Novell Suggests Linux Program Replacements

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?"

Dreamweaver and flash ...

[tomhudson]

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

Yeah ,,, whatever.

CAD

[rjstanford]

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.

AutoCAD

[a9db0]

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.

Re:Obligatory

[MrPeavs]

I wouldn't go as far as saying "GIMP fucking sucks!" I do agree, it is no where near being on par with Adobe Photoshop, but it still is a great piece of FREE software. I can honestly say I am more than impressed with what it has accomplished.

It works great for basic and intermediate graphics, anything above that it can be hit or miss. Especially if you are no familure with it. With Photoshop essentially the standard in graphical applications, having to relearn a program like GIMP just isn't worth it in advanced applications. Plus, I think Photoshop has one of the best UI interface layouts I have ever used, Adobe as a whole is great at that.

In conclusion, GIMP does not "fucking suck", it is just different and has its uses.

So....

[Otter]

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:Why?

[BenjyD]

That's the funniest comment I've read in a long time. Such an excellent caricature of the typical Free software advocate stance: offer inferior alternatives where possible without understanding the domain and discount anything else as 'useless'.

this is SO going to be a troll-fest...

[Draek]

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:Dreamweaver and flash ...

[AKAImBatman]

I suppose though, that is where AJAX and DHTML/XHTML comes into play. You aren't going to be able to create complex animations, but basic pleasing looking animation and transistion can be done.

If SVG ever becomes standard, we'll be able to do all the animation we want. Current DHTML libraries aren't bad for this, but scaling is hackish, rotation is nonexistent, and shearing is simply out of the question. Not to mention more complex animations like shaped loops (such as the hollow "splats" you might see in an animation as "sound waves" from a speaker). SVG has all these capabilities, and is designed to allow the DOM to be modified.

Some enterprising individuals have already been using XBM files for this [wolf5k.com], but XBM is only a black and white raster. :(

Re:Dreamweaver and flash ...

[Southpaw018]

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.

Re:Dreamweaver and flash ...

[NutscrapeSucks]

I suspect most of the Flash-Haters hate it for what it does, and not because it could be replaced by another standards-compliant, but equally annoying technology. (In other words, you won't find anyone who suddenly enjoys "punching the monkey" just because the monkey is in SVG.)

And, as per usual, any discussion about Flash tends to stereotype Linux users as stubborn, backwards types that hate everything that regular people like about computers. Great image to project about yourselves, guys.

Re:So....

[SocietyoftheFist]

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.

Misguided Objections and Real Obstacles

[Ankh]

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

the most desired are ones I never use

[willCode4Beer.com]

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.

GIMP vs. Photoshop .. again?

[Trevin]

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

Re:All I want from OSS...

[Theatetus]

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 email or a text file of some sort. If my graphics program is an SDI, I can simply position the viewer for that change list somewhere that's not covered by the image or the tool window. If it's an MDI, I have to resize the whole application, which is a pain in the first place, and I suddenly have to fit all of the app's windows into a single rectangle. If an MDI main window could be reshaped into an arbitrary polygon, it would be at least a little more usable to me.
2. I'm on Windowmaker, a NeXT-ish environment, which means I tend to navigate by a windowlist I can make pop up with a center-click when my cursor is on a desktop. This means I want free spaces of desktop scattered about around all my windows. That takes manually resizing and placing MDI applications; SDI applications just do it.
3. Similarly, when I use a windowlist to navigate, I like to be able to jump to a given document open by a given application. If I'm using an MDI, I have to first jump to the application and then activate the appropriate window. This is counterintuitive to me, and a waste of time and motion.
4. Also similarly (Joel on Software even mentioned this one), if I click on a window I want that to raise it. On that click. I don't want it to raise the "magic window" that contains all the windows owned by that application; I have a docked icon to do that. if an application has two documents open, and it does not have focus, and I click on the document that is behind the other one, I want the document I clicked on to be raised, not having both documents come up with the one I clicked behind the one that was in front of it.

So, to summarize, an SDI let's me position documents anywhere, not just in a resizeable rectangle. An SDI lets me leave blank desktop around my windows. An SDI lets me navigate to arbitrary open documents in multiple ways. When an MDI can do that, I'd like them more.

If I had to generalize, I would say that SDIs are better for people with "generalist" jobs like mine that involve frequent context switches. MDIs might be better for specialists who can open a single application and work in it most of the day.

My opinion:

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

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:All I want from OSS...

[Theatetus]

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 on X11 with a decent window manager who thinks that the Windows window manager is more useable? I'd be really interested to hear some ideas. I've tried OS X's desktop too, it's better than Windows and can almost fake virtual desktops with Expose (and you can set up virtual desktops with a third party utility anyways). But honestly I find Windows' desktop almost unusable after several years of using X11. MDIs can make up for some of those deficiencies in Windows, but on a decent window manager they are close to intolerable.

Missing the point....

[Curmudgeonlyoldbloke]

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).

Un-Gimp the UI first. Examples follow...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Where have all the :%s/cowboys/applications/g gone

[MadHakish]

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 choosing their favorite windows apps instead of seeking out the many superior alternatives that DO exist.

Seriously?? I can understand ACAD and PhotoShop, but I would only recommend the other cruft to my mom... Actually.... I take that back - I wouldn't even recommend them to her.

Dreamweaver, Flash, and iTunes does not a desktop replacement make.. not even close. Those with ACAD and Photoshop in mind had the right idea - professional applications with a relevance to professional users who have no real equivalent in the *nix world as much as some people want to believe they do.

In my own case for example I challenge someone who knows of a good accounting app in the unix world that I can use with similar features to Quickbooks Pro to come forth - I would love to hear it - but I bet I can still list 20 features Quickbooks has that a *nix alternative does not. A general ledger system cannot compete with the complexities that a package like Quickbooks can as simply as it can, all while allowing a basic user to take advantage of them without a huge learning curve. I'm not a CPA and don't think I should have to be in order to effectively use my accounting package or spend FAR more time doing my bills than actually billing and making money.

Quickbooks is the sole reason I have any sort of windows install whatsoever to run my business and it's run via VMware on my laptop which is running Gentoo as it's sole OS, only because it is superior to to the other tools available for my purposes. Quickbooks contains features essential to my businesses accounting needs. This idealogy applies to a number of applications - why use Blender 3D if you can use 3DSMax? Why use GIMP if you can use PhotoShop? If a commercial product can truly outperform it's open brethren because it's had a much longer development cycle and gobs more R&D put into determining what's needed, what's nice, what's fastest, what's required, what interface users feel most comfortable with etc. etc. then why even bother making a business case for the open-source version? It's not whether it's open or closed source - what's driving this idealogy is what software people want to use. They want to use Linux because it's a superior OS to MS Windows, but they want to use applications designed for MS Windows on Linux because they are superior to their open-source pseudo-equivalents.

If Novell is really serious about making Linux the desktop contender it wants - they need to build a base system to support the functionality of ALL applications.. Not just the pretty ones with cute icons and brushed metal GUI's that oh so many 14 year olds love to fill their desktops with... I think WINE is a great start but I also think far more intelligent people than I can come up with a better solution than a poll on Novell's website could ever touch. I think it's safe to say a web-poll is not a legitimate or appropriate data set to study demographics due to it's highly directed audience, and the ability for the pollster to misinterpret which audience he or she has in fact targeted for polling while analyzing that data. I offer my repeated choice of Cowboy Neal anytime that option is available on a slashdot poll as proof... ;-)

Re:CAD

[injunear]

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-ons.

I don't see much hope for a f/oss, generalized cadd solution on the horizon, either. Unlike OOo or Gimp, there is not enough of a potential user pool, and even less of a develloper pool to make it happenl

Re:My opinion:

[ChaosDiscord]

"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.

Re:All I want from OSS...

[EzInKy]

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 try. I'm sure in no time you'll see why there really is no need for MDIs in such an environment.

Re:My opinion:

[AaronStJ]

> 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 it has much much better color space handling, including CMYK.

Re:AutoCAD

[cobbaut]

Why is no-one mentioning BRLCAD (http://sourceforge.net/projects/brlcad/ [sourceforge.net]) ?

Some screenshots:
http://sourceforge.net/project/screenshots.php?gro up_id=105292 [sourceforge.net]

A sample script:
http://www.cobbaut.be/stok.sh.txt [cobbaut.be]

Re:Why?

[Grishnakh]

The cost of windows and photoshop may seem high to hobbiests, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to what you're gonna pay someone to use it.

What about the cost of dealing with all the problems that Windows brings with it: viruses, worms, spyware, etc.? I know my (Fortune 100) company's IT department costs the company a fortune in not Windows licenses, but both license costs and personnel costs for dealing with all the security problems, and that doesn't count all the time wasted by normal employees due to having to do constant security updates (which means you can't use your computer, and have to reboot after every patch), and deal with the fallout from viruses and other malware.

I'll agree: the cost of Photoshop really isn't a big deal to a company paying $x0,000 for someone to use it. But the cost of Windows most certainly is. A smart company would probably have their employees use Photoshop on MacOSX instead.

Linux wins on the desktop...

[HerculesMO]

when it's easy to use. Server capabilities -- no question, Linux is great. It's stable, fast, and is good on memory (well, I've heard bad things about more recent kernels but I digress....).

As far as a desktop OS goes however -- no. There is an elitism about using Linux over Windows where Linux developers and even leaders in the open source movement won't mimic anything Microsoft does -- even if it is particuarlly brilliant.

While I don't find Windows to be that great of an OS, it is still pretty easy to use. Easy to screw up? Sure. But when I can download any program off the web, run a setup.exe file, follow a wizard and see it work, that to me is simplicity. I know Linux zealots will say "oh, what about YUM or APTGET, or UP2DATE"... well folks, sadly to say, sometimes you like to find those little miscellaneous applications that people create for fun, and install them to see what they are all about. Those aren't listed in the repositories, and the fact when I try to use an RPM it's missing eleventy billion dependencies, I realize that my Windows DESKTOP OS is far more useful than a Linux desktop OS will ever hope to be.

Yea, you can have equivalent tools for Linux... but as long as the elitism of Linux stays in place with the 'holier than thou' attitude of development... Linux will remain a server OS, that will be used as the 'the right tool for the given job'. Most intelligent companies use Linux when they see it as a great benefit over Windows, either in cost or stablity (database servers or web servers, what have you).

Hell, even steal ideas from Apple -- they have that idea of just making things 'work' -- specifically when it comes to applications -- down pat. Linux geeks could learn a thing or two from Mac and yes, Windows too.

Re:PhotoShop 7 reportedly works with WINE

[Guspaz]

I must be missing something. MySQL costs $595 per year. SQL Server costs $5000 for the standard edition.

MySQL's pricing is per year, but Microsoft's price is per CPU. So on a dual xeon (not unreasonable for a database server), it is $595 vs $10,000. That is 16 years of MySQL for the price of a single SQL Server license, and something tells me most SQL servers are going to be upgraded a bit more frequently than every 16 years.

I'm also pretty sure that Win2K3 costs more than RHEL. RHEL ES (basic server edition) costs $349. Win2K3 basic is $999 plus $199 per 5 CALs.

In both cases, Microsoft charges way more, so I'd say you're wrong.

Re:Dreamweaver and flash ...

[jonadab]

> And, as per usual, any discussion about Flash tends to stereotype Linux users as
> stubborn, backwards types that hate everything that regular people like about computers.
> Great image to project about yourselves, guys.

Regular people don't like Flash, on the whole. They like a *handful* of the things Flash is used for (mainly cheesy games, and to a lesser extent, inane animated "greeting cards"), but they sure don't like it on *most* of the pages it appears on. Click-to-play for plugins is a feature virtually no user dislikes, and one that is destined to become standard.

Who likes Flash? I'll tell you who likes Flash: young fresh-out-of-school IT guys who fancy themselves senior webmasters, although if you asked them the difference between HTTP 1.0 and HTTP 1.1, all they'd be able to come up with is that 1.1 is newer.