Riding Linux

One major aspect to consider whenever we decided to migrate from using Windows as desktop to fully linux environment is finding what software to replace our commonly used existing windows application. Being a windows user for a very long time, we might have nurtured a certain practices and favors a quite number of applications in our works.

Migrating to a linux desktop means that we would miss a quite number of applications as most of them are designed to work only on Windows platform. Applications such as Adobe Photoshop, Ms Office, Windows Media Player is suitable to be used on a windows system. Even though there are ways to install and use those applications on linux (using Wine is an option), the works are somewhat tedious to some people and portability is not guaranteed 100%.

So, why not using any alternative softwares that are built specifically for linux environment in the first place. Most of the applications are designed to be as close as it can be to match the features, look & feel, and functionality of the win32 applications. Some of the also have the ability to import existing saved files from the windows applications.

Below are some applications that I have identified to be the closest to the commonly used windows application.

• Microsoft Office
  • Open Office (http://projects.openoffice.org)
• Microsoft Visio
  • Dia (http://www.gnome.org/projects/dia/)
• Adobe PageMaker
  • Scribus (http://www.scribus.net/)
• Adobe Photoshop
  • Gimp (http://www.gimp.org/)
  • GimpShop (http://gimpshopdotnet.blogspot.com/)
• Dreamweaver
  • Nvu (http://www.nvu.com/)
• Maya 3D
  • Blender (http://www.blender.org/)
• ACDSee
  • XNView (http://www.xnview.com/)
• Yahoo Messenger (YM)
  • Kopete (http://kopete.kde.org/)
  • Gaim (http://gaim.sourceforge.net/)
• Ms Outlook => *KMAil (http://kmail.kde.org/)
  • Evolution (http://www.gnome.org/projects/evolution/)
  • Thunderbird (http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/)
• Internet Explorer
  • Firefox (http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/)
  • Konqueror (http://www.konqueror.org/)
• Winamp
  • Xmms (http://www.xmms.org/)

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 27th, 2007 at 9:59 am and is filed under Desktop Workstation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.