Revisited: From Windows to Ubuntu: Alternative software
Since I started using Ubuntu on my computers, I’ve had the chance to work with a number of different software, trying to smooth the transition from Windows to Linux. About 2 years ago I wrote an article on rehuel.com about alternative software for those who are used to Windows. I think it’s time to recheck that list.
I discovered the use of Wine to install Windows software in a Linux environment. The first programs I tried out were my favorite web development tools: Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 and Firworks 8.
Dreamweaver vs Quanta Plus
I used Quanta Plus for about a year. All this time I kept missing features and shortcuts I was used to in Dreamweaver. I managed to get the Dreamweaver installation running through Wine, and I have been using version 8 since then. I don’t need any fancy new features that are being offered in newer versions or by different software. I need a coding environment where I’m comfortable in. The verdict: I switched back to Dreamweaver in Wine, while waiting for a Lunix version of the software.
Fireworks vs The GIMP
Here I had pretty much the same experience. I enjoyed learning the ins and outs of Gimp, but in this case, I was not happy with the outcome of my work. I do know that I wasn’t using Gimp to its fullest, but I found it too much work. For example, resizing and saving a JPEG image would take a lot more steps, with usually a worse quality image. My personal conclusion is that Fireworks is more web-graphics-friendly than Gimp. So for me it was not difficult to decide to switch back to Fireworks 8 in Wine.
Microsoft Office vs OpenOffice.org
My position on this choice remains the same: I prefer Openoffice.org (yes, that’s the whole name of the suite; read this article for more) over Microsoft Office.
The only feature of Microsoft Word I’m missing is the possibility to use an image as background on every page, by adding it to the header or footer. Unfortunately I have not found a way to do this in OOo yet.
Microsoft Outlook vs Evolution
After working with Evolution for a while, a merge of a couple of mailboxes left me with thousands of duplicate mails. This had me frustrated for a while, because the solutions required a lot of operations I was not willing to perform. I found that Mozilla Thunderbird did have easy to install addon to remove duplicate mails. After some digging around I found that some of the features I missed in Thunderbird, such as tasks and calendar integration, were available through the Lightning addon. For about a month I kept both clients running to figure out which was a better choice. I decided to remove evolution and continue using Thunderbird.
Although it’s a very good step to switch to a different operating system, it is possible that we are so used to some programs, that it can be frustrating to learn to work with different ones. In those cases it can be a blessing to find out that we still can use our favorite software.
