Hi guys

I have some experience using Linux - administering IPCop, running and setting up PS2Linux, and using CentOS on a limited basis.
So I'm still undecided which distro to use - I've heard Ubuntu is fairly easy for beginners to learn or maybe Suse but I'm still not sure.

Anyway, with Windows Vista seeming to be including more and more Windows Fisher Price features to help you "manage" your photos, music, movies etc. I'm seriously thinking about making the switch. Especially with meta-data based file systems on the way. I think I must be alone in thinking that's a bad idea - I've seen metadata in MP3 files
And whole other "brand new concepts" to help the system do things automatically. My WinXP installation looks like

Most software I already use has Linux ports - Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice etc.

I've known about Wine for years but never used it, and I was just wondering how well it works.
The main reason for me not using Linux for the past few years has been is there are a few applications that I need to use...

Outlook 2003 - I've seen screenshots of Wine running Word 2003
Excel - OpenOffice works for most of my spreadsheet stuff but there are some features in Excel that I need
FileMaker 5/6
Acrobat 6/7
NoteTab - a simple tabbed editor I've used for years
FileZilla - a great low-profile FTP client with settings import/export
Illustrator CS - not so important
Quark 6 - not so important

What's the likelihood of me getting these to work with Wine?

Stability - how stable are applications in Wine?

File system - when opening / saving files in Wine, does it just use your Linux partitions or do the Wine apps / documents need to be in a separate FAT32 / NTFS partition?


Thanks

Ben

Crossover (a comercial wine based soft) can handle M$ Office Suite, I haven't used wine with them, they are too messy, but I know wine can be configured to run M$ office, but I don't know how, if you need them that bad, use crossover.

Quark and Acrobat reader has linux version.
gFtp can replace file zilla.

Who would need damn Windoze?

take a look here

http://appdb.winehq.org/

Perfect!!


Thanks

Ben

If you want to jump in the linux puddle then you need to drop the old ways. You don't need word, exel, outlook (or is it lookout!). There are alternatives. Wine works well with some applications, a few, and not at all with the rest. If you can't live with out those apps, then stay with windows.

Good Luck.

Yeah I realise there's compromises, but there's somethings that only Outlook 2003 can do.
Connecting to our exchange mailboxes using RPC over HTTPS for example, can't be done in any other mail program I've found.
If it can though, then I want to know about it!!

I guess the more simple apps won't have a problem with Wine - like my basic text editor NoteTab - that's not been updated for 3 years now.

Thanks for the advice - I'm definitely going to have to look into getting a spare box to try some of this stuff out.
From what I've read about Wine today it seems that in theory any apps will work, but often there's a 2 year delay in the versions that work.


Thanks for the info - those application lists were exactly what I needed!

try evolution, it was nicknamed outlook in linux world

I have found "Frank's Corner" very useful on Wine. You can find it at http://frankscorner.org/index.php

Excellent

Thanks for all the info guys.
I'm actually surprised at how much stuff does actually run in Wine!
I guess you always have to wait for clever people to retro-engineers software to run in Wine at the moment.

I guess companies need to start producing the latest versions of their heavyweight software for linux distros as well.

I'd love to see Acrobat 7, Illustrator CS, Quark and Outlook 2003 on there, but it seems that for most of my work then I should be fine for Linux.

I'll definitely give that a go!


Thanks

Ben