Open Source Programs

[Jim Halisstrad]

Got this idea off of conversations stemming from Amber's thread about photoshop.

Some people just have to much shit on our plate to pay an arm and a leg for software yet don't want to stoop to pirating software.  This thread is for open source alternatives to Mainstream services.

First contender, Open Office.  The writer program is a good program to use if your computer didn't come with a copy of microsoft word.  It's a little glitchy but I haven't had any major problems with it.

[Tapewolf]

I think perhaps this thread should be called 'Open Source Alternatives' since it's not about programming per se.  Otherwise, I think it's a good idea, especially since it avoids spamming the photoshop thread.  I for one would also prefer it if we can keep things civil since 'which program is best' is a good way to start flamewars.

On the audio side, I use Audacity.  It's not quite as good as Goldwave, but it does have the advantage of running on Linux and the Mac as well as Win32.  Goldwave will only work in Windows although I have had some successes in running it through the WINE emulator when I need its special touch.  And when that doesn't work there's always booting back to Windows for a quick job.

Another one is Ardour, which is marketed as an open-source replacement for Pro-tools.  If and when I have to stop using tape, this is what will be replacing it.  It is fiddly to get going, but so is Pro-tools and it doesn't cost fifteen thousand pounds to build a decent system from it.  It does however only work on Linux at present.

The other audio software I'm warming to is Rosegarden, which is replacing SONAR in my setup.  Like SONAR, it has the strong disadvantage that it is tied to Linux (SONAR is Windows-only), but it's a step in the right direction.  Editing is still unpleasant, but it works infinitely better at the recording stage.  Currently I'm writing things in SONAR and recording them with Rosegarden.

[Darkmoon]

I like Open Office. I've actually felt little need to buy Microsoft's suite once I started using it. It's not 100% compatible with MSOffice, but for a free suite, it rocks.

Audacity is nice, but it could have more features to it. For a basic sound editor, though, it's prtty good. Have had some crashing issue with it, which was weird.

One Open Source project I'm keeping my eye on is ReactOS. It hopes to be an Open Source Windows option. Actually runs a kernel designed to run like Windows 2k. Will actually run Windows apps. Sadly, it's till in alpha form, and far from complete...

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Hmm. Personally, I kinda like evolution, but then, I'm a linux boi, and avoiding messing about in windows makes me happy.

Admittedly it has some issues, but the main reason I use it is to talk to the exchange server. Pity that that's the bit that seems to have the most issues. :-/

Other than that, I'm watching gaim, waiting for v2.0 to come out. :-)


Everything else I watch is server-level, and no pretty clickables, like, say, subversion, or iptables, or apache, or php, or ssh, or ssl, or... *cough* yeah, nuff said.

[Tapewolf]

I like Open Office. I've actually felt little need to buy Microsoft's suite once I started using it. It's not 100% compatible with MSOffice, but for a free suite, it rocks.

Indeed.  I do have a copy of Word97 as a standby, but I haven't actually needed to install it for about four years now.

One Open Source project I'm keeping my eye on is ReactOS. It hopes to be an Open Source Windows option. Actually runs a kernel designed to run like Windows 2k. Will actually run Windows apps. Sadly, it's till in alpha form, and far from complete...

Damn, yes.  I'm looking at that myself as a way to run things like AAS LoungeLizard and other audio programs which don't have a Linux equivalent.  It would be nice for games too, if they can get that far.  I haven't yet been able to get it to boot on real hardware though which is a shame.  It would be tempting to install DirectX on it too, although that would be technically illegal.

[Aridas]

I remember something called Lindows, and while this wasn't free (and sure as hell isn't in any way), they had some promise that you could run windows apps on it. I don't know if I did anything right, but it sure didn't do what I expected it to. Later on they had to change their name to Linspire because of copyright or something like that... But I still don't respect the creators of it a bit.

[Tapewolf]

I remember something called Lindows, and while this wasn't free they had some promise that you could run windows apps on it

Yeah.  That was just Debian* rebranded with the WINE emulation layer stuck on top.  It was almost totally useless.
WINE has improved a lot since then but it's still pretty flaky and wholly unusable for realtime audio applications such as Lounge Lizard.  (Unless you like having the piano sound two seconds after you hit each key of course)

*Oops, originally I said 'Caldera Openlinux', I was thinking of 'Redmond Linux' which was roughly contemporary with it.  They didn't make false promises of Windows compatibility, though.

[Aridas]

So THAT'S what they did. Hah. What's worse is that they expect you to pay for it, as well as software for it and features that other linuxeses (that i'm aware of) have free, or can be done free with a simple search.

[Saist]

I remember something called Lindows, and while this wasn't free (and sure as hell isn't in any way), they had some promise that you could run windows apps on it. I don't know if I did anything right, but it sure didn't do what I expected it to. Later on they had to change their name to Linspire because of copyright or something like that... But I still don't respect the creators of it a bit.

Okay, gonna go a bit over the history there.  Lindows was backed by Michael Robertson, the millionaire behind MP3.com many years ago. Michael has a history of creating projects just to annoy the living daylights out of Bill Gates, Microsoft, RIAA, and other "classic" villains in the technology worlds. 

Lindows was his idea to create a "Windows-Like Linux." What happened with that is that Michael Robertson licensed/bought technology from Xandros. Xandros was the "shell" company that Corel had sold their Linux Operating System too. I say Shell because Xandros was more of a spin-off from Corel that everybody who had worked on Corel Linux went to. Xandros bundles CrossOver Office from CodeWeavers which allows some level of Windows Application Program Compatibility.

Lindows took that code and made their own distro. They did several things that the Open Source World Didn't like, such as removing indications of whether or not you had created a /root account or /user account. Several of the applications were just rebrandings of existing open-source projects. Not a bad idea actually from my point of view, when I build a windows system I'll intentionally re-name the FireFox link to "Web-Browser" and Thunderbird link to "Email"  Lindows also created yet another Apt-GUI client called Click'n'Run. Granted, when they made it, it was leaps and bounds beyond Synaptic and other Apt-GUI applications available. Now, I don't think that's the case.

Anyways, Lindows finally did gain enough marketshare to bring Microsoft's lawyers down, and yes it was changed to Linspire. Supposedly to inspire people to use it.

I do need to make something clear though. Linspire never actually promoted Windows Compatibility. What they promoted was a Windows like Experience. Personally, I don't want my Linux's to be like Windows.

Xandros has been the culprit behind promoting Windows Compatibility using CodeWeavers and WINE.

****

alright, history lesson over.

[Tiger_T]

http://gimp.org/ (drawing/photo editing)

Don't know much about this one, but it's free, so:
http://www.inkscape.org/ (vector-graphic editor)

[ShadesFox]

I must confess, I rather like OpenOffice as well.  Though on my Mac I have NeoOffic.  Essentially the same thing, only using Aqua rather then X11.  I think it uses Cocoa widgets but I'm not sure if they are native.

Anyways, I have to say that I rather like the KDE desktop.  I've been hooked on KIO-slaves and there is just no going back.  It is just such a great concept.  I've heard it described as making every KDE based program network aware, which really is an understatement.

I think that ReactOS is interesting, though I fear that it is only a matter of time before the heavy hand of Microsoft's assassination department (also known as legal) is brought down on it.

[Darkmoon]

GIMPShop looks promising... If only they had something good for the rest of the Adobe suite.

[Jack McSlay]

on the 3d side we'd get 2 great contenders: Wings 3d, and Blender.

wings 3d is mostly a subdivision modeler without much of rendering features, but for its extreme ease to use and great set of features, many people use it for the modelling and rely on other programs only for texturing and rendering.

blender on the other side if a full 3d package, with even its own scripting methods for making games and other 3d apps, but i've never got to see a game made with it. the biggest downside is its plain demoniac interface

[Aridas]

Lindows took that code and made their own distro. They did several things that the Open Source World Didn't like, such as removing indications of whether or not you had created a /root account or /user account.

As well as sucking.

Lindows also created yet another Apt-GUI client called Click'n'Run. Granted, when they made it, it was leaps and bounds beyond Synaptic and other Apt-GUI applications available. Now, I don't think that's the case.

Paying to use that also sucked.

Anyways, Lindows finally did gain enough marketshare to bring Microsoft's lawyers down, and yes it was changed to Linspire. Supposedly to inspire people to use it.

Or, as I heard, because Microsoft took a fit or something because of the name similarity.

I do need to make something clear though. Linspire never actually promoted Windows Compatibility. What they promoted was a Windows like Experience.

Tell that to the site I read it from, which was the initial reason I went after it. I doubt after all this time it still says so anyway, wherever the link was from.

[Saist]

been enough posts, time to go over my own list

-OpenOffice ::  http://www.openoffice.org

Been using OpenOffice since it was StarOffice. Granted, it is memory intensive (read "ram hog"), but it delivers on the feature set.


-KOffice :: http://www.koffice.org/

KOffice comes out of the KDE project, and while it isn't as fully featured as Open Office, it is much lighter.  If you have a lower end system, KOffice may be the answer to your word processing needs.


-GAIM :: http://gaim.sourceforge.net

GAIM is an all-in-one messaging client, and it works... mostly. There is a known bug with Network speed in the most recent beta, although that should be fixed by the time most people read this.


-K3B :: http://www.k3b.org/

Nero? What's Nero? K3B is the burning solution that many may have not been looking for. Personally, after using K3B, I have a hard time going back to other burning applications, but that's just me


-FireFox :: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/  |  IceWeasel :: http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/

FireFox has been the only browser to take market share away from Microsoft, and for Good reason. It traditionally is more stable, blocks pop-ups natively, and relatively immune to most of the tricks that made Internet Explorer the most reviled program in recent history. IceWeasel is a Semi-Fork of FireFox made specifically for Debian Linux. Same program though.


-Thunderbird :: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/

One of the best cross-platform mail clients, and with a great built-in spam filter. As FireFox was built to mimic Internet Explorer, so Thunderbird was built to mimic Outlook Express. The good news is, no learning curve.


-Eudora :: http://www.eudora.com/faq/

Eudora recently announced that they would be moving their mail program into the Open Source Realm. Future Versions of Eudora will be built on Thunderbird. What all will change, couldn't say, but you might want to keep an eye on this one if you do a lot of mobile email.


-Evolution :: http://www.novell.com/products/desktop/features/evolution.html

Evolution is considered to be the heavyweight in *nix email, if only for the fact that it can connect to Microsoft Exchange servers. Users after an equivalent for Microsoft Outlook only need to stop here.


-Amarok :: http://amarok.kde.org/

Amarok is held to be the answer to Itunes for Linux. I will admit, it is a nice media player, but it tends to be a little heavy on the memory usage side. I personally stick with Kaffeine :: http://kaffeine.sourceforge.net/



-Mepis ::  http://www.mepis.org  |  Ubuntu :: http://www.ubuntu.com/

Mepis and Ubuntu are Live CD distributions, meaning that you can try out a Linux Distro without risking your hard-drive. If you do want to install the Operating System and get faster performance, you can do that too. 

[Tapewolf]

I must admit, having blown an entire weekend a couple of years ago trying to compile Koffice from source and then finding it sucked, I have little love for it.  The other problem is that it is single-platform.  Until such time as KDE runs on Windows, most people here aren't going to care.

I'm running Kubuntu myself, I've just upgraded to Edgy and it did bad things to the terminal (CTRL-left etc no longer work on the VTs).  Fortunately I've managed to fix that (the boottime keymap was somehow deranged).

[Saist]

I must admit, having blown an entire weekend a couple of years ago trying to compile Koffice from source and then finding it sucked, I have little love for it.  The other problem is that it is single-platform.  Until such time as KDE runs on Windows, most people here aren't going to care.

I'm running Kubuntu myself, I've just upgraded to Edgy and it did bad things to the terminal (CTRL-left etc no longer work on the VTs).  I'm going to have to see if I can isolate the bad component and revert it.

it'll work under Gnome and other Linux desktop managers??

ooo, you mean that people would actually want to run it on Windows? No thanks


**

edit : okay, gonna kinda address my sarcasm here. The problem with KOffice on Windows is that it is, well, pointless. KOffice is aimed at the people without the horsepower to run OpenOffice, or at least that's the view I take of the product.

In the case of Windows systems, if you have a computer powerful enough to reliably run Windows XP Service Pack 2, or a computer that can run Vista, you have a computer that can chunk it's way through OpenOffice.

I also probably need to make another point here. You spent a weekend a couple years ago... okay. I went to... this page: http://www.koffice.org/news.php

The bottom page lists this headline : 11th October, 2005: KOffice 1.4.2 released

That was a year ago. Right now the top headline is : Oct 16, 2006: KOffice 1.6.0 Released

if you really want to see the difference check the changelogs :
http://www.koffice.org/announcements/changelog-1.4.2.php
http://www.koffice.org/announcements/changelog-1.6.php

And work is already underway on the KOffice 2.x versions.


The point I'm trying to make here is that if you've tried any OpenSource program just a year ago, if it's a popular one (like FireFox), or a heavily used one (like Apache or KDE), then chances are the program today is radically different than the one you tried before.

Now, many readers are probably used to Product Cycles from Microsoft where you have 4 or 5 years between major products like Internet Explorer and Windows.  Open Source rarely moves that slowly, the only project that comes close I think is Debian.

[Tapewolf]

The other problem is that [Koffice] is single-platform.  Until such time as KDE runs on Windows, most people here aren't going to care.

it'll work under Gnome and other Linux desktop managers??

Yes and SONAR is cross-platform because it will work on Windows 98 AND Windows 2000! 

ooo, you mean that people would actually want to run it on Windows? No thanks

Like it or not, most people aren't using Linux, and unfortunately that hurts its market share.

By the way, does it still implode if you try to load the Bible into it?  That was probably the best part of KOffice weekend - it sat there for about 10 minutes and ate 380MB of memory (on a 256MB system) before the out-of-memory-killer in the kernel realised what was happening and struck it down with Heavenly Force.

**EDIT**
Yes, I'm aware that it might not suck so much anymore, but Openoffice is doing what I need at the moment.

[Netami]

Is open source the same as "free" or does it specifically have to have the feature to download the "source code" for programming?


Hamachi is pretty awesome, regardless. It creates virtual private networks, so you and your friend across the country can virtually be on the same LAN; you can play LAN games and you'll see their shared folders if you go to Network Neighborhood in windows.

[Darkmoon]

Open source specifically mean the source for the project is open to the public to play with and edit.

[ShadesFox]

I must admit, having blown an entire weekend a couple of years ago trying to compile Koffice from source and then finding it sucked, I have little love for it.  The other problem is that it is single-platform.  Until such time as KDE runs on Windows, most people here aren't going to care.

That should be the next version actually.  KDE4 will, allegedly, work on windows.  Granted you won't get the panel or the desktop or the virtual desktop  .

Though I think that things like KDevelop, Kontact, Kopete, Amarok, and Krita are supposed to work.
And funny enough the Konqueror spell check says that more then half of those are misspelled...

[Sid]

I'll just throw VLC, the VideoLAN Client into the mix. It plays tons of formats without you having to worry about installing codecs and what-else-not. Video, audio, DVDs, streams, VLC can do it. There are a few exceptions (like RealVideo...), but it even plays damaged/incomplete files (to a certain degree, but at least it doesn't just say "No, you suck, I won't play it at all").

It's not completely perfect, but it's a wonderful "one size fits most" solution.

[Darkmoon]

You know, if we're going to compile a list of good Open Source progs, maybe we should actually get the list with links together, and show like operating systems supported and all that. I'm reading through the "list" we have so far, and I'm lost as to what is Linux only and what isn't, etc.

I can edit the list to the top of the topic if it gets complied.

[Supercheese]

I must say I like this idea and the thread that contains it. All my would-be contributions have already been mentioned...

I might just have to check some of these out.

it even plays damaged/incomplete files (to a certain degree, but at least it doesn't just say "No, you suck, I won't play it at all").

That made my laugh - it's exactly what I envision Windows Media Player saying to users all the time. 

[xHaZxMaTx]

I'm to lazy to look through all this, but I believe 'Google' SketchUp is open source.