I'm a Gentoo user and I love Linux, but I'm having trouble being productive in Linux. I need some answers and would greatly appreicate it if you guys could provide them to me.

1. What are good [feature-wise] open-source/Linux substitutes for the following programs [no version included and similar programs will be grouped]?

Adobe InDesign
Adobe Photoshop/Corel PhotoPaint/Corel PaintShop Pro
DAZ Bryce
Maya [I know there is a native version out there]
Newtek Lightwave Studio
Macromedia Flash
Macromedia Dreamweaver

2. Is my printer supported [Brother MFC-420CN]? Apparently, it is detected and how I know this is because it has a built-in flash card reader and I can mount my cf card on it as /dev/sdc1. How would I go about installing it?

3. Is it possible for me to just import my Windows installation to WINE and then use programs in Linux? Will I have to work with registries? Is WINE even worth it?

i dunno much about those softwares as they are all grapgical softwares in windows environment.

wine is a emulator. meaning that it tries to run windows softwares on linux but it does not mean it is 100% able to run all programs and all. example i tried photoshop7 and it worked but i was not able to get other versions of it to work under wine.

you can try to install those softwares under wine but there is no garentee that it is possible. if there are howtos out there that it is possible then there is higher chance for it.

about your third question. i have used wine very little but it came extremely handy when i needed some win32 programs to be run under linux. yes it worth it as long as you know how to configure it effectively.

Macromedia Flash is emerge -v netscape-flash I think. I'm pretty sure that is what I used. Don't forget to close your browser and restart it. No rebooting the computer though. This is not windoze.

I'm not real sure about the rest. You do know Gentoo has its own forums right? http://forums.gentoo.org/ I have been know to use google to search though, if I don't find what I am looking for with the gentoo search. Just in case, site:forums.gentoo.org <what you are searching for here> in the google search bar.

May also want to search the wiki thing. I have never used it but it may be worth a look. I can't even find the darn thing now. It's there somewhere.

One thing about Gentoo, they are well documented. Every time I ask a question, I get a link to where it has already been asked. Don't forget the IRC channels too.

Later

Adobe = Kpdf
Maya = Blender pretty close
Flash = you can DL flash for almost any browser.
Dreamweaver and Bryce, Dont know anything comparable. Screem, Bluefish? maybe....

>Adobe InDesign
Its like pagemaker, right?
This is truly a shortcoming, nomatter how ive searched, I have not found anything for the field.

>Adobe Photoshop/Corel PhotoPaint/Corel PaintShop Pro
GIMP

>DAZ Bryce
>Maya [I know there is a native version out there]
>Newtek Lightwave Studio
Blender if you dont want to use the Maya for linux

>Macromedia Flash
You mean the plugin, or the prog for making them? If the latter, check my comments after dreamweaver

>Macromedia Dreamweaver
You might want to check out this news bulletin and Crossover Office.
http://www.dmxzone.com/ShowDetail.asp?NewsId=5796

There are tons of wysiwyg editors for linux, you might want to check out e.g. Nvu from the Mozilla foundation.

2.) Head over to the http://www.linuxprinting.org/ site, they will have all the info you need to get your printer going if its supported.

3.) Well, in theory, yes, but theres not much point in that. It would have to be on a FAT32 partition since NTFS write support is pretty unstable without Captive NTFS, but with Captive you could work also with an NTFS partition. The latest versions of wine come with the program winecfg thats a realy helpful tool to configure it, so you wont have to dabble with configfiles yourself. Wine keeps its own registry, and I doubt their regedit would like it if you tried importing your previous windows registry, drive letters all wrong etc etc.. And definately overwriting the wine registry would not be a good thing since it keeps its own settings and tweaks there also.

Trust me, its easier off using Wine without windows messing it up.. Wine is pretty robust these days, and most programs Ive tried have worked to some extent.

I've never worked with InDesign and Pagemaker myself, but Scribus is claimed to be similar. But it can't import InDesign and Pagemager files I think. You would have to create things in Scribus and save as Scribus, so you would be stuck with that for editing.

Scribus is like Quark Xpress. I have used Scribus a good bit. It is making good progress too. It is used to do the layout of magazines, newspapers etc. You can make it save/print as a pdf too, if that helps.

I have never seen InDesign so no clue what it is. I'm not a windoze person.

Later

Have you checked this site? http://www.nawaz.org/wiki/index.php?...le_of_Contents
It's a list of programs available for windows and the rough linux equivalents

Edit: For Maya, maybe look at blender? Just a suggestion , I've only done very basic things with blender.
Oops someone already mentioned blender

Instead of stayin with Gentoo perhaps you should consider using Lindows or Xandros they are both commercial linux outfits that support Windows using CrossoverOffice.
From memory Xandros gives you some free time on CO to see if it suits your needs

Linux does not do everything for everybody. It does not (yet) support every application that you may need to use. And emulation, also, isn't perfect.

When I need to use most of the applications you've named, I use Macintosh OS/X to do it. But you can use Windows to do it, and in my way of thinking, that's a perfectly acceptable reason to have a copy of Windows around!

There's one machine around here that has a Windows installation. It's on a separate disk drive just for the purpose. And the operating-system is here just because it's the most convenient way to run a small handful of "occasional applications."

To my way of thinking, it just doesn't make much sense to let the operating system run the decision-making process when it ought to be the other way around: it's putting the cart before the horse. When I decided that I needed to do video editing, I selected the best suite of applications in my price-range, then selected the computer and/or operating-system that I felt would do the work best, so that I could get the work done and get paid for it. The work is what is ultimately going to pay for both the hardware and the software, and I just want to buy myself the "right" tools with which to do that. Both the choice of OS and the choice of hardware are those which best support the chosen apps, which are chosen to best support the task at hand. "Tools for the job."

As it happens, I use Linux for almost everything these days. But I'm not gonna get my underwear tied up in a knot about using something else from time to time. After all, a monthly dose of Windows really reminds you just how good Linux is!

That is why I am excited about AJAX!!!!

Hopefully one day, we will not be tied down to ANY OS...

I must have better memory then. I remember how bad windoze was and still is. Of course this comes from someone who has never put windoze on any of my computers. I was working on computers when windoze 3.1 came out, I quit my job and changed careers. I went to selling magazines for about 5 years. I have never bought anything from M$, ever. My current rig has never even booted a DOS disk.

For your sake, I hope you find a way to use Linux for everything. If it was not for hurricane Dennis, I would have had a uptime of over a year. I was at about 10 months when our lights went out then. I have never seen a desktop running windoze do that. It is rare to see a windoze server do it.

I really think windoze is the only thing you can buy that is already broke and can't be fixed. If it were anything else, say a car, you could sue the crap out of them for selling. Imagine M$ making medicines. We woulod all die.

Later

I think when we are less dependent on the OS for applications (AJAX, Java, etc), then Linux will grab huge market share. Until then, some applications may just have to be ran from a window box (by some people).

I'm not a real big fan of java either though. I have it installed but only because some websites use the crap out of it.

I have also had java take up a huge amount my CPU time. I don't think java is the answer to all problems either. I think time will make Linux replace windoze.

In case you are wondering, if Linux were gone tomorrow, I would buy a Mac or have no computer at all. I have a girlfriend now so I can make it witout a puter anyway.

Later

Do you know what WINE stands for? Wine Is Not an Emulator

WINE is simply a layer of .dll's and .exe's on top of linux, more simply it provides the files from windows that the programs require.