Linux alt. to Windows apps (split from A real Thinkintosh)

[Bookworm]

>>> ...it´s a problem to find the Linux alternatives for some windows applications.

>>Like MS Office or Lotus SmartSuite.

>You're kidding at least about the Office, right?

Is there an MS Office equivalent for Linux?

[beGi]

Is there an MS Office equivalent for Linux?

http://www.openoffice.org/

[Marin85]

... and even something better than that -> IBM Lotus symphony

Cheers,

Marin

EDIT: changed wrong url...

[Bookworm]

> http://www.openoffice.org/

A lot of that freeware stuff isn't worth the price, but

> IBM Lotus symphony

Is based on Open Office!? Everyone knows lotus is better than Microsoft. It might not be any more stable, but my real problems are with the stinking OS not the applications. But Symphony was originaly more like Works than Office. Are the new version's features really comparable?

What are the hardware requirements for Symphony and the compatible versions of Linux?

[Marin85]

Is based on Open Office!? Everyone knows lotus is better than Microsoft. It might not be any more stable, but my real problems are with the stinking OS not the applications. But Symphony was originaly more like Works than Office. Are the new version's features really comparable?

What are the hardware requirements for Symphony and the compatible versions of Linux?

I was beta-testing Lotus symphony for a while some time ago, so I could hardly tell you what new features have been added in the mean while. But I remember I like it more than Sun´s OpenOffice... Actually, right now (and then) Symphony is/was just *like* Office. I have never used M$ Works, but in that context you probably mean Lotus Notes which is not the same as Lotus Symphony... Symphony is made with Java, so you will need the standard prerequisites for java apps. Also, I believe Symphony works from OpenSuse 10 onwards (didn´t try it with 11.1) and from Ubuntu 7.04. onwards. IBM might have extended the supported linux distros in the mean while (I believe one can find exact description on the website).

Marin

[Bookworm]

Huh? None of that means anything in english. By system requirements I mean what CPU, clock speed, ram, etc.

Will Linux and Symphony work on a 500-850 Mhz PIII with 512-768MB ram?

[Marin85]

Huh? None of that means anything in english. By system requirements I mean what CPU, clock speed, ram, etc.

Will Linux and Symphony work on a 500-850 Mhz PIII with 512-768MB ram?

Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention about the hardware requirements Well, I didn´t find any information on their website on this... But since this piece of software can be run on RHL5, I assume that everything that can run Red Hat Linux 5 and java will be able to run Lotus Symphony...

Marin

PS: Sorry, I might have misunderstood some of your other points...

[Beaver]

... and even something better than that -> IBM Lotus symphony

NO WAY... Symphony is based on OLD OpenOffice, do not use it at all, it sucks... Download the altest package from OpenOffice.org it's way better (I have it )

[Marin85]

An interesting review of Open Office vs. Lotus Symphony. I wouldn´t say that Symphony sucks..., but it indeed seems to have higher hardware requirements than OpenOffice as Beaver pointed out.

[Marin85]

While we are still on that topic, does anyone know any good Linux substitute for Adobe Acrobat Pro (with no tablet support needed) Would it be possible to make the OS-X edition work under Linux?

Thanks,

Marin

[Temetka]

I highly doubt that you'd be able to get the OS X version to run in *NIX. Unless you could D/L the source and recompile it for your machine that is. However I bet it was written (or ported) in Xcode and I am not too familiar with what dependencies it has for compiler type / version and so on.

[Marin85]

Well, then the only other solution is to make Acrobat Pro v9 working with wine...with dubious performance... I have yet to find some suitable alternative of it for Linux...

[Thinkpaddict]

The way I handle this situation (trying to run some app that I have in Windows in Linux) is to run Windows inside Linux. I use VirtualBox with great results, even with a computer that by all measures most people would consider outdated (An X24.) VirtualBox is free, and you can create multiple virtual machines, create snapshots (great feature to test installations of programs and revert back to a given state.)

I have a Windows XP virtual machine inside Ubuntu 8.04, and I mainly use it to run Acrobat, Foobar2000, and a few other apps (including Photoshop.) You might be surprised by the performance. With enough RAM and a nice CPU people report close to native performance. I'm getting less performance than optimal, due to the limitations of my computer, but still good enough to run Photoshop (I'm running Photoshop 6 though, so I don't know how Photoshop CSX would work.)

Give it a try, it's free. There is no messing around with Wine and not fumbling around with your partitions to do a dual boot. You can actually run Windows in a window in your Linux desktop, and work seamlessly, because you can make Windows capture the mouse pointer when you mouse over its window. I run a USB CD on it, and a printer with no problem, as well as wireless networking.

Best of all, since you can revert back to former states (virtualbox calls them snapshots) you can experiment with new software configurations, and revert back to a state that you saved before if you messed anything up.

As you can tell, I really like virtualbox. You can also try VMWare (according to some reviews slightly faster than virtualbox, and with a few more features.) But VMWare costs quite a bit of money and it's not worth it unless you need stuff such as snapshot branching (but even this feature is being implemented currently by Sun into VirtualBox.)

[hausman]

But Symphony was originaly more like Works than Office.

The original original Lotus Symphony didn't even run on Windows

[Marin85]

@Thinkpaddict: Yeah, I was too thinking of using VM under Linux for some light installation of windows, but I was afraid of the performance of Acrobat Pro. I guess I just have to check it out

[Thinkpaddict]

Marin85,

That's the way to go. With your computer you should have no problem whatsoever. You can assign a given amount of RAM per virtual machine, and since it seems you have 4Gb, I think you won't have any problem (I'm running my computer with 640Mb, and it's pretty good.) If you are using Ubuntu let me know, because I wrote some simple instructions as I was going. It's very straightforward, if you wish USB passthrough the only thing necessary is to edit a couple of files.
Good luck with it, and make sure to report your results!

[Marin85]

Thanks! If I come to Ubuntu, I´ll let you know. FYI, I will probably try this out under OpenSuse 11.1 and Arch Linux (at least this is what I plan as of now), so if you have any specific suggestions about these, feel free to share it BTW, my main concern wasn´t the amount of system memory (despite the 4 GBs installed I can, unfortunately, utilize only up to 3 GBs regardless of OS, due to the well known hardware limitations :sigh:), but the cpu. I work with lots of scans (homeworks, articles etc), and *even* under Windows Acrobat Pro happens to max out both cores... As already said, we will see what happens.

Thanks again

Marin

[winston.oyy]

Huh? None of that means anything in english. By system requirements I mean what CPU, clock speed, ram, etc.

Will Linux and Symphony work on a 500-850 Mhz PIII with 512-768MB ram?

Linux does, wonderfully well with that amount of ram.

I have a 2nd hand Compaq Evo N400C @700Mhz,384MB ram and I run Xubuntu 8.04 on it. It has a Win98 OEM and I figure XP is a chore on it. OpenOffice.org runs great on it provided you do some tweaks to speed up opening the app. I haven't tried Symphony, but I figure it would run great as well since it's built on OpenOffice.org.

[Thinkpaddict]

Thanks! If I come to Ubuntu, I´ll let you know. FYI, I will probably try this out under OpenSuse 11.1 and Arch Linux (at least this is what I plan as of now), so if you have any specific suggestions about these, feel free to share it BTW, my main concern wasn´t the amount of system memory (despite the 4 GBs installed I can, unfortunately, utilize only up to 3 GBs regardless of OS, due to the well known hardware limitations :sigh:), but the cpu. I work with lots of scans (homeworks, articles etc), and *even* under Windows Acrobat Pro happens to max out both cores... As already said, we will see what happens.

Thanks again

Marin

Sounds good! I haven't worked with OpenSuSE or Arch Linux, but you shouldn't have any trouble finding instructions in the web about setting up VirtualBox on them. If Acrobat Pro is so demanding even under Windows, chances are that you will find that to be the case under VirtualBox also, only even more so due to the additional overhead of the virtual machine. But I think there is a way to force VirtualBox (or any other software in Linux) to use only one of the cores in a multi-core system. In the Ubuntu VirtualBox pages they refer to this software, it is called taskset. Do a search on it based on how your experience goes. But the worst that can happen after you try installing all this is that you will have a Windows VM to test with. No partition setting and all that other fun stuff.

[TheRedFox]

In case my input is useful at all, I find that OpenOffice is just shamefully slow when compared to MSOffice '03, and that there aren't really any good MSOffice replacements with the exception of AbiWord for word, many would disagree with me, but I just can't do OO. It might just be an issue of Java vs. C++ (C++ being faster, and the language that I assume Office03 is programmed in, though I'm not sure.)

Linux, as a whole, however, I think is far superior to Windows. it's far more customizeable, and in the case of Arch, way faster (Xubuntu was about the same speed, I think). I just wish that there was better software in some cases, and that I could get as good of battery life in it.
I'm currently running Windows XP, but hopefully I will be dual booting linux soon.

EDIT: I almost forgot! Foxit PDF reader provides an amazing alternative to Adobe Acrobat Reader! it's small & light, and there are linux as well as windows versions of it. It's what I have always used, since I discovered it!
http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader ... reader.htm (Windoze download)
http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/desklinux/ (I Think this is the linux download I found. if not, just google it)
I'm not sure the capabilities of the pay version, but I heard that there are ways to make Foxit able to edit pdfs. not sure if it's a plugin or what. just a good place to start looking
DOUBLE EDIT: looks like the creator and editor are both downloadable for "desklinux" as betas. not sure what that means, lol, but it's a possibility.

[Marin85]

I agree with TheRedFox about the Office applications and Java. Office 2003 is under XP quite fast. Under Vista and Win 7 Office 2007 is even faster...

BTW, this thing about Foxit being able to edit .pdfs sounds interesting. I´ll check it out when I load the linux.

Thanks,

Marin

[TheRedFox]

Good luck!

[moronoxyd]

In case my input is useful at all, I find that OpenOffice is just shamefully slow when compared to MSOffice '03, and that there aren't really any good MSOffice replacements with the exception of AbiWord for word, many would disagree with me, but I just can't do OO.

You may want to look into SoftMaker Office.
Yes, it's commercial, but it's available for Windows and Linux (and FreeBSD) with almost the same functionality (formel editor is missing in the Linux version). And it's small and fast.

I bought the Windows and Linux versions a few years ago and haven't been looking back ever since.

EDIT: I almost forgot! Foxit PDF reader provides an amazing alternative to Adobe Acrobat Reader! it's small & light, and there are linux as well as windows versions of it. It's what I have always used, since I discovered it!

While I love Foxit PDF Reader (and Editor) for Windows, the Linux port is just not there yet.
They need to put a lot of time into it before it will replace Evince as my PDF reader of choice.

[TheRedFox]

wow. good find. Softmaker Office. sounds like a pretty good office replacement
does the linux version work on all varieties of linux? becuase technically Arch is binary based, but very few people provide packages for the pacman package manager, so usually you have to install software from the repository or from source. and it seems like it'd be unwise for a company to provide source for products that they want people to pay for...

[moronoxyd]

It should work on pretty much any Linux distribution with a halfway recent kernel, as it has only a few dependencies (X11, glibc 2.2.5 or above are mentioned in the manual).
The software is available as a binary in deb (Debian, Ubuntu), rpm (RedHat, Suse) and tgz (basivally any distribution).