Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternatives

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JohnBobSmith

Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternativ

Post by JohnBobSmith »

Here's my list of things I use regularly that works just the same as my school's Windows/Mac applications. Most of these are art based applications, but I have some other things in the list too.

Final Cut Pro X, or any propreitary video editor, can be replaced with kdenlive. I havent done much video editting in kdenlive as I have to use FCPX at school, but kdenlive seems okay. Most other video editors are either Windows Movie Maker in quality (really basic) or I havent tried them out.

Photoshop can be replaced with Gimp. Honestly, I get more work done in gimp than in photoshop. It also looks better in my opinion, because you arent being lazy with a one-filter-does-all or the quick selection tool that photoshop has. Anyone who says that gimp can't do what photoshop does is 1) Being lazy and 2) Has never heard of plugins

Adobe After Effects can (somewhat) be replaced with Blender. Blender can do some pretty awesome simulations, post production and stuff like that to make effects that look really awesome. Integrating it with video is another story all together, but it can be done and I may show you guys an example of that later in a different thread.

Adobe Illistrator can be replaced with Inkscape or any vector graphics program really. Never really worked with vector graphics like Illistrator does, and I really dont care to learn it at this time.

Any music creating/editing software can be replaced with all of the following:
-freesound.org //For nearly any sound you can imagine
-http://www.bfxr.net //for making game sounds
-http://www.pulseboy.com //for making retro sounds (mostly DOS music, youtube it).
-Try banging things together, or actually recording the sound (within reason).
-Some general creativity
-And of course, Audacity for mixing/editting/putting everything together nicely.
Honestly, I think that recording your own sounds is the best approach. No harm in mixing any of the above sounds either.

Autodesk XSI, Maya, 3DS Max, and others can all be replaced with Blender. I used to use XSI, then I started using Blender and my artwork improved 100 times over, because Blender is awesome.

Unreal Development Kit, Source Engine SDK, or Unity can be generally replaced with something like Leadwerks Game Engine (non free). Leadwerks is okay, but I didnt really enjoy it that much. Never got too much into it either though. But for the $100 I say its worth it. One time fee of $100 for a FULLY featured engine, no limitations (unlike Unity's free version) I say it was a good buy. I will have to get into it in the next little bit here... I don't regret getting Leadwerks, thats for sure.

Microsoft Visual Studio can be replaced with Code::Blocks. While I've never run visual studio, I have Code::Blocks and I absolutely love it as an IDE for programming in C++.

Notepad++ can be replaced with something as simple as Gedit. Works great for me.

Although WINE is not an alternative program, it can be used to run just about any Windows application before ~2012 ish. Older stuff generally runs better. A lot of games run great in WINE. Just be prepared to do a LOT of tweaking to get anything working... Everything I've ran in WINE needed some sort of configuring before it worked. But at least it did work.

Hopefully I'm not restating anything to obvious. Just thought I'd chip in my two cents from an artists/programmers/gamers perspective.
fuzzyanalysis

Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternativ

Post by fuzzyanalysis »

AlternativeTo (http://alternativeto.net) is quite good for for finding alternative software packages to popular apps.
Veerstryngh Thynner

Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternativ

Post by Veerstryngh Thynner »

Hi there all!

In bed with flu and just browsing through the list of Windows alternatives. And yes, I agree: it's helpful indeed.

What I'm still using Windows for is

1) video capturing (eg transferring DVDs to video file - .flv,.mp4 and the like): no Linux alternative available for this (unless you're holding a degree in IT, perhaps...);
2) as a musician, I'd really like a decent voice changer. But since there's none in Linux, I'm using Windows for that, too.

In the past, Audacity has been advised, in this respect. I'm totally chuffed with it, as recording and editing tool both - don't get me wrong - but it most definitely doesn't make the grade as to changing my male voice into a credible (and reasonably natural!) female one.

Veerstryngh Thynner
hwally

Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternativ

Post by hwally »

A great list but doesn't mention an alternative to Adobe Flash. Since they're not going to support Linux anymore does Mint have an alternative ready.
killer de bug

Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternativ

Post by killer de bug »

HTML5...
xinu
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Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternativ

Post by xinu »

Nice link yamawho.

There is not much I can't do with Linux (Mint) which I could do with Windows.

Asamof, I have the feeling I can often do more with Linux.
Also learning more with every step I take.

Above all at a much higher speed.
Even on older systems.
mehimu

Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternativ

Post by mehimu »

Nice collection, thanks for the share.
mehimu

Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternativ

Post by mehimu »

Thatys look good. Hope that i can be able to run this apps properly.
thom_A
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Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternativ

Post by thom_A »

Been trying to replace my desktop publisher in Windows with Scribus, but Scribus' search function hasn't been giving the results I wanted. The program itself is fine and could rival commercial apps, but when I try to search text or group of words, not necessarily to replace them, but to add or edit something, it' becomes a huge task.
mehimu

Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternativ

Post by mehimu »

So many apps, in a post. Thanks yamawho, for this link.
myrkat
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Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternativ

Post by myrkat »

thom_A wrote:Been trying to replace my desktop publisher in Windows with Scribus, but Scribus' search function hasn't been giving the results I wanted. The program itself is fine and could rival commercial apps, but when I try to search text or group of words, not necessarily to replace them, but to add or edit something, it' becomes a huge task.
I feel your pain. I've been using Scribus for almost a year now - only using it for a 6-page newsletter (3-column, photos, custom artwork, etc). And it is a tad "rough" still. I am on the nightly builds, which seemed better for me than the stable. YMMV.

I was using Xara for my newsletter (an incredible app for Windows only), and still use it (Xara Designer 11) in a VM for creating custom vector artwork. I am trying to ween myself off of it and move entirely to Inkscape, but the difference between Xara and Inkscape is like night and day as far as ease of use and layout goes. Not to mention stability.

Scribus is an excellent multi-platform DTP app that could easily become professional if enough resources were dedicated to it. It does get easier after a fairly sharp learning curve.
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z31fanatic
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Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternativ

Post by z31fanatic »

Most of those apps are good alternatives for most people but try telling professionals to switch from AutoCAD to Archimedes, or from Photoshop to Gimp. You'll get laughed at.
mehimu

Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternativ

Post by mehimu »

Well, i think that it is good. This link is helpful for me. Thanks for your nice share.
charlieg
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Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternativ

Post by charlieg »

hwally wrote:A great list but doesn't mention an alternative to Adobe Flash. Since they're not going to support Linux anymore does Mint have an alternative ready.
Gnash?
yamawho
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Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternativ

Post by yamawho »

Wow ... this thread is still going :mrgreen:

I installed Mint 17.3 Mate today and was looking for applications and remembered this thread.

I noticed the original link was updated in 2013 from 2008.

Also, great to see the others have added more links.
apemanx

Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternativ

Post by apemanx »

Thanks so much!

This is a list I've been waiting for. Answers a lot of posts over the last year -- all in one!
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PeterRJG
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Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternativ

Post by PeterRJG »

While it doesn't have OneNote's functionality, I use CherryTree as a note-taking/note-storing program. Excellent app to keep assorted tidbits together for university or whatever purpose you have. The folks at LibreOffice really need to have a look at making a OneNote app, but I imagine they have other priorities.

You can get CherryTree in the Mint repos.

And to whoever said ArcGIS > QGIS earlier in this thread, all I can say is that maps created in the former will not load in QGIS properly, and there's little common ground between them. Sure QGIS is free but they're both woefully complicated pieces of software to use with learning curves from hell.
Joel Cairo

Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternatives

Post by Joel Cairo »

I'm sure it's good, but there's nothing for me there. I found this list very useful though: http://www.techsupportalert.com/content ... -linux.htm
raju

Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternatives

Post by raju »

thank u for that link..
bad medicine
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Re: Top 50 Proprietary apps and their Open Source Alternativ

Post by bad medicine »

PeterRJG wrote:

And to whoever said ArcGIS > QGIS earlier in this thread, all I can say is that maps created in the former will not load in QGIS properly, and there's little common ground between them. Sure QGIS is free but they're both woefully complicated pieces of software to use with learning curves from hell.
I'm no expert in either but while you might not be able to use maps directly from Arc to Q you can recreate some of them pretty readily. Depending on what you mean by "map", because "map" could mean different things to different people. Any shapefile used as a layer in creating an ArcGis "map" can be used to make a similar "map" in Q. You just can't open or import an entire ArcMap project in Q, and you can't open a Q project in Arc. But you can make layers in Q that be used to build a map in Arc, just as the reverse is true.

And you're certainly right about the steep learning curve on both, but I was able to transfer what I knew (which is not very much) from Arc to Q pretty well, I just had to learn different ways to do somethings. Now that ArcGis is available for "only" $100/year QGIS is less appealing, although I actually like it better than Arc for some things.
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