Submitted by Linux is struggling on the desktop because it only has a small number of “great” apps, according to the Gnome co-creator. Miguel de Icaza, co-creator of the Gnome desktop, told tech journalist Tim Anderson at the recent Windows 8 Build conference “When you count how many great desktop apps there are on Linux, you can probably name 10,” de Icaza said, according to a post on Anderson’s IT Writing blog. “You work really hard, you can probably name 20. We’ve managed to p*** off developers every step of the way, breaking APIs all the time.”
The title of the article really misses the point of what Miguel said. The actual substance of the story, as far as I can see, comes in two separate points.
First, he’s making a point about how Linux’s open-source nature has led to fragmentation of APIs on the desktop. This is a perfectly valid complaint. In an ecosystem where there are many competing window managers for Linux, not to mention vastly more competing distributions (all of which are different and none of which are dominant), you’re bound to run into obstacles to producing truly great desktop apps.
However, the second point I take from the story is one that Miguel actually seems to miss. For a long time now we’ve been moving towards a situation where many of the most important desktop applications are actually quite platform agnostic. In part, this has been fuelled by a drive for portability in code that’s proved largely successful. Lately we’ve seen the process accelerated by loads of new platforms being released, each of which competes with traditional desktops, but on which users still want to have available their favourite applications. Platform agnosticism for desktop apps is a really, really good thing.
Personally speaking, of the eight or nine desktop apps I use daily, only one (Visual Studio) doesn’t run on Linux. Everything else (Matlab, R, Eclipse, emacs, various compilers for C/C++/Scala/Erlang, etc) works just as happily on Linux as it does on Windows or Mac, so for me the fact that there aren’t any truly great Linux-only desktop apps is an irrelevance.
I’m not disputing what you’re saying with respect to the complexity that comes with different options on the Linux desktop, but I do recall Miguel talking in the past about the need for Gnome to keep legacy APIs in place so that applications written years ago can still run without modification today. Perhaps his point was that Gnome is a moving target.
I have some help for Miguel to find freedom software applications:
http://www.fsf.org/news/directory-relaunch
Free Software Foundation re-launches its Free Software Directory, with over 6500 programs listed
Unfrotunately, both Miguel and the Free Software Foundation tend very much to utterly ignore KDE and Qt applications, which are easily amongst the best free software desktop applications available today.
I can perhaps help there, too:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_KDE_applications
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Software_that_uses_Qt
KDE also features platform abstraction layers such as Phonon and Solid, which effectively will allow applications written (or updated) in the past few years to still run without modification in many years time.
Miguel: “You work really hard, you can probably name 20. We’ve managed to p*** off developers every step of the way, breaking APIs all the time.”
Hey Miguel, I can easily find hundreds of great free software desktop applications. I can even find a great sub-set of these applications (outside of GNOME) which work with an abstraction layer to avoid API breakage!
Enjoy!
Edited 2011-09-30 01:35 UTC
I can’t even name 5 good linux GUI applications.
So what is a good really succesful Windows application these days ?
Photoshop ? Ohh, no, that also works on Mac OS X
Microsoft Office ? Ohh, same as Photoshop.
Firefox/Chrome, platform independent, even less of a Windows application.
Games ? They are not really GUI apps are they ?
I’m a terrible desktop user, so I wouldn’t know.
Well… Lack of Games just shows that the only party interested in PC gaming was Microsoft. OpenGL was really stuck in 1990-ies for far too long, due to all those squabbles in the community.
Granted, it’s not actually FOSS community’s fault, but lack of interest in the matter has always been “strange” for me. Only with emergence of mobile OpenGL we start seeing some interest in 3D graphics that don’t rely on D3D. Not to mention that current Linux graphics stack is a total resource hog*.
* – If you disagree, then tell me why my powerful desktop box with latest nVidia drivers(which are quite good on Linux) uses 2x more CPU to project any video onto the screen, than Windows(anything post XP) installed on an Atom N270?
PS: I’m on Ubutnu for 4 years now and quite literally hate Win7 and that mess that is it’s UI.
Wasn’t the issue with GL that it started under proprietary development stagnated by it’s parent company allowing DirectX to replace it and dominate game development?
Wasn’t my point… My point was that no-one cared about it enough to offer a competing open-source thing.
“cared about it enough” may still do it injustice though.
I may remember my history wrong but it seemd that the issue had more to do with the GL owning company driving away the game developers who did indeed care in the beginning. The owning company cared about GL but also about controlling it. The game developers cared about it but where driven off and eventually had DX instead. The third party developers cared also but couldn’t do anything due to the GL license at the time. When OpenGL became available, DX was already established with game developers and through MS distribution channels.
Sadly, OpenGL will have to be three times better than DX to get any consideration. The folks that care now have a heck of a challenge.
It could be that the windows side does more on the GPU than the Linux side? The hogginess of the display layer isn’t the most important factor if the Windows side does more of the actual video decoding on the GPU.
If I were stupid, I would have tested it with an accelerated video format. But since I’m not, I tested with universally unaccelerated WebM.
Why does it take 20% of a CPU core to project a video stream in X? It’s not the constant % of CPU X uses, but the jump while playing video…
On Atom N270 with GMA950 anything in 720p and up is not even worth trying in Linux, while Windows manages to play 720p files, without any acceleration.
PS: Windows XP does not do it’s graphics on the GPU. And I tested with Win7 and WinXP.
I like Quanta Plus. I’ve used it for many years. It has many strengths. It is no longer part of the KDE family. There is no replacement. Effectively its legs have been cut off from under it, and it’s been taken to the graveyard to starve to death. Not cool.
Plus, please remember it’s not about how many applications there are — it’s all about the quality. Miguel has very high standards. (Yet it must be noted he is extremely generous and welcoming towards code contributors).
hahahaha….
Oh, you are serious? Which piece of software that Mr high standard have created is not buggy and bloated?
This. A thousand times this.
Not a 73rd shitty iTunes clone!
Agreed. For a given application type, we only need one desktop application for Linux to be better than the alternatives for Windows in order to have a Linux desktop application that is best-of-breed.
The fact that very often there are several Linux desktop applications for any given purpose that are all better than the best application for the same purpose on Windows doesn’t really help all that much.
Edited 2011-09-30 06:06 UTC
I’d very much like to live in your fantasy-land, but I’ve yet to come across a Linux desktop app that’s better than the best Windows counterpart. All I see are several half-hearted clones.
None of the applications on my list has any code whatsoever in common with a predecessor Windows application. There has been no cloning here.
In order to establish your claim, you need to start by naming one Windows-only app, of a similar scope and purpose as any on my list, that is arguably better than the app on my list. Then we can perhaps look at the possibility that you may have a point.
Before you do that, however, you are only blowing hot air.
Premiere Elements
I see your confusion. I made no claim that every application area has a better Linux application.
I only claimed that there were some desktop application areas where the best aplication was a Linux application. For example, the desktop itself … the best-of-breed desktop available right now is arguably the KDE Plasma desktop.
A lot of people are trying to claim that there are no desktop applications for which the best application is available for Linux only. So I have suggested a number for which it can be said that the best available application is available for Linux only. One of my examples was the KDE Plasma desktop itself. Another of my examples is digikam. Another is the file manager Dolphin.
Now, to debate my claim, you need to show a better desktop. Or a better photo collection manager. Or a better (default) file manager.
Premiere Elements is a video editor. I have made no claim about video editors.
Well, I can handle the File Manger bit:
http://www.dopus.com
It’s hella expensive, but currently the best file manager on the planet, bar none.
As for the rest of them, some I haven’t used, but the whole list seems rather generic:
Kate -> Notepad++
K3b -> CDBurnerXP / Infrarecorder
Amarok -> MediaMonkey
qalculate – Speedcrunch (runs on Linux too, so probably doesn’t count)
Digikam – Take your pick?
http://www.brighthub.com/multimedia/photography/articles/61806.aspx
Anyway, Linux does a good job with the basic ‘bread and butter apps’, in that I don’t think I’d be embarrased to use any app on your list, except maybe Dolphin. However, I wouldn’t say any of the ones on your list I’m familiar with are clearly superior to their Windows counterparts. And when you get into high-end/specialty sort of desktop apps (such as software synths), Linux is going to lose almost every time.
Edited 2011-09-30 07:37 UTC
This is, at last, a reasonable response.
NOW at least there could be a discussion. For example, I could point out that Dolphin does everything on the feature list of Dopus except one: “Support for CD/DVD burning”. On a Linux KDE desktop I have k3b installed by default anyway. This means that to match what I get for free on my Linux desktop, Windows users would have to make a “hella expensive” purchase.
So it comes down to what one means by “best”. My definition of “best” would definitely include value-for-money.
I do like Notepad++, but it doesn’t quite match Kate.
A number of the photo manager applications listed were viewers and organisers only, digikam does more than thet, it includes a very good photo editor.
And so on.
At least, however, this is a discussion. Kudos for trying, you are the first one to even try to find applications that could match.
The features they list on the front page barely even begin to scratch the surface of what Dopus can do. For example, here’s a list of JUST the features that were new to version 9 (it’s now up to v10, btw):
http://www.pretentiousname.com/opus9
It would take you a least half an hour just to scan through the options dialog
Well yeah, if you’re going to exclude all the paid/commercial apps on Windows, then I’d imagine Linux would come out on top in most cases. However, I really don’t mind paying for apps when its warranted, especially when it comes to Dopus, which happens to be one of the apps that keeps me on Windows
I’d also much rather use DVDFab or AnyDVD for ripping DVDs vs Handbrake (the free app that most folks use).
I suppose you could argue it either way, Kate vs Notepad++ vs PSPad vs Jedit/Ultraedit (which are cross-platform) vs about 3 dozen other entries in this field.
Ya, I don’t screw with photo apps, which is why I provided the URL. I love Irfanview as a viewer though.
Edit: Just a few other apps that keep me on Windows:
– Winorganizer (‘outliner’ app):
http://www.tgslabs.com/en/winorganizer
(Another popular app in this genre is Treepad, but Winorganizer is better.)
– Adobe Audition:
http://www.adobe.com/products/audition.html
(If you offer up Audacity or Ardour as alternatives, I will slap you thru the computer)
– Spotify (is there a Linux version yet?)
– Newsleecher
http://www.newsleecher.com
(Anything on Linux with a Supersearch-like feature?)
– Opera web browser (because the text to speech feature doesn’t exist on Linux)
Well, those are the biggies, which doesn’t include ‘specialized’ apps. Funny this list is now a lot smaller than the last time I wrote one up … about half a dozen more apps and I could probably switch for day-to-day use.
Edited 2011-09-30 08:31 UTC
So… Ease of use isn’t a consideration? Because Dopus is no less convoluted as Win7’s explorer.
Only if the app in question has usability issues that prevent you from doing anything useful with it until you spend significant time with it, which Dopus doesn’t; it’s usable right out of the box, and grows with you. For example, if you don’t want to customize the information that is displayed on the status bar, you don’t have to. But you certainly can.
Of course, if you’re looking for simplicity and don’t care much about functionality, Dopus is obviously not for you. This ain’t your grandma’s file manager
And there’s ONLY about 3-4 dozen different free Explorer replacements to choose from.
Here’s some wisdom on your head: All great things are simple.
(even special relativity is simple in the end)
A file manger is general tool and should not be as complicated as Dopus is. Specialized tools is a different issue, simplicity is evaluated by specialists there.
I find Nautilus, though terribly heavy, to be rather simple and straightforward. Those two things would be the most important, but not limited to, evaluation elements I would use to define greatness.
Trust me, I don’t like complicated shit either; Dopus is infinitely customizable and you could spend weeks delving into its options, but it is NOT complicated… there is a huge difference between the two. You could launch Dopus and use it like a regular file manager right out of the box. Of course, by doing so, you might as well stick with Explorer.
So, what is complicated then? The sendmail configuration file… now THAT is complicated
Well hell, if you want simple and straightforward, why don’t you just sell your PC and buy an iPad? If you don’t like a lot of options in your apps, it doesn’t get much more simpler than that.
I like options and I like customizable stuff. But when I find myself staring at the screen for 10-20 seconds to find the function I have to perform I label it complicated.
I fact, the way I do usability testing with my own ideas is I try using them when I’m exceptionally tired or drunk*. I’m sorry to say, but Windows 7 Explorer, Dopus, Outlook 2010 all fail miserably at their main tasks when I’m tired (a lot of other software and websites also).
* – When I’m in those 2 conditions, which are rather similar in effect on my cognitive abilities, only the functional usability comes into play.
KDE runs on BSD and I believe there is also a build you can install on Windows. Not sure if there is an osX native release.
Dolphin is nice but I’d like to see it’s plugins crash the entire Dolphin out less often. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had three or four seporate Dolphin windows open, grabbed a video file and watched them all disapear after a momentary lockup. I’d also like to see it handle Samba much better though it’ll never manage it as well as Iexplore.exe.
Digikam I haven’t worked with.
Amarok is a very nice media player but in mhy opinion, they made a mess of the UI with the last version change. I upgraded to Debian Squeeze which ships with the newer version and now things that where dead simply like drag/drop mp3s into the play list, updating metadata and having them sorted/renamed into my library standard structure have been redisined to be a pig. Seriously? I actually had to create an “tobeadded” directory and map it into the managed directories list.. WTF? (though, it remains head and sholders above the Apple circle-jerk that is Itunes).
For me it really shines in the terminal space still though, Metasploit on Windows is just not remotely the same as working with Metasploit on top of the *nix cli userland. Granted, for that type of work Normally have my host OS, a Backtrack VM and a Windows VM all working out of the same mapped directory so I have the os/tool needed when needed without splitting my working dir and data across multiple systems.
Don’t get me wrong, while I think “only 10 good apps” is a bunk claim, there is a pretty solid point in the fragmentation of the market and APIs in terms of software that the distributions don’t take the time to package for there own distro build. Having a .DEB extension doesn’t mean it can be dropped onto any .deb packaged based distro.
If it’s an iTunes clone, then sh***y is the best they can do.
Not all of us like the bloated POS that is Itunes with each update managing to find new ways to add more UI clutter. Oh, has Itunes managed to add custom library naming yet? I’d really like to have my Itunes media library organized on the drive in a more rational way. For example, my music in;
<libarary root>/<album>/<album> <track#> <artist> <tracktitle>.ext
Far as I can tell, Itunes does all it can to mash the actual file structure in the library to avoid things like using an alternative media player/manager to access the same libarary tree.
But damn is Itunes ever good at encrougating it’s users to funnel more money back into Apple’s profit margin. I guess it does achieve it’s primary function better than any media related app on a Linux distro.
That’s my point… If they’re copying iTunes, then the best that can do is total crap, because iTunes is total crap.
fair point. I seem to have read it backwards at the time.
I prefer Rhythmbox to iTunes any day. Plug’s that extend the functionality greatly and I can still watch much of my media from it. I only wish it did work on windows for the windows box I have.
I’m happy to be wrong. It seems Quanta Plus is being resurrected in the form of a plugin for kdevelop:
http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/quanta-plus-for-kde4/
This is excellent news. I hope it works out.
Yes, linux has so many great applications that users are flocking to it in great numbers……..
The truth of the matter is that there is a handful of half-assed applications that works some of the time and then you update you system and another set of half-assed apps works.
This is not a good situation and users do generally not have great patience with it. The most idealistic of users stay with the system for about 6 months then go :f**k it….
Linux developers needs to listen to Miguel a lot more because he is talking sense.
Step 1: Make it easy to program for Linux, using modern programming languages.
Step 2: Provide stable API’s and ABI’s so that programs will work for a long time without excessive maintenance.
Step 3: Test the programs before releasing.
It seems that everyone involved with free software has a Lisus Thorvalds in the stomach and wants to single-handedly f**k the system up.
Please stop that!
Unsupported claims. You saying something does not make it so.
Freedom software doesn’t require a stable ABI.
As for the rest:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_Quick
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_Creator
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_%28programming_language~*~@…
WTF?
1) Good thing then that Windows does or WINE users would be very sorry.
2) It better do, or I won’t (ever) join the rebellion..
3) ..and neither will the dial-up world..
Linus Thorvalds ….
Good software does.
Developers do not like trying to hit a moving target. We like to deploy and forget one everything is working … we don’t like to fix thing when someone else has broken them.
If people need to then give us warning and depreciate accordingly.
Churn is good for nobody.
Edited 2011-09-30 21:32 UTC
Then again, it’s not as if Apple really fares that much better, given the marketshare of OSX compared to Windows.
Edited 2011-09-30 10:14 UTC
Last time I checked any programming language you can imagine usually gets Linux support first before anything else. As far as “modern” languages go:
C++11, Java7, Python3, Ruby19, Haskell, …, etc.
If you’re definition of “Modern” programming languages only consists of the latest and greatest iteration of C# then I guess I can see your point. But if you actually consider other modern languages then Linux definitely leads the pack in supported platforms.
On that list only C++ is useful for making desktop apps.
What about Step 2 and 3? you forgot about them.
Just a slight correctino – if they considered a “Modern” programming language anything that comes from Microsoft (which would include C#) then I can concede point.
However, most “Modern” programming languages do not come from Microsoft, but from the other 99.999999999999% percent of the world.
So…. Microsoft has only 0.00007 person?
No, Microsoft itself is only 0.000000000001% of the population of the planet.
0.00000000000001 * 7000000000 = 0.00007
He might be thinking of a Visual Studio experience where almost everything were integrated. While I am not a developer in a sense of using Linux as my tools, I understand that Linux’ dev tools are great, but not integrated. Ubuntu’s quickly I think is an attempt to address this issue.
Update breakage or lack there of tends to be a competitive attribute between distributions. What distribution are you using that breaks applications with each update and why haven’t you considered using a better managed distribution?
Step 4: Focus on a toolkit not 100, focus on a single graphics stack not 100, focus at a single app/app group. No need to reinvent the wheel 1000 times.
Step 5: Use some good programming languages. Python and Shell Scripting aren’t for general software development, really. They are for frustrated foss enthusiasts too lazy/incapable to learn something actually good for desktop/system programming.
Step 6: Try to implement a good system architecture. I.e. ALSA is a mess, X11 is a mess, Pulse Audio is a mess, HAL is a mess, Init is a mess, CUPS is a mess, udev is a mess.
Step 7: If ain’t good, don’t release it. The world doesn’t need yet another window manager, yet another text editor, and so on. The fact that you can apt-get or yum install everything from a central repository doesn’t make for the fact of that repository being full of crapware.
Step 8: Optimize, make it work. Too much slowness, too many crashes.
Step 9: Stable API, Stable ABI.
Step 10: Stable API, Stable ABI.
…………………………………………….
Step 1000: Stable API, Stable ABI.
Better yet, make your API/toolkit language-agnostic, so I can use whatever the hell I want to program in, and then compile down to a native executable, no matter what language I choose.
On Windows, my language of choice is actually AutoIt. It’s probably got 1/10th the power of perl or python, but does everything I need it to do 95% of the time, and can generate small, native .exe files.
Edited 2011-10-01 02:19 UTC
For all practicalpurposes there are only two: qt and gtk.
There aren’t hundred graphics stacks.
No? Way to show your ignorance. That’s like saying VB.net is not a language for real development.
It’s obvious that you’ve never used either and really, no-one is using shell as a desktop programming language. Python’s just fine though.
Well, I guess it would be good to do something the commercial development houses do not.
And yet, how many of these apps are truly great & how many are just repeatedly called great without actually being so?
Personally, i know only one good Linux desktop program – Amarok 1.4
Amarok 2 and foobar are just crap compared to this masterpiece.
I can’t imagine how you can call foobar crap… Especially when you can call anything with the name Amarok a masterpiece…
Edited 2011-09-30 19:49 UTC
What does the name have to do with anything?
Please also consider the number of users of those existing applications in your DE(GNOME/KDE).
I disagree with him but that is a very poor rebuttal(home many of those are good?). A better rebuttal would be to list specific good applications.
Edited 2011-10-03 09:42 UTC
With “software that uses Qt” we have there Gadu Gadu for example… NVM how it isn’t open, it is also a ridiculously bad (and not on a technical level, oh no, it’s smooth there and easily among best open ones; it’s just bad, in “concept”) application you have never used.
You throw around lists of stuff you hardly use, or don’t bother to compare them with other tools. “It’s under KDE or Qt banner, therefore it’s good” doesn’t work, a lot of it is sub-par (and the DE itself tends to get in the way of doing things for some time now; luckily, even if XFCE looks like it might go the same way, there’s a rapidly maturing LXDE for example)
Every single one of those applications is something which no normal person uses on a daily basis, just people in scientific/engineering fields. This is not the norm.
All of this is true. But it’s completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
The reason is quite simple. A desktop application can be considered “great” based on one single criteria: how good it is at its intended purpose. It doesn’t matter one little bit whether it’s a music player, a web browser, or an application for scientific computing. If it’s head and shoulders above the competition, it may legitimately be considered as being great.
The fact that the applications I mentioned are all of a statistical/comp-sci nature is irrelevant. Each of them (with the exception, perhaps, of the compilers) is an example of a truly great desktop application. And all of them (with the exception of Visual Studio) are truly great platform-agnostic applications.
You reasons here are also one of the reasons why Linux failed to achieve large applications database. Talk to graphic artists, if Desktop Linux is feasible just to show you an example.
he’s right. the best thing for linux desktops to do now is accelerate their copying of cutting edge ideas and move to an HTML5-oriented GUI standard.
intel dumped qt and meego for html5. microsoft dumped 30 years of heritage for html5. google is dumping its grandmother for html5. the writing is on the wall. chop chop.
Really this time
Miguel has spoken
the whispering of the spirit.
Really true this time
Whispering of the spirit
Miguel has spoken
FTFY
“To be honest, with Linux on the desktop,
the benefits of open source
have really played against Linux on the desktop
in that we keep breaking things.”
…
“We’ve managed to piss off developers
every step of the way,
breaking APIs all the time.”
…
“I’m heartbroken, that’s the bottom line.”
“I’m heartbroken, that’s the bottom line.”
Guess he should have done a better job with GNOME, eh?
I am sure Miguel made his point at the key moments.
Solid and stabilized API’s upon wich
(desktop) app programmers could build on.
That is the pain
Miguel is talking about.
Even on natural languages,
one of the last human dominions
not overtaken by exchange paradigms
solid an stabilizad API’s
are a prerequisite of popularity.
Programming for the PC an Mac Desktops
http://i.imgur.com/UX2Lw.png
Programing for the Linux Desktops
http://www.tumblr.com/photo/1280/10771621287/1/tumblr_lrb6w3Q4jh1qm…
Have a good weekend you all
🙂
I agree with Miguel, he’s 100% on the spot about this, as usual. I can probably name 10 really good GUI Linux apps, but then it starts getting difficult (and I used to run the original Gnomefiles.org, so I’ve tried lots of such apps). Even apps that might be seen as more “revolutionary” than Win/Mac apps, these are usually not ready for the prime time (crash too easily).
I’d say that my favorite GUI Linux app at this moment is Blender 2.5x. Not quite there yet for tracking and other movie-related CGI work, but for stand-alone animations it beats many commercial offerings with its new streamlined UI.
Second app would probably be GIMP, despite its usability problems. Still no actual good video editor though, after 10 years of looking (and yes, I’ve tried them all): crashy, slow, missing features, buggy codecs, terrible usability. Just bad.
Indeed he is. And the sad thing is that it has taken this long for him to realize it? Imagine how much further Linux could have progressed if they had figured this shit out in 2001 instead of now. Of course, it’s not like us non-Linux users haven’t been beating this drum for the past decade or more, but would anybody listen to us? Hell no. Why? Because obviously, having half a dozen desktop environments and 900 distros to choose from really IS a good thing
As for the ’10 good desktop apps thing’, can you list 10 really good apps that DON’T run on Windows?
Edited 2011-09-30 01:13 UTC
Depends what you mean by “really good apps”. I will interpret it as meaning apps that are at least as good, if not far better, as those currently used for the same purposes on Windows. OK, challenge accepted.
Plasma desktop
digikam
krita
k3b
kate
okular
dolphin
Kst
Amarok
qalculate
The question was asking for “10 really good apps” not 10 KDE packages.
There are plenty of awesome QT apps out there;
(http://packages.python.org/spyder/overview.html)
But parts of the KDE SC don’t qualify as ‘really good’.
very true, KDE apps are sub-par with QT apps.
Microsoft owns nokia->QT->KDE.
Obviously the master does not want ‘competing’ products from his slave Nokia->QT->KDE.
Qt is licensed under GPLv3 and LGPLv3.
It is a shame that Nokia succumbed to Microsoft’s embrace and extinguish strategy, but, due mainly to the GPLv3, by no means does that mean the end of Qt.
In my opinion Qt is still the best way to write portable software. And you can choose from C++, Python etc. I recently compiled Windows-binaries on Ubuntu simply by running Qt SDK under Wine and it just worked
Yes… before the Microsoft, Nokia deal all KDE apps were perfect.
Then they f**ked it all up in just 2 months…..
Dude ………………………..
Nokia losing market in 2007, MS got afraid of android.
KDE 4.0 came out in 2008.
MS and Nokia has been secret affair for many years, only came to light later in 2008.
http://www.businessweek.com/blogs/europeinsight/archives/2008/09/no…
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10307378-56.html
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2008/01/nokia-buys-trolltec…
KDE 4.0 had great plans like solid, nepomuk, this, that… where are they, after nokia acquisition of trolltech? All became vaporware.
KDE 4.7 still buggy Desktop! If not for the master.
KDE 4.7 isn’t buggy.
So your definition for vaporware seems to be “freely downloadable and completely functioning”.
No, it wasn’t. The question was, and I quote: “can you list 10 really good apps that DON’T run on Windows?”
A fine application, but Python/Qt apps, such as the one you linked, do typically run on Windows.
YOU didn’t answer the question.
Why not? Especially the apps that are far better than the equivalent apps on Windows. Why exactly don’t they qualify as as ‘really good’?
What, we have app prejudice now? Go to the back of the bus, hey?
PS: a number of the apps I quoted are not part of the KDE SC.
Edited 2011-09-30 02:35 UTC
W8, W8, so it turns that you, apparently some big self-professed promoter of KDE, have so narrow view as to not even be aware than KDE applications are largely available for Windows? (certainly most of those which you list)
Not very popular there, there are typically better choices, but still they very much DO run on Windows…
I have to second this list. I’m not sure what Mono Miguel is spewing about. What is “great”? Does he consider Mono great? (I know, it’s not an “ap”, but wtf? I also agree with what someone just posted the he’s having a hard time listing 10 “great” windows apps.
WTF? Why was this voted down? I listed 10 apps that don’t run on Windows. All 10 are at least as good as any other equivalent app for other platforms for the same purpose.
A perfectly polite and concise answer to the question posed.
What on earth is going on with the downvoting?
Is there some point here that some people don’t want others to know about, or something?
Perhaps you were voted down for being delusional?
That is not on the list of reasons for downvoting a post. Neither does it describe the post itself.
PS: In order to make a claim such as “delusional”, you would first have to establish even a teeny tiny point. This you have utterly failed to do, I notice.
My bet is that none of the downvoters have actually tested those apps.
My guess is that the downvoters are in denial that they have blown so much money on their Windows or Mac machine that they simply didn’t have to.
Or maybe they like things you don’t? Shocking, I know!
No they are not, not in my opinion. You see, this “good” word is highly subjective. I for one don’t want my screen blasted with the vomit that is Amarok or Dolphin.
But again, that’s my highly personal opinion. You sir make it sound like your opinion is the truth. Maybe that pissed people off?
Just a guess, I didn’t vote…
Yours it is just as much an opinion. For example, I can set Dolphin to pretty much mimic exactly the way that Windows explorer looks and feels, and get it to do everything that Windows explorer does. You, however, can’t get Windows explorer to have a split screen, or separate tabs, or to perform a batch re-name on a group of files, or to convert-as-it-copies from an audio CD to a set of .mp3 files on disk elsewhere (let alone a set of .ogg files on disk).
You might not like Amorak, and indeed I prefer Clementine myself but Clementine is not Linux-only. The point is, despite your opinion, I notice that you don’t actually come up with a better Windows-only application that can match Amorak feature-for-feature (for example, Amorak’s support of FLAC and Ogg Vorbis audio files, or its support of iPod personal media players, its support for lyrics and album covers and file metadata, all available in the one app).
After all, it is the Windows fanbois who are trying to claim that there are no good Linux desktop applications. All I have to do is demonstrate some of the desktop app features that equivalent Windows apps can’t match, and my point stands. It doesn’t depend on your like or dislike of Linux artwork.
No it isn’t. It’s Miguel de Icaza. The guy who wrote Midnight Commander and Gnumeric. The guy who *founded* the Gnome project. I trhink he has earned the right to speak out on this subject..
Yes, it is. But I am very clear that my opinion is my opinion. In fact I even used the word “opinion” in my post to describe my opinion. You did not. Instead you are making it sound like your opinion (“this is good”) is a fact. Just add “IMO” somewhere and I bet you won’t piss as many people off.
No, I would still feel and see the difference.
I don’t only judge apps based on what they can do. That’s like judging singers based only on how they look… oh wait!
Nice, all features I don’t really want or need. So in my opinion you are selling an ice cream cone which can fly. Why would I want it to fly?
I don’t see why I should. I was just trying to guess on why people voted you down.
Doesn’t it? I want a pretty system. For example I am disgusted by iTunes or Safari on Windows, MS Office or Spotify on Linux for exactly that reason. I wouldn’t touch it even if it had ten times more features than all other applications in the world combined. But again, that’s just my opinion. Judging by most applications on Windows I’d say that most people don’t care that their apps looks like shit.
But do you want my opinion on the state of Linux apps? I’d say that it doesn’t matter really. I don’t think that it’s the apps that’s holding Linux back (if you are not a video editor or company running highly niched apps).
I installed Ubuntu on my father-in-laws computer and he loved it. I think that there’s apps for Gnome, KDE, Windows, Mac, whatever, that do the job and work for the average Joe. So I don’t agree with Mr. de Icaza.
Or its lack of support for audio CDs…
The rest of the applications you listed are OK, apart from krita, which suffers from being too complicated while still missing basic features.
Anyway, you listed these programs as an answer to “what applications do not run on Windows”; does that mean the “KDE 4 on Windows” project is dead?
Excuse me?
http://amarok.kde.org/en/features
They might be still trying to achieve this, but for now there is no “KDE 4 on Windows”.
Good to know then that they finally put it back. I remember it not working in 2.1 (even 2.2?), so I had to go with Kaffeine for CDs and Amarok for mp3s; it was quite schrizophenic…
Krita, that’s the flow chart app isn’t it? Yeah, it’s not even close to Visio and trust me, I’d really, really, really like to find anything close enough to Visio to be usable.
No, that’s the bitmap drawing program. Kivio is the diagram app.
ah.. cheers for the corection. GIMP has been my habit for raster editing so I’m rather foggy on the other options.
No it’s not. It is bitmap graphics app similar to GIMP but for KDE. If you insist on making inflammatory posts make sure you get your factual information correct first otherwise shutup.
“if you insist on making infamitory”
Hey tough guy. Notice above where I asked for confirmation if Krita was the visio like application or not? Notice also where SoulBender right above your post answers my question and I hapilly awknowledge my error?
seems like you may want to get your own facts strait before jumping to conclusions.
“otherwise shutup”
your adorable. Did i hurt your witto feewings?
No, krita is a best-of-breed raster graphics creative tool.
http://www.calligra-suite.org/krita/
The diagramming application is Flow. It has been in the doldrums for quite a while now, but it will be back with Calligra Suite 2.4.
http://www.calligra-suite.org/flow/attachment/flow-2-4-screenshot/
It is, of course, meant to be used in conjunction with the vector graphics component, karbon.
http://www.calligra-suite.org/karbon/
There is no reason why one couldn’t incorporate elements from Krita also.
There is no reason why this combination shouldn’t be as powerful as Visio.
Object library and polish. That’s what keeps me booting over to Windows when I need to do diagram work. I had a brand name accurate diagram of my racks in about fifteen minutes with Visio and third party library pack where I couldn’t get anything usable out of Kivio. That huge library of diagram objects is a heck of a competitive advantage.
If Flow is that much better than Kivio, I definately need to give it a look. Booting over a machine just to use a single program sucks rocks; especially for something as basic as Visio diagrams.
Sadly I must agree, Kivio is/was pretty much ass. It was promising but never got to where it was actualyl usefull for me. Mostly a lack of good preset shapes. For network diagrams Dia works well enough, at least for me.
This Flow thing might turn out great but it’s really not usefull yet. Karbon is not a suitable replacement.
Btw, for managing my racks I use Racktables. Indispensible when managing a datacenter. You might want to look at it.
I’m sorry, but since when are Linux fanboys banned from criticising Linux?
I have a lot of criticism of Linux and I point out features that can be implemented better or in a unique way. Hell I consider Win7 to be the least user friendly OS release ever. After 2 years of forced use by my employer, I still hate it and find it to be unintuitive 99% of the time. Don’t get me started with Outlook 2010, I’ll take web-based GMail any day of the week…
I personally despise anonymous voting/modding.
I don’t need to know who votted up or down but I’d sure like to find out where I can see the breakdown of chosen reason for votting a comment up or down. I’ve seen more than a few o few of my own votted down for no reason aperent to rational thinking humans.
In most cases, I don’t care that the comment was even voted up or down, just if they down vote was because I was really that far off base or conflicted with someone’s chosen world view.
Except that most of them run on windows… There is no exclusively good linux-only applications, because most of them are written with portable toolkits. And if they are good, eventually someone will compile them on windows.
Except for the ones I listed, and many others besides, which don’t run on Windows.
I know kate, dolphin and okular do, because I’ve got them installed in Win7 (and they work fine). Amarok, digikam, krita and Kst also seem to have windows versions, though I haven’t tested them recently so I can’t say how useful they are.
Edited 2011-09-30 18:57 UTC
SAGE (www.sagemath.org)
Currently runs in Windows only via a virtual machine, or through browser web pages served from a Linux box. 😀
SAGE is indeed a good example.
I am not a Linux zealot and use MacOS and Windows every day, but the existence of cygwin is a proof that there is a significant number of people who prefer Linux tools to the analogues in other operating systems. This includes non-command-line applications. For example, I think
http://plasma-gate.weizmann.ac.il/Grace/
is superior to any other plotting tool I tried (and I tried many). I know at least a dozen of people (all in academia) who share this opinion. It’s available on Windows as part of cygwin.
Am I wrong that gnuplot was available for Linux first as well?
SAGE is indeed a good example.
I am not a Linux zealot and use MacOS and Windows every day, but the existence of Cygwin is a proof that there is a significant number of people who prefer Linux/Unix tools to their analogues in other operating systems. This includes non-command-line applications. For example, I strongly prefer
http://plasma-gate.weizmann.ac.il/Grace/
to any other plotting tool I tried (and I tried many). I know at least a dozen of people (all in academia) who share this opinion. Grace can be used on Windows (via cygwin + X server) and Mac OS X.
On the other hand, many good Linux applications (or applications that started as Linux/Unix-only applications) have a niche user base. An average user is unlikely to be interested in either Sage or Grace.
While I agree that those are great apps, most of them do actually run on Windows as one of the stated goals of KDE4 was for more cross-platform capabilities, and to that end windows.kde.org is driving the Windows ports of most all of KDE. This was aided, of course, by TrollTech/Nokia expanding the GPL/LGPL license of Qt to the Windows version, which use to only be for their commercial customers prior to Qt 4.
About the only app that I know of that doesn’t run on Windows from KDE is Konsole which is due to the Pty support on Windows (or rather the lack thereof).
I’m not sure of k3b runs on Windows yet or not…it might, but I can’t remember.
Oh – and the KDE/Windows folks even provide a nice installer that does a fairly good job of acting as a package manager, albeit only for what they build.
One of the problems is not running on Windows, most kde apps while possibly not well tested on windows will run on windows to some extent. see http://windows.kde.org/.
The greatest non Windows applications can be found on the Mac:
Final Cut, Motion, iMovie, Keynote, Pages, Aperture, iPhoto, GarageBand, OmniGraffle, Bento, Coda, BBEdit
What’s wrong with choices? Do you really want “one OS to rule them all”? That maybe fine for you and/or most people but, surprise, some other people like freedom (of choice) and are prepared to take the time to learn their way around and, sometimes, even put up with a botched upgrade and a reinstall — as if such things never happen with a mainstream OS! But don’t get me wrong: when I talk about choices I’m including Windows and OS X too.
De Icaza was talking mostly about Windows 8 and Metro applications and didn’t say “Linux only applications”, so flipping the question on its head makes little sense to me. Unless, that is, you’re interested in a pissing contest. 😉
That said, I think there’s plenty of “great” apps in Linux (and *BSD land) and any modern distribution makes for a fairly usable environment — at least for the most common activities. It could be said that some of them are not as polished or as easy to use but, again, I value freedom most of all and I like the idea of an OS that’s not controlled by a single entity. I don’t know, maybe I’m a bit of an anarchist.
RT.
Basically what you’re saying is that you’re willing to put up with a lot of bullshit in exchange for freedom (or at least your version of it), and that’s fine… I can’t argue with you there.
But what many of us (both end users and developers) have been saying for years is that desktop Linux is a fragmented mess, and is a big reason why we want nothing to do with it.
Of course, some folks like it that way, and like I said before… that’s fine. But in its current state, it’s NEVER going to pick up any significant marketshare. So if you want to have stuff splintered in a hundred different directions, you’re just going to have to live with the marketshare you have, and no amount of whining about choice and ‘Steve Balmer/Jobs is a seal-clubbing bastard’ is going to change it.
BS. Miguel is a rabid MS fanboy who thinks OOXML is great.
And just because Linux is lacking in your area of expertise it doesn’t mean that there aren’t great apps (see my list below)
Edited 2011-09-30 06:00 UTC
+1
The guy wrote midnight commander, started gnome and mono and according to this quote
hasn’t even thought about using Windows until now … so how the hell can he be a MS fanboy?
He doesn’t use their flagship products.
Because he was rejected to work at Microsoft, before he turned its attention to Linux.
Most of the projects he touched, although good for the Linux world, were clones of Microsoft technology.
Bonobo: COM implemented with CORBA
Evolution: Outlook
Mono: .Net
Moonlight: Silverligt
It is as like he has been trying to compensate for the fact he was not been taken by them.
Blender isn’t really a Linux app is it ?
Is the GIMP a Linux app ? I guess it is.
But as I asked above. What is a good example of a sucessful Windows application ?
You mean, “Blender isn’t really a Windows app, is it?”
http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20080511115151164
You are right, Blender really isn’t a Windows app. Microsoft wished it was.
I’m asking, because I’m not a Blender user. I’ve never ever even seen it.
Blender is a pretty powerful 3D graphics app.
http://www.blender.org/
“Blender is the free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License.”
Here are some a relatively recent samples of its output:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRsGyueVLvQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QbzE8jOO7_0&…
Enjoy!
Edited 2011-09-30 10:56 UTC
I know what it is, I just have never installed and used it because I don’t have a use for it.
If I haven’t used it for something, I wouldn’t be able to judge if it is a Linux- or Windows-application or otherwise.
Since apps that runs on many platforms does not count we must exclude all Windows apps that runs in Wine/Cedega/Crossover from any comparisons.
But then, your list of great linux apps from earlier:
So, cross-platform applications are included when counting Linux applications and excluded when counting Windows applications?
Edited 2011-09-30 17:38 UTC
You failed to detect the sarcasm.
Sorry about that, it’s been a long day…
I hope NovaCut can fix the issue of not having a good and simple video editing tool.
I only use Linux and I struggle to hit even 10.
http://zim-wiki.org/
http://projects.gnome.org/rhythmbox/
http://projects.gnome.org/gedit/
http://www.gimp.org/
http://www.infinicode.org/code/pyrenamer/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/tagtool/
This one isn’t even an ‘app’ but it’s perfect.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/minidlna/
I think what happens is that you fall into the trap of writing little scripts and use command-line programs to fill your own gaps.
Then again, I haven’t felt like anything important is missing either. Linux fills the gaps but it doesn’t make them known very easily for most people.
I dunno, was pretty easy for me.
wireshark
k3b
firefox
chrome/chromium
dolphin
kate
kopete
psi
kmail
ktorrent
…continuing…
konsole
bangarang
vlc
smplayer
amarok
clementine
thunderbird
etc etc
and thats just at the top of my head.
Now take out all the ones that are available on windows and/or Mac. That’s what this is about. Are there any apps out there that are so utterly awesome that anybody would want to switch to Linux?
Oh, I’m not a windows fanboy BTW. I’m a Mac fanboy. I do a lot of writing and Apple’s Pages is the most incredible word processor ever made. The first wp I’ve seen on which styles actually make sense. I run a Mac because Pages is available on it.
Your turn. What Linux app gives such an incredible user experience that I should give up the Mac and run a Linux box instead? And keep in mind that anything that runs via a native port (eg Firefox), or as an X port (scribus) or via Darwinports or Fink does not qualify. I can run those already.
Hey, I like the Linux politics. But it’s not enough, I need great software that I cannot get anywhere else. Give me a reason to switch!
Mac OS X lacks a good file manager and window manager, so I’d say kwin and Dolphin or one of the many alternatives. BTW, pretending that Fink and X11 somehow makes the experience the same under OS X just isn’t credible, as the user experience generally sucks.
Hell, OS X isn’t even integrated with itself when you look at it from the POV of the command line.
You have a point here. For the most part, one can achieve whatever one wants to achieve on any well-supported platform, be it Linux, Mac or Windows.
The killer feature of Linux is value-for-money. One can achieve vastly more capability per dollar spent on a Linux machine.
That feature may not be very attractive however to someone who has already blown their money on an expensive Mac or Windows system.
In fact, such people might even come on Internet forums and try to justify their expensive choice, perhaps to make them feel better. They might even go so far as to try to insist that a far better value-for-money alternative doesn’t exist, when clearly, it does. They might even down-vote others in a kind of semi-irrational state of denial.
Except that the majority of people don’t care about this. I’ve worked both in a small local computer shop servicing home users and for a consultant business servicing business IT for networks up to 200 people. One of the commonalities of both of those markets is that they want something to “just work”.
Home users don’t care about the “choice” or added capabilities that Linux offers. They want to turn the computer on, log into their email, do their banking, etc. and turn it off. If you were to tell them about “choice” or “computer freedom” or “more capability per dollar”, they’d look at you like you were insane. They don’t care. These people buy a new OS when they replace their computer. That only happens when the old one dies. Saying “But you have more capability!” means nothing to them.
Business’ clients want a system that just works with what they already have. They don’t want to pay their IT staff to figure out how to coax Postfix & Dovecot to mimic what their old Exchange server could do. They don’t want to have to sort out Samba when a Windows server will share files with five or so mouse clicks. They don’t want to pay to have their old applications rewritten to use Linux technologies. They don’t want to figure out why a mail merge that worked with Word and Excel suddenly doesn’t work with Writer and Calc. This will cost them money and provide almost nothing in return.
If you want either of those two groups to take Linux seriously as an alternative to Windows or Mac, there HAS to be a compelling reason why. That has to be a “Killer App”. Windows has a huge number of legacy applications, lots of triple-A video games and Office, not to mention Active Directory. Mac has Pages, Keynote, Final Cut, Aqua all with a “cool” factor. Linux has … Amarok? Kate? That’s not enough.
“Capability per dollar” means nothing if the people you’re trying to convince to switch have no use for the added capabilities.
This is coming from somebody who runs a personal FreeBSD server, has done SysAdmin on NetBSD and Linux for an ISP, has been using Linux on the desktop off and on since 2000 and has worked in IT for over ten years.
You are extremely abrasive. This paragraph is so full of passive-aggressive posturing that I’d swear it was written by a twelve year old. My guess is that the attitude you’re displaying here is enough to get people to down vote you just for spite.
Every single one of your points is “classical FUD” against Linux.
If one gets a desktop Linux LiveCD today, and installs it on a bare machine, it will work instantly out of the box.
Yes, I repeat, it will “just work”.
Ordinary people will absolutely be able to: “turn the computer on, log into their email, do their banking, etc. and turn it off”.
Why on earth would you imagine that they wouldn’t be able to?
Why would you imagine people would struggle setting up Postfix & Dovecot if it didn’t meet their needs (it isn’t a replacement for Exchange). Why wouldn’t they simply go for Openchange/SoGo or Zarafa (which are a replacements for Exchange)?
http://www.openchange.org/
http://www.zarafa.com/
What the hell are you on about, anyway? Why do you feel the need to try to spread disinformation like you did?
How come alleged “cool factor” is important anyway if people allegedly want things to work “out of the box”? I will simply point out that what you list as cool for OSX and Windows doesn’t work out of the box. Out of the box it is nowhere to be seen. I will further point out that there is nothing in your “cool” list that the equivalent cannot be had for desktop Linux. Except that for Linux, one can easily install for free using a few click in the GUI package manager.
Indeed “Capability per dollar” means nothing if the people you’re trying to convince to switch have already spent their dollars on something else far more expensive. Like you they are more likely to try to justify their previous outlay. OTOH, “capability per dollar” means everything to people who are looking at a new system (or their first system) and who don’t have an excess of unused dollars just lying around idle.
With your faux criticism of desktop Linux, you too are extremely abrasive.
You sound like you are crying in your beer over all that money you needlessly spent.
Edited 2011-10-03 00:36 UTC
Not in my experience. Any hardware that is the slightest bit new, and Linux is likely to fail in “interesting” ways.
For example, in 2009 I built a new desktop system using a Gigabyte X58 motherboard, Core i7 920 and a pair of SATA Velociraptor drives.
None of the Linux distributions could run it. I had to custom-compile the latest Linux -rc versions just to get the SATA drivers. Then I needed binary ATI video drivers because the open source drivers couldn’t handle the card.
This year I got a Samsung Series 9 laptop. Very nice, but no optical drive. So, off I went to boot a Fedora Live CD from a USB stick. Should be easy right? There’s even a tool for it.
Heck no. The Live CD assumes that the media (the USB key in this case) will have the same volume name that the CD was burned with. Took me a couple of hours to figure that one out!
Then there were all the problems, like reboot crashing the machine (had to add reboot=k), and the LED flashing after a crash preventing the power-off key from working (had to add another kernel option to fix that) and EXT4 defaulting to not using TRIM on the SSD.
So, to repeat: In my personal experience with Linux, which I like a lot, it takes a software engineer and sysadmin to make Linux “just work.”
Get real. Who exactly are you trying to kid?
Firstly, if one were to do for Linux the same as one did for Windows, and buy it pre-installed on a machine designed to run it, then Linux too would “just work”. It would “just work” very well indeed, and unlike Windows it would continue to work very well. It would not get slower with time, and it would be quite unlikely to ever get compromised by malware.
For self-installed Linux, one puts in a LiveCD, and on 95% of machines it will indeed “just work”. Of the existing machines out there today, a current desktop Linux distribution tailored for that class of machine will “just work” far more often than any current version of Windows. These are machines designed for Windows, mind you. Linux is far, far easier to self-install and get to a satisfactory working state than Windows is.
Linux has more working drivers for more hardware than any other OS on the planet, by quite a long way. Linux runs on more hardware than any other OS.
The ball is back in your court.
Edited 2011-10-03 22:18 UTC
Stop acting butthurt.
Windows unlike Linux is an full Operating system. That is what you pay for. You pay for all the work and testing that has gone in to make the whole system reliable (And Windows has been pretty reliable on the desktop since NT 4.0).
If your only argument is that Linux is a zero cost Windows clone with a few extra free features, and people are still choosing To Pay for it (even if you take Windows out of the equation, people are ready to pay for Macs which are far more expensive and have a similar application set to that of Windows out of the box).
Then tbh I earn good money, I might as well pay for Windows and I can use most of the GNU alternatives on a Windows system and I can use all the paid for stuff as well.
Edited 2011-10-03 00:25 UTC
Say what? On what planet?
Windows is notoriously slow & unreliable. There are literally hundreds of millions of broken and/or compromised machines out there. There is an entire industry built on trying to keep the machines running and free of compromise. Even though all that effort and extra expense through that industry clearly doesn’t work, ordinary people are still expected to pay for it all.
God no. Linux is nothing like a clone of Windows. Linux is a re-written-from-scratch Unix work-alike. If anything it is closer to OSX, which in turn is derived from BSD.
Because they are offered nothing else in commercial retail stores.
I am reminded of old wisdom here, encapsulated in the saying: “A fool and his money are soon parted”.
Edited 2011-10-03 00:46 UTC
The last time you claimed this … You actually posted evidence that said that Windows 7 was actually faster than Ubuntu at quite a few find (involving I/O) … after I point out your error you didn’t post after that … much like you normally do … you can’t admit you are ever wrong … pretty sad IMO.
Somebody being stupid and installing crap on their pc and not using a Firewall … is not anything to do with how reliable the OS is … the weakest link in the chain is the people using it. Which is the exact same argument that people are making when Kernel.org got hacked …
Why does KDE 3 series default configuration look like Windows XP? and Why does KDE 4 series look like Win Vista/7 and why does Open Office look like Office 2003, Why does all your software look and work like Software for Windows if you hate it soo damn much?
“imitation is the most sincerest form of flattery” 😉
Maybe you know if it was like a “product” rather than a “idea” … OEMS might consider it.
You probably don’t even donate for something that you rigorously defend.
I am not the fool that was acting butt hurt after he got modded down.
God you bite so easily … I didn’t expect a reply until tomorrow. You know 90% of the time I am trolling the fuck out of you don’t you? God I just trolled the whole of OSNEWS (nearly 300 comments now).
I hope David Adams appreciates the extra page views.
Excuse me?
I know that for the current versions of Windows 7 and Kubuntu, Kubuntu is quite a bit faster than Windows 7, because I run the both on the same machine for one of my machines.
Laughably, on one occasion Windows 7 took over an hour to boot to a usable desktop. The default browser, IE9, is the next-to-slowest of the pack (I have replaced it with Firefox 7 insofar as it can be removed).
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/firefox-7-web-browser,3037-17.h…
Windows 7 came with a pathetic default text editor, and an horrendously slow Office Suite that turned out to be adware. Before I could use it comfortably and safely, I had to spend many hours setting up extra security software, removing the lamentable default Office suite offering, and installing Firefox 7, Thunderbird and LibreOffice.
As a user experience of desktop software, Kubuntu 11.04 won hands-down no contest in every comparison.
Edited 2011-10-03 22:22 UTC
Was a while ago … but you ignored me once I pointed out you were wrong. Like you always do. Because you are too zealous to face facts.
Ubuntu 9.04 in the Link was actually slower than the Win 7 Beta (yes Beta …).
I can’t be bothered to find the post … it was a while ago now.
You run Windows 7 on a horrendously slow machine. My cellphone is faster than your laptop.
When it comes to decent kit … Windows 7 is faster than XP on new hardware.
Well I don’t run a crapware laden version of Windows 7. I have a laptop from 2006 with a 1.2ghz processor and 1gb of ram … and it boots up in 30 seconds.
Also I simply don’t believe you, P3 from 1998 booting Win7 in a few minutes … running latest chrome at the time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwa7vsyQw7o
Sorry comparing your obviously crapware laden piece of shit Win7 laptop to kubuntu isn’t fair.
Browsers are soo fast now … It honestly doesn’t matter if you use any of the new browsers they are all fast.
Internet Explorer 9 is actually pretty decent from a reliablility point of view. I have odd crashes with the new Firefox and Chrome while using the web inspectors.
Yeah because that is all that matters </sarcasm> … you know you can put “open Source Windows text editor” into google and find many decent websites.
The point is stupid. Win7 is a a whole OS.
You know there is GVIM, Notepad++, NotePad2, JEdit, Emacs (apparently there is a build of emacs for Windows … promoting the use of a non-free OS very hypocritical by FSF.org) … those are just off the top of my head.
Don’t buy crapware laden laptops … I don’t.
Again not my fault you bought a crap ware laden laptop.
I bought my dell by a local reseller that gave me a vanilla Windows install … I had no such problems.
If you got a bad deal because you didn’t do your research before that is your fault and not Microsoft’s.
You are a zealot, you would have found a way to find yourself at that conclusion anyway.
You’ve lost the plot entirely. You’ve gone bonkers. You are making it up.
Yep. Exactly the kind of machine needed to show up poor performance, because it isn’t masked by a very fast but expensive, power-hungry CPU.
Hilarious.
The software on this machine is, essentially, Windows 7, MS Office 2010, IE9 and MSE. I agree this machine isn’t really suited to run crapware like that.
I said that Windows 7 took over an hour to boot on one occasion. This was when it had to do updates, it wouldn’t let anyone log on to the desktop for over an hour. It displayed a “please do not turn off” message for the whole time.
Normally, as you say, the machine can boot to a usable Windows 7 desktop in two to three minutes. It certainly doesn’t have to do updates all the time. Mind you, the Kubuntu OS on the same machine also updates, but it has never taken longer than about 35 seconds to boot to a useable desktop. Often it is less than 25 seconds.
Why not? The crapware is Windows 7, IE9, MS Office 2010 and MSE, and the Kubuntu equivalents are Linux 3.0, Firefox 7, LibreOffice 3.4.3 and (not required).
Not on my machine. On my machine, Firefox 7 is usable, and IE9 isn’t.
Anecdotes. Not credible.
I thought you Windows fans were the ones always saying that “my time is worth something, I can’t be wasting time setting up my OS”?
I am comparing what came with each OS after installation on my machine, without requiring me to invest setup time. (If you want to count the time it took me to install Kubuntu itself from a LiveCD, then I will point out that you must also count the time it took to install MSE for Windows 7).
Is your time worth nothing?
Those programs do nothing to add to the value proposition of Windows, because they are also available on Linux. Since they can be searched and installed in a few clicks on Linux via the package manager, if anything they count more towards Linux as they are much easier and quicker to find and install. Since Linux uses signed repositories and package managers, installing these programs on Linux carries no risk of trojan horse malware.
You don’t use MS Office 2010?
It was all that was on offer. I didn’t buy it, it was an award. Not to worry, even though it struggles with Microsoft crapware, it runs Kubuntu moderately well.
Fair enough. Your more expensive machine was fast enough to mask the problems with Microsoft crapware. My inexpensive machine wasn’t nearly as fast, and the Microsoft crapware was exposed for what it is. Your point? Perhaps you are trying to say that you have to pay more in order to run Windows tolerably well?
Yep. That is what I am saying, also. Much more.
As i said, it was all that was on offer, it was a reward so I didn’t buy it, and I am happy that it can run Kubuntu tolerably well. I have ended up with a level of functionality and performance that would have cost more than twice as much, possibly as much as three times, to get to the same level using Windows 7 and MS crapware, as you call it.
My but you are confused. Why don’t you try to find a description, somewhere, of what “value for money” actually means, you lying-for-Microsoft zealot.
Edited 2011-10-04 09:41 UTC
Me, Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates (Bill insists we call him the “Big G Man”) we all hang around in a jacuzzi, with our posse the “G-Unit”. Steve Ballmer slips me a few $ per comment.
The two Larrys (Ellison and Page) come round with women and liquor at the weekend.
Theo and Linus don’t come round too much after the “Exotic Dancer in the pool incident” …
……
Disclaimer: None of that really happens.
I am bored arguing with you this time.
I leave you with this “Linux is free, if your time is worth nothing” … and that is all I have to say to your “value for money” comment.
Edited 2011-10-04 18:03 UTC
Are there any apps out there that are so utterly awesome that anybody would want to switch to Linux?
I’d say the GNU/Linux operating system itself. It is rock solid (if you install it on appropriate hardware), it is near gratis, it has a large range of applications available and just a few clicks away and it is pretty resilient to malware (at least Linux lets you know something wants your admin password), plus it is highly adaptable and a modern Linux distro installs a complete system in less than 40 minutes.
What Linux app gives such an incredible user experience that I should give up the Mac and run a Linux box instead?
None. If you need external convincing that Linux is best for you, than Linux isn’t best for you. Besides, reading between the lines, your gold standard is the OS X environment. Linux will fail this standard every time, because Linux simply isn’t OS X.
Give me a reason to switch!
If you can’t give yourself a reason to switch, what makes you think somebody else can? It is your computer. You should run the OS on it that makes you happy. My Linux computing experience doesn’t diminish when you happily run OS X. My guess is that you aren’t any unhappier about your Mac, knowing that I run Linux…
That’s easy. Linux itself!
The others aren’t even in the race when it comes to flexibility and freedom. To be able to just apt-get new app when I need a tool to do a job without having to agree to sacrifice my first born is a no brainer to me.
For me linux isn’t just about the Windows[tm] killer apps. linux is a choice between flexibility, freedom and convenience. de Icaza misses the whole point about Linux with this opinion piece if you ask me.
People who choose Linux do so because they need a dependable OS with no restrictions to get something done. They don’t care if it doesn’t have Windows[tm] killer apps, the other benefits far out way this BS!
Right, so we should take out cross-platform apps when talking about Windows and Mac too then.
No, it’s about great Linux desktop apps. If they exist on multiple platforms are irrelevant.
How would I know? I don’t know what your needs and wants are. I also don’t care if you use Linux, Mac or Windows. Use what works best for you.
This is a dumb criteria for “a great app”. Either the app is great or not.
Clusterssh but that is kind of an admin app so I can see how it would be missed.
That all said their isn’t that many truly killer apps on windows either. Yes there are some niche apps (Maya, 3DMax, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, etc) but they are really not used by the vast majority of users. In fact most apps that fit 90% of the users would work for them on the Linux space. Problem is you have to look at the impact of the market. The vast majority of users use productivity apps like Office or a web browser and that space is starting to be eat’n by the tablets and smartphones. Even windows will be hit by this change.
Thus we will come back to the niche markets which will then depend on where those places one to be. Adobe will still sale Photoshop for Mac and Windows and as long as some crazy Linux guy can use Wine to get it running on Linux Adobe doesn’t care. And frankly most of the niche apps cost so much that most people who use them can afford to have systems specific for their purpose.
The tablet is poised to take over the productivity and consumption apps. It will soon be that all you need is a tablet and usb/bluetooth keyboard and you can say bye bye to you desktop of your.
The “only on Linux based distributions” is the real problem.
Zim.. love it to death but v0.53 just came out and has a Windows build just like v0.50’ish and previous did. Both full install and portable versions. It’s not as clean is it is on a native *nix system but it’s darn close.
– My favorite feature is the standard folder/file tree it uses; nice and easy to rsync between all my OS including Windows.
– My wishlist; consolidated tree output to other file formats (only does output by indavidual page when last I checked but the developer may have added it since), embedded Vim or “open in external editor” as I keep looking up to see “jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj” instead of my cursor down several rows and the lack of “dd/p” to reorganize rows remains very noticable to me.
http://www.glump.net/software/zim
GIMP fails the “strictly Linux distro run” also.
http://portableapps.com/apps/graphics_pictures/gimp_portable
Along with also having a Windows full install version. Works very nicely too given my need for an image editor and lack of budget for Photoshop volume licensing.
The issue is not that these are great programs though; simply that they fail the “only runs on Linux” rule imposed to make the discussion a zero-sum game.
Well, I’m sure 2012 will be the year of the linux desktop.
It better be! Come December 2012, it’s all over 🙂
2013: The Year of Linux on the Asteroid Field where Earth Used to Be!
Still more likely than 2012 being the year of Windows in the datacenter.
The thing is, I’d have a hard time naming 10 great Windows desktop applications and I’ve been using Windows for about 3 years now.
The problem is that we automatically cross a lot of applications off the list because we have a narrow definition of a desktop application. Things like Word and Writer will count, but KidPix and Tux Paint would be ignored. The exclusion is ironic since the Photoshop and GIMP would count, but software for children just doesn’t seem worthy.
If you want to make an honest list of the great desktop applications for Linux, go into the package manager and remind yourself about all of the great programs that are out there. And try to avoid mentally crossing things off because it’s ‘for a child’, ‘only for developers’, ‘geared towards science geeks’, or whatever.
I think I’ll follow the KISS principle here. If Lots of people are using it & an overwhelming majority of them speak very highly of it, then it’s great. You should keep in mind that ‘great’ is highly relative & subjective, so the only way to truly quantify it is by volume of usage coupled with positive critique. It doesn’t matter how good a children’s app is if most children aren’t using it, because that means that most parents aren’t installing it.
My little one is using GIMP. “Can I use your computer to colour?” and all I had was GIMP installed at the time so “this program might be a little complicated” but she wanted to try so up it loaded. By the second time, she was already using it better than I can. I resize and crop images; she’s changing backgrounds, mucking with layers, figuring out all the colour pickers..
Given that it’s GIMP, I’m more than a little stunned that the first try didn’t end five minutes later with her going back to the colouring book and box of pencils.
(I should give tuxpaint a go though)
That’s easy. I can probably mention at least 1000 but I will mention only ~70.
Microsoft Office, Microsoft Visual Studio, Adobe Photoshop, 3DS Max, Sony Vegas, Adobe Premiere, uTorrent, KMPlayer, Adobe Dreamweaver, Cyberlink PowerDVD,ACDSee, Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Audition, Everest, DVDShrink, Partition Magic, Winamp, Finale, Notepad, Google Earth, Traktor DJ, Soundforge, Nero, Picasa, Guitar Rig, Amplitube, Acronis True Image, Adobe After Effects, Autocad, CCleaner, Mathematica, Quicken, Steinberg Cubase, Visicalc, Trillian, World of Warcraft, Half Life, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Rift, Guild Wars, Grand Theft Auto, Resident Evil, Final Fantasy, Metal Gear, Halo, TES Oblivion, KOTOR, Civilization, Heroes of Might and Magic, Need for Speed, Fear, Syberia, Mafia, Deus Ex, Gods of War, Rift, LOTRO, Warhammer, Planesacape Torment, Ultima Online, Unreal Tournament, Fallout, Starcraft, Diablo, The Witcher, Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Knights.
Funny that halfway you started to inflate the list with games. Hey, it’s apps we’re talking about here. The number of apps sitting on my Docky easily exceed 20 and they are all good if not great, with the sole exception of Skype — proprietary crap that fails on me all the bloody time and can’t be fixed no matter what because the source is not open.
What’s wrong with listing games as applications?
Their purpose is to amuse the user, cause relaxation and fun.
Really, that’s just as important as producing office documents, isn’t it?
I don’t think you can consider great 3D design applications like Maya without considering the game applications that use those 3D models.
Or, if VLC can be a great application to watch movies then game engines are equally great applications for interactive entertainment.
Problem is that games are rarely – Great Windows Applications. They are mostly Great DX3D applications. In addition, a lot of the games he listed aren’t even Windows exclusive….
Freedom to create, modify and share. Apple and MS is for profit, GNU/Linux is for people. Simple!
Comparing ‘paid apps’ with ‘voluntarily created apps’ is injustice. How many ‘free’ high quality apps exists in Windows or Mac which were created by voluntary efforts of the developers? I’m not talking about ‘adware’ or ‘shareware’; real free and real great, including source! 1-2-3 maybe?
And what about sharing? can you share any great windows or mac software with your family and friends? NO! you are just a licensee. And licensee can’t share anything, they are renting software. And it’s funny to see people boasting on rented software.
Linux can run all those ‘great commercial apps’ like photoshop, finereader, ms office, blah blah… using ‘wine’ already.
Wine just needs more love; integrating wine with native linux toolkits like gtk would be real cool.
Wine can make ‘the software installation’ seamless, but it is not given enough attention by any of the desktop environments and distros.
Wine developers are just amazing, I reported missing hindi support, and in a few days, they implemented Hindi laguage support. Now I can use MS office in Linux with Hindi. Great guys!
The problem is most users simply are not aware that they can communicate their issues with developers.
So, guys don’t forget to use, test, report issues to the concerned project, developers. They are friends, not landlords.
MS will die, Apple will die, free software will remain. It is the spirit of being free to care and share and not just being a tenant of rented products.
Edited 2011-09-30 02:07 UTC
http://opensourcewindows.org/
http://osswin.sourceforge.net/
😉
Edited 2011-09-30 10:02 UTC
No, it’s not an injustice. It’s as far as it gets. As a developer of both commercial & open source projects, I think you’re sidestepping the real issue. Just because a piece of software is open source, doesn’t mean that you should give the developer special treatment & call it good when it’s crappy. Developing code in your spare time isn’t a free pass to be sloppy or half-assed. To be honest, you’re probably hurting things by calling it chicken salad if it’s really chicken sh*t. Sure, there’re great OSS apps out there, but not as many as people are pretending there are.
if(pcFreeApp == pcCrapApp) {
RestartDeveloper();
}
I have to say that this is a pretty biased view of Linux. There are plenty of good apps that are on Linux. Sure, Linux is a fast moving platform. That means that its a lot of work to keep apps up to date. But guess what? At least on Linux you have the source code to fix it. How many people are running xp legacy mode on Windows 7 or some VM just to host some legacy app that doesnt work anymore? Especially in business. deIcaza is a putz. His answer to everything was Mono Mono Mono. Look where that got him. His opinion isn’t worth that much.
Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening another entity through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction.
MSFT, has been sabotaging Linux by bribing developers, companies, like coral, nokia.
remember XPDE?
KDE is sabotaged, clearly. hint: nokia and microsoft deal.
mono is such sabotaging tactic for gnome.
Yet the mono apps were some of the few that actually worked as advertised.
So sabotaging by providing working apps….
I see what you did there.
Due to patents held by Microsoft on its .NET technology, the availability of two .NET implementations (Mono and DotGNU) under free software licenses doesn’t mean that free software developers should, according to RMS, write code for the platform. His call on the free software community: “You shouldn’t write software to use .NET. No exceptions.” RMS says that Microsoft could one day use patents against free .NET implementations.
http://www.fsf.org/news/2009-07-mscp-mono
So the Microsoft Community Promise dosent exist?
http://www.microsoft.com/openspecifications/en/us/programs/communit…
C# Language Specification – Ecma-334, 4th Edition and ISO/IEC 23270:2006
Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) – Ecma-335, 4th Edition and ISO/IEC 23271:2006
http://www.gnu.org/s/dotgnu/
The Microsoft Community Promise certainly doesn’t exist for Systems.Windows.Forms. I beleive also that it doesn’t exist for .NET XML.
Do don’t use WinForms when you write Mono apps then.
Easier and far better solution … don’t write Mono apps then.
But C# is a pretty decent language, so its understandable that people would like to use it on their OS of choice.
This.
Win.Forms has been deprecated even on its native platform so I don’t see a problem here.
C ABI have been proven incapable as a system interface for modern OSes. No leading GUI platform on the market plans to continue to use it for core app framework libs in the long term. Simply having C as lowest common denominator doesn’t cut it any more.
OSS developers haven’t managed to create successful system wide managed OO api/abi on their own so the choices here are limited to either .Net or .Java.
Both are IP encumbered, but the track record of Java is currently worse than .Net (Oracle bullying), not to mention its runtime much less modern than CLR.
It definitely does not exist for neither GTK nor QT so you better not write any apps using these libs either.
Also no “promise” for linux itself, so you better stop using that as well (or Microsoft will get its Microsoft tax)
The problem is that those specifications only cover up to C# version 2.0 and CLI v 2.0. You are out of luck if you search for a language standard for newer C# versions or CLI.
Dude, I think your tinfoil hat is on too tight.
Firefox, Thunderbird, transmission, k3b, Libre Office, vlc, virtualbox, gedit, gimp, blender, wine, chrome, picasa, eclipse, …. do I really need to keep going?
Why don’t we talk about the things that Linux has on the desktop that Windows doesn’t?
One service to update most if not all software on the system, seamlessly.
True multi user capabilities.
The ability to change the graphical environment to suit your needs.
The ability to truly use the system as a user, protecting the OS as a whole from system wide compromise.
The ability to run on almost any hardware.
Built in virtualization.
A plethora of filesystem support and physical/logical disk management.
Yeah, linux obviously has it real bad.
the linux desktop user share has been 1% +/- 1% for a very long time. you can see why someone would be skeptical of your claims.
Actually about half that and falling (surprisingly).
If your point was that there are a large number of freedom software apps that work equally well on Linux or Windows, then no you don’t need to go further, that is a given.
What is your point here, however? The apps do work on Linux desktops.
These are all fine points, and perfectly true. It is great that I can run great Linux applications in such an environment.
The problem is I suppose that most people would see these as features of the OS, rather than as desktop applications.
Edited 2011-09-30 03:21 UTC
WTF is this “TRUE” multi user capability that Windows doesn’t have? Like, HELLO, Win9x was killed (thank god!) a decade ago!
And then you get offended because somebody dares to remember their latest buntu update bonking graphics drivers a year or two ago…
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_is_windows_said_to_be_a_multiuser_ope…
“windows does have the facility to give access to different users. That is the reason we can log on to different user accounts on windows. But windows does not give access to multiple users at the same time in a single processor system.”
And why is it important on a desktop/laptop system exactly to have multiple users simultaneously access one system? How can multiple users use one desktop system simultaneously anyway?
Most people would use their laptop as a server if they were able to.
</sarcasm>
I didn’t say it was or wasn’t important to be “true multi-user” for any given context. My post only points out the way in which Windows is not considered to be “true multi-user”.
But anyway, if you do want a context where “true multi-user” is important in a desktop context, read about this:
http://knowledgeoman.com/en/forums/showthread.php?996-Brazil-Deploy…
“Mauricio Piacentini writes about a deployment of systems running Linux and KDE in Brazil’s schools; some 52 million students are to be served by this initiative.”
They deployed Linux desktops to 52 million Brazillian students, but they didn’t deploy 52 million machines. I think they can have up to 10 students running off any given single Linux machine at the same time.
Edited 2011-09-30 07:32 UTC
From over the network, local or not, maybe? You know, like when there is a “main” computer in the household that you can access with a notebook, tablet, or even an older, less powerful PC?
Granted, maybe most people don’t consider it an essential feature, maybe they don’t even think about it, but that doesn’t make it any less useful.
RT.
My desktop used to be in a seporate room from my TV. I would regularily work in the TV room through a notebook “thinkclient” giving me my power/apps/data and session login on the desktop. I’ve even seen a browser crash out only to recover the session when I next logged into the desktop directly.
The catch here is that any other valid user could go sit infront of the desktop and use it normally without noticing that I was also logged in and using it.
I’ve also seen several developers logged in and working on the same desktop through local and remote connections.
With a Windows desktop, it’s one user at a time. With a Windows server it’s one user at a time unless you shell out the cost of Terminal Server CALs.
On Windows7, I can easily switch between users but I can not have two users logged into there own sessions concurrently. Alternatively, I can have two users concurrently logged into there own seporate sessions on the same machine.
Now, centralized multiple concurent user systems might not be the average need for everyone’s home desktop but it’s sure come in handy for me many times.
I’ve also seen some very nice lab setups where the students are all running off sessions hosted by the same back end server. A quick look at the Windows terminal server licensing model kills that idea quick for something as budget constrained as a school.
Nothing shows up the Linux mentality like this does. The easily re-installed OS and easily re-installed apps must be protected at all costs. But my documents that I’ve written over the last two decades, the pictures of my kids, my collections of music and films, the digital record of my whole friggin’ LIFE, well that can be blown away. It’s all about the machine, not the user.
Sure, it’s a valid way to run a system. But don’t tout it as an advantage to the user.
So, tell me, how well do Windows and OS X, as a pure OS, protect your own files in case of a malware infection? My guess, not to good.
The protection of your own unique files is called back up. There are additions that can be bundled with/installed on an OS, like Time Machine, TimeVault and Genie Timeline which make this easy. However, this is not a function of the OS itself.
I hope you realise that your own base system doesn’t do anything to keep your own files safe and that you have back up mechanisms in place to guard against potential file loss.
The same was as any UNIX based OS, with proper user rights. It is there since Windows NT 3.51, it is just a matter of proper configuration.
There is a lot of downvoting going on in this thread, especially when any poster points out great features of Linux on the desktop, or good applications that are available for it, especially good applications that don’t run on Windows.
Someone has an agenda, apparently.
Miguel, is that you?
No, just that most people don’t live in a Linux reality distortion field.
You wouldn’t be trying to avoid the question by any chance? Anything but address the actual point, hey?
In what way is pointing out the existence of a number of better-than-other-alternatives desktop applications which don’t run on Windows in any way supposed to be “living in a Linux reality distortion field”?
Hmmmmm?
Citation needed.
I didn’t vote but I would guess that people just don’t agree with your *opinion* (actually one shouldn’t downvote because of disagreement but my guess is that that’s how people use it).
Au contraire, it is the Windows fans who are trying to make the extraordinary claim here. Their claim is that there are no good Linux desktop applications.
All I have to do is point out that there are, in fact, some Linux desktop applications that aren’t matched by anything on Windows. My point is made.
Miguel Said,
The guys hasn’t even used a Windows machine until now … So he isn’t … it is a *nux user that is saying this.
Edited 2011-09-30 09:26 UTC
Just a wild guess … people may be voting “Inaccurate” because they feel that their Linux experience doesn’t match yours.
My experience as a user, power user and web developer with Linux is just a long series of compromises, hacks and workarounds to get things kind of working. Inevitably I always fall back to Windows and even OS X where magically my video card works, my proprietary applications do their jobs perfectly and open all my files correctly, I can play all my games, I can transfer files to my Yahoo Messenger buddies and so on …
So don’t give me this troll crap that Desktop Linux is ready for anything because it’s either a damned lie or your wet dream. If Linux would be any good on the desktop it wouldn’t have the crappy marketshare it has now. And if I were you I wouldn’t talk about agendas seeing how you troll every thread regarding Windows and Linux here on OSNews.
Note to future self: Don’t feed the trolls
Pfft. What is the point of lying so? Any idiot can put a Linux LiveCD into an optical drive and boot it. If it runs properly (as it nearly always does) then it runs properly.
Power user? You must be more like a half-wit.
Does lying make you feel good or something?
Edited 2011-09-30 13:03 UTC
I presume you told yourself enough times that Desktop Linux is worth a damn that you eventually started to believe it. Now that you’ve made your crappy decision you try to shove it down other people’s throats just to feel validated. Or maybe it works for you: even using Linux you can troll comment threads.
I said:
And now you say:
Are you for real? I’ll try to keep the discussion at a level that you’ll understand:
No, you!!1
Isn’t that true for every platform on earth? Good software is hard to find, period! It doesn’t matter if it’s on Linux, Windows, OS X, Android, iPhone or the Web.
1. Firefox
2. Thunderbird
3. LibreOffice
4. Chrome/Chromium
5. Blender
6. Transmission
7. Nautilus
8. Okular
9. Calibre
10. VLC
11. MPlayer
12. Amarok
13. Banshee
14. Konqeror
15. OpenShot
16. Audacity
17. Grip
18. Hydrogen
19. Muse
20. Rosegarden
21. Gimp
22. Inkscape
23. KToon
24. Krita
25. Hugin
26. Scribus
27. Synfig
28. Avidemux
29. Recordmydesktop
30. Conky
31. Filezilla
32. GParted
33. K3B
34. Pidgin
35. VNC
36. Eclipse
37. Gobby
38. Quanta
39. GnomeDo
40. Homebank
41. QtCreator
42. Gnumeric
This is a geek discussion so I will stop at 42 and I haven’t even named editors and terminals etc 😉
Just because all the Windows and Mac people don’t care about Linux and don’t know apps that don’t have big marketing budgets does not mean that there aren’t great apps on Linux.
Sure Linux is lacking in the Games and Video editing department, but tools for working with text/code and sound are top.
From the article:
If you put nautilus on the list you are obviously not talking about “great” apps or you definition of “great” is radically different than mine.
With all the functionality Konqeror and Nautilus provide I sure as hell count them as great desktop apps. Great apps are apps that you can use all day and that do everything you need. To me that is the only sane definition. Finder and Explorer don’t compare IMO.
Edited 2011-09-30 05:56 UTC
Nautilus has so many usability defects that it is pain for me to use it, if it works for you then all the power ** to you.
I believe that the top two most frustrating things that new users has when using linux is:
1. The infantile names given to linux programs.
2. Nautilus and everything about it.
Usability defects are neither here nor there (normal people don’t notice, much less care).
Cute program names are mostly invisible to users in any case.
Nautilus sucks for sound technical reasons.
I can think of half a dozen things which are easily more frustrating.
For video editing, we are getting there with kdenlive. Now it is reasonnably stable, the biggest problem remains video encoding, since most distribution cripples ffmpeg to respect the stupid pattents.
I’ll try also.
I.My great CLI apps
1.SSH, SCP
2.ranger
3.nano
4.rtorrent
5.ncmpcpp
II.My great GUI apps
1.kate – most advance Linux TE. On windows I use UltraEdit, but trey are different – some feature missed in UE and other missed in kate.
2.Okular – it’s not only PDF viewer, I should use a couple windows apps to get that productivity.
3.Amarok, Clementine
4.VLC
5.KJots – great app for note taking, never find something similar for windows.
6.IDE – eclipse, QTCreator, SQLDeveloper, JDeveloper, eric – daily I use at least 2 of them (work or hobby) and they are powerfull and has all feature of modern IDE(atleast all I need)
7.KRunner – it’s great. On windows I use Launchy, which is also Linux app.
8.Blender, GIMP, Scribus, digiKam – I never used this for complex work, but this doesn’t do them less great.
9.Calibre – I’ve Kindle, Nook and smartphone with epub reader. They love calibre and calibre love them.
10.k3b
I use real multyuser and virtual desktop capabilities
of Linux.
What I need and found only for windows:
1.XMLSpy – really mature xml editor. I don’t like XMLSpy with wine or java based editix enough
2.Toad for Oracle
3.PLSQLDeveloper
What I want in the future:
1.Dolphin – It’s good but I need a few missing options.
2.UML, ER Diagram mature application – Umbrello is good, but not great.
Daily I use less than 15 different apps on Linux or Windows. Monthly no more than 30 different.
Umbrello 3 will be OK. But I can’t tell how much time it will take us to get there. Expect keyboard friendly usage, docked tools (like MySQL workbench bottom part), documentation parsing, dictionary based documentation auto generation and retro generation. New, modern, canvas, reworked dialogs and much more.
Most of those apps are available for Windows as well. Linux ONLY
Why? Because linux community can write portability code. If you could say that app was produce 3 months earlier for windows they I could understand your point. You can’t say it’s run on windows so it’s not linux app. If some application from Linux native is compiled for windows it’s needed. When windows app is introduce for linux it’s also because it’s needed and wanted from many, many linux users.
VirtalBox use .VirtualBox directory in User home dir, so probably it’s only linux app, isn’t it?
Edited 2011-09-30 10:58 UTC
The whole point of what he was saying there is no compelling “Killer App” for the platform to make it a compelling alternative.
Also regarding portability I have heard BSD guys (that I used to go to class with) porting code from Linux to BSD and pulling their hair out because of the number of Linux-isms.
He also says nothing about Killer apps, that is all just in your imagination.
The context of it is obvious, and Also I am not the only person that is taking it in this context judging by comments on this articles alone.
Being a pedant doesn’t help the discussion
BS. He is talking about great desktop apps. Nothing more, nothing less.
Killer Apps can be desktop apps … You can use the terms interchangably in this context. Stop being a pedant.
Edited 2011-09-30 13:47 UTC
I never found this application on Windows, Mac, BSD, Solaris, Haiku, iOS, Android, Bada, Maego, Meemo, webOS, Symbian, HP-UX or AIX.
It’s not an answer. I don’t understand what you want to say with this. How hard is to port VLC to BSD? What’s difference between VLC for Linux and Windows? What’s the difference between SQLDeveloper for 32-bit Windows, for 64-bit Windows, for Mac OS X, for Linux, for other platforms? They all are 147M zips. I use SQLDeveloper, but didn’t think about that until now, and I could assure you there’s no difference between them from users point of view. Off course skype isn’t Linux app only because you could install it on Linux, but most of others application are Linux application.
You could install KDE with windows. That’s mean that KDE isn’t Linux, is it?
The truth is that many Linux applications have Windows version and vice versa. That’s because users wanted it.
The whole point of responses is that there is no “Killer App” for any other desktop platform either.
The “Killer feature” of Linux is its um-matchable value-for-money.
About that. What is the compelling “Killer App” for Windows and/or OS X?
Do we still have Killer Apps?
TBH for me it is Visual Studio 2010 and SQL Server Management studio are the big reasons as well as the reliability of Win 7.
But non-dev stuff … I am not so sure.
Games are indeed entertainment applications. I’d love to get native installs of Dragon Age and Shogun Total War 2 on my Debian box but as it stands, if I want an hour or two of gaming in my down time then it means rebooting.
The up side is that I can tune Windows purely towards game performance.
The down side is that I have to stop all the productive stuff my machine is doing under Debian.
Generally, if the developer does not change how the application saves user data, it’ll simply create a directory directly under the Windows user profile.
Virtualbox on *nix
/home/user/.virtualbox
Virtualbox on Windows
/documents and settings/user/virtualbox
/users/user/virtualbox
I gather it’s the same for osX:
/users/user/.virtualbox
*Citation needed. He says nothing about Linux only.
Way to go to miss the point of the article.
Reading comprehension fail.
Just because you think great desktop app means: mythical-system-only-killer-application doesn’t mean everybody else has to be live with that delusion.
I dare you to name 10 mythical-system-only-killer-desktop-applications that will people make switch desktops for Windows or OSX. Waiting …
You are being a pedant for the sake of it. It is pathetic.
Your list can be divided into four (nonexclusive) groups:
1) Multiplatform applications like thunderbird
2) Basic utilities that have as capable counterparts for Windows: for example gparted
3) Cheap knockoffs used only because they don’t cost anything or because there is nothing better for linux: LibreOffice is good example here
1) So?
2) Which as capable counterpart to gparted is *free*?
3) I think MSOffice is bloated unintuitive expensive crap and actually like LibreOffice.
4) ???
??? You said four groups ??? Where is number four? Counting is hard I guess.
1) I can’t name more than 10 great windows apps, which aren’t multyplatform.
2) You’re kidding. GParted support more file systems than Windows. Do you know btrfs, I make tests with Oracle 11g and btrfs.
3) Yeah, I know people talk how power is MSOffice. I don’t need something like that. I almost don’t use Libre/Open Office, Calligra Office suit, MSOffice or other.
1) So they can hardly be called “linux” applications. The bottom line is that on Windows you can have every good application from linux (or more capable substitute), but not the other way around.
2) Why should it be free?
3) Good for you. At least until you want to send your document to anybody else.
4) Fourth category was basically reworded second, so I removed it.
No way. I managed to get at least 39 great apps [counted]. I guess it’s sufficient, as it suits all of my needs.
But I don’t use Gnome.
What is a great application? In comparison to a good application? is this meaningful?
Personally I use:
Firefox
Google Chrome
Thunderbird
Skype
Gimp
Xara Xtreme
Rhythmplayer
VLC
SMPlayer
Gcompris
K3b
Gparted
Libreoffice
Stellarium
Pidgin
I’m not sure they are all “Great” but they are all useable functional and allow the PC to be useful. I get the point in its day BeOS was a much, much better OS than Windows 95 but had few apps – this was one of the main reasons for its demise.
However, Linux is not in this position you have a useable Desktop, as for – “the year of the Linux Desktop†it’s been and gone.
I prefer the Linux Desktop to Windows, currently I’m using Unity on 11.10 a great Desktop, I’m sure that if I could be bothered I would find KDE a great Desktop too and both of them superior in many ways to the Windows 7 Desktop, I’m tempted to mention Vista here, but I won’t – but I wonder how many knowledgeable computer users are confident about windows 8? . Linux has been a viable alternative to Windows for years – I find it surprising that so few people have noticed. Probably the lack of MS Office, Photoshop etc is a powerful reason.
The solution better compatibility with Wine? A compatibility layer for Mac apps, better Linux apps – I don’t know
Edited 2011-09-30 07:39 UTC
I don’t get this “Linux desktop app – Windows desktop app – Mac desktop app”-thing. It’s 90’s. Great software is something that can be ported to all major platforms. There shouldn’t be any “Windows counterparts” for a Linux application. It should be the same application!
It’s even worse with mobile OS. Thousands of note taking apps for dozen OS which are graetlessly.
No, you see…us *nix folks need to write crappier apps that are not portable because that,uh, is, uh, better…. Ok, admittedly that’s completely illogical but never mind that. Just remember: portable != not good. Platform lock-in == awesome.
Edited 2011-09-30 15:43 UTC
This guy started gnome because he didn’t like the license qt had at that time and, years latter, somehow, have no spats with .net? That makes lots of sense.
I would ask him: cite just one really good .net application that does not have a single C++ (or any other language) counterpart of, at least, same or better level of functionality? He has been chasing .net for years and now, it seems, with all turnarounds that are happening on Microsoft with the Windows 8 platform, he will have a way slippery path to play with. Not saying .net and C# are crap, they aren’t, they are excellent to write business applications around Microsoft base technology (MS Office, MS Exchange and SharePoint mostly), i.e., to help empower MS. But frankly, I never saw how they could help empower the FOSS community, as Microsoft was never clear enough about the most important parts of .net.
I have to say “thank you” to him as he started mc (at that time a bad “copy” of Norton Commander – I am specially grateful to the current maintainer) and, perhaps, if his action on starting gnome somehow contributed to the current license qt has now. But his push towards mono didn’t contribute to improve the FOSS stance against the “competing alternatives”.
He is actually ahead of .NET … Mono has some features that aren’t in .NET.
http://thisdeveloperslife.com/post/1-0-7-audacity
You may wish to listen to this.
Linux desktop doesn’t need any of the prorietary MS apis to sort out its developer story.
What is needs is stable, modern, systemwide OO api (best if managed). All that could be build on top of CLR without even touching any of MS IP tainted parts.
Best would be if somebody managed to seamlessly integrate QT and CLR (add something like pInvoke for QT objects), to get native support sorted out.
The answers so far for system level integration was: use C abi or sockets, technologies outdated for app integration 2 decades ago.
Edited 2011-09-30 10:31 UTC
And why should I use it then instead of Qt directly? And who is going to keep it up-to-date while Qt evolves?
Fact is, it is hard enough to keep one framework “almost” platform independent and I don’t think it is wise to make it even harder trying to maintain two.
For all the beauty and sugar syntax C# has, its power would be if we could code on it on a “platform independent” style. That is not going to happen as Microsoft is not willing to allow it, it seems.
You know that you can use C# and QT at the same time right? Use the Qyoto bindings for QT.
There’s Cedaga, aterm, screen in aterm, irssi in aterm, mutt in aterm, vim in aterm, K3B, gvim…
… uhm… uhm… Any IM client?
So far I can only name 8 =P
Opera!! That’s 9 .. Is Reason ported to Linux? =P
Let’s add Keldons Race for the galaxy AI and we’re up to 10.
Easy
Now which of those are Linux only?
Edited 2011-09-30 10:38 UTC
Looks like it pretty much boils down this:
That noob users that cant live without fancy and glossy noob software, and dont care enough to learn the ways of a free and better OS, should stick with windows should a little longer.. (And thats no great loss for the linux community btw)
The smart people that want to be able to install and keep updated great software like nmap, lynx, irssi, gimp, rsync, vim/emacs, or whatever beautiful gem, pretty much has started using Linux already.
E.g, on laptop Im writing on now, nmap is just a few keystrokes away: aptitude install nmap
If you use windows and are browsing the web to find small and beautiful tools like theese, you should make the switch.. You’ll not going to miss cmd, defragging, antivirus/-spyware, reboots, license numbers, validations, and all that useless crap
Youll notgoing to miss the bill either, or the endless chain of new releases that you have to buy..
Noob users will have to keep up with that a little longer though, well unless they know a linuxer who can help them setting up a useful computer..
I totally agree with lemur2 and fast_riswaan. Spot on.
ITT: 12 year olds pretending to be 1337 h4x0rz.
I don’t know who you think are 12 year old that consider themselves elite hackers..
But I think here are very few 12 y.olds at osnews..
But to speak for my self, Im three times that age and system engineer and administrator as my profession.
Use both linux, windows and some bsd.
I enjoy working with linux because the only limits there are technology and my own mind and creativity.
Working with windows is different.. MS do as they like and one have to do as they want and use the solutions that they want to support, even if there are better solutions. One have to pay licenses for everything.. even for allowing more than a few RDP connections to a server (!!) Something thats basic functionality in linux (well nor rdp though..but xrdp is pretty cool).. Even my wireless access-point@home can handle as many ssh connections that HW can handle:p
Working with software and OSes that are full of DRM, and are limiting and defective by design is not something I enjoy at least.. Good thing people are different :p
Enjoy your windows or whatever you like :p
Yes, high-quality desktop apps are definitely lacking in my Linux experience. And it’s not just because they’re FOSS – open source apps for Windows tend to be higher quality than those for Linux. Heck, the same FOSS application is often better on Windows than on Linux – look at Firefox.
Taken overall though, I feel that Linux is a higher quality OS than Windows for my purposes – mostly because it succeeds in annoying me less. Also, it’s free, so there’s less reason to complain. But I do think this stuff needs to be said.
BTW. What’s this stuff about “We don’t need stable APIs. we don’t need binary compatibility”? How many people actually want to waste hours and hours compiling a huge desktop application so it works on their computer (other than teenagers running Gentoo)? How many companies want to write software that uses a moving target API? Proprietary software is not going away, and if Linux is to gain market share on the desktop, developers need to accept that, and make it possible for proprietary as well as FOSS software to easily run on Linux.
But it does look like I’m kidding myself, doesn’t it? Microsoft is still King, and we’re still pouring endless money (and endless lives, don’t forget the tantalum: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coltan ) into constant hardware upgrades we don’t even need. The vicious cycle continues apace, and we can’t stop it, oh no, because it’s CAPITALISM and capitalism is ALWAYS GOOD.
SMN.
Edited 2011-09-30 10:58 UTC
Linux users don’t need a stable API in order to avoid having to spend hours and hours compiling a huge desktop application so it works on their computer.
http://packages.ubuntu.com/oneiric/blender
Just install it with the package manager.
Only works if someone else packaged it for that distribution.
Have fun trying to run an older application that no one cared about.
I remember trying to build XTank and NetTrek for Linux back in 2001 I think. Not fun.
One would have more ability to take XTank and NetTrek and improve on them than one would for any commercial game.
There are literally tens of thousands of packages in Debian/Ubuntu repositories, and in the case of Ubuntu, perhaps a hundred thousand more in external repositories such as launchpad.
The thing with Linux is that for the majority of packages available for it, one CAN compile the source. Legally. If one wants to. For the majority of packages for Windows, one can’t.
Out of the two scenarios, the former is better than the latter for users.
Here is a nice integrated Office suite that achieves power through smaller apps which can all use one another’s data. Being smaller, each app loads much faster than any part of MS Office.
http://www.calligra-suite.org/
Version 2.4 is still in Beta, it isn’t due for release until next month. This release will include new applications in Brain-dump and Plan, and it also features the return of Flow.
Being lighter-weight, it can run handily even on netbooks and tablets (Calligra Mobile and Calligra Active.).
Exceptional value-for-money. Doesn’t need a monster system to run really well.
Nice. Neat. Linux only.
Edited 2011-09-30 13:50 UTC
Save that lame propaganda for the people who has never used Linux or Caligra, because the ones who had know pretty much how Caligra is incomplete, buggy and can’t be compared to MS Office.
Everybody keeps complaining here that the list of software should be Linux only. I think that is stupid, most software in Linux is opensource and is written using GUI-frameworks already ported to Windows. It’s a breeze to port it over to Windows so somebody is bound to do it. That is a good thing.
If I need to make a list of very good software that is written so it can’t be ported to Windows, then no, I can’t even make it to ten.
Well, this was my last comment in a Linux v. Windows thread. I’m just going back to my operating system with just, I don’t care, 100 users and I’ll continue drinking ginger beer, even though Cola is a way more popular soft drink.
Edited 2011-09-30 11:12 UTC
20 nice assorted apps I use all the time on my Linux machines:
Firefox
Thunderbird
Inkscape
Shotwell
Banshee
VLC
Avidemux
ffmpeg+mplayer+GUI frontends
Padre
Virtualbox
XBMC
gedit
Dolphin
Frozen Bubble
Gparted
Brasero
LibreOffice
Baobab
Geany
Back in Time
Your list looks familiar to me. Let me add another 10 of my favorites to that:
mplayer
Scribus
Qt Creator
Blender
Gimp
Texmaker
Battle for Wesnoth
ufraw
Okular
Meld
The question for me is: How many application does the user today really use? With linux you don’t install a shareware tool for every tiny simple task, like zipping files. If you have 30 apps in your daily use, it is already quite a lot.
I’m still trying to think of 10 great Windows desktop apps…
I’m still stuck at coming up with one (because we are, of course, not counting cross-platform apps…).
Yeah, I know lots of people consider Amarok a hallmark among Linux desktop applications. Sometimes they even compare it to iTunes and Windows Media Player.
But have you guys ever tried foobar2000 on Windows?
Insane amount of features, taking audiophile needs into account, clean interface, everything is customizable, smart & stable extension API with hundreds of plugin components available online in just 3 MB (!) distribution and its free! Just awesome. It dwarfs bloated crap like iTunes, WMP on Windows and just any other music player on _any_ platform.
Now, last time I checked Amarok distribution for Windows was 92 MB. Trying to install it on Ubuntu 11.04 (with mplayer, vlc and ffmpeg there already – so most of the audio-related deps in place) requires one to download 72.2 MB of archives. Very iTunes-like. What the f***?! Does it have more features than foobar2000? Hardly so.
Next to iTunes, Amarok may be great. Next to foobar2000 it is a joke – why would you even install it having a much better free alternative? Well, at least it supports Replaygain and has a media library, so it can actually be convenient to listen to music, unlike 75% of other music players on Linux. As for Joe the developer, why would you even waste your effort porting it to Windows instead of making your product better on its own platform, where it is needed most?
So, talking about great apps, you need to define a great app first. If not comparing to other platforms, one can find a great piece of software for Linux in any category. But in comparison to the very best from all platforms, unfortunately, Linux apps still feel like half-arsed clones for almost every general-purpose app. Of course, I must admit, they do their job well enough, but their greatness.. is not that great after all.
In the end it all depends on the user – we use what we like.. of what we can (depending on platform).
Since we hear from the Mono Guy spreading FUD about the Linux Desktop in the middle of some MS conference, he might be seeking another position on MS payroll after the latest Win 8 announcements.
P.S. Oh, yeah, must admit – using K in almost every KDE app name is pathetic.
Edited 2011-09-30 14:22 UTC
When comparing applications on different platforms, many people forget about whether the app is free or even open source or not. You can’t be serious comparing a product of a bunch of free software developers to the one made by a horde of programmers of some software publishing house.
Well, there are exceptions, like gimp. Apart from missing a number of quite important features photo professionals use, it is an excellent app that can stand to being compared to Photoshop. And it is completely free, while Photoshop is not!
Now, if we look at photo management software, Shotwell is good and it works. Looks like Picasa, perhaps more like version 1.0 of Picasa. That’s it. You can’t even compare it to the latest Picasa, not even mentioning Adobe Lightroom.
Now, if there’s Picasa for Linux, why isn’t it on the Linux (i.e. Ubuntu) desktop by default?
Gosh, I guess you never tried digiKam did you? You now, people should first do a little research before posting.
Now, I can understand that many people love Windows, this is the platform they learned how to use computers.
There are some very nice Windows applications for sure. For example, I really miss badly Autocad on linux, but that is the ONLY application I miss.
And before I forget, I cross my fingers everyday hoping that LibreOffice will not copy the new MS Office interface
Nothing against Windows or OSX, but they aren’t for me.
Yes, and last time I used it under wine it ran perfectly. Nowadays I use ‘deadbeef’ which is a ‘linux native’ foobar-inspired very lean on resources music-player.
As for Miguel being heartbroken, sure he is but it’s not due to lack of linux desktop apps. It’s because he was peddling Mono towards the Linux desktop and noone was buying, I remember him whining about the non-existant uptake outside of Novell (where he was developing it) and later Attachmate washed their hands of it when they aquired Novell.
Now he is targeting Mono towards iOS and Android, and that’s fine and all but I really doubt it will be a sustainable business. Still, I wish him luck since he certainly loves .NET and I always hope people get to work on what they love.
His bogus claim that Linux haven’t got more than 10 great desktop apps though just comes across as petty bitterness as a result of Mono’s failure to attract developers on Linux.
Yes and it’s indeed a very good audio player. For Windows. It’s not a patch on Amarok, Clementine or Bangarang though.
It’s almost like that other company that uses “i” in every product name.
I agree completely. It’s easily the best player on Windows, and even with a few glitches, I’d still rate Foobar2000 + WINE as by far the best player on Linux too.
I’ve tried pretty much every Linux player available, but Amarok and the rest aren’t even in the same league.
I do not get your argument. What does a great music player like foobar2000 on Windows take away from a great music player like Amarok on Linux?
Why is the number of available configuration options and features the main metric for how good a player is?
In your mind, is there a killer feature in foobar2000 that completely changes the listening experience and which is not available in a Linux music player?
If the claim was it’s hard to list 10 really good Gnome/GTK apps, I’d tend to agree. But 10 really good Linux apps is easy. I’ll even start with a GTK app:
GIMP
Clementine
Opera
Firefox
Libre/OpenOffice
Evoluition
Thunderbird
kwrite/gedit
k3b
gwenview
PiTiVi
OpenShot
Kleopatra
Ark
VLC
There, 15 or 16 just from what I personally have installed, not including package managers, compilers, dev tools, emulators or virtual machines. And I can easily come up with another ten for games. There is a lot of wonderful software out there for Linux.
Now the part about breaking APIs are diverging standards/distributions, I completely agree with. Linux is a pain to develop for in that regard. So, yes, it could be a lot better. It should be a lot better, he’s right. Let’s just not make silly claims about there not being great desktop apps on Linux.
Most of the applications listed here are just a rip off of the Windows and OSX counterparts plus some new options.
Where is the innovation?
Edited 2011-09-30 15:08 UTC
Are you just trolling or do you really think that there should be an OS/application exclusive? What about applications available on both Windows AND OS X, then? Who is copying who?
Also: by your reasoning, neither Windows nor OS X should have any networking software, as it all originated on UNIX.
RT.
It goes like this:
1.- Apple or MS release a catchy application usable not beta.
2.- And suddenly a docent of Linux half baked barely useful clones appear.
3.- The same Application on OSX and Windows is switched to mantainence mode, witch it means bug fixing and minor improvements w/o breaking the first goal of the application.
4.- A half of the linux versions dissapeared cause lack of interest, the other half are in eternal remodelation, not mantainence, every week gains a new useless option that will make the program more complicated and buggy.
5.- The application is not on the trend anymore because another new has arrived.
6.- back to step 1.
Hahaha, Right. That’s not how commercial development works.
So it’s like the opposite of server software?
I think you’re confusing OSS applications with the feature-creep most commercial applications end up with since they always need to sell a new, updated version.
I can’t decipher that sentence.
I can’t understand why you are trying to explain.
Linux Applications need a centralised donation lobby for third party apps.
Something that list the top apps in the specific software categories and keep tabs on dormant/abandoned ones.
A feature requests, code contribution could be thrown into the mix.
O and a few eccentric millionares
(Konquerer is the best file manager ever par none.)
Ardour is getting Midi and VST support
Gimp is moving toward incorporating GEGL for the “bit issue”
Cloud accounting and office software is getting more feature rich and available.
Training materials is becoming more available.
Publishers like Packtpub is help making this happen.
Edited 2011-09-30 16:27 UTC
I did not say “all,” I did not say “they suck.”
However, from a practical standpoint, clone apps like GIMP and LibreOffice do not strive to develop competitive features that draw in users, they merely aim to match the most commonly used ones.
The FOSS movement is consistently held back by the programmer’s mantra “I’m representative of my user base” which results in uninspired feature sets, dismal and frustrating UX, and very little incentive to improve.
If LibreOffice had research tools or business tools that Microsoft Office did not, if GIMP took the notion of professional image editing seriously, if there were a music player that also had dead-easy mashup tools…
… if there were a single Linux-only desktop app that did something original, did it well, and whose developers did not immediately crosscompile it for other platforms, desktop Linux would have had a glimmer of a chance.
I am a web developer. My job is to prioritize platform neutrality so I constantly evaluate OS X, Windows and Linux. Across the three OSes, there is no web development platform comparable to Dreamweaver, either inside or outside FOSS. And DW is not in any sense uncloneable. But, and this is a big but, its useability from beginners to veteran power users is second to none.
Automator is great software. You can argue that shell scripting is more powerful, but you’re expecting most people to become shell scripters. Again, FOSS has to develop with real end users in mind, people like your grandparents and your neighbors and those ditzy girls who live in their cellphones.
“Good enough” has damned FOSS desktop apps. Desktop Linux proves, proves that competence without imagination is always going to lose in a competition with commercial products.
Maybe because the most commonly used are the ones you really need or, at least, going to use on a daily basis? Seems like a sensible approach, if you as me.
Except for that, I sort of agree with the rest of your post. Some Linux applications are ugly and/or buggy, or both, some are half baked and some never make it past the alpha stage.
However, let’s not forget the quote that started it all: “When you count how many great desktop apps there are on Linux, you can probably name 10. You work really hard, you can probably name 20.” See? The subject of contention, so to speak, is not the merits (or lack thereof) of Linux and/or FOSS as a whole, but the lack of “great” applications — whatever that means.
The applications available on Linux and *BSD may not be great, but surely get the job done and, again, make for a perfectly viable, alternative platform for people who actually “think different”. In other words, that statement is perfect trolling material and, judging by the number of posts in this thread, it got its job done! 😉
RT.
I aim to please
.
But in all seriousness … Changing API/ABI is a good way to piss devs off and just drives people away from your platform.
Say what you like about Microsoft they love their devs. The new WinRT framework I can use all my existing HTML and JS skills to create Metro Apps … so for me there is a very low level for entry for making metro apps.
Edited 2011-09-30 20:00 UTC
FWIW I’d strongly disagree. I really hate developing software on Windows. I have some issues with C# as a language — for example, I think signals and slots in Qt are a much better event syntax than delegates — and I really don’t like Visual C#. XAML is kinda cool, but Qt and GTK both offer roughly-comparable capabilities. Granted I don’t have a lot of experience with desktop development, but I’ve done a very little work with Qt, GTK and WPF in C#, and so far I think I like C#/WPF the least.
Well, I like Java/Swing the least if we include that.
I don’t like Swing either.
TBH frameworks are like marmite you either love it or hate it. I am very comfortable with .NET and C#.
I have spoken to other very good devs that don’t like .NET at all and for very good reasons.
I know what I am developing for and I don’t get many suprises with Microsoft and after watching the Win 8 Build demo … I can use a lot of my existing knowledge to develop desktop apps (I am a web dev).
Edited 2011-09-30 20:21 UTC
That can be true; I don’t think that it’s a given that Linux should be aiming to take on Windows and OS X on “average” user’s desktop OS’s in the first place. There clearly are a lot of users, mostly tech-savy users, for whom Linux is the optimal choice of operating system, and there are also many more users for whom it’s not. That isn’t a bad thing; that Linux doesn’t work for you doesn’t make it stop working well for me.
This! I can’t vote you up … but +1
Edited 2011-09-30 20:10 UTC
Thom Holwerda,
Could you please fix the moderation system for good and for all?
I really see no good reason to not be able to express my agreement with well thought arguments just because I had already posted some of my unfinished ones.
Should I really register “acobar_mod”, just to be able to do that?
I think we both agree that is way better to have freedom to express our opinion, even if some idiot abuses the system.
For some that prefer open software, “openness” is such an important feature, that it skews their opinion of greatness compared to the “average” person, to whom I think Miguel is concearned with.
Very well put.
But good Linux apps pretty much all tend to be cross platform….. that’s part of the point of Linux, you aren’t locked in. Good apps don’t stay Linux specific for long.
How you move people to Linux is you move the apps they use to free ones. Then just change the OS underneath for a faster more secure free one. 😉
I found this news good and very positive
Finally we are going to get rid off Migue de Icaza. He loves Mono, he loves .Net, now he might switch to Windows 8.
It is good !!!
de Icaza is the Microsoft Linux Lover and always try to promote MS and close source software inside FLOSS communities. It is better to have him switch to Windows. While developers keep hacking on GNOME on their own.
Why is it good that someone wants to improve your platform leaves?
http://thisdeveloperslife.com/post/1-0-7-audacity
it might be worth listening to.
He has contributed a lot to Linux and you are saying “f–k off” … and let other people hack on gnome when he was one of the people that created it.
You should be grateful … not hateful.
Maybe people with your shitty attitude is why he will want to develop on Windows … he has much more patience than I.
Edited 2011-09-30 21:56 UTC
“Oddly, de Icaza was more positive about Windows…”
I just thought it was funny. Working on Gnome all these years and has nothing good to say about it. But he likes Windows 8. Tantamount to saying he’s wasted years of his life.
The reason for no video editor is pretty simple. Reinventing the wheel doesn’t work for video. GStreamer is a horrible implementation of the idea. Without a solid pipelining framework any attempt at making a decent video editor is going to fail. You can’t really write a monolithic video editing application, and to make it work you have to get right into the guts of the OS to make it right. The best video editing software around is all under Mac OSX. The reason is the Objective-C video apis that apple invested a ton of money making are such a solid foundation that it just snaps together easily and it works. The api is so robust that you can have realtime applications running on it without them crashing every five minutes. It’s something which I haven’t seen available even on windows. If linux wants a decent video editing program they should start with the GNUstep APIs and reimplement the Apple video apis.
No NLE on OSX nor Windows comes close to the robustness of Piranha: http://ifxsoftware.com/products/piranha
Piranha is as high-end as one can get. Guess what — Piranha only runs on Linux!
Of course if you can’t afford the USD$250,000 for Piranha and it’s hardware console, you can buy it’s little brother for USD$10,000 — Ant: http://ifxsoftware.com/ant
Ant was handling 4k Red streams about a year before Avid and Final Cut Pro. Ant only runs on Linux.
A lot of high-end production software runs on Linux.
What was that about having to get into the guts of the OS and using Apple APIs??
…and you’ve just shot your own argument in the head, Pirhanna is a Commercial non open-source product. The entire API/Framework is made by one company. Ant is also another proprietary non opensource product.. how does this help Linux again? Call me when a normal linux user has access to these tools without forking out thousands of dollars? remember every mac user has FREE access to quartz composer built into their license for Mac OSX. There is nothing close to that on linux that will allow you to mix HD feeds in realtime, or allow layered effects. OSX is only $39.95 for a legit license you can run on most intel based PC hardware, and a mac will set you back less than $1000 for an i7 mac mini which will let you do the editing.
Edited 2011-10-01 04:53 UTC
Nevertheless, it far out-classes any OSX/Windows NLE, and it only runs on Linux.
By the way, Piranha runs on RedHat, but I’ve heard of Ubuntu Piranha installations.
Ant can run on RedHat and Ubuntu, too. From the Ant page: “The Ant is a Linux Solution supporting most versions of RedHat and Fedora as well as Ubuntu, Debian and others.”
Nevertheless…
It helps in showing that fanboys make a lot of baseless claims about the superiority of their proprietary OS (OS means “Operating System” — not “application”).
As I recall, Piranha in 2005 was capable of 100 simultaneous HD feeds on Linux. Call me when OSX has an NLE with that capability.
The cost is irrelevant — the important thing is that Linux has already demonstrated superior capability in all aspects of production software. If a developer wanted to create an open source version of Piranha, there is nothing in Linux that is limiting him/her.
Being closed-source does not disqualify an application from being a great application.
Even Linux runs on Windows, I almost forgot. Check out Colinux, you can run the Linux kernel and all the rest of
vaporware on top of windows.
The phrase “Linux has only 10 great apps” implies several ideas:
1. There *MUST* be more then 10 desktop apps one uses.
2. All desktop Linux users are zealots.
3. Other platforms have more then 10 great desktop apps.
Arguable, at least.
And from my experience: I have switched nearly all my relatives from Windows to Linux with GNOME. Each of them was told that I will switch them back as soon as they ask for it. I’m waiting for several years now…
What did you do? Tied them to a chair and point a gun to their heads? Told them that using Windows or Os X is a sin and RMS won’t let’em in the foss/GPL paradise unless they won’t repent their sins and accept Linus as their savior?
Because it’s completely unthinkable that a person would want to switch away from Windows and OSX.
I thought I would toss in three applications.
I have been using Cartes du Ciel (Skycharts) by Patrick Chevalley since back in the late 90s, when it was Windows only. It’s now multi-platform, and excellent for use in the field at the telescope.
A related program is Atlas Virtuel de la Lune (Virtual Moon Atlas). Originaly written for Windows by Christian Legrand, Patrick Chevalley has helped make it multi-platform.
The third program is not multi-platform. It’s APT. It’s why I stick with Debian and related distros. It keeps my systems up to date (including Skycharts and Virtual Moon). I started using it when RPM hell was at it’s height. Aside from working, what makes it great? Simple, it inspired other (usually RPM based) distros to come up with something similar.
I don’t agree with Miguel de Icaza. In my opinion Linux lacks in the area of professional applications like Photoshop. Not that you can’t do a great deal of what you can do with Photoshop in GIMP but applications like Photoshop have simply become a standard of their own. On the other hand in the area of the Desktop I think that Linux is on par with what Windows has to offer. In my workspace i use Windows and i use several windows only applications there. But since i don’t take my work at home i use my home pc purely as a desktop machine and there i need a browser, skype, torrent client, media player and mail clients. I use Firefox as a browser (which is multiplatform), Skype is multiplatform as well, but there also very good messengers for linux like Pidgin, a use OpenOffice and i’m fine with it and i actually prefer its interface to the one of the current MS Office suite, i use ktorrent at the moment but i’m also very happy with deluge, for media players i’ve used Rhythmbox, Banshee and Clementine and i think that each and everyone of them is better than WinAmp which seems to be the standard in Windows and for video i use MPlayer which is my favorite video player and i usually install it in Windows as well, VLC is very good as well, for mail client i currently use KMail but i’m very happy with Evolution and Thunderbird as well. I think that i just listed about 10 applications which first are desktop applications and second are very good at what they do. Note that the majority of these applications are multiplatform and i would use them in Windows as well if i had Windows installed.
Linux may be lacking in the area of professional applications and it definitely wouldn’t hurt if some of the industry standard applications are ported to linux. But Desktop usage is one of the areas where it is on par with Windows. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend a distribution like Ubuntu or OpenSuSe to a person who only uses his or her computer as a Desktop. Indeed I have helped a couple of my friends to switch from Windows to linux (at their request by the way) and there were almost no problems with the transition and they are happy Ubuntu users now.
Including cross platform(some might be very good not great, and am not saying they are better then any! windows only equivalent)
vlc
Firefox
file-roller/ark(extract or compress to several compression formats, file manager right click/mount support)
Nautilus/Dolphin(file managers include sftp support, tabs)
Thunderbird
Tomboy – simple notetaking
kate(editor)
okular(document viewer)
gwenview(image viewer with basic editing)
gimp
ktorrent
calibre(book reader/organizer/device syncer)
gnome-do/krunner(command run/launchers/do cool things)
MyPaint
kpatience- A nice collection of solitaire games(very good looking with hints, let the AI play for you/demo mode, and undo/redo)
Baobab (Disk Usage Analyzer)/KDirstat for when you are running low on space and need to know why
Inkscape
Cheese -photobooth like take webcam photo application
empathy/pidgin multi protocol instant messanger
Virutalbox
Blender
Here’s a Linux-only app that’s groundbreaking, and is the best at what it does. This app is not available for OSX nor for Windows. It’s called Compiz! Windows and Mac have been copying features from it, but are nowhere close to eye-candy desktop Compiz provides. 3rd party vendors have made very hack-ish looking clones of compiz for Windows. Stripped down in functionality, AND most charge money for their not-as-good-as-compiz knock-offs.
There are other decent Linux-only apps that are free (as in beer) and work well in Linux such GnoMenu and Plymouth. Again, 3rd party vendors tend to charge for software of this functionality in Windows. And the Windows “equivalents” look nowhere near as good nor integrated as their Linux counterparts.
All this without even touching on the superiority of System Update in most major Linux distros compared to the paltry functionality of Windows Update.
I’d forgotten all about him.
Mono was supposed to bring all of these great applications to Linux ten years ago.
Well, Mono doesn’t support WPF and I guess it won’t support WinRT. And some .NET desktop apps use some features which are Windows only.
It’s cool though for writing portable winforms apps or deploying .NET apps on ios or android.
http://linuxmadeasy.blogspot.com/2011/09/so-as-usual-ive-no-wrote-i…
Yes, Linux is acceptable in daily to daily work of an engineer.