The Most Desired Linux Ports

zenboomerang writes "It looks like Novell is trying to hit the hammer on the top of software developers heads and try and get them to port their applications directly to Linux. With help from the public they will try to pursuade the management of the most popular programs picked to get into the 21st Century and do some Linux testing. It seems to me to be a good idea and all it needs is a little help from the community."

Hands down!

[by Anonymous Coward]

Port 80.

Everyone wants that sweet sweet http.

Re:Hands down!

[AoT (107216)]

Nah, I am definitely in favor of 6881-6890.

Here's a start...

[$ASANY (705279)]

How about Microsoft Bob first?

Heh. From TFA:

[republican gourd (879711)]

From TFA:

Also, I think a nice attention-getter for the survey would be to get it slashdotted. Generally, I give about 75 points for a great article. If someone can get the survey on Slashdot, I will give you 250 points. As you all know, we have some incredible stuff for which you can redeem your points.

Re:Heh. From TFA:

[Janek Kozicki (722688)]

It's not on the frontpage, but rather in linux section, so zenboomerang, did you get 250 points?

some luck for linux-interested people (whole /.) that now it's much easier to spot non-frontpage linux stories (thanks to CmdrTaco ;)

nice followup will be about the results from this slashdotting. Will Autocad get to the top? I really hope so. CAD people in big companies really are tech-saavy, and really need reliable software to work with. Autocad running under windows is a misunderstanding, that currently lasts about 12 years (since they switched from dos, I still have v.12 running on dos, and v.13 running both on dos and windows). Heck, I remember working with some CAD software on on Amstrad/Shneider about 15 years ago, aww memories :)

Port photoshop

[baryon351 (626717)]

Convince Adobe to bring Photoshop to Linux and I know dozens of people who'll switch in an eyeblink.

Re:Port photoshop...and the rest of Creative Suite

[toby (759)]

Hey! I was going to say that! :-)

Together with InDesign and Illustrator, this would round out a complete Linux publishing solution that any professional could sit down at and get productive. I have prayed for this for most of the years I was working in graphic arts.

But if they don't come to the party - that's OK: We'll just keep polishing GIMP [gimp.org], Scribus [scribus.org.uk], Inkscape [inkscape.org] etc until they start seriously eating into Adobe's monopoly (same way M$ lost the server market). Your move, Adobe!

Re:Port photoshop

[by Anonymous Coward]

> Seriously, not trolling... why bother? Say you're a designer, and you have either Mac OSX
> on a Mac, or XP on a PC. Both are relatively modern, fast machines. What would switching
> to Linux get you?

Freedom from the constant expensive M$ or O$X upgrade cycle. $129 for a point upgrade? please. Linux is free in more than just freedom.

Re:Port photoshop

[nxtw (866177)]

FWIW, with Windows you don't really need those "point upgrades" until 5+ years until after they're released. Most new software still works with Windows 2000 (with the last free updates, of course). Sure, there are missing features and such, but the majority of the hardware out there supported in XP is still supported in 2000. The latest .NET Framework, .NET Framework 2.0, still runs on Windows 98 and Me as well as 2000/XP/2003. The latest version of Photoshop still runs on Windows 2000 as well as XP, as does most software I've seen.

I'm sure things are getting better, but the latest version of Photoshop only runs in Mac OS X 10.2 (2002) or later, and is "recommended" for use on 10.3 (2003) or 10.4 (2005) only. I've seen a lot of "System Requirements" for Mac software that explicitly require later versions of the OS. I suspect the APIs have stabilizied greatly across the past few versions.

Re:Port photoshop

[SanityInAnarchy (655584)]

But you concede there's a reason to bother?

I mean, say a new version of Photoshop is released. The old one still works fine, so why upgrade? I mean, you're the one bringing up the "latest version of Photoshop"...

And by the way, if you're seriously considering .NET on Windows 98/ME, go back to it. After your seventeenth bluescreen and your fifth reinstall, Linux will sound like heaven. Point is, upgrades are a good thing, and on Linux, they're free.

But then, that's why I use the Gimp anyway...

Re:Port photoshop

[by Anonymous Coward]

1. Linux is the most comfortable for me (To all you Linux-is-not-ready-for-the-desktop whiners, stfu. Don't tell me what I should like)
2. Macs aren't cheap (and while OS X is pretty, it's still not Linux)
3. Windows is a fucking annoying, retarded OS. Don't tell me to use it
4. I happen to like Photoshop.

Good enough for you?

Re:Port photoshop

[dbIII (701233)]

Both are relatively modern, fast machines. What would switching to Linux get you?

Run it on a faster machine or several of them and display it on your local desktop machine using X Windows.

Re:Port photoshop

[Lord Kano (13027)]

Many graphic houses are designed to run photoshop. Their equipment is calibrated for Photoshop's color separations. Their processes are centered around Photoshop.

The GIMP is cool, don't get me wrong but Photoshop based houses will only run Photoshop.

The day that it is ported to Linux is the day that these houses will start looking at Linux on the desktop.

LK

Re:Port photoshop

[Saven Marek (739395)]

GIMP has had great colour support for many years now, you don't need colour profiles if you're working on real true colour images, so be careful because some desktops are only 16 bit not 24 bit, meaning you will need to use colour profiles, but that's not a fault of the gimp that's a fault of some desktops.

If you want more information then the gimp user [gimp.org] mailing list is the best place for it, and they'll tell you what you want to hear.

Re:What gives?

[SanityInAnarchy (655584)]

Because it's not true.

A few years back, it was "I'd switch to Linux if (insert game) ran on Linux." Or "I'd switch to Linux if Word ran on Linux." Or "I'd switch to Linux if it was easy to set up stuff that I need on Linux."

Not "Microsoft Word", just "Word", so these are probably people who would be fine with OpenOffice. And yes, there was free StarOffice back then.

All of these have been fixed. Microsoft Word does run on Linux, even if you can't deal with OpenOffice. Quite a lot of decent games run natively on Linux, and if you go nVidia, it's not hard to set up. I mean, alright, you don't have AutoPlay -- which is a GOOD THING, remember that rootkit stuff? But I think people can handle typing "emerge quake4".

Plenty of games now work out-of-the-box on Wine, and more work out-of-the-box on Cedega, from the insanely popular (WoW, Counter-Strike) to the unheard of (NexusTK). Drivers come with distros, usually, or are quite easy to find/install.

More recently, there've been other reasons, other things that aren't compatible, but the most commonly cited is "I don't want to learn a new system, and I'm afraid most of my stuff wouldn't work on it." Which is the same old FUD.

If you are hearing that a lot, make a bet with someone. Get them to switch to Linux. Most of the technical stuff is close enough, what we need now is the marketshare so that the FUD can't hold. Making it "cleaner" (native versions instead of Wine) can come later.

Automatic slashdotting

[slavemowgli (585321)]

Hmm, seems that the article redirects to itself when you block cookies, essentially causing the page to reload forever and ever. Can you say "automatic slashdotting"? :)

Biased Survey Construction?

[DongleFondle (655040)]

"Of those top 10 applications, two of them are financial management packages. Looks like there is quite a demand for that. It looks like there is a huge interest in the AUTOCAD arena, as well. Something that is very well worth noting is the demand for multimedia applications."

I imagine this is probably because of the fact that they suggest all of those top ten applications in their dropdown menu (leaving an "other" option at the bottom in case you don't want any of their default applications). Anyone whose ever worked on survey or statistics theory knows this is an obvious bias. That's not to say that's its a bad idea to do this if they have an agenda, I'm just pointing out that the results should definately be taken with a grain of salt here. There may be more relevant programs people would like to see ported to Linux. I imagine lots of people can think of specific games they'd like to see ported. Anyone whose ever reads /. knows that there's a pretty large community of gamers that keep that one Windows box around just for gaming.

Anyways, I say best of luck to Novell. I'd love it if they were able to make some ground with Adobe on porting some of their apps.

Linux CAD

[Kadin2048 (468275)]

AutoCAD used to be offered as a UNIX program. Like the "Photoshop for UNIX" that Adobe offered, it was distributed as a binary for Sun Solaris, I believe. A quick Google search didn't turn up any definitive information on whether or not it's still being offered (I'm thinking no) but there's one university that still has it available for students to use, and you can read the instructions for using it here [usc.edu]. Based on the list of packages [usc.edu] installed on their UNIX systems, I'm going to guess they're older SparcS

Only one I really need

[overshoot (39700)]

and that's a Microsoft NetMeeting compatible conferencing tool. Too many flipping NetMeeting sessions going on at work, and I hate having to borrow an MS box, call up IT, get a login (forgotten immediately) and so on -- all to join a meeting.

Wouldn't hurt to have a client for Webex, either. Never mind what they say, their putative Linux client still seems to require Red Hat 7.x

Re:Only one I really need

[pilot1 (610480)]

can't gnomemeeting communicate with netmeeting clients?

Worked for me

[phorm (591458)]

Last time I checked it worked okey for me, though the Netmeeting client needed an extra audio codec installed... and I remember having video issues at various times when using gatekeepers.

Clippy?

[someonewhois (808065)]

Nobody? Come on, you know you miss him...

Interesting

[MBCook (132727)]

Most of that list doesn't surprise me too much. I thought Photoshop would be first, but Quickbooks does make sense, as does Autocad. I'm a bit surprised to see Act! on the list (I haven't heard about that software in years).

That said, I don't think you'd ever see iTunes for Linux (and I was amazed it was on the list, I would have never guessed it).

And then there is Visio. That will never be ported either. If Visio is there, why isn't Office? That said, I've never met someone who liked Visio in the two years or so I've been exposed to it. What Visio needs first is a good Windows port. OmniGraffle is much better. How about a Linux port of that?

Re:Interesting

[rthille (8526)]

The funny thing is that Visio is a copy of Diagram. I was friends with some people at Lighthouse Design (makers of Diagram), and they had the order from the people who basically 'ported' Diagram to Windows. The thing is, the cost of marketing on Windows was so high that even though Visio sold way more copies than Diagram, they didn't make any money. Then Sun Microsystems bought Lighthouse for the people and killed all the NeXTStep apps and Omnigroup just rewrote Diagram/Visio as Omnigraffle.

Re:Interesting

[sgtrock (191182)]

When you are looking at the Windows platform, there really isn't anything else in Visio's league for doing network and system diagrams at that price point. Note the final qualifier. :)

weh

[labratuk (204918)]

iTunes? hah!

Of that List...

[SmartSsa (19152)]

It actually surprises me that Lotus Notes has never been avail for linux. Since it's heavily Java based it should be easily portable and with IBM backing it in their Pro-Linux state... why hasn't it been? Maybe because it's a hunk of junk.

The only ones on that list that I'd care to see are Visio, Autocad and Photoshop.

But I do agree that there's a serious need for business/money/finance software. GNUCash and a few other's that are out there just don't cut it. I just hate Quickbooks with a passion :)

Re:Of that List...

[bobrog (945115)]

IBM is rolling out GTK based Linux Notes client called the "Notes Plugin" which will be a part of their Lotus Workplace product. This article [techtarget.com] says the Linux Notes Plugin will be available later this year and this blog [edbrill.com] discusses its demo taking place at Lotusphere 2006 this week.

Re:Of that List...

[scottme (584888)]

Au contraire — Lotus Notes was indeed available in a "Unix" version; this existed up to release 4.5 or so. They dropped the port beginning with R5. No great loss — I recall a company running it on Solaris machines and being fairly unhappy with it; it definitely lagged the Windows and OS/2 versions of that time in usability.

It is possible to get the Windows binaries running under WINE or Crossover; I understand that is how Linux diehards in IBM tend to use it. But as others have posted

WTF? No Half Life 2?!?!

[elasticwings (758452)]

Oh, come on. There have got to be a ton of other people that want their CS:S fix without having to keep around a Windows box. And don't start with that Cedega crap. I want it a real Linux installer.

PF

[ArbitraryConstant (763964)]

One of the things I miss on Linux is PF. I like OpenBSD for other reasons, but PF is the only thing I can't do without, so I keep another box around for it.

Once I've got one of those chips with hardware-supported virtualization (AFAIK, OpenBSD doesn't get along with Xen), I'd like to try putting both together on the same box.

Please don't port quickbooks.

[Vellmont (569020)]

I've never used it from a client perspective, but from a file, network, and multiple user perspective it's really quite a terribly designed program. I sincerly hope that Quickbooks is NOT ported to Linux, and someone else designed a different program that's designed with the Internet and multiple users in mind.

Just to give people some perpsective, quickbooks is used by a lot of small businesses. The problem is that these people need to access the books from more than one place. Usually home, and the office. Also, it's quite common for multiple people to want to use the same quickbooks file at the same time. Or, say you want to give access to your quickbooks files to your accountant. Quickbooks was never really designed for the Internet age, and it shows. People solve these problems with ad-hoc solutions like emailing quickbooks files back and forth. Please don't port quickbooks to linux, let this crappy program die the horrible death it deserves.

Re:Please don't port quickbooks.

[pintpusher (854001)]

Quickbooks and Quicken are the reason I left windows in the first place. Both programs were mature products years ago, but did intuit leave well enough alone and move on to something else? nope. All the upgrades that have come out in the past few years basically enable more ways to spy on your stuff and get more of your money through vendor-lock-in. They are bells and whistles that mostly get in the way, clutter the desktop and intrude on real work. I mean they've got freakin' pop-ups for chris'sakes. If I

MOD PARENT UP

[The Slashdotted (665535)]

Quickbook's is one of the worst written programs out there.
It's based of IE 5.5, and is made of swiss cheese.
It requires administive privledges (or local standard user) to check a balance.
The database is propritary, and very easy to corrupt.
It's reporting functions are pathetic at best.
The $3000 "Enterprise Edition" won't work off a DFS share.
You need to buy a new payroll file every year, or a yearly version.

Hell, Microsoft is going to include it's clone of QB in Office for Small Business, and they're more open then Intuit.

How about some games?

[randomErr (172078)]

I think Duke Nukem Forever [wikipedia.org] would be great on Linux!

Outlook!

[ivoras (455934)]

It looks like that people woting for that list were not big corporate users. In such environments Outlook is immensly popular, especially with management staff, because it's a nice integrated environment for everything from e-mail to group calendars, todo lists and similar organisational features. Of course, all this depends on Exchange servers.

I've heard several times that offices could switch to Linux, and even tolerate OpenOffice, but they simply cannot do without Outlook+Exchange.

Yes, there may be better solutions (such as using separate applications for e-mail and calendaring, possibly web applications) but none are as polished, easy to use and comprehensive in just the areas people like this need.

'Battle Of The AJAX Mail Programs'

[Burz (138833)]

This may interest you:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8722 [linuxjournal.com]

What do all those programs have in common?

[gnarlin (696263)]

That's right, they are all propriatery. The groups who use this software are so bound into it's usage that the very idea of trying to substitude one of these programs for a Free one makes people scared. It won't matter how closely Free software can mimic those programs, as long as they aren't *EXACTLY* the same, they won't touch'em.

Also this article sounds way to much like begging to me.
"please sir, can we have these program ported! Please!". "All our money will belong to you if you do!" etc. Why do we need these programs so badly? Might it be because now there is some value to be found in using Free software?

I'm sorry if I sound a bit bitter about this. I worked at a small firm where everyone was using popular propriatery software, always without any proper licenses. If I talked about it or sugested a substitude (gimp for photoshop) people would just say that it didn't matter and that everyone did it, so why shouldn't they.
If people were actually forced to pay for all the software that they used (that they can't get for free legally) there might be a serious effort put into trying alternatives.

Just let me ask you one question.
How often in the last month have you been asked for a copy of a propriatery program that you know you aren't legally allowed to copy and distribute to others?

Thinking to buy out CodeWeavers?

[Cycon (11899)]

I can't find the link on their site, but CodeWeaver's Crossover Office lists almost verbatim the apps from the dropdown in the survey [novell.com] among their "supported" apps when you're installing new software.

Ximian was a small outfit and Novell bought them out, maybe they're considering a similar move with CodeWeavers?

In any case, for comparison here's a list [codeweavers.com] of top most wanted apps for Crossover to support next.

Visio

[NullProg (70833)]

Isn't going to happen until Microsoft starts being a platform neutral software company again. I have an older pre-Microsoft version and it rocked. Too bad Microsoft killed (oops, integrated) it with Office.

Dia http://www.gnome.org/projects/dia/ [gnome.org] as replacement works for me. Windows port available.

Hey Microsoft /. patrollers, ask upper management if its worth selling me nothing or selling me a $40-$100 standalone version of Visio for Linux? I'm not a thief and I won't upload my copy.

Enjoy,

Re:Visio

[Zontar The Mindless (9002)]

Unfortunately, Dia just isn't quite there yet.

And it doesn't seem to be getting any closer anytime soon. Is development on it even still active? There's not been a new Dia release in over a year now.

Macromedia & Adobe

[queenb**ch (446380)]

I need Macromedia's suite, Photoshop (I love GIMP, but it just isn't the same), Illustrator. My husband is a commercial artist and he really needs Quark. Most of the other stuff I use on a regular basis has acceptable open source equivalents.

2 cents,

Queen B

Endnote and FruityLoops

[cyclop (780354)]

1) - EndNote.
I'm keeping a WindowsXP partition on my lab PC and a copy of Office installed on it only for this purpose. I looked into Pybliographer but it's simply not good enough (pretty unstable, cumbersome bugs) and too much LyX/LaTeX oriented (I'd LOVE to use LaTeX at work, but I can't,alas), I also spent some time looking at the code to improve it: it's good Python, but uhm, I don't like it. I'm seriously considering writing a replacement.

2) - FruityLoops, Reaktor, Traktor etc.
There is no music-generating and mixing software for Linux that AFAIK comes even *close* to proprietary windows solutions. However seems FruityLoops 4 COULD work on the latest versions of Wine. The audio output on my machine is horrible, but I think the problem is my audio setup on the Linux side.

I also can't see why people who write Windows apps can't recompile them for Linux against the Winelibs. This would give 99.999% Linux compatibility (at least on x86) with very minor tweakings to the codebase (AFAIK). Can someone explain me why can't this happen?

Re:Dreaming

[jonwil (467024)]

I use OpenOffice and I have yet to find a single Word document that it cant open and read. The formatting may not be pixel accurate to what Word would display but so what, its accurate enough that I can understand what the document is saying.
As for exports, I can save in PDF.
Even where I do need to save as a Word document, I have yet to find an OpenOffice document that, when exported as a Word document, cant be opened, read and used properly by Word.

Someone should make a site hosting a pile of testcase docu

Re:autocad, but not microstation?

[jonwil (467024)]

I think one of the problems with CMYK is that every CMYK output device (printers, imagesetters, plotters, printing presses etc) needs its own translation logic/tables to translate the colors into CMYK that will look like what the artist wants when the CMYK is output to the device. Device makers will give this information to companies like Adobe but would be reluctant to give it to developers of an open source program (especially under a licence that is open-source friendly)

Re:Finale

[Theatetus (521747)]

Different strokes, I guess. Lilypond's superiority (to me, at least) over Finale and Sibelius was one of the things that pulled me away from the Dark Side. I could never get braces quite right on Finale and they just work with lilypond.

Have you tried denemo? It's a really nice GUI front end to lilypond, with the added benefit that when the morendo isn't stretching out exactly right you can just edit the markup to make it do exactly what you want.

Re:My List of Apps I'd Like to see on Linux...

[SanityInAnarchy (655584)]

FileMaker is a BAD IDEA for the same reason Quickbooks is. Look at the other comments. It does work in Wine, though, and has a Linux server.

DreamWeaver? Hire a web designer. There are web development tools for Linux, and there are web-based development tools for anything with a decent browser, but honestly, if what you're doing requires something as complex as DreamWeaver, it really requires a professional web developer comfortable with Linux and Vim.

I have no idea what InDesign is or what it really doe

Re:Pointless.

[Crayon Kid (700279)]

First, Linux users are used to free (beer) software. There are a few money-makers running on Linux, but for the most part the software doesn't cost anything except maybe the occasional Paypal donation. Secondly, Linux users are used to Free (speech) software. If the software is not licensed under the GPL (or a GPL-compatible license) there will be hell to pay.

Stop right there. You're basically saying that there's no money in the Linux desktop market and there never will be. Which is simply wrong and a harmf

Re:Access (and SQL Server) Clone

[cruachan (113813)]

LAMP and Web-based solutions are all well and good, but unfortunatly they're not (yet) the rich interactive environment that Access is. For simple apps yes, but for the kind of business application which I need to handle with multiple rules, validation, lookups etc. then you'd be looking at cutting-edge AJAX to replicate to a similar level of user experience, and the amount of effort required compared to creating Access forms simply isn't feasible.

And that's leaving aside reports. Access is very quick and

Nedit

[Chris Tyler (2180)]

Nedit is a notepad on steriods. Simple UI, very clean window layout, open source, but with all the toys under the hood: syntax highlighting, rectangular moves, autoindent, macros, the works. (Unfortunately based on Motif/Lesstif, but about the nicest Motif UI I've seen in a long time).