The Most Desired Linux Ports 320
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."
Heh. From TFA: (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Biased Survey Construction? (Score:5, Interesting)
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
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.
Only one I really need (Score:3, Interesting)
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:Port photoshop (Score:2, Interesting)
Of that List... (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Heh. From TFA: (Score:5, Interesting)
some luck for linux-interested people (whole
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
PF (Score:3, Interesting)
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. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Outlook! (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Dreaming (Score:3, Interesting)
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 documents in word format that, when loaded into OpenOffice, do not read & render properly, preferably with screenshots of what they look like in Word. Such a thing would enable the OpenOffice team to improve their import filters to render the documents correctly.
Also, someone should post documents (in OpenOffice format/ODF) that, when exported to a Word document with the latest filters, are unusable in Word (along with a screenshot of what they look like in Word to demonstrate that they are unusable). Such documents would enable the OpenOffice team to improve their export filters to produce better output.
Re:Please don't port quickbooks. (Score:3, Interesting)
I made the mistake a couple years ago of upgrading Quickbooks one too many times and discovered too late that they had eliminated the exporting of MY information. Its locked in there forever. They have annual sunset policies, eliminated data exporting and keep jacking up the prices for what is free tax table informatino from the government. When I stopped using their payroll tax table subscription and began using my own spreadsheets (tired of paying every year for that free government information) guess what! The payroll calculations, using user-entered tax tables were incorrect. The tax table information was correct -- THE CALCULATIONS WERE WRONG! As in 1+1 != 2. seriously. (sorry to shout. I obviously care deeply about this).
So now I must forever maintain a Windows partition on one of my boxen just to maintain a working copy of quickbooks in case I ever need to access some old financial records for my business. Screw them Intuit can have their windows. I will never use another one of their products ever. Do not port quickbooks to linux. I like my free world just fine as it is.
Go GnuCash! [gnucash.org] Check it out. They are close to finally making the GNOME2 port which will bring it to more user desktops. Its a REAL accounting program, not that half-baked quickbooks crap. double entry, invoicing, international support etc. good user community. etc etc etc.
cheers
MOD PARENT UP (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:autocad, but not microstation? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Port photoshop (Score:3, Interesting)
Macromedia & Adobe (Score:3, Interesting)
2 cents,
Queen B
Linux CAD (Score:3, Interesting)
This doesn't do us modern Linux users much good, since it means the software was probably distributed as SPARC binaries only. So unless you know of a good way to emulate/virtualize a SPARC (which shouldn't be impossible, given that it's an allegedly open architecture) system from within x86 Linux, I'd say we're SOL there.
There are some people in South Africa who have AutoCAD running (apparently) to their satisfaction under Debian WINE, according to this page [architectafrica.com]. They mention a "German GNU/Linux clone of AutoCAD which is quite impressive and very cheap" in the article, but sadly don't give a name.
LinuxCAD [linuxcad.com], which rather hilariously describes itself as "the Best application program for Linux. Period." claims to be an AutoCAD replacement, but just from first glance the site seems questionably maintained (as in, '1995 called, they want their web page back'). The company behind it has also been alleged to be behind some Usenet spam [mega-nerd.com]. On that last site there are several "alternatives to LinuxCAD" listed, including VariCAD, which seems like a pretty polished (it ought to be, for $500) product from a company in the Czech Republic.
Anyway, I thought I'd throw those options out there. If anyone has any experience with any of them I'd be interested to hear them.
Re:Port photoshop...and the rest of Creative Suite (Score:4, Interesting)
Together with InDesign and Illustrator, this would round out a complete Linux publishing solution that any professional could sit down at and get productive. I have prayed for this for most of the years I was working in graphic arts.
But if they don't come to the party - that's OK: We'll just keep polishing GIMP [gimp.org], Scribus [scribus.org.uk], Inkscape [inkscape.org] etc until they start seriously eating into Adobe's monopoly (same way M$ lost the server market). Your move, Adobe!
Endnote and FruityLoops (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
'Battle Of The AJAX Mail Programs' (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8722 [linuxjournal.com]
Re:Access (and SQL Server) Clone (Score:3, Interesting)
And that's leaving aside reports. Access is very quick and powerful for creating these. It can be done with LAMP, but it's much slower and more kludgy.
There must be hundreds of thousands of small 'database' applications out there written in Access. Virtually everytime I get referred to a new client I find one, either written by a consultant developer such as myself, or more often kludged together by the office clerk who's had some 'Access Training' - in those cases I'm generally getting called in because the business recognises that the app needs to be sorted out and put on a professional footing because it's become business critical. Some can be replaced by a web app, but most need Access itself for the reasons above. On many occassions the user is only using the PC for the app and the standard office wp, spreadsheet and email functions, so could easily migrate to Linux if the app could be recoded in an Access clone.
Re:Visio (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Missing the point (Score:2, Interesting)
From what I can tell, it's an evolutionary/survival thing. Human children are {warning: poor or predictable analogy coming up} born with just a simple bootstrap loader and receive constant, incremental firmware upgrades for the first few years of their lives. We don't "get" abstract concepts at first; we learn to do something by blind, unquestioning imitation and treat it as though it were magic before we understand it fully. And even by the time we reach the stage of abstract thinking, we often stick with whatever we learned by repetition.
It seems that some total n00bs with computers often learn the way children learn, never quite grasping the abstract concepts but content to treat them as inscrutable mysteries.
Warcraft (Score:2, Interesting)
They can still sell the boxes in stores with cds for texture, sound, all the platform independent stuff, and the all-important account activation code.
AutoCAD and Lotus Notes (Score:3, Interesting)
AutoCAD and the likes of Photoshop are also really important. Acrobad reader exists thankfully, but theres a huge userbase for each of AutoCAD and Photoshop, who will be tempted to switch.
Re:Heh. From TFA: (Score:2, Interesting)