Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternatives

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blueXrider

Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternativ

Post by blueXrider »

not a bad beginners list however it needs to be updated
.William.

Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternativ

Post by .William. »

I'd add Karbon from the Calligra Suite as alternative to Microsoft Publisher. I find it easier to work with then Scribus. It supports Vector and is under active development. The Calligra Suite is a graphic art and office suite by KDE created from KOffice in 2010.
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Pilosopong Tasyo
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Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternativ

Post by Pilosopong Tasyo »

.William. wrote:I'd add Karbon from the Calligra Suite as alternative to Microsoft Publisher. I find it easier to work with then Scribus. It supports Vector and is under active development. The Calligra Suite is a graphic art and office suite by KDE created from KOffice in 2010.
Karbon is a vector-graphics application primarily used for making illustrations (drawings). It's akin to Inkscape and the Windows analogue is CorelDraw and Adobe Illustrator.

Scribus, OTOH, is a Desktop Publishing (DTP) application, geared more for laying out pages for printing or reading (e.g. newspapers, magazines, certificates, et. al.), and contains a mixture of text and graphical elements (but more on text, usually). Windows analogue to Scribus include Microsoft Publisher, Adobe PageMaker and InDesign.

Although they are related to each other, both illustration and DTP applications have some degree of differences. I use both, BTW, depending on the kind of work done:

Inkscape - for illustrations, drawings, clipart, etc.
Scribus - for page layouts/desktop publishing
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nextdistroplease

Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternativ

Post by nextdistroplease »

As a noob to Linux, about 6 months, I think I can say that "tar" is the perfect alternative to backup software.
HaploVoss

Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternativ

Post by HaploVoss »

My favorite Video editing / VJ system for linux:

http://lives.sourceforge.net/

Not sure why I rarely see this anywhere. It is very robust, I never have problems with it. If it does break after an update it gets fixed.
Love it, use it, abuse it. :)
- Hap
reptilezone2002
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Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternativ

Post by reptilezone2002 »

wow nice work i was looking for a qwickbook alternative
blueglass

Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternativ

Post by blueglass »

I use OpenOffice and GnuCash a lot on my Mint laptop that I bought from Lazada and I agree with some other members here that technical applications are still behind in terms of the number of them that are open source. :)
Last edited by blueglass on Mon Sep 10, 2012 5:17 am, edited 1 time in total.
habfan29
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Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternativ

Post by habfan29 »

nextdistroplease wrote:As a noob to Linux, about 6 months, I think I can say that "tar" is the perfect alternative to backup software.
rsnapshot >> tar, though you do need to format your backup drive in a *nix filesystem, not mere FAT32 or NTFS.
blueglass

Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternativ

Post by blueglass »

reptilezone2002 wrote:wow nice work i was looking for a qwickbook alternative
Have you tried using a web app like Wave Accounting to replace Quickbook?
Evgeny

Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternativ

Post by Evgeny »

I never knew about Cabos, I'll give a try
GreenLang

Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternativ

Post by GreenLang »

What's an alternative for Adobe Premier CS6.5 that just came out. All i can say about that program is, rock solid, stable. butter smooth. low on memory. high on performance
Jessey Lawson
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Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternativ

Post by Jessey Lawson »

Man this thread is old. Like an old man. :D Libre office and Caliga are much bettter then Open office.
iTunes to Songbird: If you’re accustomed to the equation where “Apple + iPod + iTunes” equals a ton of money, then you might consider a switch to Songbird. Songbird is an open source player and a platform committed to “playing the music you want + from the sites you want + on the devices you want.” Songbird thereby challenges the conventions of discovery, purchase, consumption and organization of music on the Internet.
Ok this just grinds my gears as they forgot that songbird is also a decent web browser to and that is the ONLY REASONi use it. And by the way, where are the open source games?! I did not see any witch means that the list is Biast and not complete. That it write I am going there. Now Micropalus is a good game but LinCity is complete crap. I mean what is with all the Russian vocabulary and we still don't have any more then one simcity clone.
inflatablemouse

Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternativ

Post by inflatablemouse »

Has no one mentioned Kingsoft Office?

http://wps-community.org/download.html

I think this is by far and above the best MS Office alternative. I've not had the slightest trouble importing Office 2010/2013 documents or spreadsheets. Colors, formatting and fonts all look almost the same. Formulas and graphs all seem to work too (I have a few complex ones).

Honestly LibreOffice looks outdated and formatting has never looked right when importing Office documents. Fonts are ugly too. Kingsoft Office is simply beautiful :D .
erfunath

Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternativ

Post by erfunath »

In terms of media players, I have to plug Clementine. http://www.clementine-player.org/. Love it. Probably already listed on here. Love it.
Acanthus

Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternativ

Post by Acanthus »

This list really needs updating.
OldgitTom

Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternativ

Post by OldgitTom »

Kingsoft as Word replacement; I've tried the free version, which prolly lacks all the features of the paid-for one. It performs well & handles all MS Word files, so maybe worth downloading for that. But it falls behind Open Office in not recognizing & incorporating a scanner feature, or 'odt' files. Since that meant it was of limited use for my purposes, I rather lost interest after that, so I don't know if it can save graphics as 'jpeg' files (Word refuses), or how it fares with 'pdf' files.

Personally, I find MS Word the best. Linux would make bigger inroads in the business/academic markets if it introed its own version, were that feasible. Word's domination is from its near universal use, making the exchange of docs simpler - little file converting & staff training needed.

Open Office is acceptable, but no match for Word beyond simple text-bashing. Eg., commands ribbon cannot be customized, & any doc saved in non-odt form tends to have corrupted formatting when re-opened later. This seems to be when graphics & text are mixed.
Last edited by Oscar799 on Thu Jan 30, 2014 5:39 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Returned text to normal size
JohnBobSmith

Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternativ

Post by JohnBobSmith »

Hm, thats interesting. I've had no problems using LibreOffice (the one that comes pre-installed with Mint) and MS Word, once I got my partition mounted. Sure a few formatting issues within the document itself (font, spacing, etc.) are inconvienent, but I've never had issues with corrupted files.

I wouldn't go as far to say that MS word is the king of office suites. Statistically speaking it does well, but other than that, I don't know... I guess everyone is entitled to their opinion (at least in Canada) so if you like using MS word then by all means, use it and enjoy! :)

I just prefer using free software. After all, Linux is free... :D
trapperjohn

Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternativ

Post by trapperjohn »

Here's a huge alternative:

ArcGis -> qgis
trapperjohn

Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternativ

Post by trapperjohn »

molecular modeling and visualization:

Windows versions - various high priced apps

Alternatives:

Modeling/drawing:
Avogadro: http://avogadro.openmolecules.net/wiki/Main_Page

Visualization
Jmol: http://jmol.sourceforge.net/
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