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Novell Suggests Linux Program Replacements 358

Posted by Zonk from the gimp-!=-photoshop dept.
An anonymous reader writes "As a result of over 14,000 votes since the beginning of January, Adobe Photoshop, Autocad, Dreamweaver, iTunes, and Macromedia Flash are currently the top 5 'most wanted' Windows/MacOS-only applications in Novell's online survey. From comments made by the survey participants, Novell has also listed suggested substitutes for each of the five. What do readers think of these suggestions?"
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Novell Suggests Linux Program Replacements More

Novell Suggests Linux Program Replacements

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  • Dreamweaver and flash ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tomhudson ( 43916 ) <barbara.hudson@b ... m ['son' in gap]> on Thursday February 16, 2006 @10:36AM (#14732449) Journal

    Because then we linux fans can also churn out web pages that are an eyesore, full of bloat, proprietary ...

    Yeah ,,, whatever.

    • Dreamweaver makes standard compliant code.

      And I think many web developers would love to use a technology that is equivalent to Flash but open and OSS, if such a technology existed and was practical. But it doesn't.
      • Dreamweaver makes BLOATED code. Its also crap to maintain - click on this, click on that., yadda yada yadda. Only for people who don't know how to write their own scripts to generate web pages that don't suck.

        Add in the need for proprietary extensions for database access.

        Also, there is nothing to imply that any Linux version of any of these products has to be either open or free.

    • Re:Dreamweaver and flash ... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Southpaw018 ( 793465 ) * on Thursday February 16, 2006 @10:57AM (#14732655) Journal
      IF you have Dreamweaver configured properly, and IF you're not trying to do anything too cute or fancy, and IF you're making a new webpage and not revising an existing one, Dreamweaver can output XHTML 1.0 Strict/CSS 2.1.

      Since those three conditions are only ever met under the best of circumstances, I suggest your favorite text editor as a replacement for it. Seriously. Hand coding your pages is just as fast as creating them in Dreamweaver, albeit with a higher learning curve, and what you can craft with the pure code is fantastic.

      • Since those three conditions are only ever met under the best of circumstances, I suggest your favorite text editor as a replacement for it. Seriously. Hand coding your pages is just as fast as creating them in Dreamweaver, albeit with a higher learning curve, and what you can craft with the pure code is fantastic.

        Finally, someone who "gets it." Especially since most work IS maintenance work, and its a lot easier to write a perl script and make file to regenerate 100 pages than to load each one and chan

    • Four of these five applications are only for specialized geek users (who probably voted early and often in this poll). Really, most normal people don't use these programs.

      The fifth, iTunes, is a proprietary DRM package that it would be best to stay away from (although it too, is popular in geekdom).

      • iTunes is more than the iTMS (Score:5, Informative)

        by Kadin2048 ( 468275 ) <.ten.yxox. .ta. .nidak.todhsals.> on Thursday February 16, 2006 @12:20PM (#14733630) Homepage Journal
        The fifth, iTunes, is a proprietary DRM package that it would be best to stay away from (although it too, is popular in geekdom).

        If you could make a program which replicated everything that iTunes does, without the iTMS or DRM functions, I think you'd do what 90% of people want.

        I know a lot of iPod owners (and I'm sure there are quite a few here on /.) who have never purchased any music from iTMS and have never had to use a DRMed file. Personally I've only ever bought two, out of a total library of close to 20,000. The Music Store is not iTunes' "killer feature." Ease of use, a basically seamless interface, and tight integration with the iPod are. The new automatic features for subscribing to, downloading, and maintaining Podcasts on an iPod are going to be more important as people realize how cool a thing it is.

        But replicating the DRM functions isn't necessarily important in terms of coming up with a free alternative to iTunes, it's replicating that useability experience and other features that is.
        • I agree completely. Some people eschew iTunes because of its DRM, but they probably don't realize that iTunes can be used without ever visiting its music store. In fact, there is even a preference to turn it off. I must admit that I have a few purchased songs from it, but the vast majority of my music library (ripped right in iTunes, by the way) is composed of standard MP3 and AAC files that can be used by any free (including OSS) player that supports those formats.
        • The Music Store is not iTunes' "killer feature." Ease of use, a basically seamless interface, and tight integration with the iPod are.

          iTunes and ease of use in the same sentence? Gaaaa. Even experienced software developers have a large rampup period learning its arcane interface, and it doesn't make easy things easy at all--you have to know which of a large number of tabs do what, and you can't (for instance) right-click on an mp3 and say "send this to my player". There is a pane that supports dragging a
          • I've had completely the opposite experience with iTunes. Drag and drop to the iPod is easy, you just drag the song onto where is says "iPod". If I want to find a song/album/artist I just start typing the name and it generally shows up in the list within five keypresses. Ripping a CD is easy - insert CD, leave and come back when the CD ejects.

            The main way I can tell that iTunes is easy to use is that I gave my dad an iPod for his birthday and the only emails I've had from him about it have been saying how he
          • Interesting. Well, that's a very different experience than I or anyone I've ever talked to has had.

            I'm going to guess that you're a Windows user. I'm making that guess because I think you'd have to be a Windows user to think it's more obvious to select something, right click, and send it to the player, than drag-and-drop it onto the iPod in the left-hand Source pane. (I'm not sure how you got that hidden by default, since it's where the Library and all the user's Playlists are kept, as well as how the iTMS
    • Because then we linux fans can also churn out web pages that are an eyesore, full of bloat, proprietary ...

      Linux fans aren't happy just churning out bloated eyesore DESKTOP apps anymore!

  • CAD (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rjstanford ( 69735 ) on Thursday February 16, 2006 @10:41AM (#14732495) Homepage Journal
    Autocad is, for better or for worse, the standard. Right now, there are no comparable products - its somewhat like suggesting that people use Write instead of Word. For simple stuff, yes, it works just fine (and indeed with just a few enhancements would probably be better than Word for most people). For anything more complex, like most real-world uses of AutoCad (as opposed to folk just doodling around in it), you need a full blown package.

    I'm sure there are people running small shops off of [insert your favorite linux cad program here] who can't wait to tell us about them. However, if you're running even a moderate sized shop, you probably need the real thing. Besides, one of the real strengths of ACAD are all of the add ons, like Land Developer Desktop, that you certainly can't get for just any random cad-lite package.

    • List of alternatives (Score:4, Informative)

      by jbeaupre ( 752124 ) on Thursday February 16, 2006 @11:12AM (#14732805)
      I'd have to agree that most alternatives that run on Linux aren't ready yet. But I was surprised to learn Pro/E is availible. http://www.tech-edv.co.at/lunix/CADlinks.html [tech-edv.co.at]

      UGS is also porting software. http://www.ugs.com/about_us/press/press.shtml?id=4 367 [ugs.com]

      Personally, I'd like to see SolidWorks ported. Yes, I ditched Acad for solid modelers 12 years ago and would be very reluctant to go back.

    • "Autocad is, for better or for worse, the standard. Right now, there are no comparable products "

      AutoCAD as the standard is probably for worse. ;)

      I currently use AutoCAD but I watched a demonstration of Solidworks and it makes AutoCAD look like the ancient design tools concept that it is.

      But I would also go so far as to say that VariCAD could replace a large percentage of the work that is done with AutoCAD. I've used VariCAD a bit, until the demo license ran out, and other than learning a different interfac

    • Re:CAD (Score:3, Insightful)

      by injunear ( 840981 )
      Don't expect to ever see Autocad for Linux, ain't gonna happen. Autodesk got involved in the *nix world a little too early on. Their (ugh) Xenix version was a failure, in spite of its promise, and the Sun versions fared little better. (Don't even let me get started on the Mac version.)

      The sad thing about this is that Autocad shines in the A/E/C, civil, and mapping fields, all of the others mentioned are solid modellers/mechanical design and drafting packages. Acad even made a decent GIS or FM with add-o

    • Re:CAD (Score:4, Informative)

      by Sir_Kurt ( 92864 ) on Thursday February 16, 2006 @03:00PM (#14735285)
      I am an architect with a five person practice. I have been searching for a decent non-autodesk CAD program that runs on linux for some time. I have finally found one. Check out Bricscad. http://www.bricscad.com/ [bricscad.com] It is an Autocad clone. Even has the 3-D stuff. Reasonably priced. If you are familiar with Autocad you will be up and running in an hour. It is a Linux port from there windows product and uses wine. We were a Beta test site for them It will read and write all autocad files going back to version 2.2. Worth the price just for that. Kurt.

  • AutoCAD (Score:5, Insightful)

    by a9db0 ( 31053 ) on Thursday February 16, 2006 @10:41AM (#14732503)
    From the perspective of a home user / small business those may be options - I've not yet experimented with them all. But medium to large architectural and engineering companies usually have a large investment in training, tools, libraries, and licenses that they are unwilling to give up, especially if it means they might lose one micron of functionality or productivity.

    I for one would have no problem writing checks to AutoDesk for AutoCAD if it were ported to Linux.

  • Story posted to the general public at 9:35

    Site Slashdotted 9:43

    Way to go crew !

  • So.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Otter ( 3800 ) on Thursday February 16, 2006 @10:50AM (#14732581) Journal
    Novell does this survey about "datacenter" usage, in which the "datacenter" needs a replacement not for SAP or Peoplesoft, but for iTunes and World of Warcraft. And their solution is to toss out a bunch of "replacements" with no regard for their functionality.

    No offense, but the Linux community already has thousands of 14-year-olds cranking out helpful information like this -- it hardly seems like Novell needs to join in.

    • Re:So.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SocietyoftheFist ( 316444 ) on Thursday February 16, 2006 @11:19AM (#14732881)
      You noticed that too? I could only think that why would you offer up a replacement unless you knew the requirements? The replacements for AutoCAD for instance aren't even close to providing all the AutoCAD does and I recally one comment saying that they Linux alternative, "looked pretty slick". Get back to me when you can compare doing a complex task in both.
  • already slashdotted.

    Maybe this [nyud.net] will work.

    But really, the programs suggested have reasonable alternates that I know of (minus autoCAD, since I haven't used that since college).

    Photoshop -- gimp [gimp.org]
    itunes -- there are multiple, but i'm still content with xmms [xmms.org]
    flash -- HTML web pages. i'm not the only one browsing with flashblock on, for good reason
    dreamweaver -- vi [vim.org] & emacs [gnu.org] -- nuf said

    • there are multiple, but i'm still content with xmms

      The word content has two meanings. You used it as an adjective meaning happy, but it is also a mass noun meaning works of authorship other than computer programs. So given that xmms lacks iTunes Music Store, do you find the other kind of "content" through iRATE?

      flash -- HTML web pages.

      Please point me to the HTML version of Homestar Runner.

  • Damn. Now I'll never know which Linux app can replace Dreamweaver... ;)

    This is good first step -- I want better apps available on the Linux platform. Personally, I'd like to see a good file manager ported to Linux (comparable to Directory Opus 8). So far, every file manager I've tried are either functional copies of DirOpus 4-5 or that old Norton Dos-app.

  • this is SO going to be a troll-fest... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Draek ( 916851 ) on Thursday February 16, 2006 @10:53AM (#14732618)
    this is so going to be GIMP-vs-Photoshop all over again, with doses of Flash-sucks, Vi-rules, and the usual dose of propietary-app-is-THE-standard and even worse, those OSS-app-must-behave-like-commercial-app trolls, which are the same OSS-doesn't-innovate trolls... for heaven's sake, can't we just have a WEEK without these flamewars? I think it was better when we had a new story every week hailing our new Google overlords...

    • Re:this is SO going to be a troll-fest... (Score:5, Informative)

      by vurian ( 645456 ) on Thursday February 16, 2006 @10:57AM (#14732654) Homepage
      Besides, the Gimp isn't the only player in town... In eleven days (Feb. 27), we'll release the rc1 of KOffice 1.5, with Krita 1.5 in it. And Krita has already cmyk, 16 bit support, lab, raw import and lots of other fun features.

      • Besides, the Gimp isn't the only player in town

        Which "town"? I'll explain why an important "town" is cross-platform applications that work on both Microsoft Windows and *n?x.

        In eleven days (Feb. 27), we'll release the rc1 of KOffice 1.5, with Krita 1.5 in it. And Krita has already cmyk, 16 bit support, lab, raw import and lots of other fun features.

        I've read that the transition from Windows to KDE is easier if you migrate users to the apps one at a time before you switch the operating system and d

  • Help with next generation GIMP (Score:4, Informative)

    by brewer13210 ( 821462 ) on Thursday February 16, 2006 @10:54AM (#14732629) Homepage
    No doubt that Photoshop has some features that GIMP lacks, and that professionals can't do without (CMYK color, higher color depth, etc.). The next generation of GIMP will be based on GEGL (Generic Graphical Library) which will provide the bulk of these features, but it's development has been a bit slow. Lend a hand and we can help bring GIMP on-par with photoshop.

    http://www.gegl.org/ [gegl.org]

    Todd

    • Un-Gimp the UI first. Examples follow... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16, 2006 @12:39PM (#14733826)
      Fix. The. UI. Then we can talk features, mmkay?

      Resize selections, please. Not by adding or subtraction, but by dragging, like in All Other Apps(TM).

      Not everything on right-click ,always. It's called a CONTEXT menu. Be selective. Present reasonable choices.

      Resize brushes by pressing buttons, remove limitations - I don't want to create new brushes to get a new size.

      And so on. This has nothing to do with imitating photoshop or anything, it's just common sense and removing frustrations. Just because the people who have been developing Gimp since the 90's are able to work *effectively* in it doesn't mean anyone else can.

      Others can help fill this list, then someone maybe, maybe dares file a bug or ask the list. Then again, Carol the Dragon *will* bite your head of for it unless one of the others get there first, so wear flame-safe suit.

  • PhotoShop 7 reportedly works with WINE (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jdgreen7 ( 524066 ) on Thursday February 16, 2006 @10:55AM (#14732635) Homepage
    As of the most recent release (yesterday), WINE 0.9.8 has reportedly fixed PS7 to run in Linux (obviously x86 only).
    • Indeed, and the article's suggestions include "Run it under WINE" for some of the programs (Including Photoshop IIRC).

      They suggest a few alternatives for Photoshop, but they aren't really relative. We've already had this debate on Slashdot before, and the consensus is that even if Gimp offers the same functionality as Photoshop, unless it presents an identical interface, people aren't going to use it. Professionals using Photoshop are content to continue using Photoshop, and they're not going to switch to L

  • Er...this isn't Novell (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jnik ( 1733 ) on Thursday February 16, 2006 @11:13AM (#14732819)
    Novell did the original survey. Desktoplinux.com (a ZD thing, apparently) is suggesting the alternatives.

    • Aw, crap (Score:2)

      by jnik ( 1733 )
      So it is Novell...ZD is just taking everything and reslicing it with minimal quotation marks. And not linking the original source. *headdesk*
  • Please, for the love of god, Learn the concept of an MDI.
    I have not seen a single OSS (GUI) application which uses this basic interface concept.

    I'm sure this is a religious issue, but I've not actually seen the arguments against MDIs.
    • Arguments AGAINST MDI

      1 - Your window manager provides perfectly good window control -- why would you need this duplicated into the application.

      2 - If the window manager is changed, how does MDI accomodate the new controls?

      3 - MDI doesn't work with virtual desktops.

      There are more problems with MDI, but these are the top three. Basically, NO application should EVER use MDI. Certainly not in a Unix environment.

      Ratboy.

      • That's better-stated than my comment below. I have a window manager to let me manage windows. I don't need an application to bring its own window manager with it. I mean, I can scream "give me mechanism not policy" until my face turns red but until application designers "get it", I'm going to be stuck having to deal with the fact that Windows has a crappy window manager which forces application developers to bring their own window management capabilities.

        Seriously, is there anybody who has spent some time

    • I'm sure this is a religious issue, but I've not actually seen the arguments against MDIs.

      Oh, that's simple: MDI programs cover up real estate needlessly. If I'm editing a couple of photos in an SDI program like the GIMP, I want the screen area for those photos and whatever tool windows I'm using and nothing else taken up by my graphics manipulation program. Why? Several reasons:

      1. If I'm editing graphics, I'm usually doing it by according to some list of changes someone gave me, which might be in an e
    • I've not seen any arguments for them, either. You want to cover the entire desktop with a big window that does nothing, other than serve as a desktop replacement for the little windows? Do you somehow cover all of the MDI parent window with them? And if so, why bother having the parent there in the first place?

      And if you don't have the child windows covering everything, why waste the space painting up a gray background? You could stick gaim in one of the unused portions, and follow a conversation, or whatev
    • That's because MDI is a horrible UI. Tabs are ok, though. Don't get me started on the way M$ implemented MDI with recent versions of excel.

    • Please, for the love of god, Learn the concept of an MDI.
      I have not seen a single OSS (GUI) application which uses this basic interface concept.

      I'm sure this is a religious issue, but I've not actually seen the arguments against MDIs.

      No, it's not a religious issue. You obviously haven't mastered the power of multiple desktops yet. I normally use nine of them and set their bindings to Ctl-Alt-Keypad #, but some people prefer to use a pager. It really makes it easy to keep your work organized. Really, give it

  • Misguided Objections and Real Obstacles (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Ankh ( 19084 ) * on Thursday February 16, 2006 @11:27AM (#14732972) Homepage
    If Novell want people - especially corporate users - to move to their Linux distribution instead of using MacOS or MS Windows, then yes, identify the things that are blocking them, and then identify alternatives.

    If someone says they need to run Adobe Creative Studio (say), you have three choices:

    (1) see if it's possible to give them Linux with some combination of open source/Libre software, and have them be as effective. In a corporate environment this will probably involve training.

    (2) see if you can get Adobe Creative Suite (or whatever it is they say they need) to run on Linux, either via a system like WINE or by arranging for the software to be ported.

    (3) arrange for the corporation to employ someone else.

    People's needs and people's beliefs are not the same. It's not sufficient to say "you could actually work in this totally different way with these tools that are totally unknown to you" because that just creates anxiety, nervousness and distrust. You have to be gentler than that.

    There's also motivation -- people may perceive it to be easier to get a job using PhotoShop than a job using GIMP (I am not saying whether it is true or not, but only that people may have this belief).

    The hardest place to make changes is at the periphery of an organisation - the people who deal with other groups. For example, the person who receives AutoCAD files from external engineering companies, or the person who works with print firms and ad agencies who say "send me the Quark file and the PSDs for your images", or the external copy editor who says "send me the Microsoft Word file and I'll use Word's revision control to mark all the changes", there are a great many examples. You can't generally get outside organisations to change unless you are a major customer and they are a small firm, but when they are using high end CAD packages licensed at $30,000 per user (yes, that's a real figure) and they have spent, say, $150,000 on training in the past three years, they aren't about to change.

    Instead, Novell needs to demonstrate that they have a viable platform for a lot of use cases, and it's clear today that for many people that this means running some existing commercial applications. And furthermore that it isn't only about features of those applications, or which is "better".

    Liam

    • If Novell want people - especially corporate users - to move to their Linux distribution instead of using MacOS or MS Windows, then yes, identify the things that are blocking them, and then identify alternatives.

      Good point, but the alternatives aren't always alternatives. If I have a choice of having to put together an entire suite of alternatives which may not have everything I need, combined with retraining all my user base, versus using a highly functional single program that has an existing trained

  • the most desired are ones I never use (Score:4, Insightful)

    by willCode4Beer.com ( 783783 ) on Thursday February 16, 2006 @11:28AM (#14732989) Homepage Journal
    To me this is kind of funny.
    The apps that the most people want are ones that I never use.
    On linux I already have IBM WSAD, Eclipse, and the standard dev tools.
    I've got Firefox (which I would use on windows if I used it)
    I've got Evolution (there is no good Windows equivalent of this)
    I've got GAIM so I can use all my IM's in one app
    I'm not a graphics person, and I'm really surprised that there are that many of them (so much for photoshop). I don't really do design (so much for autocad) and I'm really surprised there are enough people paying that much money to rank the proggram that high in the survey (unless there are that many pirated versions). As for HTML, the text editor in WSAD or MyEclipse is excellent (everybody knows WYSIWYG editors are evil).

    If these are the most desired apps for Linux, then I am very surprised that there aren't more people moving toward it. Seems the apps used 90% of the time by 90% of the population are Web/IM/email. Then again, for typical usage, the OS is really unimportant. Good Web/IM/email apps are available for just about every OS, and I'd bet most consumers probably don't care.
    • "I've got Evolution (there is no good Windows equivalent of this)"

      You must've somehow missed Outlook (the full version, not Express). Evolution has nothing on it.
      "everybody knows WYSIWYG editors are evil"

      Professional web designers also know they are necessary.
      • You must've somehow missed Outlook (the full version, not Express). Evolution has nothing on it.

        Evolution lacks layers of modal dialogs (try adding someone to an address book distribution list -- three or four modal dialogs deep in Outlook!), and doesn't get into cycles where it hangs and starts barfing up dialogs about "LDAP Server found more entries than could be returned for your list" as Outlook does. I have absolutely zero idea why people rave about Outlook.

        That being said, I use mutt.

        • At Sicirec [sicirec.org], we've used Outlook (Express) with LDAP in the past. Outlook didn't even support LDAP autocompletion. So, basically, all the users went on to add all contacts to their local address books. The kind of synchronisation problems this caused were pretty annoying. But, even when the users ignored autocompletion, performing an LDAP search still required struggling through three to four dialogs.

          Admittedly, Mozilla (and now, since 1.5, Tunderbird) has its inperfections too; why can't you globally set t

    • I don't really do design (so much for autocad) and I'm really surprised there are enough people paying that much money to rank the proggram that high in the survey (unless there are that many pirated versions).

      Autodesk is one of the 5 largest software companies in the world. Tens of thousands of businesses rely utterly on hundreds of seats of AutoCAD in order to do their jobs. And pay extortionate fees (to Autodesk AND Microsoft) to do so.

      So you have a potential huge cost savings, a way out of the upgrad

  • This article reminds me of another article [slashdot.org] which explained why professional Photoshop users don't want to switch to The GIMP.

  • Is the article a joke? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Karma Farmer ( 595141 ) on Thursday February 16, 2006 @11:38AM (#14733104)
    Seriously, is this article a joke? It's full of the same helpful, informative advice I'd expect from The Onion, like:
    After checking these applications out a little, some of them look pretty slick. If you need a CAD app, check these out
    I read stuff like this, and I can't figure out if it's sarcasm or stupid.

  • My opinion: (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NoMoreNicksLeft ( 516230 ) <john.oyler@ c o m c a st.net> on Thursday February 16, 2006 @11:47AM (#14733232) Journal
    Photoshop: No substitute is available. Even if we filter out all the whiny bullshit that some of the graphic artist weenies expect (I want all 4000 commercial photoshop plugins too!), we're still left with things that really matter that Gimp can't do. CYMK is the killer feature. And it's apparently nothing that can be hacked in so easily. There are still some usability issues that need to be addressed (though again, some of the weenies will never be happy unless it matched pixel for pixel). There are undoubtedly major issues that a non-photoshop user like myself aren't even aware of. For now we have Gimp, but it is no substitute.

    Autocad: No substitute is available. Again, it's a case of all the commercial plugins... if they really make photoshop worthwhile, well, then they basically *ARE* autocad. They make all the difference. This is going to be a tough act to follow, and worse, there are 100 graphic artist wannabees in open source for every engineer wannabe. I'm not familiar with any of those suggested by the article, but I expect they are pretty much to Autocad what Gimp is to photoshop. No real substitutes available.

    Dreamweaver: Nvu. It's pretty damn close. It could be Dreamweaver with not an incredible amount of work. But I hope that we don't do that. Mozilla/Firefox aren't just IE, they're better than it is. That's what Nvu should be, or some branch off of it (know it's Mozilla Composer at its core, but is it OSS or proprietary? I never really checked it out). The best part is, that it shares some heritage with Firefox and Thunderbird, and that means in theory, writing plugins for it should be possible. I think that could be really useful in an application like that.

    iTunes: Didn't we just see an article about Songbird here recently? The screenshots look pretty slick. Again, based off of mozilla code, I think this could end up being a replacement, even if it isn't yet. Though nothing would ever satisfy the mac weenies, I suspect.

    Flash: Inkscape. It's not there yet, animation isn't ready. They're actually trying to design the interface correctly, rather than just imitate all the other animation software we've seen over the years. Also, they do seem to sort of be waiting for software that can view it (for most purposes, this means browsers that support SVG/SMIL). This will probably be every bit as powerful as Flash... there will be those who disagree of course, but who wouldn't have laughed if you'd suggested that mozilla would be the superior of IE in the beginning?

    • Re:My opinion: (Score:5, Interesting)

      by nagora ( 177841 ) on Thursday February 16, 2006 @12:19PM (#14733616)
      CYMK is the killer feature.

      Actually this is a bit of a myth in my experience. I send stuff to printers from Gimp fairly often and CMYK isn't an issue; they just convert it as part of their process.

      What IS a killer is spot-colour usage. I have no decent method of working with Pantone or other specialised spot colours, nor is there a good system for handling product shots where a particular colour HAS to be represented correctly, such as a Coke can.

      People forget that CMYK can represent less than half the contents of a Pantone swash; it is not the be-all and end-all of colour handling.

      TWW

      • Re:My opinion: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by AaronStJ ( 182845 )
        > People forget that CMYK can represent less than half the contents of a Pantone swash; it is not the be-all and end-all of colour handling.

        It is the be all and end all of color handling if you're targeting four color offset printing. And having your printer to the conversion is no substitute. CMYK can't represent all of RGB, and you want to know about the difference *before* you shell out for set up costs.

        Professionals will never, ever, not even a little bit be able to use GIMP for print design until i
    • "Dreamweaver: Nvu. It's pretty damn close. It could be Dreamweaver with not an incredible amount of work. But I hope that we don't do that. Mozilla/Firefox aren't just IE, they're better than it is. That's what Nvu should be, or some branch off of it (know it's Mozilla Composer at its core, but is it OSS or proprietary? I never really checked it out). The best part is, that it shares some heritage with Firefox and Thunderbird, and that means in theory, writing plugins for it should be possible. I think that

    • Re:My opinion: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by crazyjimmy ( 927974 )
      I've been inching towards moving from my WiNAZI OS to Linux since they announced that you'll have to prove you own your copy of WiNAZI to get any updates. This was furthered when I found out that Corel now owns PSP (sniffle), that M$ was doing their cheap tactics again (OEM bundling, Forced Upgrades, forced hardware based DRM, Required OEM software replacement duirng MB upgrades, etc), and...hell the list goes on and on. M$ is not ever going to be a decent company, and now that the Linux builds are actually

    • Re:My opinion: (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ChaosDiscord ( 4913 ) * on Thursday February 16, 2006 @01:24PM (#14734321) Homepage Journal
      "Photoshop: No substitute is available."

      Depends on the user. The GIMP probably isn't ready for most people doing graphic design, art book layout, and the like. However, the vast majority of Photoshop users barely touch its power. You've got people tweaking their family photos in Photoshop. They've never calibrated their monitor and printer. They aren't aware of the existance of the more suitable Photoshop Elements, and even if they were why would they buy it? They didn't pay for Photoshop, they're happily using their copyright infringing copy. They got Photoshop by borrowing the discs from work get having it installed by their geek friend. You've got people doing online work who will never need CMYK. You've got small town newspapers who've also never done calibration and rely on their reporters to prepare images for final output. (On the last one, I know such a reporter. She didn't like the GIMPs interface, but once she tried GIMPShop, she was perfectly happy. It does everything that Photoshop did for her.)

      I suspect that for the majority of Photoshop users that the GIMP is a suitable replacement. It shouldn't even bug Adobe since most of those users didn't pay for Photoshop in the first place.

  • Rhythmbox? (Score:3, Informative)

    by j00bar ( 895519 ) <slashdot&flowtheory,net> on Thursday February 16, 2006 @11:50AM (#14733263) Homepage

    I'm surprised that Rhythmbox [rhythmbox.org] didn't make the list of iTunes replacements. It looks like iTunes, it interacts with your iPod in a similar fashion, and it even supports DAAP. Other than the iTMS, it's almost a complete replacement.

    -jag
    • I agree.

      I still think Rythmbox has a long way to go before it can hold a candle to iTunes -- and I'm not talking about DRM functions, because I don't give a hummingbird's fart about iTMS, but just regular usability stuff -- but it certainly beats the hell out of their other suggestions.

      A music jukebox is one thing where I think "the UNIX way" just isn't going to agree with most people. In most other circumstances I appreciate small tools that do their job well, but a jukebox is inherently a do-everything-an
  • Not a word about Visio. If I could find a viable alternative to Visio, I'd drop Windows tomorrow. I already use Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice and a dozen other open-source programs on Windows, as well as on my Linux partition. If I had a good Visio clone on Linux, I could dump Windows and never look back.
    And yes, I've tried Dia and all the other Linux diagramming tools. Not even close.
    BTW, I like Visio better when it was an independent product. Now that Microsoft owns it, it's becoming bloatware like all
    • I agree that Dia is apallingly bad. I find that I end up usually making do with OpenOffice Draw if I need a drawing program and I don't have AutoCAD or Visio handy - but it's not a perfect substitute.

  • Missing the point.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Curmudgeonlyoldbloke ( 850482 ) on Thursday February 16, 2006 @12:29PM (#14733735)
    The point isn't that app X on Linux as "nearly as good" or "as good as" app Y on Windows, it's that, when it comes to hiring, there are people out there who know app Y but not app X.

    App X has to be (a) better in some way (to get people to switch) and (b) easy to use by people familiar with app Y (to stop them giving up after 5 minutes).
  • And there is still no viable solution for video-editing on Linux. Sure, there's cinelerra, but its interface is unintuitive and it crashes frequently. Jashahka crashes, too. I haven't even been able to pull off any editing with it because it crashes all of the time. Now, if Novell can suggest a OSS solution for video-editing, that would be something.
  • I remember when I first saw that article on slashdot - I rushed over to vote (If you call opening the link in a new tab "rushing") and what I saw was Quickbooks at the number one spot. I was needless to say hopeful that it would remain there but after a few weeks it started dropping.. Dropping in favor for the likes of iTunes, and Flash, and Dreamweaver...

    The first thing this tells me is that the people who responded most to the survey were of average to below average competency in the world of *nix thus ch

  • I can't believe that LinuxCAD was even listed, that program is ten years out of date, and never was any good to begin with. I wasted my $99 on it around 1998 and AFAIK they haven't ever updated it since. They distribute a RPM built for RedHat 5 or something. It was maybe ok ten years ago, but it was never updated and I doubt it even works on modern Linux systems without a slew of compatibility libs.

    QCad is my preferred 2D CAD program for Linux right now, and it wasn't even listed. Its nothing super fancy,

  • My showstoppers (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Linker3000 ( 626634 ) on Thursday February 16, 2006 @01:06PM (#14734128) Journal
    First, we need a coherent set of tools that let peripherals such as smartphones and PDAs sync with Linux calendaring apps as easy as they do with Outlook - something that's as transparent as plugging the device into a USB port and it 'Just Works'(TM) - that will start to make some lukewarm-to-Linux Managers sit up and take note. For the 'interim', we also need a bridge between Outlook and whatever app is being used under Linux - eGroupware (for example) is getting there with Outlook integration, but it still has some very rough edges. Looking at my desktiop needs, the only things that really stop me going 100% Linux are Outlook and Corel Draw. The other things I use regularly in Windows are easily sorted: Firefox FileZilla SecureCRT/PuTTY PSFTP (SFTP batch file transfers) Word Excel PowerPoint Looking at my users' needs there's two problems: 1) A proprietary app written in A Windows dev framework with an SQL server back-end. Our current supplier has no intention of porting to a LAMP (or Java) environment but one other has written a really good alternative using JBoss that works with a MYSQL back-end and they may get our business. 2) A spreadsheet app that copes with Macros and has 100% interoperability with Excel - we have a few complex spreadsheets with some macros and pivot functions which just choke on OpenOffice but without the Excel-specific stuff we couldn't do half the things we need. The other issue, of course, is whatever we do internally, we will always be thrown stuff (docs, spreadsheets etc.) from external sources and will just look plain daft if we cannot handle it, plus we are in a specialist medical care environment and some tools we use (or have demo'd to us) are Windows-based so we'd be at a disadvantage if we were 100% Linux.
  • WTF? Was this a web-developer only "survey". Where are the apps that could really push Linux into new business environments, as opposed to yet another bloated way to make cartoons on a web page...

  • amaroK vs iTunes (Score:2, Interesting)

    by MWales ( 686969 )
    I've used iTunes very briefly on my father's WinXP machine, and thought it was pretty neat. I then found out about amaroK for Linux and installed it, and have instantly fallen in love with it.

    What does iTunes have to offer that amaroK doesn't match?

    I'm assuming the online music store would be the biggest one, but what else?
  • How exactly is XSI a replacement for Flash?

    I don't know how exactly a $7000 3D modeling/animation/rendering package is a replacment for flash?

    Mental ray (the renderer integrated into XSI) can't even output to SWF, or any vector format for that matter, except for postscript from its contour shaders, which are damn rarely used.

    Novell has not thought about any of this stuff at all.

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