Linked by David Adams on Tue 27th Jul 2010 07:35 UTC, submitted by sjvn
Some people hate the idea of adding proprietary software to their desktop Linux. For these people, there are Linux distributions such as gNewSense that use only free software. For the rest of us, who use distributions such as Fedora, openSUSE and Ubuntu, there are times we either want to, or feel forced to, add proprietary programs such as Adobe Flash or Skype or the ability to play proprietary audio and video formats such as MP3 or commercial DVDs to your Linux desktop. Here's how to do it.
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Member since:2007-02-17
"When to install propietary software?
When there is no free alternative or the free alternative is not good enougth.
When there is no free alternative or the free alternative is not good enougth.
Very nicely put... the article summed up in 2 sentences. "
It was very nicely put. The thing that they forgot to tell you, though, is that the cases where "the free alternative is not good enough" are extremely rare.
In most cases I can get an open source application for my KDE4 desktop that is better than, or at least as good as, any proprietary desktop application. I am talking here about over 95% of the people using a desktop ... every application they would normally use is well catered for by an open source application. The vast majority of their desktop applications would be better than closed-source proprietary equivalent applications.
That is very much a story that commercial software interests don't want people to know. Nevertheless, it is perfectly true.
Now, there are specialist areas that are best catered for by specialist, proprietary applications. Most people wouldn't be running any such applications, but even so, even these areas are starting to cater to Linux desktops:
Here is one example ... CAD:
http://www.bricsys.com/en_INTL/bricscad/index.jsp
http://www.varicad.com/en/home/
http://www.cycas.de/
Professional photography:
http://bibblelabs.com/
http://bibblelabs.com/products/bibble5/specs.html
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/06/lightzone-for-linux-professional...
Personal finance:
http://www.moneydance.com/
Mathematics:
http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematica/index.html
http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematica/platforms/
Having said that, some of the obscure specialist application "gems" are free software:
Book publishing (mathematical content and structured documents like academic articles, theses, and books):
http://www.lyx.org/
Multimedia Studio:
http://lmms.sourceforge.net/screenshots.php
3D content creation:
http://www.blender.org/
http://www.blender.org/features-gallery/gallery/art-gallery/
http://www.makehuman.org/
Numerical simulation:
http://www.salome-platform.org/
Member since:2007-09-06
I'm having no luck with Gnash replacing Adobe Flash Player which sucks because Adobe has shtcanned 64bit development and I don't want to dirty my install with a bunch of 32bit infrastructure to support Flashplayer.
Nouveau is not delivering 3D processing yet, Nvidia has backed out of helping with NV since Nouveau is at feature parity with it. Nvidia-GLX remains without an OSS equivalent.
Like the original post said; where there is an equivalent FOSS alternative, go with the FOSS alternative. Where there isn't, you either live without or you go closed source. Even Mr Stallman suggests this approach.
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Member since:
2005-11-13
When there is no free alternative or the free alternative is not good enougth.
Very nicely put... the article summed up in 2 sentences.