Linux Programs Windows Counterparts

[Beelzebub]

Well, I finally delved into the realm of Mandrake Linux, and I like it. Only problems I have are learning the ins-and-outs of Linux commands, and more importantly, knowing what programs are most like my favorite Windows programs.

Basically, I want to know what programs y'all are using that fill the need of my WinXP box. I am a little overwhelmed by the sure volume of different programs for the same operation.

List of programs I want to know have capable counterparts in Linux :

All MS Office XP programs
Ad-Aware 5.62
Adobe Acrobat
Adobe Photoshop
Nero Burning ROM
Crystal Reports 8.0
MS SQL Enterprise Manager
MS Project
MS Money
MS Visio

Any help from you guys on what programs you use or think are perfect alternate programs from the above windows programs will be greatly appreciated.

 

[klosters64a]

Coming up with exact replicas in Linux isn't all that easy. There are office suites in Linux, koffice and StarOffice come to mind. There are more, of course.

Adobe Acrobat reader is available for Linux.

Xcdroast(hope I have the name right) is said to work very well for burning.

MySQL is popular. I don't know if it equates with MS SQL Project Manager. I believe that SQL was originally a Unix prog that MS gladly copied.

 

[XWRed1]

All MS Office XP programs

OpenOffice

Ad-Aware 5.62

Don't know what this is... is it some ad blocker? You can accomplish that using a combo of the Squid proxy server, Netfilter, and a browser like Galeon.

Adobe Acrobat

As has been said, Adobe has a port.

Adobe Photoshop

The Gimp

Nero Burning ROM

XCDRoast, Gtoast, there's alot. I use cdrecord.

Crystal Reports 8.0

I'm sorry, there's no equivalent of this I know of. From what I've used of it (generatig reports for web clients, which pull their data fields from sql databases), you could accomplish it with html and a language like php. At any rate, this is more of a server thing, I'd say.

MS SQL Enterprise Manager

Probably not... I don't know of any programs that will give you a nice gui to admin an MS SQL server. If you were to replace MS SQL with something like MySQL , there's plenty of gui frontends for that. If this is a production machine, though, don't just blindly charge ahead on this. I certainly wouldn't want to be responsible for your customers having downtime.

MS Project

Not sure.... I don't even know what Project is used for, exactly. Isn't it for managing product teams or something? I don't think there's any equivalent... productivity tools are fairly sparse compared to whats available on Linux.

MS Money

Gnucash

MS Visio

There's some flowcharting apps out there. Koffice has one that looks nice.

I believe that SQL was originally a Unix prog that MS gladly copied.

SQL stands for Sequence Query Language, and is a standard that anyone can adhere to. Sort of like how C and C++ are languages, so is SQL. Microsoft SQL Server is actually descended from Sybase 6.0 or something like that, which MS bought from Sybase, and then forked. Sybase still has the original, which they have continued to improve and bring forward. Both of them are pretty interoperable with each other.


Anyways, alot of these programs looks like business productivity apps. If you're thinking of migrating alot of your business workstations to Linux, you should do alot more research than hitting a web forum, and it looks like you are tied closely enough to MS solutions to make a migration very inconvenient.

 

[Beelzebub]

Thanks for the feedback guys. Basically all the programs I had listed are on my personal workstation at home. I want to at least learn the Linux programs. I am having fun with Mandrake, and if I can find replacements for all my windows programs, I just might move over. Just wanted to know what real Linux users are using.

 

[PolyPill]

All MS Office XP programs = staroffice, openoffice, and koffice to a lesser degree

Ad-Aware 5.62 = don't need it

Adobe Acrobat = Port

Adobe Photoshop = Gimp

Nero Burning ROM = Gnome Toast

Crystal Reports 8.0 = Nothing

MS SQL Enterprise Manager = Nothing unless you switch database servers, and that'd most likely not an option

MS Project = Nothing

MS Money = gnucash

MS Visio = Nothing


If your have the ability (probably not) you can run anything that isn't available in linux through a Citrix server in integrated mode. I do this for Visio, SQL Manager, and the whole Office XP sweat. As much as I love linux I had to admit that office software is lacking.

I've probably booted my work computer to windows twice in the last 4 months, but if I didn't use other servers running vnc and citrix to run programs I would probably have to reboot more often.

Here's a screen shot of Visio running on a Citrix server from my desktop. Works great on a 100mbps connection, it's a little sluggish from my house over cable, but not too annoying.

http://www.figz.com/~scottd/screenshots/screenshot.jpg

(note, there's an internet explorer icon on there, I only use it to access my credit card account, I swear)

 

[PolyPill]

Almost forgot, Evolution is a very good email client, you can even buy an add on to connect to MS Exchange servers.

 

[tyler]

All MS Office XP programs = Openoffice
Ad-Aware 5.62 = Look @ freshmeat.net
Adobe Acrobat = Adobe Acrobat for Linux
Adobe Photoshop = Gimp
Nero Burning ROM = gtoast
Crystal Reports 8.0 = Look @ freshmeat.net
MS SQL Enterprise Manager = MySQL or Postgresql
MS Project = Look @ freshmeat.net
MS Money = GnuCASH
MS Visio = Dia (something like that)

Tyler

 

[Malakai]

all the Linux proggies are pretty much free to, correct?
Im gonna format my hdd and set up a 20gig partition and start fiddlin w/ linux. id love to learn unix commands and such. U guys know of a real good site with tons of info for a linux noob?
isnt there some site like linuxnoob.org or something?
-Malakai

 

[tyler]

www.linuxnewbie.org

And yes, most apps for linux are free.

Tyler