Switching from Windows to Ubuntu [was: Re: ]

[Mario Vukelic]

On Mon, 2008-04-28 at 11:07 -0400, Jay M wrote:
> There are ways of making the software work but your safest bet would
> be finding alternatives to the software below. That way you know they
> will functioning correctly.
> 
> MS Office - OpenOffice.org
> Acrobat 7 - Acroread, xview
> Photoshop CS - The Gimp
> Illustrator CS2 - Inkscape
> Frontpage - NvU

The alternatives are mostly sound, and it certainly is recommended to
check them out. Acroread (= Acrobat Reader in Windows), however, is not
a replacement for Acrobat 7, as Acrobat's job is to create PDFs, not
read them. It's confusing naming on Adobe's part

But ...

> these programs come close to what you want, may not be 100% but it
> should work for you

You cannot know this. Photoshop is much more powerful than the Gimp, and
works very differently. Someone schooled in Photoshop who needs its full
power will not be too happy with Gimp.

That said, Photoshop CS2 works very well in Wine, a compatibility
environment for Windows applications. See
http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?iVersionId=2631

Illustrator CS2, though, does not:
http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=5392

Front page 2003 doesn't really, as doesn't Acrobat 7:
http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=7208
http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=4922


That said, it is possible to run these in a virtualized Windows, e.g.,
with vmware: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/VMware

For general info on switching from Windows, read the help files:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwitchingToUbuntu/FromWindows
http://doc.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/switching/