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The Linux Newbie <- Needs Help !

post #1 of 10
11/12/04 at 2:04pm
Thread Starter 
Hey guys,

Was thinking of trying out linux after all the hype and go with something recognised such as mandrake .. but I've got heaps of questions as this would be my first time using the cute little penguin .. anyway .. yeap, I was thinking of installing mandrake linux to run as my work suite because I heard how effective it was and all that ..

anyway .. I was wondering

1) Does openoffice have powerpoint,word,access,excel,frontpage like microsoft ?? is it compatible with windows ??

2) Are apps such as macromedia studio mx, and adobe photoshop compatible with mandrake ??

3) Would my hardware work properly on mandrake ??

4) Could you recommend me some software to start with and their costs prices ? I'm thinking of getting Mandrake, OpenOffice and ermx .. that's about it .. I already have macromedia studio mx and adobe photoshop

Thanks guys !
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post #2 of 10
11/12/04 at 2:56pm
1) Openoffice has the appropriate replacements for the Office counterparts. OOo Impress for powerpoint, OOo Calc for Excel, OOo Writer for word. Why would you be using access and frontpage anyways? Linux has the far more ubiquitous MySQL, and various html programming packages which I can't name off the top of my head right now. The openoffice replacements are fully compatible with MS Office files; they can open MS file formats, and save them as well. I've only had problems with MS Draw pictures in Openoffice, and when I have a whole bunch of floating frames. Those are the only instances in which Openoffice will foul them up.

2) I don't think studio MX will work unless you try wine (http://www.winehq.com), but GIMP (http://www.gimp.org) should make a very good replacement for photoshop. You may have to get used to it though.

3) What kind of hardware do you own?

4) Linux is free- the entire idea is that you don't pay for any of it. You can download Mandrake from http://www.linuxiso.org and install it without paying a cent. OpenOffice should be included with mandrake; if not, http://www.openoffice.org. GIMP is free, and so is wine (to make windows programs run on linux). So basically, you don't have to pay for anything.


Any more questions?
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post #3 of 10
11/12/04 at 4:02pm
Thread Starter 
Thanks James ! You've been mighty helpful ..

Ermx ..

I'm running these specs now:

Intel P4 2.8GHz LGA 775 1Mb Cache 800FSB w/Fan
Gigabyte GA-81915G LGA775 SATA/Sound/GBLan/PCI-Ex/DDR1+DDR2
2 * Twinmos 512MB PC3200 DDR400 CL2.5
2 * Western Digital 8GB SATA 7200Rpm 8MB 3Yrs *Online*
Sony DVD-RW 16x +/- Dual Layer
Leadtek TV2000XP Expert w/ Teletext
Alcatel PCI ADSL Modem
Aztech 56k Modem Internal
Gainward Ultra/1960PCX XP Golden Sample GLH 6600GT
Creative Live 5.1 Retail
Altec Lansing AHS502
Any Black w/ = or > 350W PSU (SATA Ready)
Slim USB 2.0 Hub
Viewsonic KU306 (Black) (USB) + Mini (Laptop) Wheel Optical Mouse (Black) (USB)
Philips 17" Black Flat w/ LightFrame3

Any known issues ??

Ok ..

I wanted to use linux to handle my office apps, and my studio mx and photoshop cos I heard from -J- who helped me alot in setting up my system that linux ate alot less resources than windows when doing productivity suites etc .. nevermind studiomx and photoshop won't run linux ( i can use it on my laptop aneways ) .. but .. I will need replacements for flash, and dreamweaver for linux .. i mean u have recommended me gimp for photoshop which i presume is already the best replacement for it .. so i needsomething to replace flash and dreamweaver .. as u were mentioning in linux there's all these html and stuff .. but issue is i need something integrated and powerful like dreamweaver .. so i hope u can recommend something and help me further .. anyway, MUCH THANKS !
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post #4 of 10
11/12/04 at 9:32pm
Im not sure on studio MX, but i know photoshop CS doesnt work with wine.

I havent actually seen a wysiwyg editor like dreamweaver that is native linux, most people I know code by hand anyways. There are a lot of good text editors around that will do the job. You can try quanta/kwebdev which is the same program. I personally just use kate which is a texteditor.

I have never seen any type of flash development programs around for linux yet. They might exists tho you can check sourceforge to see if there is a project going on.
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post #5 of 10
11/12/04 at 11:24pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by mjolnir
Im not sure on studio MX, but i know photoshop CS doesnt work with wine.

I havent actually seen a wysiwyg editor like dreamweaver that is native linux, most people I know code by hand anyways. There are a lot of good text editors around that will do the job. You can try quanta/kwebdev which is the same program. I personally just use kate which is a texteditor.

I have never seen any type of flash development programs around for linux yet. They might exists tho you can check sourceforge to see if there is a project going on.

Older versions of photoshop I believe can be gotten to run under wine, however Wine is a project to tackle after you are used to linux.

Gimp is VERY comparable to Photoshop, although Photoshop is SLIGHTLY more powerful, for all but the MOST hardcore users Gimp should work fine.

In as far as HTML editors, There are probably several hundred out there, as someone else mentioned I do most coding by hand as well, I havent tried to see if openoffice saving as an HTML is as bad as Office doing the same, so maybe someone can speak on that, however it still wouldnt be dreamweaver, which is by all means a nice program.

There are probably quite a few comparable to it out there though.

Office applications I think Open Office does a better job than MS Office, the only problems I have run into is when certain fonts arent installed right, but changing the font to one that is fixes that problem quickly and easily.

Running with few resources is definitly true if you tweak it right, but some distributions that make it easy to run, install many useless apps, so once you get used to it you might want to play around with getting rid of things you dont need. Or take a deep plunge and work with some of the more minimal distros.

Seablade

Edited to remove my GS sig, gotta stop doin that
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post #6 of 10
11/13/04 at 3:05pm
Agree strongly with seablade's last paragraph. I've been trying a few out-of-the-box distros on a spare hard drive and I have been disgusted with how much useless stuff they come with. I mean WTF do I need a RAID daemon if there was no RAID in my system? . I have been using Gentoo for almost a year now and the everything-done-for-you distro I felt most comfortable with was Ubuntu - Debian based distro so the package manager "just works", like Gentoo's Portage. URPMI or Yast simply can't compare to Portage or Apg-Get. I don't want to spend an hour trying to get either one of those to work; (on the family machine, ) I want to just install a distro quickly (as to not get bothered) and leave, only coming back to update some packages every once in a while. If it wasnt for other people wanting to use the system, I would honestly install Gentoo on that machine .

Mikhail
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post #7 of 10
11/15/04 at 10:18pm
But, definitely, you can't recommend Gentoo for someone looking for his first distro

About Mandrake, I don't like it. Even if you are probably too new to Linux and, therefore, probably won't like installing Gentoo, Mandrake is cluttered with uselless things. I recommend, for someone looking for an easy, little slow though, distribution, I recommend Fedora Core. But try to get to a faster one as soon as you can, if you are the kind of guy that likes to learn about your computer...
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post #8 of 10
11/15/04 at 10:30pm
Out of Mandrake, Suse and Ubuntu, I would recommend Ubuntu first and Suse second. In the meantime, Gentoo WAS my first distro (read the sticky in all of its glory)
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post #9 of 10
2/12/05 at 8:37pm
Folks, there is an WYSIWYG editor for linux, it's called Nvu, you can get it @ www.nvu.com
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post #10 of 10
2/12/05 at 11:04pm
If you are willing to RTFM, Gentoo is fine for your first taste of linux.
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