If only the GnuCash management wasn't effectively keeping the doorway to the Linux elevator signposted "Out of Order".

It's not about "being on Linux"

[Anonymous Coward]

If we have a bunch of proprietary programs running on top of GNU/Linux, then what have we gained? We need to be able to trust our computing to do what we intend it to do, and no more / no less. With proprietary programs, you can never be sure that a backdoor hasn't been inserted into the program. Governments inserting backdoors into software (even into compilers) is not an imaginary threat. It is a current actuality, and using Free / Libre and Open Source Software gives us our best defense against these attacks.

Re:GIMP

[rnturn]

``I believe GIMP introduced the single-window mode in version 2.4 or 2.6; the multi-window mode was just a PITA.''

Yes. GIMP began offering the single window interface a couple of point releases ago. As for the multi-window PITAness you mentioned... having a single honkin' window must be be something you like about Photoshop. I've been using GIMP for years in multi-window mode and find the single window interface is just not my cup-o-tea. We all has our druthers.

Traktor

[kodabmx]

Traktor would be nice. and my BMW scan tool...

Cubase

[Anonymous Coward]

Cubase. Or Ableton Live.

Quicken

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the main reason I have to start up Windows.

QuickBooks

[Mrrrrrrr]

QuickBooks. Lots of small businesses could possibly be moved to Linux if they could keep QuickBooks.

I'm a designer so...

[tezbobobo]

sPhotoshop, Illustrator, Indesign (Scribus is not a replacement for people doing it on a daily basis) Acrobat Distiller, Premiere, and AfterEffects. Also, Photoshop Lisghtroom and DxO. There are also a myriad of smaller apps like image resizers. Also, I'm at uni, so Endnote would be nice. Having a look at my startmenu more than 50% of the apps are not supported on linux. My whole ecosystem would need to move over to allow me to change. Note: I have been running linux on one laptop or another since the 90s.

Quite a few.

[Anonymous Coward]

Foobar2000 - It has graphical issues in WINE, and it also uses a stupid amount of resources. Unfortunately, I haven't found any native Linux programs that offer its level of library management or customizability. DEADBEEF is a shitty ripoff that doesn't even compare, even though people seem to keep recommending it.

CPU-Z - It's hard to find Linux applications that actually offer in-depth info about your CPU, motherboard, and RAM the way this program does, just general overviews that don't really tell you much. If I recall correctly, this one doesn't work in WINE because it needs ring0 access, which Linux doesn't allow. Maybe a kernel module would fix this.

Speedfan - Same case as above, though Speedfan is focused more on temperature and fan speed monitoring, as well as hard drive diagnostics surprisingly. I'm aware that Linux already has some temperature monitoring tools, but none seem to sit with me quite as well as SpeedFan. This needs ring0 access as well, and I wouldn't be surprised if its device driver could be ported over as a kernel module.

SIV - Another system information tool. This one is great for identifying hardware that you don't have drivers for, and I actually managed to get this working in WINE once by running as root, but newer versions of WINE don't allow this.

Rufus - An easy tool for making bootable USB drives, AND it actually works! Can't say that about Unetbootin.

BizHawk - Aside from Retroarch with its godawful console-oriented user interface, this is the only way to use Genesis Plus GX on a PC, and it works great. Unfortunately, it's coded in C#, but someone could potentially port it to a more Linux-friendly language. It is open source after all.

Agent Ransack - Just like the good old Win98 search tool, only better. Beats the crap out of everything that's available for Linux, or comes pre-packaged with modern versions of Windoze.

iTunes - Personally, I hate this program, but if Apple got off their asses and made a Linux-native version of this, it would make the Windows to Linux transition much easier for a lot of people. As it is, iTunes does NOT work in WINE, and one of the biggest reasons is because it requires a number of background processes, as well as special drivers for handling i-devices.

MSPaint - Are there any photo manipulation or drawing programs on Linux that are as easy to use as this? I think not. Sadly, WINE won't run the Win7 version of MSPaint, and I think it struggles with the XP version as well.

Meade Autostar updater

[flightmaker]

I'd love to have a decent telescope but won't buy anything that depends on the Dark Side.

For Small Offices

[Akili]

One of my greatest sticking points has been Quickbooks. There are several little office shops I've helped that would be just fine using Linux for nearly everything else - Thunderbird, Firefox, and a few other odds and ends cover their general needs.

Except Quickbooks. Gnucash is just not a suitable alternative for their business accounts. I can get the Quickbooks database to run on Linux (with difficulty, sometimes), but the GUI must be not-Linux.

That'd be my vote.

Gaming

[Anonymous Coward]

For me, the final nail in the coffin would be video games. That is the only reason I have a Windows PC. Hopefully the new SteamOS will help the shift to gain ... steam.

Blue Iris

[roc97007]

Blue Iris video security software. I'd much rather run it natively on Linux rather than run it on Windows in a virtual box or try to get Wine working.

Adobe Lightroom

[roc97007]

There's always going to be a debate on Photoshop, but what I really need is Lightroom. Specifically on Android. The only thing keeping me from buying an Android tablet is that I'm a content producer, not a content consumer, and the apps aren't there yet. (Adobe Carousel is a joke. Don't even mention it.)

Ableton Live

[drkvogel]

Anyone?

3D Modeling Software

[Cramit]

I am stuck running a windows virtual machine for Autodesk Inventor. I wish it or SolidWorks or something equivalent ran natively on Linux.

Tax preparation software

[Anonymous Coward]

Tax preparation software is the only thing I need to spin up my old Windows VM to run. I won't do tax prep "in the cloud" because I prefer to keep my sensitive data under my control as much as possible.

IrfanView

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd kill for a good alternative to Irfanview (http://www.irfanview.com/)

The closest alternative that works on Linux (and Windows, since it's cross-platform) is XnViewMP, but I have a soft spot for IrfanView given its huge functionality and speed.

ABBYY FineReader

[Opyros]

I've tried open source OCR software, but found nothing with anything like the same accuracy.

FL Studio

[Anonymous Coward]

FL Studio. 100% of the reason I have wine installed.

Ableton Live

[Anonymous Coward]

Ableton Live for Linux plz

Honestly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows Media Center. Yes, really. I've tried several linux media center applications and none of them come close to the sheer simplicity of using WMC for locally stored movies & tv shows.

My list

[bkgoodman]

iTunes (or to remove the need for it), Orbiter, Final Cut Pro, Word and Excel (and not the free clones!)

Is Linux still relevant?

[Anonymous Coward]

The question should be, "... on iOS and Android?".

Skype

[Trogre]

An up to date version of Skype, ie one that isn't three major versions behind, would be nice. A bit awkward when Linux users can't take part in multi-way Skype conference calls.

Or, better, a real free alternative.

Adobe Suite

[Anonymous Coward]

The entire Adobe Creative Suite.

Winmerge

[toadlife]

There is nothing that comes close to it in Linux. I went so far as to run it under WINE once when I was playing with my own Android kernel and wanted to compare sources.

Re:Winmerge

[kbrannen]

I like Winmerge when on Windows. For linux, you want "meld". I think I prefer meld a little more, but that may be just because I use it more.

HTH!

Re:Winmerge

[toadlife]

I tried meld and all of the native ones. Winmerge had some features that none of the native versions could match.

I have much more experience in Windows and with winmerge, so it's possible I just didn't know how to properly use the programs.

ExamDiff Pro

[GeekyGuru]

Would love seeing a Linux port of "ExamDiff Pro".

Microsoft Bob

[marciot]

Because Linux needs a friendlier interface.

Microsoft is still the best and worst

[Anonymous Coward]

OneNote, good built-in text-to-speech and speech-to-text, and good built-in handwriting recognition. Linux has nothing that comes close. The best Linux handwriting recognition software needs to be manually trained letter by letter. Windows has had decent, untrained recognition since WinXP Tablet Edition and they've only gotten better. Listening to plain text files is easy with espeak, but Windows offers much better voices and more features. The more advanced Linux text and speech engines are very confusing and difficult to install and configure.

OneNote is fucking awesome for writing notes (with a stylus on a Tablet PC) during class. Your hand writing is converted to searchable text behind the scenes, audio is recorded as you write, and it syncs the audio with what you were writing so you can select some notes and hear the audio of when you wrote it.

CrossOver

[emblemparade]

I feel your pain. But: I run the complete Office 2010 suite using CrossOver without a hitch. It doesn't quite feel "native," but it works well enough for all my needs. CrossOver even creates links so that, for example, when you double-click on .docx documents, they will open up with Word 2010.

It actually works so well that I have a terminal-server-based office (based on LTSP) running Word 2010 over CrossOver.

This is not a great solution (you will have to buy a license from Microsoft), but it is a solution to allow my setup to stay in Linux and still collaborate with others.

Cheers!

Re:CrossOver

[blind biker]

How does that CrossOver-ed Word work with Zotero?

The big parts

[Vlijmen Fileer]

The Windows GUI (The combined failure of Gnome, KDE, FVWM, Mintamon, Cinnamate and whatever you have more is outright sickening)
Active Directory plus its supporting GUI programs
Powershell

DirectX

[Anonymous Coward]

At least until OpenGL ousts it.

Reflex Buddy

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope they get enough hits to make the port, really nice software.

Regex buddy

[Anonymous Coward]

Stupid auto correct

Vsee

[Anonymous Coward]

Vsee is currently an outstanding low bandwidth Skype alternative but runs only on windows and mac

A Decent CAD For Architects

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, there are software for line drawings and solid modelling, but something fitting for building design and producing actual work and construction plans efficiently is sorely missing. No, an IFC solid modeller doesn't cut it and is too complicated for many, and those Autodesk-style hatched lines are disgusting and contain no structural information.

The apps that really keep me on Windows?

[Shinobi]

There are quite a few apps that keep me on Window of which these are just some of them:

Photoshop
Lightroom
Sony Vegas Pro
Visual Studio
BL BokfÃring(an accounting software, only supports Windows for local data saving etc)
Directory Opus(I've been using this since back in the Amiga Days, so it's a force of habit as much as anything else so....)
Electronic ID Certificate software

Nothing left on Windows that is worth having

[Anonymous Coward]

The only programs that aren't currently available for Linux are things like Office (which is now a human interface catastrophe), and Photoshop, which simply doesn't interest me. For everything I do, there are simply no tools that I have encountered on the Windows platform that are as good as the tools that are available on Linux. I really do not understand why anyone is still using Windows.

Premiere

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd almost donate a kidney to get Adobe Premiere for Linux. It's the one and only reason I need to dual boot. I've tried every single video editing program available for Linux and nothing even comes close. Out of all commercial and FOSS video editing software for Linux, KDENlive is IMO the best because it resembles Premiere the most in terms of the most basic editing tools that are so damn good in Premiere (and the only ones you need most of the time). However, KDENlive is still very, very buggy and slow.

Re: Premiere

[Anonymous Coward]

Premiere used to run nearly perfectly under Wine.

Re: Premiere

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, there are no good NLE's for any OS. The best was originally the video toaster hardware + software. Premiere just took that to a software-only solution and was PC-only until CS4.

Avid and Apple final cut are alternates but these have no Linux version primarily due to hardware requirements that don't exist and can't exist on linux

Double Commander

[Anonymous Coward]

Double Commander is a nice Linux substitute to Total Commander. It captures much of the look and feel of Total Commander.

Process Explorer

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a number of GUI process and resources tools, but all pale in comparison to Mark Russinovich's/Winternals' Process Explorer. That puppy is rock-solid stable, loads instantly, and is performant. By comparison the Ubuntu default (gnome-system-monitor) is a resource hog, takes relatively forever to load (on non-SSD hardware, anyway), is half as discoverable, makes no (or little) intelligent use of colors, has maybe a 20th of the options of PE, and looks ... just plain bulky.

The closest in quality I have is htop, which is unfortunately CLI only. htop is an incredible improvement on top, and is certainly much more suited to situations like SSH, but the Linux ecosystem is missing a quality GUI, well, "Process Explorer".

Pale Moon is available

[Anonymous Coward]

Checkout their website. Pale Moon is available for Linux.

Some audio software

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm missing Cubase and Melodyne and drivers for 16ch audio interfaces on Linux.

MS and SAP Apps

[petermp]

1. Native MS Office 2013, MS Outlook and Excel in particular 2. SAP GUI(real one, not JAVA)

Better Android Support + iTunes (aargh!)

[Anonymous Coward]

Trying to remember the last time I booted my dual-boot machine to Windows - I think it was because mounting of one of our Android phones' internal drive just wasn't happening in Linux.

The time before that it was undoubtedly because I had to do something on my iPad that required iTunes - import/export from some stupid app that my kids use. Doubtless iMovies.

IBM i2 Analyst Notebook

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing really compares

Applications is not the real problem for Linux

[ibib]

* Me as a private person: ALL games, Pages (OS X application)
* Me as a professional: MS Excel, MS Outlook or other Exchange client equivalent
* My colleagues: SPSS, Nvivo, MS Outlook or other Exchange client equivalent
* My father as a professional: Adobe CS

The real reason why I don't switch to Linux on any of my computers at home: usability. Linux for the desktop is still too difficult to work with, even for a power user like me. EVERYTHING that reasonably needs to be configured has to be configurable in the GUI. You should never ever need to open a Terminal to fix things.

Anything related to audio and music production

[bugl.benjamin]

the state of linux audio is a disgrace. not only are a lot of audio interfaces (both usb and firewire) not supported (which is the manufacturers fault) but also the drivers (jack in particular) are so stupidly hard to install and configure to perform correctly and with low latency that one almost needs a specialized degree for that. when do people realize, that stuff is only adopted when it's easy to use.

Internet Explorer

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel too safe

Device specific front-ends

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately there's still devices which (which might use Linux internally) still have only Windows/MAC front ends. TomTom navigator update, Polar Loop update etc. Some of them even uses Qt but still, no dice for linux version.

VST Plugin Support

[TractorBarry]

I'd love to see audio VST plugins fully supported on Linux. Given that Reaper will run under Wine being able to use my collection of VST plugins would give me the opportunity to finally move off my XP audio machine. There's no way in hell I'm going to ever use Windows 8 or 10 as I will simply not be spied upon. And Windows 7 is neither use nor ornament as it doesn't have drivers for my audio/MIDI interfaces (which run fine under Linux).

Following the recent obnoxious spying behaviour of Microsoft Windows is now a completely dead platform to me. However I'm running a standalone Windows XP machine (which isn't connected to any networks) purely because it runs the audio software I need to do my work.

VST support for the win !

Internet Explorer

[Pieroxy]

What I'd like is to have all versions of IE available on Linux. I can't stand running VMs just to test the websites I'm working on. What a waste of resources...

IE is the only reasons I still have Windows (both VMs and real machines) around at home.

Microsoft Bob and Clippy

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeay, would miss those two...

Directory Opus

[Warma]

Directory Opus (https://www.gpsoft.com.au/)
Nothing on Windows or Linux comes close to this in ease of use and power of this program. Basically DOpus has good UI-level tools for the stuff you typically need to use bash scripts to do (complex rename or move, duplicate finding and syncing directories, etc).
In addition it's the only file manager replacement with an FTP/SFTP feature that actually works.

foobar2000

[Anonymous Coward]

foobar2000. Best music player ever. Luckily, it runs under Wine just fine.

I'd also be interested if Win32 VST plugins could be made to work on Linux (without sacrificing virgin goats and whatnot).

File and folder compare

[Anonymous Coward]

Winmerge is a must have.. linux alternatives I tried, meld, diff.. etc. not so user friendly..

Optical Music recognition

[yotam]

The OMR (Optical Music recognition) feature of music typesetting (like Finale has).
That is - I would like to be able to scan a music score and import it to LilyPond.

OneDrive

[fuzzywig]

If anyone knows of a good way to get OneDrive syncing working on linux, I for one would be super happy.

All the solutions that I've found so far are, basically, crap.
"Why don't you use Dropbox/Ubuntu One/Rsync etc?" Because the customer wants to use OneDrive.

UAC

[Anonymous Coward]

user: Make me a sandwich
OS: You are not authorized. (blindfolds user, waits a couple seconds, then) Please confirm.
user: Confirm.
OS: (makes sandwich)

Flight Sim X... FS98, FS2000, FS2002, FS2004

[advocate_one]

just can't get on with Flight Gear... got a lot invested in flight sim aircraft, cockpits, scenery etc.

Evernote

[Anonymous Coward]

I just went back to Windows on my laptop when I found no native Evernote client on Linux. The web client just isn't good enough and I use Evernote heavily for my farm.

WinMerge

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't been able to find a good merge/diff tool on Linux, but this rocks on Windows. It's the only development tool I miss when I'm on Linux.

CoolEdit!

[Anonymous Coward]

CoolEdit (before it was turned into bloatware by Adobe) would be great. Audacity is just a (bad) joke.

Macromedia FreeHand MX

[WillAdams]

It's ``just'' Altsys Virtuoso for NeXTstep w/ some updates (Virtuoso 2 was ~= to FreeHand 4, plus some bugs).

The thing is, what I'd really like to have is Altsys Virtuoso (which was announced for Windows NT), but on NeXT/OPENstep. Using Windows at a new task at work, and every day, I miss Mac OS X, or at least the things which OPENSTEP afforded to Mac OS X:

  - pop-up main menu
  - tear-off / repositionable sub-menus
  - Services
  - Shelf (Sidebar on Mac OS X)
  - Miller column filebrowser
  - Display PostScript (Quartz née Display PDF on Mac OS X)

Could we just finish up GNUstep?

None

[Anonymous Coward]

Until the linux leeches start paying for their software.

Explorer.exe

[Not-a-Neg]

I want the Windows GUI on Linux. The ability to right-click on something and run it as Administrator would make life A LOT simpler.

EasyNN-plus

[Anonymous Coward]

I get a request for a Linux version of EasyNN-plus every few weeks. I don't have time to produce one but somebody may have time. All the VS code is available to anyone by request.

Re:GIMP

[TemporalBeing]

``I believe GIMP introduced the single-window mode in version 2.4 or 2.6; the multi-window mode was just a PITA.''

Yes. GIMP began offering the single window interface a couple of point releases ago. As for the multi-window PITAness you mentioned... having a single honkin' window must be be something you like about Photoshop. I've been using GIMP for years in multi-window mode and find the single window interface is just not my cup-o-tea. We all has our druthers.

If the multi-window mode made things usable...then I'd agree. Rather, it makes it really hard to find stuff and know what's associated, etc. Most often, I'd end up losing track of which went with GIMP or did what, etc. So yes, I prefer a single-window mode that operates like Eclipse/VisualStudio with dockable parts - if you want to move something, undock it and move it. That alone can make a really big difference in the learning curve for GIMP.

Origin

[alexmagni]

where I'm working (materials science research) what everybody using Linux agrees on is that we really miss Microcal Origin - that's the only reason many here have a virtual machine with Windows on it...

Nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

Really. Nothing. Its been six years since I slammed my own door on Microsoft, and there is nothing in the Windows universe I have needed since. Granted, I do not use my computer for games, I just run my life and business on it. But I have found that everything I need I can do, and often better. So, if you want to do it, just do it. There is no perfect Linux alternative for this or that Windows program, there is only what works for you or not. The nice thing is: if you do not like anything, you can always dump it and try something else, and it won't cost you a dime.

Clarion and Total Commander

[Anonymous Coward]

I whole heatedly second Total Commander, all Linux variants I have tried incorporate some of the functionality but none incorporate all. I think Mr. Ghisler is the one that can truly write a Linux port.
The other BIG pain is Softvelocity Clarion. Like Total Commander there is just no satisfactory replacement for Clarion. Some people may hate it, but once you are hooked, there is no living without it.

Autodesk autocad / inventor

[Anonymous Coward]

Autodesk autocad / autodesk inventor, I use it to build models for my 3d printer, other than that I don't need windows at all, linux has some cad tools but inventor is just too easy/fun to use.

Visio

[Anonymous Coward]

I would really like a Visio substitute. The things everyone says to try just don't compare.

It is for sure Office !

[Anonymous Coward]

All companies i've worked for runs Office, like it or not. It is a de facto standard.

Not having it in Linux forbids Linux adoption in the large majority of work evironments
and create troubles in comunicating with busiess people.

p.s. I don't like Office, but this is not the point.

FAR Manager

[Anonymous Coward]

FAR Manager

Commence

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the last piece of software which I am porting from Windows ~ goodbye windows!

http://www.commence.com

Give me these and I'll never ever use Windows agai

[Anonymous Coward]

- Office suite (yes, a lot of docx in my work and in my university)
- Photoshop, InCopy, InDesign, AfterEffects, etc (yes, i did try to use GIMP, more than once, hours and hours - thinks like content-aware and the "unshake" feature)
- Lightroom
- AUTOCad/Solidworks
- Full featured skype (my windows skype makes HD calls, where the linux version does not support 640x480. plus in weak connections it isn't as effective)
- GTA V in steam
- Garmin Basecamp

I have (effective!) alternatives for everything else :D

WINE

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to see WINE for Windows.

*facepalm*

[MarbleMunkey]

The OP should be censured; It's the first thing it says on the Pale Moon webpage!

"Pale Moon is an Open Source web browser available for Microsoft Windows and Linux"

https://www.palemoon.org/

media

[xuvetyn]

windows live movie maker and a decent mp3 player (winamp?)!

Re:Fire up ubuntu

[Teun]

With that level of 'knowledge' it's just as well you are anonymous, coward.

Drivers & 3D applications

[Segelflieger]

Drivers for laptops & netbooks are a problem, especially Wifi and Audio. I would like applications such as Unity3D and 3D Studio Max to run and Linux. I would then say that getting the maximum performance from GPUs is also a big thing. If only nVidia, AMD & intel would invest as much effort in Linux drivers as they do in Windows drivers Then there are things like DirectX12, and support for VR devices & sensors like OculusRift, Kinect, Leapmotion, etc. And yes ... a complete rewrite of Gimp to give it the ability to be used by Photoshop users without investing hours ... (a bit like Blender did for Maya & 3Dsmax users).

Windows Update

[Anonymous Coward]

I get far too much done on Linux as it stands, only windows update causes the interruptions, forced reboots, and crashes that I've come to realize on from windows.

Flow Chart

[metzjtm]

Visio I have to keep a Win partition to use Visio . It's an engineering standard.

Visio

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I've tried it under Wine (various flavors), but I still run it best on Windows.

I got a bunch

[Anonymous Coward]

I wanna see a word processor. Oh wait nvm they have that...

I wanna see a spread sheet maker. Oh wait they have that...

I wanna see a banking manager. Oh wait they have that.

I wanna see a chat program. Oh wait they have that too.

I guess I don't want shit from windows that Linux doesn't already have... Well sometimes I get bore with a perfectly stable system so maybe a registery like widows ME and complete with all the errors. Yeah that'd be fun. We need more errors so sysadmins stay busy.

OPEN source

[Evan Langlois]

Linux isn't free beer. The only way this stuff improves is people donating time or money. If everyone that complained about Gimp donated the price of Photoshop to the developers, we would be well past 2.8 a long time ago

Once Linux has...

[MainCore_01]

... Office 2013 and Adobe CC, we will have no need for Windows anymore.

Solidworks

[Anonymous Coward]

Solidworks ported to run natively on Linux would be amazing

Windows app on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to see 2 things - 1.) Visual Studio, yes there is nothing like it on linux. 2) And of course, Solitaire.

Quite a bunch

[Anonymous Coward]

Foobar2000
CPU-Z
Speedfan
Agent Ransack
Bizhawk
actual good AMD drivers
DirectX 10
SIV (System Information Viewer; NOT simian immunodeficeincy virus)

And for apps I don't use, but other people might appreciate:
iTunes (it's broken on WINE)
Microsoft Office
Photoshop

I almost forgot

[Anonymous Coward]

WinDirStat

I know it's based on KDirStat, but WinDirStat is a million times better.

Quicken/Quick Books

[DaveJ45]

The number one program most people that I deal with use as their 'deal breaker' reason for not converting over to a LINUX based OS is Quickbooks. Both personal and business users have too much of their financial history already invested into these programs, and would have to either re-enter a massive amount of history to bring any other solution up to speed, or they would have to switch over to a new LINUX based software solution but still have to run a Windows machine to access their past data, which is obviously a stupid option as well. Although at one time there were vague rumors of a LINUX version of Quickbooks in the future, it's obvious that now the preferred 'fix' is to sell everyone their monthly cloud based accounting instead.

Re:Quicken/Quick Books

[RyuMaou]

Yes! A thousand times, yes!

I've tried some of the FOSS "replacements" for this, but they couldn't even port my data correctly from my Quicken backup. Also, along with this, TurboTax. These two programs are the *main* thing that keeps me on Windows in my personal life. I have other programs, too, but they could be replaced or I would be willing to use a virtual machine for the little I use them any more. Quicken and TruboTax, though, are a lot more important to me and simply have to work and be supported.

On GNU/Linux I would like....

[edwyr]

Quicken

Re:Nvidia/ATI driver quality equal to or surpassin

[Druegan]

Yup. This. The only reason I own a Windows box is gaming. If I could get away from it for the titles I want to play, I'd wipe that box and put some Linux variant on it.. Till that can be a thing, well, I'm stuck with a shitty OS on my game rig.

The internet is for porn

[Anonymous Coward]

Those obscure Windows-exclusive porn/hentai games (some are called 'visual novels').

Port them over to Linux and I'll convert, I promise.

Re:Photoshop - Framemaker

[Anonymous Coward]

Hear hear!

I am still using ID, PS and Illu on a virtual XP installation but at the time I was using FrameMaker, I would have bought a Linux FM, PS, PageMaker and most of the page layout stuff they sold for Win and Mac. But no. Linux. Adobe. Bye licensing.

Windows to Linux - Bring it On!

[darrenadelaide]

Hi Everyone,

For me the answer is absolutely nothing.

I do a lot of work with Excel and writing code in VBA, but when the recent details of Microsoft's Security Violations came to light we had to investigate the changeover to Linux ( My secondary machine is Linux Mint and has been for nearly a year now).

Libreoffice actually was very good, and although it means an entire rewrite of the codebase (fortunately not as big as it sounds) which does the data mining research as Libreoffice is very different in the way code needs to be written to interface from Excel VBA, it was actually not a great issue with over 90% now ported (although the last 10% will take time due to lack of documentation at this stage).

The biggest Issue I have is that NTFS on Linux is a bit of a hack and I dont consider reliable, meaning I have to transfer something like 40+TB of research raw data to drives formatted under EXT4, and verify the data (Tip - Try DC++ to generate the TTH for the files so you can compare), before the previous source drive is reformatted for the next transfer of a drive. As im working with sensitive data I have no choice but to ditch Windows for good after air-gapping the network for now.

When it became apparent what was happening with the Microsoft/NSA spying, it sent shudders down my spine, I am trained in PCI Compliance and data mining /security and this would mean the all corporates who deal with creditcards (and users who use their card online) are leaking data to Microsoft and NSA et al, and this is NOT ON!.

Goodbye Microsoft, you may have had me as a customer for over 30 years being an IT professional, but no more. The only issue I have now is finding a good antivirus (dont laugh I have used Trend for sometime, and they just dont have one as Linux is a lot more damn secure than Windows).

Where Do I want to go today? Definately not with MS.

Evernote

[Anonymous Coward]

Evernote. Nixnote, or whatever it is called now doesn't count. I am not ready to fully embrace the web client either.

TomTom app, Tyre

[MoarSauce123]

How else would I update the device and plan my trips? I have yet to find a Linux alternative that works as well.

Re:TomTom app, Tyre

[MoarSauce123]

Forgot also MadCap Flare and associated applications and a decent app that works with my TV card. Yes, I know, there are plenty of TV card apps, but did you ever try to configure one of them? It is a total pain in the rear.

A decent media player

[ThePhilips]

Two things I use the most on Windows and which are missing on Linux:

A media player similar to MPC-HC. (VLC's UI is kind of crap. Nowadays - animated crap. Always was and it seems that they are not going to ever fix it. Still no click to play/pause. And some keyboard shortcuts are missing too. And the video tearing is also much worse on Linux than on Windows.)

A tool similar to AutoHotKey. There are efforts to replicate the tool on the Linux, but they are all castrated because of security and missing features and whatnot.

But in reality, though the state of the video players on Linux is as frustrating as it ever was, there is really nothing I'm missing too much.

Indispensable

[Anonymous Coward]

The one program that has left me chained to some method of running Windows, whether that be through Wine or VirtualBox or just a full install on a secondary drive, has be AutoCAD. How I have wished Adobe would port over their extremely over priced software to Linux, but nothing can really match what AutoCAD can do. There are some great CAD programs available for Linux that are quite impressive, like QCAD works very well, as well as FreeCAD. Neither can really do 3D modeling though and I do realize that there is Blender out there, which is on my "to learn" list, but the learning curve is a bit more steep than I wanted it to be and I have limited free time as it is.

Sadly there just isn't really anything close to an equal when it comes to CAD software as AutoCAD. Much like Photoshop is king of graphics. There are programs that can do basic core functionality, which may be sufficient for beginners or novice users, but your skills will stop where the software capability stops. With AutoCAD there is just more and more you can do... and pay for additional software by the buckets, but it is impressive all that it can do and software available on Linux currently has years and years of catch-up to even be compared.

Adobe on a case-sensitive filesystem

[Anonymous Coward]

Adobe Creative products will never have a linux version because you can't install it in a case-sensitive filesystem.

OSX has the option to create case-sensitive filesystems since 10.3
It's 2015 now and you still can't install Creative Cloud to a case-sensitive filesystem

TFA is stupid

[allo]

Who cannot find, that there are linux builds of palemoon should not post on slashdot.

Re:Nvidia/ATI driver quality equal to or surpassin

[higuita]

AMD open source driver is getting better and better, mesa 11, being release this month adds OpenGL 4.1
I'm already playing several OpenGL 4.1 games from steam. OpenGL 4.2 and 4.3 are also with most of the work done so probably in the start of next year it is ready
Performance is also getting better. So with mesa11, most people can forget catalyst driver

DirectX... that don't exist anymore, MS killed it... but you are probably talking about Direct3D ... you have gallium nine!!
that with a patch wine version, you can play many games in wine directly with Direct3D at full speed... but it only works with gallium mesa cards, so nouveau and radeon. Intel and closed sourced drivers can't use it

Games, there are already many GOOD linux games in steam! yes, more the better, but buying and using linux in steam right now helps the port of future games

Just dumped Windows too

[Javaravanava]

I am 1 week into converting my Main PC OS on bare metal to Linux Mint from Windows which I have frankly enjoyed since the days of 3.1 and through to Windows 10. I've also played with linux machines since the days of slackware on many floppies and am familiar with it as well when suited but never as a main OS with a GUI. I've never been against using Microsoft products, actually I've praised them and very much enjoyed using them for work and play. I had upgraded our main machines quite quickly from 8.1 (which i frankly liked) to Windows 10 which I also liked. I was concerned about how deep Microsoft and others tendrils reach into my environment and after testing Mint in VM for a while I stuck another HD in my machine and now run Mint on the bare metal. Other than games (Minecraft and Steam are fine) I have not missed Windows one bit. I am very impressed with mint and for general use, Web, youtube, streaming media, downloading Mint hits all the targets. I'm actually very impressed with it and how easy it has been to use and replace my Main OS. Thing is, I'm a techy, I enjoy the challenge.. the millions of mums and dads out there won't care a cracker.

that I have to Export to save

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever since they decided to not consider a file "saved" unless you saved it in its .xcf format, I have been hating every moment I work with Gimp.

I've read their rationale and don't agree with it. My workflow is terrible now. Saving in image formats is under export. I don't care that a programmer sees it as an "export" operation. I think it's silly to open a jpg file and then not be able to "save" a jpg file.

Then there is that frustrating "file is modified and your changes will be lost" dialog that pops up every time unless I submit to their will and save an xcf.

Evernote

[Anonymous Coward]

Evernote is the missing app for me. Web app is not enough, alternatives aren't stable enough,

We don't need any Windows apps

[chris_clay]

Seriously, what would you possibly need to keep? There are thousands of applications with every GNU/Linux distribution, more than Windows has in some areas. I think it's more of a matter of finding out what GNU/Linux apps will replace the Windows equivalents, and go from there. That's the hard part. I migrated over to GNU/Linux over 7 years ago, and don't need any Windows apps. In fact, we've been using all GNU/Linux native apps during the past 7 years, and it's been wonderful. It wasn't an easy migration, but it can be done with a little work up front, but the payoff in the long run is definitely worth it. Things like Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, and other smaller apps that make up the GNU/Linux OS, are more than what we need. Once in a great while I may want to play a game or two that was released for Windows back in the late 1990s or early 2000s, but I use Wine and DosBox to run those in GNU/Linux.

Vsphere Client

[Anonymous Coward]

Vsphere client.

Re:Vsphere Client

[Anonymous Coward]

Citrix XenCenter - I still find it odd that there isn't a Linux version of this when XenServer runs on Linux.

Adobe Digital Editions

[Anonymous Coward]

I was making do with an old version that runs under wine, but recently they've "fixed" something so the old version doesn't read the new .epub files I get from the library and vendors.

There are people who claim to be running the most recent version on Wine, but so far I haven't gotten it to work.

Speaking of Adobe, the old acroread that you can download from before Adobe stopped supporting Linux has some problems, too. (Maybe memory management? It works fine when you first run it, but if you leave it up and keep adding PDF files for it to print, it eventually goes away and just sits there instead of displaying the files.)

Fully-fledged Microsoft software...

[Anonymous Coward]

...on a Windows 10-like desktop.

Re:Photoshop - Framemaker

[Zontar The Mindless]

Adobe did us all a favour, and you complain?

PWSafe

[Anonymous Coward]

PWsafe would be a good porting to Linux and Mac. I have to use it with Wine and this makes it a little bit harder to use.

http://www.pwsafe.org/

Only a few

[Anonymous Coward]

Exact Audio Copy - Uses AccurateRip and provides a GUI.
AnyDVD HD - I like what it does. Haven't looked into Linux alternatives yet.
mIRC - Needed for current custom scripts that can't easily be converted.

I could try WINE, but I doubt AnyDVD would work with it. I've also read about stability issues with mIRC in WINE, and it has to run 24/7.

Of course there are still many games that are still Windows only. I have found acceptable or better replacements of anything else I use Windows.

Window App

[Sing929]

Would most like to Quicken ported to Linux. They did it for the mac how 'bout Linux?