Linux have everything you need ...

[khaled]

In this thread I will list Linux-Free-Programs that are alternative to famous programs used by developers\researchers,

You are welcome to request an alternative to any program you usually use on another Operating System ...

 

 

C\C++ IDE: Code::Blocks, Netbeans (full edition), Eclipse, KDevelop

 

Java IDE: Netbeans, Eclipse

 

HTML\CSS\..\JS: Blue Fish

 

All Sources Codes editor: gedit

 

Photoshop-alternative: Krita, GIMP

 

Visio-alternative: Dia

 

Download Manager: Kget, Wget

 

Office: Open-Office, KOffice

 

Latex IDE: Kile, Tex Maker

 

Matlab-alternative: GNU Octave

 

Mathematics Tool: Genius Math Tool

 

Sound-Editing: ReZound

 

Video-Editing: Open Movie Editor

 

Sound-Covertion: Sound Converter

 

Sound-To-Command for ease of use: KMouth

 

 

note: I'd like this thread to be pinned, so everyone can request anytime ...

Edited January 31, 2011 by khaled

[Xittenn]

Well there are only three programs on that list that I have opinions about and of the three none are good. I'm in a rush but ...

 

CODE::BLOCKS is fugly and although it provides the environment equivalent it omits the important stuff, the automation tools. There is a very good reason for when I right click a project I open up a very long list of potential variables in VCStudio. This functionality is simply not provided and I would rather just use a text editor and compile Make files. I think the greatest thing about VCStudio is, aside from intellisense, row column select

 

GIMP I will say is a reasonable alternative to its commercial partner, it's free I can't complain. No self respecting artist will ever utter GIMP outperforms Photoshop in any way whatsoever. Having studied Game Design in a film school I have been specially privy to such banter.

 

Open Office has caused me a number of times to almost release some rather serious wrath upon my PC. There is nothing I hate more than completing a few hours of work on making a very pretty table just to have the program crash and leave me with a corrupt or reset file. Have I mentioned my fondness for the ribbon, no not OOo silly ....

 

VCStudio Express is free and powerful and allows anyone to write commercial software openly. Paint.NET is a free open drawing package that has the raw power of Photoshop and is expandable through the addition of tools. It does however have some quarks in how tools are interfaced to the canvass. There is always wordpad and every Windows station is well equipped with spell checking.

Edited January 31, 2011 by Xittenn

[khaled]

Well there are only three programs on that list that I have opinions about and of the three none are good. I'm in a rush but ...

 

CODE::BLOCKS is fugly and although it provides the environment equivalent it omits the important stuff, the automation tools. There is a very good reason for when I right click a project I open up a very long list of potential variables in VCStudio. This functionality is simply not provided and I would rather just use a text editor and compile Make files. I think the greatest thing about VCStudio is, aside from intellisense, row column select

 

GIMP I will say is a reasonable alternative to its commercial partner, it's free I can't complain. No self respecting artist will ever utter GIMP outperforms Photoshop in any way whatsoever. Having studied Game Design in a film school I have been specially privy to such banter.

 

Open Office has caused me a number of times to almost release some rather serious wrath upon my PC. There is nothing I hate more than completing a few hours of work on making a very pretty table just to have the program crash and leave me with a corrupt or reset file. Have I mentioned my fondness for the ribbon, no not OOo silly ....

 

VCStudio Express is free and powerful and allows anyone to write commercial software openly. Paint.NET is a free open drawing package that has the raw power of Photoshop and is expandable through the addition of tools. It does however have some quarks in how tools are interfaced to the canvass. There is always wordpad and every Windows station is well equipped with spell checking.

 

About Code::Blocks, it's an alternative, and I am a researcher, and It has everything you need ...

-- ps developers do not need row column select ...

 

About GIMP, I know that, and I don't like GIMP much, that's why I use Krita, which is easier to use, and give better results ...

 

Open Office doesn't have problems in linux, and I work on all extensions from linux,windows,mac .. if it crashes, then you have

a problem with your linux along with your device, also there is KOffice too ...

 

About your last statement, VCS Express is not free, it is a share-ware, and no, it's illegal to write commerical software using that,

Microsoft will issue your program in the court, and i'm not joking !

 

Paint.NET is a good program, not to forget that using WineHD on Linux, you can use windows applications,

not to mention also that there are many good Paint programs on Linux too,

 

Linux have spell-checking with a dictionary, It appears in Firefox & Office Tools .. and Linux Programs are well-Stationed too,

 

-- About myself, I use gedit and gcc\g++ compiler with C\C++, and NetBeans with Java

--- and I hate Eclipse, It feels like living on Mars (you will know what I mean when you use it) !

Edited January 31, 2011 by khaled

[Xittenn]

 

About your last statement, VCS Express is not free, it is a share-ware, and no, it's illegal to write commerical software using that,

Microsoft will issue your program in the court, and i'm not joking !

 

 

FAQ 7

 

 

OOo is a joke, I laugh ..... Have you ever tried to create an index with Open Office?

 

 

 

About Code::Blocks, it's an alternative, and I am a researcher, and It has everything you need ...

-- ps developers do not need row column select ...

 

-- About myself, I use gedit and gcc\g++ compiler with C\C++, and NetBeans with Java

--- and I hate Eclipse, It feels like living on Mars (you will know what I mean when you use it) !

 

 

I use row column select and I like to think I'm a little more than just a hobbyist, not that I would ever be given such respect.

 

Truthfully I would never encourage anyone one way or another I will simply state why I choose one path over another. Linux has a lot of packages and many of them have potential to be productive solutions. In my opinion none of them meet the requirements of their professional industries and simply provide home users with an inexpensive alternative to commercial software. The ability of most to get this software functional currently is not adequate to push the market over that way at this time. In the end I bet it will and the market will break up some.

 

Back to my first point of my policies as a developer .... If I am working on plant management I will use Microsoft Dynamics( Assistant Production Engineer; Sunrise Kitchens 2007-09.) If I am developing in house software for Game Design or for Industrial Machining purposes I will use Visual Studio and this would extend to Web Dev. as well. I will almost absolutely always prefer Office over any other software packages as by the time any other package becomes adequate I will still be most familiar with the Microsoft Office product from Excel to Power Point.

 

Linux has now provided me with something I need however and as a consequence I now have a nix partition. I need to learn more about analytical biochemistry and practices for manipulating protein structures on a machine as this is what I am striving towards as my next step in education and this has been provided for me. And so thank you Mr. Pauling whom I envy greatly for having done such important work at such a young age! I extend to Linux a live long and prosper .....

Edited February 1, 2011 by Xittenn

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Typesetting with indices is something that LaTeX excels at, although you'll be disappointed to see that it's a text-based typesetting system. LyX is a nice graphical editor for it.

[Xittenn]

Are there any projects working towards a heavy weight code completion and edit time debugging tool like intellisense? This would be a pretty stylin' project ... but really, really hard.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

KDevelop and Code::Blocks both do completion.

[Syntho-sis]

Where do I find a link for VCStudio Express and can you tell me more about it?

[CaptainPanic]

I use my linux computer for browsing the internet, watching movies, playing a few games (I'm really not a hardcore gamer), and listening music.

 

And it's the perfect OS for that. I haven't had problems in ages, and it's easy as anything.

I can also burn CD/DVD's if I have to. I can upload my pictures from my camera. All plug-and-play.

 

But I have seen threads and blogs claiming that GIMP is a real alternative for Photoshop, but it's not. It's decent though.

Similarly, OpenOffice is not at the same level yet as the MSOffice. But it's possible to do some minor work with it... and it's free.

 

So, as an office (company) computer, I would use Windows with MSOffice... For graphics I would probably buy a Mac, rather than Windows with photoshop, but whatever.

But at home, for chilling out, my Ubuntu rules supreme.

[khaled]

I use my linux computer for browsing the internet, watching movies, playing a few games (I'm really not a hardcore gamer), and listening music.

 

And it's the perfect OS for that. I haven't had problems in ages, and it's easy as anything.

I can also burn CD/DVD's if I have to. I can upload my pictures from my camera. All plug-and-play.

 

But I have seen threads and blogs claiming that GIMP is a real alternative for Photoshop, but it's not. It's decent though.

Similarly, OpenOffice is not at the same level yet as the MSOffice. But it's possible to do some minor work with it... and it's free.

 

So, as an office (company) computer, I would use Windows with MSOffice... For graphics I would probably buy a Mac, rather than Windows with photoshop, but whatever.

But at home, for chilling out, my Ubuntu rules supreme.

 

Also, when you work in Linux, you don't care about your drivers !

[Xittenn]

Where do I find a link for VCStudio Express and can you tell me more about it?

 

 

Visual Studio Express is just a set of programming tools that perform for the languages C#, C++, Visual Basic and a suite for Web Dev and that run under the Visual Studio IDE.

 

Although there are Integrated Development Environments for both Linux and Windows operating systems Visual Studio is largely considered to be far superior to all of the others. This can be attributed to Intellisense which can pre-compile code while you are programming thereby allowing you greater knowledge of the mistakes you may have made and also information on what it is that has been coded. The property pages are also very well laid out and versatile being easily modified to suit ones needs. It is a great IDE to use if you are a beginner and just learning and as you progress you will also develop the knowledge of the underlying structure that is being applied outside of the environment.

 

Obviously there are alternatives and some will say they are better. There is no other IDE that has the reputation that Visual Studio does and although I am more than content with Microsoft it would be nice to have a true competitor on the Linux platform in this category. I'm sorry but this is definitely a fail on the Linux end. Some will suggest that coding should not be done in an IDE for reasons of inefficiency, I don't agree. There are times when coding quickly is best suited to the job and times when complexity does not permit such an approach and each style needs to be weighted independently. Linux programmers tend to require and tend to focus on speed techniques as a good deal of their activities revolve around trying to take over the world and to the bringing about of the downfall of the corporate empire(sorry I had to.)

Edited March 9, 2011 by Xittenn

[timo]

Also, when you work in Linux, you don't care about your drivers !

I don't really find myself in this statement. I did and still do care a lot about my drivers:

 

WLAN:

My Internet connection is via the university's WLAN network which is spread over the city. To access it, I need a WLAN usb stick with an external antenna (computer is based on Nvidia Ion, so probably no room for a proper WLAN-card). In early versions, the stick was not supported by linux, and an alternative driver I found didn't even compile. Then, with an update, it was supported. However, with the next update (to 9.x, I think), the stick did no longer work out of the box, so I had to reinstall my system and use the older version. I later found out that by blacklisting some other drivers, I can get my stick to work on newer versions (I have to re-blacklist after each system update, though).

 

Graphics card:

Apart from the low power consumption, one of the main reasons to buy an Ion was playing around with CUDA. Needless to say, the default driver of my Linux distro (Kubuntu) did not support that. In other words: download the proper driver from NVIDIA (careful: the newest Linux driver did not support CUDA, only an older one did!), run the installer, and have it alter my configuration in I-don't-know-which-manner. Of course, the driver is compiled only for a particular kernel, so with each kernel update, I have to reinstall it with I-don't-know-which-remnants of the old configuration. It becomes better: with the latest update to 10.x, I can no longer login on the graphical interface. ASCII login works but a subsequent "startx" also fails. Partial solution: reinstall the driver from NVIDIA (which I actually wanted to get rid of because I don't program in CUDA at the moment). Now, I can chose "login via console" on the login screen, log in there, and then run "startx" to get to the graphical mode.

 

Bottom line:

I do worry about drivers quite a lot.

[khaled]

Everyone has the choice,

 

When I talked about the drivers, I meant that generic drivers covers most of the drivers on any computer,

and, with exception to some, your drivers are defined automatically ...

[CaptainPanic]

I don't really find myself in this statement. I did and still do care a lot about my drivers:

I installed Ubuntu. Then it came up with some popups, which I all accepted. It installed some stuff. Then some more. And then all my drivers worked, and I've had no reason to upgrade them. Some are 'non-free' or whatever they're called. That means they are not open source, but still really easy to install.

 

It's funny that if you're just a very average user (i.e. practically a newbie), then Ubuntu works fine.

On the far other side of the spectrum: If you're a complete geek, then it's often also the preferred operating system.

 

But for that intermediate user, the businessman, the scientist, with a few special needs and applications, Windows is the best.

 

But I am happy to see that Ubuntu is now closing that gap from both sides... and it's now mostly up to the third party programs to come up with an Ubuntu version... but that's just a matter of time.

[khaled]

I installed Ubuntu. Then it came up with some popups, which I all accepted. It installed some stuff. Then some more. And then all my drivers worked, and I've had no reason to upgrade them. Some are 'non-free' or whatever they're called. That means they are not open source, but still really easy to install.

 

It's funny that if you're just a very average user (i.e. practically a newbie), then Ubuntu works fine.

On the far other side of the spectrum: If you're a complete geek, then it's often also the preferred operating system.

 

But for that intermediate user, the businessman, the scientist, with a few special needs and applications, Windows is the best.

 

But I am happy to see that Ubuntu is now closing that gap from both sides... and it's now mostly up to the third party programs to come up with an Ubuntu version... but that's just a matter of time.

 

Currently, Linux is very good to me, but, there is one thing I couldn't really find a good replacement for, which is Photoshop .. there are

applications such as gimp and krita, but they are short on the functionality on many things such as Selection like the Photoshop,

[Syntho-sis]

Visual Studio Express is just a set of programming tools that perform for the languages C#, C++, Visual Basic and a suite for Web Dev and that run under the Visual Studio IDE.

 

Although there are Integrated Development Environments for both Linux and Windows operating systems Visual Studio is largely considered to be far superior to all of the others. This can be attributed to Intellisense which can pre-compile code while you are programming thereby allowing you greater knowledge of the mistakes you may have made and also information on what it is that has been coded. The property pages are also very well laid out and versatile being easily modified to suit ones needs. It is a great IDE to use if you are a beginner and just learning and as you progress you will also develop the knowledge of the underlying structure that is being applied outside of the environment.

 

Obviously there are alternatives and some will say they are better. There is no other IDE that has the reputation that Visual Studio does and although I am more than content with Microsoft it would be nice to have a true competitor on the Linux platform in this category. I'm sorry but this is definitely a fail on the Linux end. Some will suggest that coding should not be done in an IDE for reasons of inefficiency, I don't agree. There are times when coding quickly is best suited to the job and times when complexity does not permit such an approach and each style needs to be weighted independently. Linux programmers tend to require and tend to focus on speed techniques as a good deal of their activities revolve around trying to take over the world and to the bringing about of the downfall of the corporate empire(sorry I had to.)

 

 

Ohh I see thanks for the explanation...As far as IDEs go...I like codelite. It comiples just about everything..

 

Cheers,

[Xittenn]

Ohh I see thanks for the explanation...As far as IDEs go...I like codelite. It comiples just about everything..

 

Cheers,

 

Is this on Linux that you are using the IDE? Rating out of 10?

 

I installed Ubuntu. Then it came up with some popups, which I all accepted. It installed some stuff. Then some more. And then all my drivers worked, and I've had no reason to upgrade them. Some are 'non-free' or whatever they're called. That means they are not open source, but still really easy to install.

 

It's funny that if you're just a very average user (i.e. practically a newbie), then Ubuntu works fine.

On the far other side of the spectrum: If you're a complete geek, then it's often also the preferred operating system.

 

But for that intermediate user, the businessman, the scientist, with a few special needs and applications, Windows is the best.

 

But I am happy to see that Ubuntu is now closing that gap from both sides... and it's now mostly up to the third party programs to come up with an Ubuntu version... but that's just a matter of time.

 

As I'm sure you are aware(just making my point clear) hardware often comes with features that generic drivers do not implement. Installing the goods can often be a pain and occasionally there doesn't even exist such a solution. There are a lot of varietals of OS to be trying to write a driver for each and everyone and I can't see a market for open source hardware any time soon.

 

The fact that third parties are jumping in and doing the dirty work is great but you are relying not only on their existence but also on their expertise and ability to produce quality on no budget with you as a tester.

 

side note: Fedora is working pretty ok for me so far for the limited purpose of Rosetta Commons which is fine by me ....

[Djordje]

Ah, Linux, everything you might need for "security testing (pentesting)" http://www.backtrack-linux.org/

I also had Ubuntu which's a decent OS though I'm not really fond of GNOME, I prefer KDE such as in above-mentioned Backtrack

Edited March 17, 2011 by Djordje