Hello All,
Sometimes if making a full switch to GNU/Linux is difficult, there are Libre alternatives to commercial closed softwares available for the windows platform too.
For Photoshop, there is the Gimp alternative. http://www.gimp.org/ Its ready packages are available at http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html
Download all the packages on this page. Install the GTK for your OS version. Then install Gimp. Then its help package (Select only English during installation). Then the animation package if required.
For Corel Draw, there is the Inkscape alternative. http://www.inkscape.org/ The exe file is available at http://inkscape.modevia.com/win32/?M=D http://inkscape.modevia.com/win32/Inkscape-0.45-1.win32.exe
On 29/06/07, Rony ronbillypop@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
Hello All,
Sometimes if making a full switch to GNU/Linux is difficult, there are Libre alternatives to commercial closed softwares available for the windows platform too.
Although I wont recommend this, but there are some rare situations where what roni suggests is the only way. for example imagine an accountent who wants to shift to free software, he has to use tally so stay on windows.
For Photoshop, there is the Gimp alternative. http://www.gimp.org/ Its ready packages are available at http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html
Download all the packages on this page. Install the GTK for your OS version. Then install Gimp. Then its help package (Select only English during installation). Then the animation package if required.
and no matter what a few people in the free software circle say, gimp is the greatest tools for image manipulation. I know some people who are doing anti promotion against foss in favour of non-free close source softwares. but no matter what any one says, gimp in some cases is even better than photoshop. I have this testimony from users of gimp who had previously used photoshop.
For Corel Draw, there is the Inkscape alternative. http://www.inkscape.org/ The exe file is available at http://inkscape.modevia.com/win32/?M=D
again I would second roni's finding. inkscape is 100% equal or in some cases better than corel. I have testimonies on this too. so people who can't right now change the OS and still want to switch to free software for your most valued freedom and obviously want quality. do use these softwares. regards, Krishnakant.
On 30-Jun-07, at 12:10 PM, krishnakant Mane wrote:
but no matter what any one says, gimp in some cases is even better than photoshop. I have this testimony from users of gimp who had previously used photoshop.
this is true
For Corel Draw, there is the Inkscape alternative. http://www.inkscape.org/ The exe file is available at http://inkscape.modevia.com/win32/?M=D
again I would second roni's finding. inkscape is 100% equal or in some cases better than corel.
this is absolute rubbish - inscape is not even 1% equal of corel draw
On 30/06/07, Kenneth Gonsalves lawgon@au-kbc.org wrote:
this is absolute rubbish - inscape is not even 1% equal of corel draw
I know some people find some software difficult. I am even aware that some people try their hands out of on free software just because they could not do any thing successful in their life. and when unfortunately they can't use one of the softwares they feel it is not good. but same thing happens with free or non fre softwares. I know people like Mr. Niyam Bhushan who uses inkscape for their professional work. and he is an international professional who is also currently working on an international knowledge sharing project called self (again free sharing of knowledge sounds laughable to some people ). I have professional artists in my circle who have used inkscape and corel as well. they too prefer inkscape more than corel. and if that is not enough we are soon going to have seminars conducted by professionals specially for inkscape, gimp and scribus. friends, it is highly possible that a particular software might not sound as user friendly to you as it might sound to others. but it is wrong to generalise when we know professionals use it for their most critical work. hindi may ek kahavat hain "nach na aaye angan tedha ". this is a wrong attitude. currently I find that the only thing missing in free software is a close match to tally (gnu cash is no where close to it). and yes serious gamers don't have that liberty too. so what is not available is not available. but just on one personal impression there is no point to generalise. regards, Krishnakant.
On 30-Jun-07, at 12:46 PM, krishnakant Mane wrote:
I know people like Mr. Niyam Bhushan who uses inkscape for their professional work. and he is an international professional who is also currently working on an international knowledge sharing project called self (again free sharing of knowledge sounds laughable to some people ). I have professional artists in my circle who have used inkscape and corel as well.
do doubt a professional artist can use only inkscape and produce good things. But to say that inkscape is 100% feature compatible with corel draw is wrong. It will only give FOSS a bad name. There are some things FOSS cant yet do - 3d cad for example. It is better to be honest and honesty will help the foss cause.
On 01/07/07, Kenneth Gonsalves lawgon@au-kbc.org wrote:
do doubt a professional artist can use only inkscape and produce good things.
Keep doubting, realities wont change. the person I refered uses only free software for his professional work. he uses inkscape, gimp etc for his work and has also been doing loads of international level work regarding designing, photo editing etc.
But to say that inkscape is 100% feature compatible with corel draw is wrong. It will only give FOSS a bad name. There are some things FOSS cant yet do - 3d cad for example. It is better to be honest and honesty will help the foss cause.
it is better to be honest and honestly some people indeed give free software a bad name by spoiling reputations of some softwares which are known to be top quality. again, a software may sound non user friendly to one person but it is wrong to generalise. and when there are proofs from professionals who testify gimp and inkscape, there is no need to doubt their efficiency. we are soon having workshops for gimp and inkscape in a month or so and we are not just planning to give a demo but hands on for those interested. it is ok to be mis guided by some one (that could be an unfortunate mishap) but it is wrong to pass that mis guidance to others. I can't comment on alternatives for autocad because I don't know much about it and nither do I know any one who does it with free software. may be just like no accounting alternative this might be another case "_to be honest_". but plese don't generalise on ones own feeling and experience. I know a few people who say "open office is just ok for your small scale work, gimp is ok for a few things, inkscape is not good at all, scribus is useless, bla bla bla. but foss is really good ". what a joke. I wonder whether it is their own unsuccessful currier that is talking or the realities. so friends, it is time to really understand from the successful ones about their experiences because it is nice to hear that the glass is half filled rather than half empty. you see, it helps to fill that empty space.
and by the way if a product is missing one feature which only 10 % of the users use, I will not consider the software useless.
On 02-Jul-07, at 10:51 AM, krishnakant Mane wrote:
it is ok to be mis guided by some one (that could be an unfortunate mishap) but it is wrong to pass that mis guidance to others.
we are talking about two different approaches to converting people to foss here:
1. There are those with a comitment to foss - they will only use foss tools, and labour hard to do their work with only foss tools. They dont mind the inconveniences if things dont work perfectly or if all the features they want are not there. They either build the features they want or work around them. These people are also honest. I dont think even Niyam Bhushan would contend that inkscape has all the features of corel draw. He uses inkscape exclusively and does professional quality work with it.
2. There are others who are not committed to FOSS. They just want the best tool for their job and dont care whether it is free or not. These people will only switch to FOSS tools if either they are convinced of the FOSS philosophy or if the tool has all the features of the proprietary tool. If we tell them that the FOSS tool is 100% as good as the proprietary tool - this is not true, and when they find out that, they will become anti-foss.
Incidently i was a longtime user of coreldraw and photoshop and now exclusively use inkscape and gimp - not because inkscape has the same features as coreldraw, but because it is free. I am willing to put up with the inconvenience because i believe in the foss way of doing things. I therefore strongly resent your suggestions that I am misguiding people. I am not. I am just telling the truth.
well, some important points have been raised here. firstly when I refer to professionals like niyam, they have no time to do huge work arounds. and what ever small work arrounds they need are of course needed for better quality in the end. so while inkscape might need some work arounds, it produces good quality work in the end. and rest works as good as the other non free software. and if these people are ready to share what ever "work around " they have doen and make people aware of them I think complaining is nothing but anti foss. so I can asure every one that every one of us may have donw work arounds for non free and free softwares at some point of time. softwares are never up the the mark every time we use them. some times some may not do exactly what we want and work around is needed. but that is the case with non free softwares. so from the experiences of many like Niyam, Dr. Nagarjun and many others I can say inkscape is pritty good enough. I can't comment on autocad like things again but with free software I only know tally has no other alternative. regards, Krishnakant.
On 02-Jul-07, at 9:54 PM, krishnakant Mane wrote:
so from the experiences of many like Niyam, Dr. Nagarjun and many others I can say inkscape is pritty good enough.
but no where as good as corel draw or adobe illustrator. To make my point clear: last week I had the pleasure of driving around in a Rewa for 4 days. The Rewa is an electric car, max speed about 45 kmph, no gears. It is comfortable for two people and especially within the city is very convenient to drive. It is noiseless and non-polluting. If everyone drove around in Rewas, our cities would become paradises. It fulfilled all my needs - got me from point A to point B in comfort and without pollution. So how do I convince my friend to switch from his mercedes to a Rewa? Tell him that Rewa is as good as a mercedes? It is not. It doesnt have 10% of the features of the mercedes. But it is eco-friendly, which the mercedes is not. So my friend will only shift if he is convinced that using an eco-friendly car is more important than the other features that a mercedes offers
On 03/07/07, Kenneth Gonsalves lawgon@au-kbc.org wrote:
but no where as good as corel draw or adobe illustrator.
I respect your personal feelings about the thing. but I only suggest not to generalise, because there will be 10 others who might say the other way round.
because the chances are that you could never get the grasp of the features which you find as missing?
To make my point clear: last week I had the pleasure of driving around in a Rewa for 4 days. The Rewa is an electric car, max speed about 45 kmph, no gears. It is comfortable for two people and especially within the city is very convenient to drive. It is noiseless and non-polluting.
Inkscape is nither a car nor is eco friendly. Mind you just like corel, inkscape has many features which need some learning. nothing comes easy.
If everyone drove around in Rewas, our cities would become paradises.
if Anti Free software people start understanding the value of freedom and also appreciate the high qualities then the entire world will be a paradises.
It fulfilled all my needs - got me from point A to point B in comfort and without pollution. So how do I convince my friend to switch from his mercedes to a Rewa? Tell him that Rewa is as good as a mercedes? It is not. It doesnt have 10% of the features of the mercedes. But it is eco-friendly, which the mercedes is not. So my friend will only shift if he is convinced that using an eco-friendly car is more important than the other features that a mercedes offers
wow! sounds a good analogy, the only problem is that it more suits to a comparison with tally and gnu cash. I think this debate must stop here because people are smart enough to figure out what to generalise and what should be taken as a personal feeling. for those who will be really interested, we will invite every one to the rounds of workshops we will be holding to prove the quality of free software and we specially will welcome the anti free software people and people who unfortunately never had success using it and have a mis guided or mis understood fact. Freedom fighters and free software friends, it is time to really do an analysis for our selvse about the quality and other aspects of free software.
regards, Krishnakant.
Kenneth Gonsalves wrote:
On 02-Jul-07, at 9:54 PM, krishnakant Mane wrote:
so from the experiences of many like Niyam, Dr. Nagarjun and many others I can say inkscape is pritty good enough.
but no where as good as corel draw or adobe illustrator. To make my point clear: last week I had the pleasure of driving around in a Rewa for 4 days. The Rewa is an electric car, max speed about 45 kmph, no gears. It is comfortable for two people and especially within the city is very convenient to drive. It is noiseless and non-polluting. If everyone drove around in Rewas, our cities would become paradises. It fulfilled all my needs - got me from point A to point B in comfort and without pollution. So how do I convince my friend to switch from his mercedes to a Rewa? Tell him that Rewa is as good as a mercedes? It is not. It doesnt have 10% of the features of the mercedes. But it is eco-friendly, which the mercedes is not. So my friend will only shift if he is convinced that using an eco-friendly car is more important than the other features that a mercedes offers
While I agree with your opinion about being honest about the performance of Libre alternatives to highly expensive closed softwares, I feel the example you used is flawed.
First about performance of Libre software vs expensive closed software. I tell users that the libre version may not have the glitter and decoration of closed versions but it gets the work done and since it is free as in freedom, it has full potential to improve its performance with later free upgrades. Closed softwares have everything ready made but up to a certain limit. There will be no limit in libre types. The human mind is the limit. I request the user to at least make a beginning and use the libre software as it is a peoples' software, a community effort meant to empower the common man with legal professional tools that can be setup at low cost for entrepreneurs with the added advantage of no vendor lock-ins.
The second part about the car. You have compared a very low budget India car with a high end German luxury car. If you want to compare eco friendly cars with high end luxury ones then you must give examples of the ones being developed in foreign countries. There they have developed various types of eco friendly versions running on electricity or alternate fuels and they tend to be more expensive than the regular cars as they use latest technologies and special materials. They are meant to preform just like luxury cars and have the added advantage of being eco friendly. I cannot recall any individual models but such news and videos regularly come on BBC or now DW TV and Discovery channel.
I would also request list members to stick to technical points in discussions and avoid any personal remarks about any member.
On 03-Jul-07, at 9:29 PM, Rony wrote:
I would also request list members to stick to technical points in discussions and avoid any personal remarks about any member.
who made personal remarks against whom? I and krishnakanth both mentioned Niyam Bhushan and neither of us criticised him.
Kenneth Gonsalves wrote:
On 03-Jul-07, at 9:29 PM, Rony wrote:
I would also request list members to stick to technical points in discussions and avoid any personal remarks about any member.
who made personal remarks against whom? I and krishnakanth both mentioned Niyam Bhushan and neither of us criticised him.
The request was not addressed to you. Let the matter rest. :)
krishnakant Mane wrote:
so people who can't right now change the OS and still want to switch to free software for your most valued freedom and obviously want quality. do use these softwares.
This is one strategy to slowly move people towards Libre software. If they use the same even on the Windows platform, making the switch becomes easier as they will use the same software later in GNU/Linux.
I had posted a link for a GNU accounting software called TurboCash for Windows. http://www.turbocashuk.com/accounting-software-opensource.html It is designed for US, UK and Europe. It has provisions for VAT too. Since the source code is already available under GPL, why don't we make an Indian GPLed version that works on Windows and Linux. It can have an option of arbitration ( I hope I got the term right) for Tally users. Non-Tally users can de-select this option. This should be easier than building an accounting package from scratch. Importing data from Tally and the likes can be an added feature,
On 30/06/07, Rony ronbillypop@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
I had posted a link for a GNU accounting software called TurboCash for Windows. http://www.turbocashuk.com/accounting-software-opensource.html It is designed for US, UK and Europe. It has provisions for VAT too. Since the source code is already available under GPL, why don't we make an Indian GPLed version that works on Windows and Linux. It can have an option of arbitration ( I hope I got the term right) for Tally users. Non-Tally users can de-select this option. This should be easier than building an accounting package from scratch. Importing data from Tally and the likes can be an added feature,
that's right. basically I am aware that tally exports data in various formats so we can import it and yes it does in xml too. by the way roni, does this software work on kde or gnome? regards, Krishnakant.
krishnakant Mane wrote:
On 30/06/07, Rony ronbillypop@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
I had posted a link for a GNU accounting software called TurboCash for Windows. http://www.turbocashuk.com/accounting-software-opensource.html It is designed for US, UK and Europe. It has provisions for VAT too. Since the source code is already available under GPL, why don't we make an Indian GPLed version that works on Windows and Linux. It can have an option of arbitration ( I hope I got the term right) for Tally users. Non-Tally users can de-select this option. This should be easier than building an accounting package from scratch. Importing data from Tally and the likes can be an added feature,
that's right. basically I am aware that tally exports data in various formats so we can import it and yes it does in xml too. by the way roni, does this software work on kde or gnome?
TurboCash works on Windows. However, since it is GPLed, it should not be difficult to modify it and port it on Linux and Windows for India..
On 6/30/07, krishnakant Mane researchbase@gmail.com wrote:
by the way roni, does this software work on kde or gnome?
Why this question? Any software works on KDE and GNOME or any other DE/WM, just the matter of having the right libraries.
On 30-Jun-07, at 12:40 PM, Rony wrote:
under GPL, why don't we make an Indian GPLed version that works on Windows and Linux. It can have an option of arbitration
what is arbitration?
Kenneth Gonsalves wrote:
On 30-Jun-07, at 12:40 PM, Rony wrote:
under GPL, why don't we make an Indian GPLed version that works on Windows and Linux. It can have an option of arbitration
what is arbitration?
It is that option in tally that allows entries to be manipulated later on. I hope I got the term right. If not, then please feel free to make a correction.
On 6/29/07, Rony wrote:
For Photoshop, there is the Gimp alternative. http://www.gimp.org/ Its ready packages are available at http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html
.....
For Corel Draw, there is the Inkscape alternative.
On 03/07/07, Kenneth Gonsalves wrote:
but no where as good as corel draw or adobe illustrator.
Just curious to know whether any non-FOSS alternatives are available for gnuplot and grace ?
http://www.gnuplot.info/ http://t16web.lanl.gov/Kawano/gnuplot/index-e.html http://plasma-gate.weizmann.ac.il/Grace/
These represent another area of graphics -- plotting . They are scientist / programmer 's tools rather than artists' . Programming constructs and seamless integration with scripting languages make them very powerful ( more than what their dull looking interfaces may suggest ).
Regards, Sourabh
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Kenneth Gonsalves -
krishnakant Mane -
mehul -
Rony -
saurabh daptardar