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linux: alternatives for common windows software

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Originally posted by: alex
hi all, decided to finally start making the move to linux so I installed ubuntu 9.04 (for now, anyways until I feel more comfortable)...

Music Player/Manager - Rhythmbox (silly name and icon but hands down much better than Amarok or Banshee at least in my opinion, I have a fairly large music library and Banshee doesn't work well with genres and Amarok just crashes)
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Sorry for being late to the party, but I don't usually post in this forum - kinda like preaching to the choir, you know? I'd rather witness and evangelize in the Windows Forum aka Operating Systems... 😀

Anyway, I'm a distro hopper, if you know what that is - and what I wanted to tell you is...

Don't *feel* bad about running Ubuntu 9.04! I'm an Ubuntu hater from way back - but I love 9.04. I'm running it as my primary OS on my Intel Extreme Edition box - and playing around with other distros in a (Sun VirtualBox) VM.

Why, you may ask??? Because I don't want to take a chance on borking Ubuntu 9.10 - I like it that much!

Anyway, it looks like you have pretty much decided the winners - and for the most part, I concur. However...

Without a doubt, Exaile is the best "Music Player/Manager" I've run across, in all my distro hopping!

You might want to reconsider your 'winner' in that grouping... 😉

http://www.exaile.org/ (Exaile Music Manager / Player web Site)

 
Originally posted by: alex
Video Player - "Movie Player" (or something like that, came installed out of the box with Ubuntu 9.04 and after installing codecs it played anything I threw at it including wmv without a hitch), VLC looks good too but if whatever came out of the box works then no point changing for me
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I think it's called Totem.

Photoshop GIMP
Click to expand...

That joke never gets old, does it? 🙂

For panorama stitching, I like Hugin.

For HDR image creation, I like Qtpfsgui. It's got an "oh god this is going to be an archaic crappy UNIX app" name, but it's actually surprisingly easy to use, and it works really well.

The best MS Paint alternative I've found is Krita. It comes from KDE land, so it looks a little out of place on the GNOME desktop, but it's the best app I've found. GNU Paint is a piece of crap (it doesn't even have an "undo" feature!).

I haven't found a decent equivalent to IrfanView, so I just run IrfanView under WINE.
 
Kompozer is a option to replace dreamweaver, i have got dreamweaver running fine under wine though but i have an older version.
 
Originally posted by: earthman
What would you use to replace QuickBooks and Dreamweaver?
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its in the 1st post! 🙂

Quickbooks is a money manager so GnuCash or Money Manager EX (although I only have the need for personal money tracking I couldn't tell you how well any of these are suited for full-fledged accounting)

I use NetBeans as my primary development IDE (I used to use Dreamweaver on Windows) and I love it. It's definitely subpar (so far anyway) for CSS editing, which is the one thing that I really liked DW for. Aptana Studio is more complete but also more complicated especially to set up since 1.2.6 required xulrunner 1.8 specifically (ubuntu 9.04 ships with 1.9)
 
Having used Ubuntu and Kubuntu (unfortunately, it was KDE 4.1)

Music: Banshee (Gnome) or Aamarok (KDE); Rhythmbox was pretty mediocre overall. Out of any media player I've ever used, Winamp is my favorite, if only for the "Jump to Song" feature and it won't f*ck up your playlist like WMP will or only loop a few songs...
IM: Pidgin
Video: VLC
E-mail: was just using gmail on the web
Internet: Firefox + Adblock/NoScript

Office tools: Open Office was alright, but setting up stuff can be such a pain in the ass. It also had problems displaying equations written in Word and WINE + Office 2003 had the same problem. If I was to go back to Linux, I'd probably go for WINE + Office instead of using OO.
 
Originally posted by: Rifterut
Originally posted by: alex
updated, Exaile FTW 🙂
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DAMN STRAIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! thanks VinDSL!!!!!!!!!!!!
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My pleasure! 😉

Here's another one for you...

I recently read that almost half (47%) of computer intrusions in 2009 have occurred because of multiple vulns in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Reader.

Security experts say Reader is sooo broken, that it can't be fixed - and are suggesting that you find an alternative.

http://news.google.com/news?q=...robat%20reader%20vulns (Google News Search - Adobe, Acrobat, Reader, Vulns)

I just installed Foxit Reader on 'Jaunty' and it looks/works great - runs circles around the default (Gnome package) Document Reader!

Check it out...

http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/desklinux/ (Foxit Reader for Desktop Linux)

I installed it (on 'Jaunty') using the deb file download...

After I click the 'Reply' button below, I'm going to install it on the other machines on my LAN! 😀

BTW, ASAIK, Foxit only works on PDF files. For everything else, I would suggest Okular (works on KDE or Gnome):

http://okular.kde.org/ (Okular "more than a reader" web site)

You can run Okular on Windows machines too, if you install "KDE for Windows":

http://windows.kde.org/ (KDE on Windows Project)

...but you'll lose the printer function (under Windows).
 
Quickbooks is not a "money manager", you're thinking of Quicken. I'm looking for something that can do accounting with invoicing and inventory, as well as manage fiscal years.
 
Originally posted by: earthman
Quickbooks is not a "money manager", you're thinking of Quicken. I'm looking for something that can do accounting with invoicing and inventory, as well as manage fiscal years.
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oh my bad!... I don't know then...

bump then so someone else can help 🙂
 
This thread needs bumping. How about I add:

- Compression = PeaZip (Not in Synaptic, but there's a package; it's a GUI that works with .7z files.)
- Video editing/non-MPEG conversion = AviDemux
 
Hey, I like to code in VS.net 2008, and like to use on adobe photoshop, flash and stuff. I just started downloading ubuntu 9
is it the best and how can i use the above mentioned softwares in linux ??
 
Originally posted by: ganesh1
Hey, I like to code in VS.net 2008, and like to use on adobe photoshop, flash and stuff. I just started downloading ubuntu 9
is it the best and how can i use the above mentioned softwares in linux ??
Click to expand...

As far as it being "the best" that's really a matter of personal preference. What I can tell you as a long-time Windows user that switched successfully to Linux roughly a month and a half ago is that Ubuntu is definitely one of the more user-friendly ditros out there.

In the past I tried Mandrake, Red Hat and Ubuntu pre 9.04 and really the only one that I stuck with was Ubuntu 9.04 this time round.

As far as getting VS.NET 2008 running I suggest you google it but it's kind of sketchy. On the other hand, there's stuff like MonoDevelop that are good .NET IDEs that work on Linux.

For Adobe CS4 stuff there's a link at the bottom of my 1st post of a tutorial that I followed step by step and worked for me.

Disclaimer: CS4 works but can be quirky and definitely is not 100%. I'm a programmer so I do really simple stuff with Fireworks and chop up PSDs occasionally and for that it suits me.

Hope this helps!

Alex
 
Thanks a lot Alex.
Have so many doubts about linux, probably will make a enw thread I guess.

Any how, after I started downloading ubunutu I saw kubuntu and edubuntu and xubuntu !!!
which is better for a complete noob ?? and how hard is it to learn linux huh ?? couple of months ?? years ?? never ??

will make a new thread after I complete the download and install it. I will do it after my classes today.

hell with life,
Adi
 
Originally posted by: ganesh1
Thanks a lot Alex.
Have so many doubts about linux, probably will make a enw thread I guess.

Any how, after I started downloading ubunutu I saw kubuntu and edubuntu and xubuntu !!!
which is better for a complete noob ?? and how hard is it to learn linux huh ?? couple of months ?? years ?? never ??

will make a new thread after I complete the download and install it. I will do it after my classes today.

hell with life,
Adi
Click to expand...

np!

Edubuntu is an educational version aimed for use in classrooms. Kubuntu and Xubuntu are the same thing but use a different window manager (Ubuntu uses Gnome, Kubuntu uses KDE and Xubuntu uses XFCE).

I really am not the most apt to talk about the differences but I've tried both Ubuntu and Kubuntu and I like Ubuntu better as far as user-friendliness goes.

Like I said I had tried moving to Linux in the past but I never really had a good reason (apart from curiosity), I was terrified of the terminal and wasn't willing to put any effort into it.

It's been really fun though and about a month and a half into it I feel really comfortable.
Sure I have to look up the syntax to untar (or something else) from time to time but I make a point of using the terminal as much as possible.

For LAMP development its incredible. I'm way more productive than when I used Windows 🙂
 
MPEG conversion DVD::RIP
Compression Ark
Office tools Gnumeric(spreadsheet) if you do not need the gargantuan OO.Org suite
 
Originally posted by: sgtwiltan
MPEG conversion DVD::RIP
Compression Ark
Office tools Gnumeric(spreadsheet) if you do not need the gargantuan OO.Org suite
Click to expand...

duly noted, thanks! 🙂
 
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