Use Linux!

Often, people claim they’re stuck with MS Windows because of the requirement of some specific application. Often, they’re right. While Codeweaver’s Crossover Office has saved me from that fate, allowing me to run MS Office on Linux, there’s a whole bunch of applications that aren’t MS Office out there. In many cases, there is no easy way to run them on Linux, but there may be a functional substitute. This article provides some substitutes for the ‘most wanted’ apps in Windows land. The list includes alternatives for Photoshop, AutoCAD, iTunes, and Flash.

Of course, it’s worth noting that many of these apps will run on other operating systems too. You might even be able to try them out without leaving the comfort of your Mac.

7 thoughts on “Use Linux!”

  1. Funny you should mention Crossover Office. I’ve been playing around with it a little bit. It installed without any troubles at all.

    One of my main Windows applications is Photoshop. Based on the Crossover Office Web site, it is directly supported. Haven’t bothered to try it yet, because I’m giving Gimp another shot and I have one other application that I want even more than that.

    That extra application, the one that truly keeps me on Windows, is one called 3rdPlanIt. Think of it as CAD software that specializes in model railroad layout. I’ve not been able to get it to work under XO yet. It may not at all, but I did see on the XO site that some game that required OpenGL worked fine, so I haven’t given up yet. Sadly, it just doesn’t appear to start at all when I load the application. The installer worked fine, but the program itself just never seems to start.

    As far as Photoshop vs. Gimp. I have no doubt that Gimp is a powerful app. Unfortunately, its UI is so poorly laid out that it’s nearly unusable to someone that knows Photoshop.

    What Adobe really needs to do is come out with Photoshop for Linux. That and some of their other media suite (Premier, Dreamweaver) would be nice.

    Not sure why you’d want to run MS Office on Linux, however. I’ve been having marvelous success with OpenOffice in Linux (and on my Windows box), really nobody can tell the difference. Well, I shouldn’t say nobody, one of the tech writers figured it out, but he tends to use some of the more advanced features in MS Word, so it was apparent pretty quickly. My boss, however, has no idea that I do my weekly status report in OO and dump it on Sharepoint from my Linux box.

  2. I do a fair bit of sharing of powerpoint and excel files with relatively complex formulas. OpenOffice just doesn’t handle those too well. The animation in ppts gets lost and the formulas in excel don’t work. That’s the main reason.

    Oh, and you might want to check out GimpShop, which makes Gimp run more like photoshop.

  3. OK, can’t argue with you on the complex Excel formulas. Animation in PPTs get lost? Some would say that’s a good reason not to use them. :-)

    GimpShop–Just tried to install it. It was pissy about the glib install, so I tried to fix it and just tanked my Gnome Desktop system. Last time I did this, I had to reinstall the OS.

  4. At least a simple reboot fixed it. But still, the requirements just install GimpShop!

    As much as I love linux and OpenSource, this is a perfect example of why Linux is not yet ready for the desktop. While we are smart enough to work through the pre-requisites, the average Joe is not.

    Until the Linux developers figure this out, we’ll never achieve world domination.

  5. I agree with Michael. I have tried Linux at times and found it too cumbersome and unintuitive for a desktop OS. There is always a point when one needs to tinker with the nuts and bolts to get anywhere.
    I am a firm believer that the PC world would be a better place with more competition and variety. At the same time however, I think it may become more difficult for software companies and open sourcers to provide their product for even more platforms. And for the consumer, this will just be confusing. It’d be great if apps were universal and could just run on any OS, or if the OSs were universal and would accept different kinds of apps and files. It seems that the whole industry and the way it is setup could use an overhaul. Unfortunately I don’t think this will happen soon.

    I always get a sense that Open Source and Linux is sort of a guerilla front against anti-(commercial) mainstream platforms and software (although parts of the open source community actually lay ground work for and support commercial products). It’s quite amazing to see how much energy this movement posesses and what all becomes of it (see GimpShop for example). I find myself looking for this sort of developement in other aspects of daily life – I can see it in the automotive industry, where there are people who make their own zero emissions vehicles, but that seems much more exotic. Seems like there is a lot of interest and drive in the computer industry, which is great. Maybe one day all his energy will help form a more public lobby that can change things more dramatically.

    I personally have made peace with purchasing software (if it works). I look at it like a tool. Being a carpenter, I am okay with spending good money on good tools (and I like choosing the ones that work best for me for my work). Using this analogy, I think purchasing a well functioning application is a fair thing. And purchasing the upgrade is like having a saw-blade sharpened or something like that. I have also made peace with the fact, that I don’t have a choice when it come to OSs. I believe that I can be very productive and creative with the tools that are out there today. In the end, the question for me is, how much time and effort can I spend trying to re-invent the wheel to get away from dependencies on main stream and commercial software. And the answer is short, at least when it comes to my professional life: none. In the office things just need to work and get done – and in my field of architecture and design, I am not blessed with an incredible amount of open source and Linux app alternatives in the first place. Architects are still struggling with the fact that there are too few cross platform/cross app file formats to actually get your digital data across to the next consultant or contractor without him having to tweak or re-enter the data from scratch. I wish there were a .doc or .ppt for my work that most people could open. I would actually appreciate a narrower market first, and define standards and file formats, before branching off into alternatives. How can the open source and Linux community (I hope I don’t offend anybody by throwing these two groups together) help this process and create a brighter future for all computer users? In my opinion that would be an interesting discussion to have.

  6. Tim, I think you’re right about a lot of those points. I didn’t intend for this to be a linux advocacy post, but more an open-source advocacy post. There are a lot of open-source projects that run on Windows/Mac, but people just don’t know about them. For example, as a student, there is zero reason you should buy MS Office. OpenOffice is absolutely adequate.

    In any case, I’ll bring an Ubuntu Linux disk and an old laptop to the next geek gather for some install fun.

  7. That sounds great. I would like to see how that runs. And like I said, I would love to see more variety among OSs, so let’s put this thing to the test. That should be fun. Is there a Mac (PPC) installation available as well?

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