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

[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.

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.

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.

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 :)

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.