What Windows software can you not do without?

[z31fanatic]

As an EE major, Matlab..

Matlab is available on Linux http://www.mathworks.com/support/sysreq ... ?sec=linux

OH MY GOD YOU HAVE CHANGED MY LIFE.

Bow to your Messiah!

[z31fanatic]

Thinkpads for the win!

You complain about Google and then use Thinkpads?

[Dngrsone]

Thinkpads for the win!

You complain about Google and then use Thinkpads?

My Thinkpads were pretty sturdy machines. Reliable, fixable... I used mine for a couple years and then my kids used it for another few years... only just retired them because they were so darn old and beat all to hell, it would have cost me almost as much as a new machine to repair one.

[z31fanatic]

Their business machines are good but I will never trust them.

http://thehackernews.com/2015/09/lenovo ... virus.html

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150 ... alls.shtml

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2887392/ ... snafu.html

[Dngrsone]

Oh, well there's your problem... Lenovo

My Thinkpads were IBM.

[Moem]

You complain about Google and then use Thinkpads?

Who's complaining? I just avoid. I also avoid Thinkpads with the specific problems you are referring to.

[hawkeye315]

Is there an opensource way to paint on 3D models? That is one thing that Photoshop does seem to do well.

Also, rainmeter is great for desktop beautification, but I guess you can manually do all of that yourself.

[trapperjohn]

Hi,

What ... can you not do without

I wish it was as simple as that. As a systems administrator and a nearly fanatical Linux advocate, my challenge is; what software can't others do without.

On a commercial level, Microsoft Office is a valid user preference, particularly when advanced collaboration (and a decent spell checker) are required. Although Windows is a bloated and intrusive OS, Microsoft Office is probably the best piece of software ever written. Rant all you want, but people won't give it up until MS fks it up. The good news is: they are fking it up quite nicely with Office 360.

Beyond Office, many production operations are tied to Windows because instrument/machine control systems use closed-source, Windows-only applications. Milling machines, mass spectrometers, you name it - you don't have a job if you don't have Windows.

[exploder]

trapperjohn, I have to agree with you! I find myself using Windows 10 on my new Lenovo laptop because of college courses and compatibility with job sites. Also, the WiFi and ATI graphics are terrible under Linux. (My desktop still runs Mint 18 Cinnamon!)

Sadly some things just do not work under Linux...

[thom_A]

On a commercial level, Microsoft Office is a valid user preference, particularly when advanced collaboration (and a decent spell checker) are required.

Spelling checkers are no longer exclusive to MS Office long long time ago. Even a notepad equivalent like Kate has a spell checker. I don't think it's that complicated for coders to embed a dictionary in any text-based app. You have to come up with something more advanced than spell checkers. I genuinely want to know what other advanced feature Libre Office can't do that people can't give up MS Office?

I used to use a legit MS Word stand alone for XP back in the days and can still run it in Win 7 32bit. I discovered OpenOffice, then LibreOffice. I understand that most offices use MS Office, but for home use I don't feel the need to.

[sphyrth]

I genuinely want to know what other advanced feature Libre Office can't do that people can't give up MS Office?

Borders. Those fancy, annoying, MSOffice-only borders. I hate those borders.

[trapperjohn]

What distinguishes Office?
Briefly, Track changes and advanced formatting.

Ask a team in a professional publications department to give Word alternatives a try (I have actually done this with several groups). They deal well with procedural variations and are happy to be rid of the silly Office tool ribbon. But, track changes, trust me, is grounds for a divorce. Why? Red-lining a document, most times with multiple revisions, and enforcing chain-of-command approval of changes can not be accomplished with the ease and perfection that Office provides when you substitute any other word processor, paid-for or free. (Professional users insist that this is a fact. These professionals can, and do, seek the best available technology, just like us.) Whether you are collectively writing reports and bylaws for a non-profit or generating a engineering report for a Superfund site, it's about multiple-author, multiple-review collaboration.

Professional writer-editors are also considerably more into advanced formatting and indexing than us LibreOffice folks. I have seen them stamp their feet in protest on this.

Who cares about writer-editors? In my region, the primary final product of most companies is a written report. They have the money to pony up and they are not going to settle for what they have determined to be mediocrity. They are not MS groupies and they will seek the best way to do their jobs and go home on time.

I don't use Word/Excel or even native-boot Windows for personal use. This is my preference. Even at work I use a Blackarch native boot to keep the place functioning. There are no Windows programs that I, in isolation, can not do without. But, it's not all about me.

As an active community member and as a system administrator, I must consider the needs of individuals and organizations, and most often they need Office... to serve and compete. With all the drunken self indulgence on the OS side of the house, what baffles me most is how well MS got it so right with this application. Paying all those MIT graduates the big bucks did have a remarkable, positive result.

Who knows, maybe they'll figure out that their OS gets worse with every iteration and that organizations increasingly can't use it effectively. Maybe they will focus on what they do well, perhaps form a partnership with the Canonical folks and port the technology to Linux. (I have seen things like that happen.) Alternatively, maybe Google with all of its Stamford and MIT brainpower will develop a better mouse trap.

BTW: The LibreOffice spell checker is rabidly hated by professional editors. But most of them know how to spell. Write a 50 page report to your boss in LibreOffice, perfect it, save it as a doc, then open it in Word and see what a mistake you would have made.

[thom_A]

Borders. Those fancy, annoying, MSOffice-only borders. I hate those borders.

So it's all about cosmetics you mean. Nothing about advanced customisation using Visual Basic or something. And I don't know what you mean about borders. Borders like you see in spreadsheets, rows and columns of them? Libre Office have those. You might have meant frames.

I understand the need to use MS Ofice in offices where you work, because it's always been that way. I don't think it's likely to change. What I'm saying is why spend money, or pirate one, and use the same in your home computer when there is one that is available for free and does the same thing?

[MintBean]

I loved Winamp. Wish there was a Linux version.

[sphyrth]

So it's all about cosmetics you mean.

Definitely! I personally grit my teeth when a customer wants me to print a Word file that has those Word-only borders in it. If there are no people who use them, then I would have no problem opening doc/docx files in LO-Writer.

What I'm saying is why spend money, or pirate one, and use the same in your home computer when there is one that is available for free and does the same thing?

Here in Philippines, the Ribbon UI has a significant impact. People who learned to use it just don't want to learn the LibreOffice UI. Schools are either unaware of these beautiful MSOffice alternatives, or apathetic about them.

This country is struggling for advancement if you ask me.

[GoustiFruit]

Using Windows 7 under VirtualBox for one reason alone. Many years ago a U.K. based Genealogy program - Family Historian - appeared on the scene. I purchased it and found it so good that I've been using it ever since. It is now up to v6.2 and I wouldn't use any other program for my genealogy, even though I have tried many, including GRAMPS. And so, Windows still has a place in my computing. BTW, I have tried to persuade the programmer of Family Historian to modify it to be available for Linux but with no success

Wouldn't it be easier to run it in Wine ???

[Hoser Rob]

There is no Windows software I can't live without. Which is why I don't have any Windows partitions anymore. After having a Windows partition for years as a sort of security blanket I yanked it.

I'm not one of these anti Microsoft linux users, and I totally think if you need some Office features or Photoshop et al then you need some Windows, but I don't need it.

[rxd]

For me it's corporate VPN Client access. I have no problems connecting to all my clients with Windows, OS X and iOS. But Linux refuses to work with some offices. No connect means no paycheck, so Linux is a no go for me.

[DeMus]

I loved Winamp. Wish there was a Linux version.

Especially which part of WinAmp did you love, and please don't say all of it.
Maybe somebody here knows a substitute which you will love as well.

[Dngrsone]

Speaking of old Windows programs we've missed, I loved the old ACDSee... the gallery feature (and the fact that it could see any image regardless of the file extension) just really worked for me back at the turn of the century...