I decided to post a little introduction to myself here: Ask me who I was last March, and I would have had WinBloze 7 Beta on my main computer and would have been part of Micro$uck's test project for WinBloze 7 and would have been excited about it. However, that changed as soon as my network adapter changed and the new one worked with Linux. As soon as I tested the new adapter with Mint (I'd say about a year ago, in July 2009) I began to really value Linux for what it is.

However, I knew about Linux long before that. I started with gOS 2, which was my first distro. I had tried it back in about February 2008. I first learned about Linux back in mid-2007, from an article in PCMag that spanned several pages. I had quite a hard time back then, and Ubuntu Hardy was no different than gOS.

So then what took me so long from knowing about Linux to finally becoming an active user? My house was nothing but Wi-Fi. My mother set a secure wireless network up back then, and I couldn't connect to it because my adapter (Linksys WUSB54GSC) wasn't recognized by Linux. I had the patience to continue.

Then, in June 2008, my family got hit by the economic collapse here in the USA: The mortgage on my old house doubled and my family had to leave because of the rate increase. So, we were stuck in a hotel room until my family and I could end up in a new house. That Christmas, I wanted a netbook, and got my wish (the one I'm typing on, an Acer Aspire One AOA110-1545). It came with Linux preinstalled, and I liked it all around.

From then to June 2009, I still had WinBloze on my desktop, as Linux still didn't work with my wireless network adapter. Then, in June 2009 as I said, I got a new wireless network adapter, and in July decided to test it with Linux Mint 7. It worked, even from the Live CD! Now,

For Newbies: List of open source alternatives to proprietary software

Posted 11-06-2010 at 01:08 PM by Kenny_Strawn
Updated 11-24-2010 at 11:12 PM by Kenny_Strawn

This blog entry is for those who have no idea just where to start with Linux because they have no idea just what kind of *free* and open source goodies are just waiting to meet them. Here are some commonly used open source alternatives to proprietary apps:

Microsoft Office = OpenOffice.org, LibreOffice, KOffice or AbiWord

Adobe Photoshop = GIMP

Windows Movie Maker/Pinnacle Studio/Corel Studio = PiTiVi or Kdenlive.

iTunes = Rhythmbox + Ubuntu One Music Store

Microsoft Visual Studio = Geany, Eclipse, Anjuta, Code::Blocks, KDevelop, or Qt Creator

Internet Explorer = Firefox or Google Chrome (both widely used)

Nero = Brasero

Yahoo Messenger or Windows Live Messenger = Empathy, Pidgin, or Gwibber

Windows Media Center = MythTV

GarageBand = Audacity or Ardour

Microsoft Student (the graphing calculator portion, not the Encarta portion) or Matlab = SageMath or gEDA.

There's absolutely nothing except (maybe) popular gaming that can't be done under Linux, as you now know.

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	Some obvious alternatives to Visual Studio that you left out are Code::Blocks and KDevelop (and I really like Qt Creator, but it's only useful for Qt/C++). As for office apps, AbiWord is a nice and simple word processor. And finally, Kdenlive is a much more powerful video editor, but it's still in early development and is a little glitchy.
	Posted 11-09-2010 at 01:39 PM by MTK358

Added all those apps in there.

Posted 11-15-2010 at 08:25 AM by Kenny_Strawn
Also added LibreOffice to the list of free office suites.

Posted 11-15-2010 at 08:36 AM by Kenny_Strawn
Added Pidgin to the list of instant messengers.

Posted 11-16-2010 at 04:29 AM by Kenny_Strawn

	What about specific programs such as mathematical software such as Matlab or engineering simulation/PCB design software as all I can find is gEDA which is quite obtuse. Any help would be appreciated cheers.
	Posted 11-21-2010 at 09:50 AM by Smophos

	Quote: Originally Posted by Smophos What about specific programs such as mathematical software such as Matlab or engineering simulation/PCB design software as all I can find is gEDA which is quite obtuse. Any help would be appreciated cheers. Probably SageMath is a very good bet.
	Posted 11-24-2010 at 01:25 AM by Kenny_Strawn

Quote:

Originally Posted by Smophos

What about specific programs such as mathematical software such as Matlab or engineering simulation/PCB design software as all I can find is gEDA which is quite obtuse.

Any help would be appreciated cheers.

Scipy for Python is a good alternative to Matlab. Scipy may not be as advanced as Matlab, but being part of Python, it is very versatile.
iPython offers several features found in Matlab compared to the regular Python shell.

Posted 11-24-2010 at 07:05 AM by wagaboy wagaboy is offline

Thank you, I'm still a relative newbie but I want to get rid of Windows for good, it's just stuff I need for work that means I still use it.

Posted 11-24-2010 at 07:47 AM by Smophos

Quote:

Originally Posted by Smophos

Thank you, I'm still a relative newbie but I want to get rid of Windows for good, it's just stuff I need for work that means I still use it.

Have a look at http://www.scipy.org/Cookbook for an idea of what Scipy is capable of. There are a couple of examples on signal processing (and electrical engineering stuff), which I think is what you are interested in.

Posted 11-24-2010 at 09:34 AM by wagaboy wagaboy is offline