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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?
MS SQL Server on Linux and OS X would be sweet.
yeah it's called "sybase"
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/
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.
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.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
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.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
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.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
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.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M