Hi,





I'm in the process of evaluating ditching my WinXP system in favour of a Linux workstation and a Linux server. I have a lot of things to iron out, the first one being the distro. Second thing is to try and ween myself off windows as I have found myself dependent on some software in Windows that I haven't found yet in Linux.







The software is:



* Microsoft Money 2001 - is there a Linux equivalent where I can import all my accounts? I have several years worth of accounts I would like to import.







* FTP client - I used FlashFXP and SmartFTP in Windows and so far have only found gFTP in Linux which I have found to be profoundly lacking in features compared to the Windows rivals.







* Firewall. I'm using Zone Alarm in Windows - what's the best under Linux? I've heard of ipchains and iptables - what's that? Also I heard of Smoothwall and XSentry. I would prefer to go all GNU/GPL stuff as a matter of principle - so no commercial stuff please.







* Web browser. I'm afraid to say that MS IE6 is the best browser I've ever used. All the Linux ones I've tried fail to render most websites properly - this is probably due to the fact that most sites are developed for IE. I've tried Konqueror, Opera, Nutscrape, Mozilla, Galeon and Lynx - yes really!







* Personal Information system such as Outlook 2000 (email, calendar, tasks, notes) that can sync up with my Palm Vx. Outlook shares info with the Palm quite nicely and I haven't found anything in Linux that can do that yet - any suggestions here? I need something that's seemless with the Palm. Is Evolution any good?







* Games - I will have to keep my WinXP partition for games - however I spend most of my non-work computing time tinkering with Linux now, so I don't really need games Games I play on Windows are Return to Castle Wolfenstein and MS Flight Sim Pro 2002. There's nothing that can touch these on Linux, that I've found.







Everything else I've pretty much sorted out.







Thanks for taking the time to read this rambling.
Keymoo.

There are several FTP clients available for Linux (check freshmeat.net and sourceforge.net) but I'm not familiar with the programs you mentioned so I can't recommend something equivalent.

Ipchains and iptables are the standard firewall programs. I don't remember which one outdated the other, but one of them is obsolete. Check your man pages for info on them. IIRC the firewalling rules can be a bit tricky to setup correctly.

For a graphical web browser I use Opera, no contest. IMO it is the best browser available. However most of the time I'm not even in X so I just stick with Lynx.

I know that there are comparable programs for everything you need. ipchains and iptables are kernel dependant. ipchains was/is used with the 2.2.x kernel version and iptables is the newer used with the 2.4.x kernel. By far iptables will beat the pants off of any windows software firewall. Tiny firewall is pretty good and can be used in linux though. I love IE 6.0 also, honestly, but in Linux I really love Galeon, built on Mozilla of course, it seems to handle anything I want to do. There are more FTP clients for linux than I could name, it's like windows, find one you like and use it. There are Palm sync programs for linux also, but I can't for the life of me remember. Something like gnuPilot? I think all you really need to do is find out how to set up iptables for your useage and perhaps throw Tiny or Smoothwall in as an upper level filter and let iptables proxy handle the grit. Then just start searching for the programs you want and migrate program by program. I hope something here helped since I wasn't able to give specific programs for all your categories, but they all exist...

i like you am slowly moving to linux. I only boot to windows to use quicken. I'm checking out gnucash right now which claims that you can migrate quicken data, haven't figured that out yet. though quicken aint m$, so i dont know if that helps you.
Igloo ftp is the closest to smartftp i have found.
As for a firewall I am using portsentry and iptables with help from gShield, it is a script that helps to configure iptables to your needs.
i am pleased with konqueror, it suits my needs.

later
eric

Instead of Money try Kapital (www.thekompany.com)

There really arent any *great* FTP Clients for linux. gFTP is one, but I suggest kbear , and IglooFTP-Pro

As for a firewall I really wouldnt worry about it. If you want, take a look here.

For a PIM I suggest Ximian Evolution or Aethera.

Also check here for palm-related software.

As for games, Urban Terror is the coolest mod/game/anything I have ever played. If you dont have quake3 I suggest buying it. The linux version is only $9.99 at ebgames.com.

There is a linux version of Return to Castle and unfortunetaly, I have no suggestions for a flight simulator.

Hope this helps!

not sure exactly what you're looking for, but you should take a look at the ftp handling in the KDE filemanager konqueror.

-Bill

http://linux.tucows.com/ has a decent amount of software. You might find a lot of what you are looking for there.

As far as the broswer issue is concerend. I won't use IE anymore, anywhere. Opera. pure and simple. If the webmaster can't design a site, then he doesn't need my business. Opera is standards compliant. More so than IE and Netscapte. And NO security issues that seem to plague IE.

I also use Star Office for most of my stuff.

Ftp client. - Konqueror

Try KDE's Konqueror for a quick and simple FTP client that is fully intergrated into the KDE desktop... All your basic needs fully catered for. However, if you are wanting a little more I suggest also using Downloader for X. Use Konqueror to browse the FTP site and then just drop anything you want to download into 'Downloader for X' for a fully managed download.

To be honest I have never muched liked the idea of running a firewall program on the machine that I am trying to protect from intrusion. If this is the way you really want to go then the suggestions already mentioned are probably the best. However, my suggestion is to download yourself a copy of SmoothWall and install it on an old 486 or Pentium 100 or something and network your main machine to it. Use this new machine to access the insecure network and act as the firewall for you, simple and more secure (IMHO).

Unfortunatly this is something that you have to live with a little with Linux. Mozilla and Opera are probably the best two (IMHO). Opera is quicker and lighter on the system, Mozilla a little more featured. They are both getting better all the time. However, it depends somewhat on what the problems you are having with sites (it may be just that you need a plugin in order to view things like Flash etc).

Basically I tend to use Konqueror most of the time (mainly because it is the most conveniant, when in KDE). However I always keep Mozilla installed and up to date for those times when Konqueror fails me (which is a little too often really).

There are several Palm software for Linux, a few come with most distributions and are safer to use than LookOut! For a slightly heavier wieght program you may want to look at StarOffice. version 5.2 synced quite well withthe palm (although it took a little setting up). I don't know how well this works with the new version 6 or the OpenOffice.org free version.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein has been ported to Linux, so you could now play it in either OS. You may want to have a look at Flight Gear, I believe it is still under development, but it may be interesting.

Keymoo as far as your need to view MS Money files. I would see if they import into Staroffice, if not you may want to run a virtual machine(vmware,wine,win4lin) runnig MS windoz inside of linux for old MS files and your games. For something more heavy duty than Money, look at
http://sql-ledger.com. You need to be running Postgres database as your underlieing data storage system. But it is a full accounting program and someone may have written a script to format Money files into an importable format. As far as web browsers go, I use Netscape 6.22 (under windows and linux)and have not run into any sites that render badly. If you need to browse rapidly try lynx and links for text only(speeed). There is a growing number of games being ported over to linux(www.linuxgames.com and www.lokigames.com). The distro with the most bang for the buck(7cd's + 1 DVD) is Suse 8.0 and it is very friendly to the new user as well.

I am subscribed to the Gamespy Daily Newsletter, so that keeps me up to date with just about anything that has to do with gaming, whether you're talking about consoles or PC. As far as I know, the playing of windows games wasn't possible (on a Linux box) until a program called Wine was created, which is actually a Windows emulator. And to be honest, game-playing is one of the worst things it did, because you could supposedly use it to run almost any Windows program. That is until a program called WineX arose. If you want to play games that don't have linux versions, this is the program to get. The developers have just updated the program so it will run high-demand games such as Max Payne, a game which I do beleive requires Direct X 8 to play in Windows. This program can supposedly run just about any game u want to play on linux, be it Half-Life, Deus Ex, etc. I suggest anybody who is interested go to www.transgaming.com to find out more. But there is a "subscription fee" of $5.00 if you want to be able to download the pre-compiled version of WineX. But you *can* download the uncompiled version free of charge. But if you are a Linux n00b like me, it doesn't help very much if u don't know how to compile it. Anyways, it does kinda tell u how to compile it yourself, and if I wasn't busy trying to fix countless other things in Linux, I would have already figured it out and done it.

The best way to wean yourself from Windows is:

System Shock.

I am now a happy Linux user who is trying to get Debian Woody to work 100%. Its fun, but still total shock.

Have fun with Linux. Set up a small 5-10 GB partition to mess with, and just go! Install Linux and just mess around. I keep reinstalling Debian because of stuff I want to redo, and i've learned a LOT. Just go off and have fun!

a few things....

Konqueror is just as good an FTP client as IE is.....which is sort of good but still half-fast. i know that Mandrake comes with like 4 different FTP clients.

Konqueror and Mozilla make excellent web browsers (Opera too )

for games, you NEEEEEEEED a Nvidia graphics card. some games are coming over for Linux but for others you can just use Wine. my buddy has an Athlon900 with GeForce4 4400 with the proper Linux video drivers and he plays TFC (a Half-Life mod) through Wine. his FPS in that game beats the hell out of mine 3 ways from sundown. WineX is specialy made for games but regular FREE Wine still works great.

i know that RedHat and Mandrake both come with built in firewalls, you can set them from sort of lax to high (in Redhat) or paranoid (in Mandrake lol). my friend tested his Redhat 7.1 box with medium firewall at this site here:
https://grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2
and it said all his ports were stealth, it could not connect to his BIOS thingy and it could not get any info about his computer. i haven't gotten around to testing my Mandrake with standard firewall yet.


just a question though, why destroy the WinXP box? don't you have a different OS to take down instead? i'm on WinXP now and i think it's pretty good, it's stable, it has the NT services and it runs my game server very fast, i don't need to reboot this thing for at LEAST a full week. Linux is something that is great to take over Win98 but i'm not sure if it's work taking down WinXP for it...

Just make it dual-boot. This way you can run XP and Linux on the same drive.

Oh, and my record with XP Pro is 4 days. And its always a crash. A Resetting Screen of Death.

I have been recently moving over to Linux as well and if u visit

http://www.winehq.com

you will get Wine. I have found I can run pretty much every windows program the only one I have not been able to run is EverQuest. I have not tried office products, since they have staroffice.