Microsoft Bashing !?!

[Dr Mordrid]

Originally posted by leech


Here's one. Don't know how good it is, but it is a Commercial package for linux for Video editing.

....................

Leech

Sorry, no cigar.

MainActor isn't a full featured video editing program; no MPEG or DV I/O under Linux, limited keying and overlay controls, limited motion path controls, etc. etc. etc. It has a few interesting things like fractal and oscilloscope effects, but a professional editor such things do not make.

Broadcast2000 has been supplanted by Cinelerra, which is improved over Broadcast2000 but still no cigar. It does have some nice features (renderfarm for one), but otherwise....

Keep trying....

Dr. Mordrid

[LvR]

I know what I want and I am going to do it, you can go do whatever MS alows you, the way they say...

.................and the most important bit is I know what I want

My experience is that not many people know exactly what they want, and because of that, they only end up being able to bitch about what is being offered to them very effectively.

There are most likely less than 100 people on this board that can define exactly what they want, and on top of that have both the time and technical ability to use an open source solution to achieve their goals.

As soon as somebody with both a lot of time and common sense sits down and produce commercial applications that can run under Linux etc and that can compete on equal footing with the current Windows based apps, its gonna cost money - lots of it, and because bread and butter is always involved for this guy, he wil most likely, just like Bill, try to protect his investment after he has ensured that eveybody wants his product - so M$ rev2 is in the making - call it Linux or whatever if you want.

[leech]

Great points LvR. I was thinking about this today at work. For the most part my biggest gripe is about MS's OS. If you're stuck using it because of particular apps, the best thing to do of course would be to compile the list of apps that everyone wants ported over to linux to make it a contender to windows in the business world and hound the hell out of the makers to create a port. Though I think the momentum of linux is carrying along quite nicely right now. More and more professional applications are being moved over to linux.

As far as DV I/O and Mpeg stuff, I could be wrong, but isn't there MJpegtools for that stuff, and dvgrab? Not sure, never used 'em. Though in my search I did see that a guy is creating a new distro called Chainsaw Linux, that's going to be specifically packaged for video editing. So it is happening, but like everything else opensource, it's going to take time (unless of course they can get a lot of programmers to join in.)

Let me ask everyone this, wouldn't it be good to at least have a CHOICE in what you use? A lot of the people who use windows for business apps do so because they HAVE to, either because the corp won't try anything else, or because of ignorance about alternatives. We've all had MS shoved down our throats for so long that everyone automatically assumes that's all there is in the computer world.

Frankly all I really use my computer for is browsing the net, writing stuff, and the occasional game. Linux does everything I want and does it well. And GTK2 just plain kicks ass :-)

Leech

[LvR]

We've all had MS shoved down our throats for so long ............

Not true.

Major voluntary surgery to the throat has been suffered in order to get it to the right size - on a fairly regular basis, and at the cost of a new version of the MS OS or Windows based software everytime.

[Pace]

Well, I use Windows because I have to. Not 100% compulsory, but pretty much. I'd love a viable alternative, but the problem is Linux is *always* getting there...

What pro apps have moved over? Are Adobe still making Photoshop for Linux? I think we've had PS5, 5.5, 6 and 7 while waiting on that

They've got some good stuff, but the problem for me, and many other Windows users is the lack of good WYSIWYG programs for most tasks. Excellent text editors galore, excellent command line, excellent command tools...but WYSIWYG WP, DTP, Web Design, image manipulation, image creation, vector graphics. Sure Linux runs the Internet, but it sure as hell don't make or view it.

P.

[leech]

As far as web design, WYSIWYG editors SUCK. For DTP I'd love to see something like Pagestream or Calamus SL ported over (used to use those on the Atari ST, those were the 'fun' days of computing when only 'nerds' had them )

I'm going to look into what's going on with Adobe. I did read somewhere that they weren't going to because they had ported it over to Solaris (I think that's what it was, damn my horrible memory) and they had pretty much zero sales. But I think if we got enough people to sign a petition they'd port it over. But I think that we'd need a lot of professional photographers that are computer hobbyists for that to happen.

There is a program called Impress (personally I wasn't Impressed with it (pun intended)) but you might like it. It's a "WYSIWYG Publishing & Presentation for use With/without Web browser"

One thing I really love in X that I hate about windows is that you can highlight something then just middle mouse click to paste it in X. Can't tell ya how many times I've tried it windows only to realize it doesn't work. Just like whenever I use the dosbox to do somethings (like ping to make sure my Internet connection is still working right) and I keep using 'ls' instead of 'dir'

Another pretty good web Design program I played with a bit is Blue Fish. Screem is still buggy as all hell last I used it. Word Processing.... Abiword is definitely getting there quick. I think the main hurdle that X apps have is the crappy way that it sets up fonts. It's not exactly user friendly. Though on the bright side, I read an interview with one of the XFree86 developers and it looks like XFree86 5.x is going to fix a lot of those problems. That I think is one of the BIGGEST gripes people have with *nix systems.

Image manipulation. Gimp is great and getting better all the time (Somewhere on the net there was an article about Gimp being used on some movies. Also there's a program that they used in Blade 2 (can't recall the name right now) and also check this out.

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6148

Leech

Edit: Found a great one for DTP/ART/Web design, and yes, it's commercial. Artstream, looks great!

http://www.mediascape.com/artstream-linux.html