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Dangermouse

Dangermouse

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I know this has probably been done a zillion times, but what I want to know is if I install Fedora now its very stable and useable, what outlook type applications are available and will photoshop work on the platform or am I limited to Gimp:thumbs:
 
If you want to use email and calendar, then Evolution is the equivalent to outlook.
Fedora is almost a development platform. There is support for 3 versions only, with a version lifecycle being defined as 3months. However, it is my prefered distribution (as I come from a redhat based background).
Gimp is aparently the best tool, possibly more capable than photoshop in some respects, but, I prefer photoshop. It depends on what you are doing (HDR for example has other tools which can be used and automated)
 
For a mail client I'd use Mozilla Thunderbird. It has the advantage that it's available for Windows as well.

Check this is correct because I'm going on memory from a while back. I think you can import you messages and contact into Thunderbird from Outlook, however you need to do this using the Windows version of Thunderbird, it's then very easy to move it to the Linux version.

As for photoshop, there is no Linux version. You can use a tool called Wine on Linux to run Windows software. There's some info here;

http://wiki.winehq.org/AdobePhotoshop
 
IMHO, don't bother. It may be free, but you'll spend all your time getting around the bugs in the UI.... (admittedly, that was on Ubuntu 9.4...)
 
So basically I am better sticking with 7 and putting up with it, I just want to get out of the establishment and find Mac too expensive to get the same setup I have now, any other OSes that may spring to mind
 
Dangermouse1964 said:
So basically I am better sticking with 7 and putting up with it, I just want to get out of the establishment and find Mac too expensive to get the same setup I have now, any other OSes that may spring to mind
Click to expand...

Download http://www.virtualbox.org/

It's a good way to have a proper look at other OSes.

However I've always found that although Linux is very reliable making things work in the first place is often more challenging.
 
arad85 said:
IMHO, don't bother. It may be free, but you'll spend all your time getting around the bugs in the UI.... (admittedly, that was on Ubuntu 9.4...)
Click to expand...

Did you submit bug reports for these failings, and what hardware were you running on. Fedora is a bit more bleeding edge than ubuntu generally, bugs will get fixed faster for newer hardware, at the risk of there being more funamental bugs on initial release (I recently accidentally installed an Alpha release, but the majority of bugs were fixed very quickly)

srichards said:
There was a commercial paid for linux thing which was supposed to be really good and user friendly.
Think it was called Lindows or something but they had to change their name as Bill complained.
.....
Click to expand...

SUSE Linux Desktop is a commercial product, and Novell (the company bought SUSE) have an agreement signed with Microsoft with regards to a few things. The enterprise server for SUSE has a service pack (which in this case is an add-on product, not a bug-fix product) which provides almost seemless integration into windows networks. Enough in fact for it to provide a point-and-click interface for the linux machine to provide full domain services to Windows clients.

However, I prefer redhat based to the SUSE products, because that is the variant I know. I have done consultancy on both, and either are as good as each other.
 
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coldpenguin said:
Did you submit bug reports for these failings, and what hardware were you running on. Fedora is a bit more bleeding edge than ubuntu generally, bugs will get fixed faster for newer hardware, at the risk of there being more funamental bugs on initial release (I recently accidentally installed an Alpha release, but the majority of bugs were fixed very quickly)
Click to expand...
Hardware - standard PC config with E8400/4G/RAID 0. Issues were all in the UI. Ranging from having to know the runes to get CDs to be windows compatible through the default installation of pulseaudio being unstable, Firefox/plugins having more bugs than a buggy thing with the final straw being that the standard file open dialogue would often pop up at around 100x100 resolution. I had a number of other issues that niggled me, but I can't remember the details... All issues had bugs reported on the usual channels some 6+ months previously. It was a nightmare (and, trust me, I know computers backwards ;)) that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy - I feel that strongly about it. I run "linux" on my Windoze PC as the command line interface (cygwin is the first thing that is installed at arad towers..).

The UI looked nice though.....
 
of all the OS ive installed to date from windows 3.11 all the way through to 7 and 2008 R2 and OSX snow leopard etc.. linux (redhat i think it was) baffelled the flip out of me the most to the point where i got halfway through install and threw it in the bin... :lol:
 
Don't get me wrong, I love linux as an OS (my media PC runs xbmc on linux). It's just when it tries to do a UI it fails due to the bugs....
 
As stated earlier install virtualbox then install whichever windows version you require to run the windows compatible software photoshop etc.

I installed ubuntu and virtualbox then installed Xp to run Adobe Lightroom 3 for my photo editing, works really well easy to setup too.
 
I've never had a problem with linux, the only reason I don't run it on my laptops is that getting Microsoft Office to work on it is a right faff (I've tried Open Office, but absolutely hate it), and I don't run it on my desktops because I want them for gaming.
 
arad85 said:
I run "linux" on my Windoze PC as the command line interface (cygwin is the first thing that is installed at arad towers..).

The UI looked nice though.....
Click to expand...

Cygwin isn't exactly linux, it in my mind does have many failings.
The other items, I am surprised at.
Firefox plugins are third party items of course, I would have thought that any reproducable bugs in firefox would be closed pretty quickly.
The one anoying thing about linux (from a developer point of view), is there is no such thing as a standard open dialog box as there is in windows GUI programming. Which program was giving this issue?
 
Pete, if you want to use your PC use Win 7. If you want to spend your life looking up how to do the simplest of things that you don't even think about with Windows, then try getting them to work, go for Linux....

Download Wubi and use it to download and install whatever distro you want; this way your hard drive isn't partitioned or anything like that, and you can run it alongside Windows to see if you like it or not.
 
Fedora is a decent Linux distro, but if you are new to Linux then you will probably be better off with Ubuntu.

If you want to play with Linux and don't fancy installing to your hard disk then just try running a live CD for a while. Just download the latest Ubuntu 10.10 image, burn it to a CD, then get your PC to boot from the CD.
Running Linux this way is slower, but it will let you have a play without buggering anything on your hard drive.

If you like Linux then you can just resize your Windows partition and install Ubuntu from the live CD. The install process is very quick and easy. Now you have a dual boot system and can choose which OS you want to boot from.

I like Evolution for email on Linux, it's the closest thing to Outlook on Linux.
WINE doesn't always work so you might need to learn GIMP.

Linux is stable, fast and virus free, but there is no guarantee that all your hardware will work, and if anything goes wrong then you may need magical powers to fix it.
 
coldpenguin said:
Cygwin isn't exactly linux, it in my mind does have many failings.
Click to expand...
What I was saying is that I do most of my day-to-day housekeeping on a PC using the linux command line ;) I don't use cmd.exe - it is just too restrictive.... Linux is just that, an OS with a command line set of tools. All the UI is X and X window managers. THAT'S where all the bugs are.... It's a classic development by committee with seemingly very little structured release testing.

coldpenguin said:
The other items, I am surprised at.
Firefox plugins are third party items of course, I would have thought that any reproducable bugs in firefox would be closed pretty quickly.
The one anoying thing about linux (from a developer point of view), is there is no such thing as a standard open dialog box as there is in windows GUI programming. Which program was giving this issue?
Click to expand...
It was this bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gtk+2.0/+bug/75324. Or at least, it seemed to be - I never installed Jaunty to see if it was fixed.

Took 3 years to fix by the time it was fixed.

eos1 said:
Linux is stable, fast and virus free, but there is no guarantee that all your hardware will work, and if anything goes wrong then you may need magical powers to fix it.
Click to expand...
Linux is stable, fast and bug free. The window managers aren't (or at least they weren't 18 months ago). There were just too many issues to pursue it.

Just by way of putting my credentials out there - I should say that my first experience of Linux was when I ran/administered 0.99e back in '94 as a replacement for Win 3.11, and my first experience of Unix was SunOS 3.x back in the very early 90's so it's not like I don't understand what's going on underneath me ;)
 
As a Linux devotee, using nothing else for over 10yrs, I love it but have to agree with some of the negative comments. If computers are your other hobby, it's great but if you want an OS to 'just work' with PS etc then maybe not so great. Eg some third-party drivers are a trial to find, never mind install. Especially if you have to compile them, not something a typical end-user really wants to be doing with their time when it's easier and faster to click 'install now' in Windows.
Personally, I quite like doing it that way but YMMV
 
Carter64 said:
If computers are your other hobby, it's great but if you want an OS to 'just work' with PS etc then maybe not so great.
Click to expand...
Computers are my other hobby, but I still want applications to be 100% compatible and rock solid otherwise I won't use them. What's the point being 2 hours into an image edit and your main app crashing due to some issue in the emulator - i.e. wine.

Another example, OpenOffice may read MS Office documents, but it doesn't format them in exactly the same way. Useless when you spend much of your life dealing with people who only deal in MS Office documents. Try running it under wine - hmm... bugs lie that way too, and you can't be guaranteed that it'll always work in the future. Well, install a VM... Hang on, I'm running a VM JUST so I can run Linux and then I need to emulate the environment most of my apps are built for?? That's like putting the cart before the horse - use the UI that works with your apps (relatively) bug free (Win 7) and then install an emulator for the bits I want to use occasionally.

At least, that's my experience. YMMV of course ;)

Don't get me wrong - I have linux boxes here too, but they're running embedded code for media streaming...
 
Dangermouse1964 said:
I know this has probably been done a zillion times, but what I want to know is if I install Fedora now its very stable and useable, what outlook type applications are available and will photoshop work on the platform or am I limited to Gimp:thumbs:
Click to expand...



photoshop won't work but you can run virtual windows though. have a look at centos (the one I use is actually from CERN) for a linux platform.
 
Linux certainly has it's uses but IMO it's milked to death as a desktop OS. As rightly pointed out, most of the common desktop environments are riddled with bugs and half of them don't even look finished.
 
arad85 said:
It's just when it tries to do a UI it fails due to the bugs....
Click to expand...

Only UI I use on my linux boxes is bash (mostly over ssh as only one has a screen and keyboard attached). Seems bug free ...

Running debain, unubtu and gentoo, in various locations.

Obviously this is not what most people will want to do.
 
Carter64 said:
As a Linux devotee, using nothing else for over 10yrs, I love it but have to agree with some of the negative comments. If computers are your other hobby, it's great but if you want an OS to 'just work' with PS etc then maybe not so great. Eg some third-party drivers are a trial to find, never mind install. Especially if you have to compile them, not something a typical end-user really wants to be doing with their time when it's easier and faster to click 'install now' in Windows.
Personally, I quite like doing it that way but YMMV
Click to expand...

This about sums it up. I use a hardened version of Ubuntu 8.10 for security and penetration testing and it's fantastic. It isn't for the faint hearted though. Recent distros are much more user friendly and package managers make installs easier for the most part, but every so often something (usually a dependency) will bite you on the bum. You need a bit of knowledge to use Linux without tears.

If you want an OS that works out of the box with pain free installs and completely point and click user interfaces then stick with Windows 7 :)
 
onomatopoeia said:
Only UI I use on my linux boxes is bash (mostly over ssh as only one has a screen and keyboard attached). Seems bug free ...

Running debain, unubtu and gentoo, in various locations.

Obviously this is not what most people will want to do.
Click to expand...
Teehee... You're right, that's hardly a typical usage - unless you're back in the 80s and only want terminal access. Bash/ssh is what I use on cygwin and it does everything I want it to. As I said above, the command line is finme, it's just the X windows apps that are a big letdown.

For a workstation, I need a GUI, not a curses/tty interface ;)
 
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