Open Source Software is Awesome

[t0yrobo]

I never found much use for the GIMP, but I have a retail cop of CS3 so it's no big deal. Where I'm at right now there's no use for anything but Photoshop or Painter anyways. I do like Blender, OpenOffice, and Firefox though. I use FF and Blender almost daily.
I used to run linux but it's not practical for me to have OSX, Windows, and Ubuntu all running on my laptop. Once I have a desktop again it'll definitely be on there though.

[Hatta]

If you think the open source apps are nice, you should try an open source OS some time.

Edit: Concerning firefox. One word: Noscript.

[puke_face]

I use firefox. They have so many tools for web devs, its just amazing. Not only that, but it reads html the correct way, with IE you always have to put code in specifiying what version of IE it is. For example, this IF statement:

<!--[if IE 7]>
According to the conditional comment this is Internet Explorer 7<br />
<![endif]-->
<!--[if IE 5]>
According to the conditional comment this is Internet Explorer 5.0
<![endif]-->

Because IE 5 renders different html dimensions than IE 7, so yea. Its a complete pain in the ass to code for IE(any version).

[Dakinggamer87]

They really are amazing. Nothing like free software.

Yep, couldn't agree more.

[Boaradoor]

I use firefox. They have so many tools for web devs, its just amazing. Not only that, but it reads html the correct way, with IE you always have to put code in specifiying what version of IE it is. For example, this IF statement:

<!--[if IE 7]>
According to the conditional comment this is Internet Explorer 7<br />
<![endif]-->
<!--[if IE 5]>
According to the conditional comment this is Internet Explorer 5.0
<![endif]-->

Because IE 5 renders different html dimensions than IE 7, so yea. Its a complete pain in the ass to code for IE(any version).

You my good sir are so correct! Coding for IE is so annoying! My results always look better on Firefox.

[arion]

When it comes to reading pdf files Foxit Reader is far less clunky than Adobe Acrobat Reader.

[Niode]

It's just a shame foxit is not open source/freeware. I'm not sure what it is, but it cripples features unless you support the browser toolbar crap, so it's definitely not freeware, maybe it's that pleaseinstallourcrappybrowserpluginware that I see so much of these days. However it is better than Acrobat Reader...

The only open source software apart from Firefox and Videolan that I use on a daily basis are; Arduino development platform and Open Sound Control.

[lordofduct]

Seeing as I'm a Linux user I enjoy the free software quite a bit. Some minor complaints here and there with some of them, but it ain't like I never complained about pay software neither.

Though as userinterface goes, GiMP really needs to ante up a bit. The separate window for each thing just drives me bonkers.


I'm not going to say pay software isn't good either, it's especially good for corporate and business level demands. I'm sorry but open-source just does not satisfy the needs of business level demands. Adobe, Autodesk, and their ilk really have this cornered and with very good reason.

But when it comes to some of the more basic shit that most people come to expect their computers to do... you just can't beat the free community.

Media Players, internet browsers, disk burners (after playing with all the disk burning options on Linux, it's like why the fuck would I EVER buy disk burning software... or even bootleg it), word processors, etc etc...

Speaking of Word Processing, that's one thing that I have a huge beef with the closed source community and its influence.

Microsoft Office and all of its sup parts have always been a standard in schools around the US (I can't vouch for other countries as I don't know). But it's Windows software. Mac gets the Suite as well but usually around a year behind (if not more) in versions... now this leads to a huge freakin' headache.

I don't have the money for Microsoft Office, I've always built my computer myself and never bought the crap software, but time and time again in school my teachers and professors REQUIRED the lates .doc file format. They refused printed versions, and demanded it like so. But I was always an OpenOffice user... and the exporter isn't perfect or anything and my teachers would bitch about jarbled formatting when they'd get it.

Or worse, an example, my girlfriend and her friend (who are in college) were doing a project the other night. One of the girls in their group emailed the a .docx file, but my girlfriend is a Mac user. Her version of MS Word wouldn't open the damn file, she tried openning it on my computer, and fumbled hard because well... a) it's Ubuntu and b) OpenOffice which defaulted to open it jarbled the thing all up


I'm sorry, but when it comes to the school place, they should be accepting more open or legacy formats, not sticking up to date shit that not everyone has. Her Mac is only a couple years old, she doesn't have the damn money to afford a new lappy or even the freakin newest MS Word! That's why she's in Community College for christ sake!

And the biggest punch in the stomach in my opinion is how schools offer purchasing plans or deals through the school to buy Macs... but Mac suffers from always being about a year behind in MS format support. How fucking ridiculous is that!?





Oh and I use Gnome Document Viewer (open source) to read PDF files, speedy and great experience for me. PDF is the way I go most of the time, it's closed source, but hey it freakin' works... and usually always works. But alas my professors in college wouldn't even accept that! WHAT!?

[Niode]

Oh and I use Gnome Document Viewer (open source) to read PDF files, speedy and great experience for me. PDF is the way I go most of the time, it's closed source, but hey it freakin' works... and usually always works. But alas my professors in college wouldn't even accept that! WHAT!?

Same thing happened at my uni. They refused to accept digital submission of work in PDF format, I submit in Mac Office format and they would bitch saying that the formatting is wonky or whatever. The annoying thing is, the course I did (Music Technology) is split across two seperate divisions within the University, School of Music and School of Engineering. The engineering side use Windows, exclusively, since they get a massive cut for doing so (they are big on the whole microsoft programming platform, Canalside Studios is the game design studio run by the university and the game Yo-Ho Kablammo on XBLA was made by them.) The music side use Macintosh, because the art and design side (which Music is a subdivision of) get a massive cut for doing so. So you have to have two seperate versions of Microsoft Office to hand your work in, in accordance to their digital submission requirements.

It gets worse. The engineering side, because they use Windows, use Nuendo for their digital audio workstation of choice. The Music side use Logic as their DAW. So not only are you having to pay out for 2 versions of office, which to students is only about £40 for each version (meh, whatever, that's what my Grant was there to pay for) you have to get some version of Nuendo (the cheapest of which is £700, fuck that) and Logic (I bought it for £120, which I don't mind paying since the software is awesome for what you get). So the only way to get work done is to use the systems at the university, which the only room Music students have access to (my course is run by the school of music, so we have a different login process to the engineering side for the networked computers) has 25 systems in it. When there's 60 (half engineering, half music) people doing a module you can see the problems that you end up having. Unfortunately, not being able to get into the room to submit your work for the 12pm deadline because there aren't enough systems, and you can only submit your work through an Engineering computer since the drive you have to drop your work into is an Engineering network resource, isn't an excuse and you get a flat 40% for late submission, do not pass go, do not collect £200.

For some reason I'm the asshole for shouting at some dumb fuck from engineering who simply won't vacate his system despite him being able to access any of the several hundred engineering systems across many of the labs that he has access to, but won't because he's a lazy fucktard.

I don't know why these fucking education establishments REQUIRE proprietry formats for submission. It's idiotic. If I'm doing the foly for some video for a client, I don't send them the project file, I send them the fucking finished video in a native windows and mac compatible format. If I submit a proposal to a client, I don't send them the fucking .Docx format file. I send them a PDF (over email) or print the fucker out.

I didn't want to learn how to use a completely different DAW when I can use the one I'm used to perfectly well and get the same results. Why the hell does it matter that I'm using a specific piece of software to achieve the same result. Oh yeah, I know why, it's because they get mega-buxx from these software companies knowing that students are being pushed out into the world only knowing how to use their software, it means more sales down the road. Same reason Microsoft gives Office away to schools, the more kids they get a younger age the more they will stick with it the rest of their lives. Market penetration. People use 'Office' not word processing. Writing a letter instantly means 'Microsoft Word' to the vast majority, the fact that an open source and free alternative is available doesn't even occur to them, they just assume thats all there is, because that's all they know.

Rant over.

[lordofduct]

Damn straight, I'm so happy someone else knows where I'm coming from. My classmates back in school thought I was stupid because I didn't have Word... like the lack of some specific software made me intellectually inferior. Come on, it's a word processor... what the FUCK do you need it to do so much? Shit gedit does about 90% of the word processing I need a word processor to do damn it!

I like your point about industry software as well (I didn't bring up industry software like you did, I don't use a lot of stuff like that). I believe there's more to it then just the corporate penetration... but I bet it plays a big role. And that drives me bonkers damn it... I get a professor saying "This software here is a standard in this field, but it's not the only option...", but enforcing a single option, well hrmm... I wonder why it's the standard!

That's one thing I always liked about programming... I can program in any simple text editor... gedit, notepad, whatever. All I need is the compiler and 9 times out of 10, it's free.