tingo wrote:
What are those applications that you miss?
I need to create documents. Stuff that you do on Windows with Word, or Ami Pro if you are stubborn. On Irix I use Ted but it's a struggle. Luckily, Word is awful also so I don't feel like I'm being persecuted. I have Framemaker, should use it more and become more skilled with it but it's cumbersome for small jobs. There's no Framemaker for Linux so no problemo there
Maybe Abiword would do the job. Open Office is awful. Even Akkana Peck who loves Linux can't stand the thing. It's like a second-rate bad copy of Mickeysoft Office, ugh.
Graphics, you've got GIMP. Decent enough but won't do cmyk so there goes printing. Okay for home but not for work.
Vector graphics like Corel or Illustrator, Inkspot doesn't work.
Layout like Indesign or Quark, nothing. Scribus doesn't work. Indesign 4 (aka CS2) is nice. Serif PagePlus was good. There's several choices on Windows, on Linux nothing.
CAD, nothing at all. Not a single program that's worth squat. In fact, the one that does exist is useless. In my case, that's a killer.
No CAM programs, for most people that's not a problem but the fact still is, there aren't any. None.
I do use CDRTools but it is painful. It does work well though.
Sound and video applications, nothing that works. Luckily MPlayer is good for playback but half the Linux distributions are 'deprecating' MPlayer now for some retarded reason.
The desktops themselves - what a pile of disgusting spooge. Not one single well-thought-out good-performing desktop. Twenty years after 4Dwm they are finally discovering vector icons. Be still, my heart. Even Windows 2000 is head and shoulders better than
any
Linux desktop. What year did is it now ?
I'm sure you can live with it - hell, I survive on Irix, although at least Irix has some good commercial apps - but why ? Every single one of these major projects has gone nowhere for years. And now they are all just like the Mickeysoft fanboys with their stewpid, "Just use gcc !" chant. What happened to cross-platform, standards-compliant, inclusive, all that good stuff ?
It's just totally discouraging. All these good intentions and big plans but it's all gone nowhere. What was the platitude about "genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration" ? Well ... somebody in fossyland needs to sweat some details. Maybe fix some real problems for a change instead of switching toolkits.
For me, I've been using FreeBSD and Linux for the last 10 - 15 years at home, and I have all the applications that I need.
I use Irix ... but if I had to change to Linux, I'd quit. Unless you are a mas0chist, the applications are awful. Of course people should use what they like but at this point, I think I'd rather run Windows 98 than Linux. It's less hassle and works better.