How Do I Do That?: Difference between revisions

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| '''In Linux I'd Use...'''
| '''In Linux I'd Use...'''
|-
|-
| Burn a CD
| Burn a CD/DVD
|-
|
* Roxio Toast
| Burn a DVD
* Nero
|
* Nautilus, the file manager for [http://www.gnome.org/ GNOME] has integrated burning of ISO backup images images.
* [http://www.k3b.org/ k3b] is a robust CD/DVD burner for the KDE desktop.
|-
|-
| Rip a CD
| Rip a CD
|
* iTunes
* MediaMonkey
* Nero
|
* Sound Juicer is part of the GNOME desktop and automatically fetches the metadata for the songs including artist and track name. It can rip tracks to mp3, ogg, flac, and almost any other format you desire.
|-
|-
| Rip a DVD
| Rip a DVD
| colspan="2" | Ripping video DVDs implies breaking of the CSS copy protection/encryption present on the disc. Although this system is very weak, it is a violation of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to do so. As such, while it's easy to take a '''DVD''' and use a '''decrypter''' to copy the DVD, and even then later take the '''DVD''' image and '''shrink''' it to fit on a cheap 4.7GB disk, we can't tell you how to do it. But, we're sure Google could.
|-
|-
| Record live television
| Record live television
|
| SageTV
* SageTV
* BeyondTV
* Windows Media Center Edition
|
|
* [http://www.mythtv.org/ MythTV] - Supports a wide variety of both standard definition and high definition tuner cards, including firewire cable boxes and the HD Homerun Ethernet attached HDTV tuner. Allows for pausing of live television, themable user interfaces, automatic commercial cutting, and more. [[User:Pwagstro]]
* [http://www.mythtv.org/ MythTV] - Supports a wide variety of both standard definition and high definition tuner cards, including firewire cable boxes and the HD Homerun Ethernet attached HDTV tuner. Allows for pausing of live television, themable user interfaces, automatic commercial cutting, and more. [[User:Pwagstro | Patrick Wagstrom]]
* [http://freevo.sourceforge.net Freevo] - while Freevo is much easier to setup than MythTV, it is not nearly as robust of a solution. It does not allow viewing of television until after the complete recording is done, and is lacking support for a wide variety of hardware.
* [http://freevo.sourceforge.net Freevo] - while Freevo is much easier to setup than MythTV, it is not nearly as robust of a solution. It does not allow viewing of television until after the complete recording is done, and is lacking support for a wide variety of hardware.
|-
| Transfer photos off a camera
| Whatever software came with your camera
|
* The GNOME desktop should automatically detect when you've plugged your camera in and ask if you'd like to download the photos. A word of warning for compulsive organizers, the import functionality provided directly by the desktop automatically rotates your images, creating a discontinuity between the image and its exif tags.
* [http://www.f-spot.org/ F-Spot] has facilities to automatically import from a camera. [[User:Pwagstro | Patrick Wagstrom]]
|-
| Organize photos
|
* Picasa
* Adobe Album
|
* [http://www.f-spot.org/ F-Spot] works much like Adobe Album and the interface will be pretty simple to navigate for those experienced with Adobe Album. It also has the ability to tag the images for easier categorization of the images. [[User:Pwagstro | Patrick Wagstrom]]
* [http://picasa.google.com/linux Picasa] is also available for Linux. It's a fine example of utilizing Wine to easily port an existing Windows application. Its very nice for automatically touching up photos. <font color="red">not open source</font>
|-
| Publish photos to a website
|
* Picasa
|
* [http://www.f-spot.org/ F-Spot] can publish photos to a wide variety of websites including [http://www.flickr.com/ flickr] and Picasa albums. It also can create static HTML output, and if you're really adventurous, your own mini version of Flickr using [http://pennave.sf.net/ PennAve].
* [http://picasa.google.com/linux Picasa] can publish photos from Linux and windows. <font color="red">not open source</font>
|-
| Play a movie
| Windows Media Player
|
* Totem
* Mplayer
|-
| Organize and manage MP3s
|
* iTunes
* MediaMonkey
|
* RhythmBox
* Banshee
|-
| Sync to an iPod
| iTunes
|
* Banshee
* GTKPod
|-
| Edit Video
|
* Adobe Premiere
* Microsoft Movie Maker
|
|-
|-
! colspan="3" style="background:#ffdead;" | Office Tasks
! colspan="3" style="background:#ffdead;" | Office Tasks
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| TurboTax, TaxCut
| TurboTax, TaxCut
|-
|-
| Create a PDF File
| Create a PDF file
| Adobe Acrobat
| Adobe Acrobat
|
|
* Most Linux programs can print to PostScript, check the "Print to File" option if it's not available. Then use the ps2pdf program to translate.
* Most Linux programs can print to PostScript, check the "Print to File" option if it's not available. Then use the ps2pdf program to translate.
* OpenOffice.org has a feature to save directly to a PDF file
* OpenOffice.org has a feature to save directly to a PDF file
|-
| View a PDF file
|
* Adobe Reader
* Adobe Acrobat
|
* Evince is part of GNOME and supports most PDF functions.
* KPDF is a very robust PDF viewer for KDE
* [http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=10&platform=unix Adobe reader for Linux] operates very similarly to the windows version. <font color="red">not open source</font>
|-
|-
! colspan="3" style="background:#ffdead;" | Internet Communications
! colspan="3" style="background:#ffdead;" | Internet Communications
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|
|
* [http://www.bacula.org/ Bacula] is a very robust network based backup system.
* [http://www.bacula.org/ Bacula] is a very robust network based backup system.
|-
! colspan="3" style="background:#ffdead;" | System Administration
|-
| '''Issue'''
| '''In Windows I'd Use...'''
| '''In Linux I'd Use...'''
|-
| Install Software
|-
| Remove Software
|-
| Add a new user
|-
| Switch users without logging out
|-
|}
|}



Revision as of 02:47, 16 January 2007

There are lots of tasks that may seem relatively simple in Windows, but may be a bit more difficult to do in Linux. This page presents a variety of these tasks, and the best ways to solve them using tools in Linux. Wherever possible, we'll try to notate when a solution is presented using Free software, and when a solution requires the use of proprietary software in Linux.

If you have other ideas, feel free to add them to this table, if you're not comfortable editing the HTML in this table, then add them to the list at the end of this page. If you can answer an issue, add it to this table and make a note that you can do it.

How do I do that?
Multimedia
Issue In Windows I'd Use... In Linux I'd Use...
Burn a CD/DVD
  • Roxio Toast
  • Nero
  • Nautilus, the file manager for GNOME has integrated burning of ISO backup images images.
  • k3b is a robust CD/DVD burner for the KDE desktop.
Rip a CD
  • iTunes
  • MediaMonkey
  • Nero
  • Sound Juicer is part of the GNOME desktop and automatically fetches the metadata for the songs including artist and track name. It can rip tracks to mp3, ogg, flac, and almost any other format you desire.
Rip a DVD Ripping video DVDs implies breaking of the CSS copy protection/encryption present on the disc. Although this system is very weak, it is a violation of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to do so. As such, while it's easy to take a DVD and use a decrypter to copy the DVD, and even then later take the DVD image and shrink it to fit on a cheap 4.7GB disk, we can't tell you how to do it. But, we're sure Google could.
Record live television
  • SageTV
  • BeyondTV
  • Windows Media Center Edition
  • MythTV - Supports a wide variety of both standard definition and high definition tuner cards, including firewire cable boxes and the HD Homerun Ethernet attached HDTV tuner. Allows for pausing of live television, themable user interfaces, automatic commercial cutting, and more. Patrick Wagstrom
  • Freevo - while Freevo is much easier to setup than MythTV, it is not nearly as robust of a solution. It does not allow viewing of television until after the complete recording is done, and is lacking support for a wide variety of hardware.
Transfer photos off a camera Whatever software came with your camera
  • The GNOME desktop should automatically detect when you've plugged your camera in and ask if you'd like to download the photos. A word of warning for compulsive organizers, the import functionality provided directly by the desktop automatically rotates your images, creating a discontinuity between the image and its exif tags.
  • F-Spot has facilities to automatically import from a camera. Patrick Wagstrom
Organize photos
  • Picasa
  • Adobe Album
  • F-Spot works much like Adobe Album and the interface will be pretty simple to navigate for those experienced with Adobe Album. It also has the ability to tag the images for easier categorization of the images. Patrick Wagstrom
  • Picasa is also available for Linux. It's a fine example of utilizing Wine to easily port an existing Windows application. Its very nice for automatically touching up photos. not open source
Publish photos to a website
  • Picasa
  • F-Spot can publish photos to a wide variety of websites including flickr and Picasa albums. It also can create static HTML output, and if you're really adventurous, your own mini version of Flickr using PennAve.
  • Picasa can publish photos from Linux and windows. not open source
Play a movie Windows Media Player
  • Totem
  • Mplayer
Organize and manage MP3s
  • iTunes
  • MediaMonkey
  • RhythmBox
  • Banshee
Sync to an iPod iTunes
  • Banshee
  • GTKPod
Edit Video
  • Adobe Premiere
  • Microsoft Movie Maker
Office Tasks
Issue In Windows I'd Use... In Linux I'd Use...
Write a letter Microsoft Word
Design a presentation Microsoft Powerpoint
Create a small database Microsoft Access
Design a spreadsheet Microsoft Excel
Collaborate using groupware Microsoft Outlook
Balance a checkbook Quicken
Manage business finances Quickbooks
Fill out tax forms TurboTax, TaxCut
Create a PDF file Adobe Acrobat
  • Most Linux programs can print to PostScript, check the "Print to File" option if it's not available. Then use the ps2pdf program to translate.
  • OpenOffice.org has a feature to save directly to a PDF file
View a PDF file
  • Adobe Reader
  • Adobe Acrobat
  • Evince is part of GNOME and supports most PDF functions.
  • KPDF is a very robust PDF viewer for KDE
  • Adobe reader for Linux operates very similarly to the windows version. not open source
Internet Communications
Issue In Windows I'd Use... In Linux I'd Use...
Browse the web Internet Explorer
  • Mozilla Firefox
  • Opera - this lightweight and fully standards compliant browser is available for a huge variety of operating systems. not open source
  • Epiphany - the fully GNOME integrated web browser
Send an email Microsoft Outlook
Send instant messages
  • Microsoft Live Messenger
  • AOL Instant Messenger
  • Yahoo Instant Messenger
  • Google Talk
  • GAIM - a multi-protocol, multi-platform instant messenger client that can connect to almost any instant messenger client. also available for Windows
  • Gossip - a jabber focused instant messenger client, that now supports a huge variety of networks thanks to integration with Telepathy - User:Pwagstro
Participate in Internet Relay Chat (IRC) mIRC
  • X-Chat
  • Irssi
Server Tasks
Issue In Windows I'd Use... In Linux I'd Use...
Run a large scale database Microsoft SQL Server
  • PostgreSQL - known as the workhorse of the OpenSource Database field. PostgreSQL supports a variety of languages for stored procedures, foreign keys, has interfaces to many programming languages, and runs on a variety of systems.User:Pwagstro
  • MySQL - is a very fast SQL server that is easy to setup and scales fairly well. Despite it's earlier faults, MySQL is now a fully functional relational database program.User:Pwagstro
Provide email services Microsoft Exchange
  • Postfix
  • Sendmail
  • Hula
Serve web pages Microsoft IIS
  • Apache
Customer Relationship Management Microsoft CRM
  • SugarCRM - markets itself as "Commercial Open Source". A very high quality package of CRM tools to manage all aspects of business relations.
System Maintenance
Issue In Windows I'd Use... In Linux I'd Use...
Scan for viruses Symantec AntiVirus
Scan for malware/spyware
Scan for rootkits
Backup my hard disk
  • Bacula is a very robust network based backup system.
System Administration
Issue In Windows I'd Use... In Linux I'd Use...
Install Software
Remove Software
Add a new user
Switch users without logging out


I'd like to see how to do that!

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