Linux apps that are "almost there"

[mintnoob]

Which Linux apps do you think are so close to meeting all of your needs for that particular kind of app and/or are so close to being able to fully replace the comparable Windows app that you still can't do without yet?

List the app(s) and tell us which features are still missing, or still need improvement before it becomes a "complete enough" app in your eyes.


A few of mine:

Basket Notes - to replace Evernote. Want a note-taker that you can drop in images and hyperlinked text. The newest Basket Beta version can do this, but dropped in images are not showing up properly. I'm sure that's just a bug that will be easily fixed by the time the stable version comes out. ALMOST THERE!!!

OpenShot - to replace MS MovieMaker. Still needs a simple text editor that MovieMaker has and that no other Linux video editor has. I think the next version of OpenShot may include a simple text editor. ALMOST THERE!!!

Transmageddon video transcoder - to replace MediaCoder. Only lacks option to transcode with audio muted. That suggestion is up on its wish list. ALMOST THERE!!!

Avidemux - to replace Virtualdub. Does everything I need in Virtualdub except for an animated gif maker, which there are no good Linux gif animators out there IMO. ALMOST THERE!!!

[mintnoob]

No one has any "almost there" apps? All your apps either fits your needs, or are far from there???

[Midnighter]

Most of what i use suits me fine. Acidrip/Handbrake/Thoggen for ripping my dvds to my drive, Devede to create movie discs from video files, Easytag for renaming and tagging of my audio files, Asunder/Rubyripper for ripping my cds, Abiword and gnumeric for basic word processing and spreadsheet work (or Openoffice is need, but usually fine), Seamonkey for browsing, email, and HTML editing, Firefox for other web-work, with so many extensions, GPRename for bulk file renaming, Tracker-search-tool for finding everything on my machine, Ktorrent does everything I need in a torrent client (even better than the windows ones), gPodder handles my podcast collection fine, Miro is great for grabbing all manner of free media with so many Channels to choose from, Rhythmbox is a great audio player/manager, Soundconverter is good for re-encoding my audio files, iriverter for re-encoding vid files to play on my iRiver, Evolution handles my other email needs and calendaring fine. I really don't have any complaints, except when the ball gets dropped with something, but it's usually sorted. Samba seems hit and miss at present, sometimes it seems to work fine, others, not so fine (annoying, but not crucial), but it only seems to be with ubuntu/Mint, fine with other distros I use. *shrug* Overall, much happier with my apps here than on my Windows box. On windows, I miss Ktorrent, Rhythmbox, and several others. Also, windows app menu is, frankly, shit. Gnome and KDE has the apps better sorted, and easier to find. I'm good.

[JohnnyC35]

Deluge and Transmission I would mark as almost there. If they could incorporate Vuze-like encryption (RC4/Level 5) then I would be happy, and use them. Stupid ISP blocking. Till then I will use Java-bloat Vuze :'(

[Midnighter]

Deluge and Transmission I would mark as almost there. If they could incorporate Vuze-like encryption (RC4/Level 5) then I would be happy, and use them. Stupid ISP blocking. Till then I will use Java-bloat Vuze :'(

eh? Both Transmission and Deluge have encryption, and neither have given me any probs, nor have I been blocked.

[JohnnyC35]

For some reason neither of them like sandvine thru Sympatico, but I did find a better program that Vuze, Lince. Based off of Vuze not it is not Java based. RC4 encryption but without the memory hog at the trough.

[Charles_]

Lince, Transmission, Deluge, and Vuze all follow the same encryption spec. In fact, Lince (which you advocate) even uses the same implementation as Deluge, whose encryption you found lacking.

All of them use RC4. In Transmission's case, I know this firsthand because I wrote the code.

I'm glad that you've found a client that works for you. But whatever the problem was, it wasn't due to lack of RC4 encryption in Deluge and Transmission.

[tdockery97]

Hi Charles. If you wrote Transmission then you are the one I have been wanting to give a big thank you. Transmission runs circles around bittorrent for me.

[DrHu]

Which Linux apps do you think are so close to meeting all of your needs for that particular kind of app and/or are so close to being able to fully replace the comparable Windows app that you still can't do without yet?

I can't say I find that type of question of much interest.

The inference behind the statement, are there any Linux apps that are there yet?, implies that if the Linux project and the various OSS software developers could just get it right, all the windows OS users will flock like pigeons over to our side of the fence.

• Won't happen
  --therefore it is pretty pointless to try to convert such users, assuming that they even exist!

..or are so close to being able to fully replace the comparable Windows app that you still can't do without yet?
Directly answering the question as a Linux user, I can see OpenOffice as a direct replacement for ms Office, as well as some other commercial Ms Office replacement strategies for google et all (including full replacement office suite applications, that can handle excel files (which are the most problematic types))

[Midnighter]

[mintnoob]

I forgot to mention Tomboy Notes. It's my favorite note-taking app, but wish it could allow image and hyperlinked text insertion. It then would become the most awesomest note taker app (minus the mono).

[linuxviolin]

An app I like is Meld. There is also Diffuse as an alternative to Meld... Sagasu is also quite interesting.

P.S.= Tomboy? No thanks, not with me. I hate Mono. It's one of the first things I remove after installation if the distro installs it by default.

[mintnoob]

KeepNote - To replace EverNote. Just stumbled across this gem of an app. Can paste in hyperlinked text and images just like Evernote can, but doesn't have an Import feature yet to import Evernote notes exported as HTML. Almost there!

[mintnoob]

aTunes - A very underrated music collection player app IMO. Seems to do just about everything iTunes can do (plus things like showing lyrics and songs on youtube), but can't play music off a audio CD yet. You have to rip the music first. Almost there.

[piratesmack]

Hmm... I guess I'd say... KDE SC
vs. the Windows 7 and Snow Leopard desktops

It's beautiful and modern-looking, feature-rich, and the apps integrate very well with the desktop.
But the file indexer uses like 90% of my CPU so I just turn it off, there is no built-in GUI for configuring my synaptics touchpad (I know Windows 7 doesn't have this either, but Mac OS X and Gnome do), and the settings manager isn't very intuitive. (PCLOS improves this with their custom KDE control center).

Probably some other issues I can't think of right now, but yeah, almost there.