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."

Port photoshop

[baryon351]

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

Interesting

[MBCook]

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:Port photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

I dare you to use GIMP [gimp.org] for a month without using photoshop. Almost everyone who does stays with GIMP.

Do you REALLY need the patented cruft Adobe adds to their apps? You probably don't.

weh

[labratuk]

iTunes? hah!

Re:Port photoshop

[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.

WTF? No Half Life 2?!?!

[elasticwings]

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.

Lotus Notes

[lpcustom]

C'mon ????Lotus Notes....I wish they would unport it for Windows....I'm forced to use it at work and I hate it. Give us Google Earth for Linux. That needs to be on the list. I set up dual boot on my home PC which is normally just Linux, just so I could get on Google Earth. Before anyone tells me to Wine it, I have tried to and it's just not going to work on my preferred distro. I've heard of spyware, malware, abandonware, shareware, freeware, and all that. Lotus Notes should be labelled crapware.

Pointless.

[Anonymous Coward]

Porting any of those apps to Linux would be a wasted effort.

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. I cannot think of any proprietary software that was ported from Windows to Linux and was successful in any sense of the word (I'm sure somebody will counter this will some examples). The GPL is just too entrenched in the Linux software world to allow any competitors. Thirdly, Linux users are more-or-less satisfied with "good enough" Free software; they rarely even consider proprietary software when Free software exists that gets the job done.

I don't think there is a big enough market for proprietary software to make it worth their while. However, I do think there may be a market for "complete solutions". I.e. Adobe could come up with a high-end fully-contained Linux-based photo-editing solution. However, proprietary software (for the most part) is so entrenched on the Windows platform that it would be hard for them to break away from that.

Let's be realistic. Do you really think these Linux users are going to shell out $500 for Photoshop if it gets ported? Most of thse people (VERY BIG GENERALIZATION, but in my experience the truth) are the same people who pirate the Windows version of Photoshop. Granted not every Linux user is RMS or a pimply-faced Microsoft hater, but I just don't think the market is big enough to warrant porting some of these major applications. On the other hand, if there is going to be a market you probably want to be the first player there. Then again, we are entering the 10th year of "Year of Desktop Linux". The more things change the more they stay the same.

Those are just the issues with the Linux mentality. What about the technical issues? There are hundreds of Linux distributions. There are just a few different Windows configurations, mostly compatibile with each other. Linux is still too fragmented to offer the (platform) stability that Windows has. Adobe or Quicken or whoever would probably have i386/i686 binaries, and mabye x86-64 if you're lucky. Granted that covers the majority, but then you have all kinds of package and library dependencies. In Windows you can basically ship a binary and a few DLLs and your product works out of the box (again, a generalization). In Linux a proprietary software application would be difficult to deploy and maintain across more than a few major distros. And then users of other distros would whine about being left out and things not working and whatever other problems they have. Linux is always a moving platform, while Windows offers excellent binary backwards compatibility (at least compared to Linux).

To summarize, I don't think proprietary software will be successful on Linux until the market grows. I don't think the market will grow until proprietary software is successful on Linux. I think this is another "Year of Linux on the Desktop" situation.

What do all those programs have in common?

[gnarlin]

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?

Re:Port photoshop

[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:Dreaming

[pintpusher]

Here's how I deal with this. I use OO.o and send them in native (.odf?) format. THen I let the word victims figure it out. When they email back that they can't read my file, I wait 24 hours before sending an rtf. Then I politely suggest that they upgrade to more modern software that can handle this format. ;)

And the reality in my little world is that most people are running a couple years behind on their Word updates anyway and so the filters work fine.

World of Warcraft

[Anonymous Coward]

Counterstrike
Starwars Battlefront
Battlefield 2
Age of Empires III
FEAR
etc...

Re:Port photoshop

[SanityInAnarchy]

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:What gives?

[SanityInAnarchy]

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.

Re:Pointless.

[Crayon Kid]

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 harmful way to think.

Open source is a software development tool, not a religion or a marketing strategy.

Are Windows or Mac users really used to buying every last separate piece of software? Do they really do that? Do they never pay for anything and pirate everything (like some corporate drones already say they do)? Aren't these just extremes?

I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. People will use free (beer) applications if they're Good Enough (well, duh, who wouldn't) but will pay sensible amounts for their own copy of a piece of quality software, with support and love put into it.

As long as a state of balance is kept -- ie. the free stuff is of decent quality, and the payed-for stuff doesn't try to screw you with spyware or claiming you don't really own your copy -- everything's cool and everybody's happy.

On a personal note, I wish Microsoft wasn't a world-wide monopoly. They omnipresence blurs and distorts everything. They superimpose their double-standards and medium quality software over everything. Imagine a world where platforms like Mac, Linux, Solaris, OS/2, BeOS and whatnot occupied fairly equal market shares. There would be a lot less misguided passion and hate, IMHO, and more quality and consumers getting their work done on the platform of their choice.

Re:Port photoshop

[flewp]

I dare you to use GIMP for a month without using photoshop. Almost everyone who does stays with GIMP.

Sorry, but those people you're talking about obviousely aren't professionals. I don't know any reputable design house that relies solely on the gimp, and never uses PS. Face it, while the gimp is indeed a nice app for being a free one, it is absolutely *NOT* a replacement for Photoshop in the professional work environment. You can claim all you want that it is a viable replacement for PS, which may be the case for a casual user, but until you've actually done graphic design, illustration, CG, etc, for a living, you'll never understand.

Re:Interesting

[sgtrock]

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. :)

Re:What gives?

[ultranova]

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

More likely it's the same reason why people say "Sun" and not "Earth's Sun"; that is, when there is no significant possibility of a misunderstanding, qualifiers tend to be dropped. Human language is a compressed communication protocol :D.

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).

I must have just lousy luck then, since the only program I've ever gotten working well under either is Morrowind, which crashes all the time (but it does that on Windows too, so that's not Wine's fault).

And so many of them are so frustratingly close - Arcanum's graphics are just corrupted enough to be unplayable, Poser works perfectly but doesn't display any text, etc.

Oh well, can as well ask it here: does anyone know any way to make Poser 6 display text in labels under Wine ? I've found nothing from Google... This might be some kind of font problem (there's a file called "ASIFONT.FON" in Poser's main dir), but neither Wine nor Cedega show any error messages whatsoever.

And, failing that, does anyone know any Poser replacement that runs on Linux (no, a generic 3D editor isn't a replacement, since they tend to have user interfaces that make edlin look sane) ?

Re:Outlook!

[pclminion]

Holy crap don't spread that disease around. At my workplace, being caught using Outlook is grounds for termination (not kidding).

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

[mad.frog]

Together with InDesign and Illustrator, this would round out a complete Linux publishing solution that any professional could sit down at and get productive.

Well, OK, but look at this from Adobe's perspective:

-- Adobe already owns the lion's share of the "creative professional" market, virtuall all of whom use Mac or Windows.
-- Adobe could decide to spend millions of dollars, and man-months (or more likely, man-years) of time doing Linux ports... which, at best, would get customers currently using Mac or Windows to switch to Linux.
-- This may be great for Linux, but helps Adobe not at all. In fact, they have now blown money and time to do ports which probably haven't affected their marketshare in the slightest (but most certainly would increase their tech support costs).

Bottom line: Adobe's in business to make money, not to promote Linux. I guarantee you that if Linux ports made it likely for them to increase their profit, those ports would be underway tomorrow.

country stats

[gggggggg]

From TFA
I checked the numbers, and just under half of the overall requests came from the United States. About ten percent came from the United Kingdom. Why could that be? Well, it could be because the survey is in English. Or, it could be because most of the people who want to switch to Linux live in those countries.

Well, why could that be?...Language issues aside, any chance of it being that this stupid top 10 country list by number of requests is pretty much based on their population?! (note...population _with_ internet access).

I bet they're also having quite a higher number of right-handed readers than left-handed. Now why could that be...?

Wikipedia: US 300million, UK 60million, Germany 82million...

Re:Mod parent up.

[Burz]

Thanks.

You have an excellent point about the demands of tech support.

I have actually done Linux product support for a living: Shrink-wrap Linux applications, along with Windows versions. And the vendor actually did target Redhat specifically... 6.x, 7.0, and 7.2 were supported. Redhat 7.1 was never supported because of an incompatability introduced with libpthreads that was rectified in 7.2. The introducion of Redhat 8 made the largest app nearly impossible to install, and 9.x just blew the whole thing out of the water.

I have several major programs which worked on Redhat 7 but a couple years later couldn't work with current Linux distros: WP Office 2000, Rational Rose 7, VMWare 3.2. Tux Racer is the only independant program I have older than 2 years that still runs.

Why have this lethal environment? Distro architects say that a constant flow of architechtural changes is easier on them than major revisions after 3-5 years. But I am inclined to think this amounts to cutting corners where flesh exists.

Re:Port photoshop

[Anonymous Coward]

If configuration is a requirement, Windows is not ready for the desktop. Most "average joe" users can't configure it, and whenever they modify administrator-land settings, their machine gets eaten by malware. People who aren't at least amature sysadmins don't do a good job of administering a system with any OS. Users can use Linux just as well as they use Windows. Users don't add printers or change system configurations.