Only frustating replacements (Score 1)

Hi there, this is a nice discussion I've been involved in many times. It's very funny to see that Novell proposes such alternatives to the demand of those big apps... I say it's funny mostly for two reasons: the first is that apps such as Photoshop, Autocad, Dreamweaver, Flash are really quality apps. I'm a Linux geek, but I've always been involved in computer graphics for the last twenty years. Now I've tried using Gimp. Ok, it's good, you I can achieve results similar to photoshop in terms of filters, layers, brushes... But it misses all the rest that makes photoshop unique: the careful and well balanced UI design, the web publishing tools (slices, javascript generation) and all those tools that a graphics professional needs: color correction, color libraries and the rest. Gimp can't be a good substitute for a professional, the same way Paint Shop Pro for Windows cannot be like that. Moreover Photoshop is integrated with lots of applications such as the entire Adobe Creative Suite (that if you work in multimedia you surely use 80% of the time). Simalar words may be spent for Autocad, Dreamweaver, Flash and the rest. Then the second reason that makes me laugh about these substitutions is that novell try to persuade people that they can use their linux desktop without feeling in need of the big apps. This is like those sellers in the old west that tried to sell you miracle shirups or magic pills to cure anything. If you are a graphic professional you need Photoshop to work faster, if you are an architect you need Autocad to create projects that are readable by other people and other apps (such as 3dstudio) and if you are a web developer you need macromedia dreamweaver, because I tried the rest and it definitely sucks beacause are just cheap apps, mostly poorly written.