I Can Has Linux?

Getting Linux functionality on a Windows desktop.

September 14th, 2007

When I was forced to run Windows in a support environment, I was faced with a number of challenges. Mainly, how to get my favorite OSS functionality back in my Windows desktop. Luckily, there are many tools that can help you.
I’ll go through them in the order I usually install them on a Windows box, and add in some others that I’ve found and considered.

BBLean

BBLean gives you a Blackbox environment in Windows. I like BlackBox, especially in a Windows environment, and it’s probably the biggest visual indicator that you’re making progress in getting OSS on your Windows box.

UnxUtils

Oh how nice it is to have native GNU tools in Windows. I put the utilities into the Windows/System32 folder, renaming find.exe to gfind.exe, as Windows won’t let you replace find.exe (Who knew?)
Notable programs in the package include dd, diff, grep, find, head, tail, gzip, gunzip, wc, tr, sed, gawk, and touch.

Cygwin

From Cygwin.com: “The Cygwin tools are ports of the popular GNU development tools for Microsoft Windows. They run thanks to the Cygwin library which provides the UNIX system calls and environment these programs expect.”
Worth the install, definitely.

GnuWin32

GNUWin32 has Windows ports of GNU or other open source software. The list is much more comprehensive than UnxUtils, and you can pick and choose which packages you want to download. Useful if you want a native version of a specific tool not included in UnxUtils.

PuTTY

PuTTY gives you SSH to other machines, and also includes SOCKS proxying, port redirection, SCP, SFTP, and other useful tools for the command-line.

BitVise Tunnelier

This item isn’t GPLed, so it diminishes its value in my mind. However, if you need an easy client to just run a SOCKS proxy, do graphical SCP, or run SSH tunneling of any kind, the BitVise Tunnelier client is great for this. I don’t use it for CLI administrative tasks, as PuTTY does better terminal emulation, but it’s still very good at what it does. If you’re SSHed into a Windows box, it will let you do one-click, SSH Tunneled Remote Desktop sessions to the box you’re SSHed into. Which leads me to my next item….

BitVise WinSSHD

If you’re not a big fan of Cygwin but still want to SSH into a Windows box, get WinSSHD. This is a closed source SSH server for the Windows environment that runs as a service. It costs money, though, $40 for a personal license and $100 for a business license. This also only gives you 5 user licenses. Closed source, costs money, and a diminished value in my book. May be necessary for some, though.

WinSCP

If you wish they made a SmartFTP-like application to do SCP file transfers in Windows, you’re in luck. This program is open source and free as in beer. It’s definitely more secure than plain FTP, and the program is very polished. Tunnelier does some of the same things, but for large or complicated transfers, this is the way to get it done. Plus, Tunnelier is closed source.

Unison

There aren’t any particularly good Rsync options for Windows (except for via Cygwin), but Unison comes pretty close and brings you a lot of the same features. To synchronize folders, there is no other. Unison is also open source (GPL) and free as in beer!

You can find a veritable gaggle of other Open Source windows software via the OSSwin site. So if there’s something else you like in Linux but want in Windows, you might just happen to be in luck. We still don’t have Yakuake/Tilda or Compiz Fusion on Windows yet, but this will make Windows more tolerable for OSS geeks like myself, and give more functionality to the Windows power users.
That’s a Win/Win in my book.

Did I miss anything? If so, use the comments section to slap me upside the head.

Until next time!
-LightningCrash

Posted in gnu, gpl, linux, port, windows | 1 Comment »

batch rename with regexps

September 13th, 2007

You may not know this, but when you browse to add photos to MySpace on Linux, it specifies *.jpg and a handful of other formats. This is perfectly fine in a Windows world, but MySpace must not remember hat Linux filenames are CASE SENSITIVE. So when I import photos to a folder and they’re all named IMG_0101.JPG, etc, they won’t show up in the MySpace upload form. So those 50 photos you want to upload of your last vacation won’t show up in the window.

So you try to use mv to rename them. Yes, mv will due globbing on filenames, but rename will do regexps.
cd ~/photos/dirwithphotos rename 's/JPG$/jpg/' *.JPG

Done.
You can go further with it, too. For instance, if I want to rename the files, since they’re all named IMG_0203.jpg
cd ~/photos/icanhaslinux rename 's/^IMG/icanhaslinux/' * rename 's/JPG$/jpg' *

Easy enough, right?
You can do more, since you have the full suite of regexps available, but that’s just a start.
Grab the regexp cheatsheet and you can do even more unnecessarily complicated things!

woohoo!

Posted in mv, regexps, rename | No Comments »

Ubuntu no match for sex

September 13th, 2007

I recently came across this article mentioning that Google searches for Ubuntu recently surpassed searches for Jesus.

At this point, I was curious. What else had Ubuntu surpassed?

Well, despite Ubuntu’s best marketing strategies, it has not surpassed sex, not by a long shot.
Ubuntu versus Sex - Google Trends

Ubuntu is very close to “friends” in search volume, however, and not too far away from “BMW.” The BMW is more likely to impress women than Ubuntu, though, so maybe you should skip the Linux User Group meeting and go to a BMW dealership instead.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

How I loathe regexps….but wait….

September 12th, 2007

Well, I got frustrated with having to refer to documentation every time I wanted to do something with regexps, so I decided to find a cheat sheet. I hate regexps, but I love them too, you know?

Thankfully, www.ilovejackdaniels.com has a cheat sheet I don’t mind having. It’s more thorough than the others I’ve found and it comes in PDF and PNG formats. I had to print the PNG one, since evince printed the greys as solid black in the PDF version.

Anyway, check it out here.

I’ve been using regexps so much lately that I contemplated taping it over my second monitor. I settled for hanging it from the cube wall right next to it.

Until next time!

-LightningCrash

Posted in awk, egrep, regexp, sed | No Comments »

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars demo released, leaves Linux users out in the cold

September 11th, 2007

I was really excited to hear the the ET:QW demo was released yesterday. However, for reasons unknown, iD decided not to release Linux binaries of the demo.

But for as much as I like iD software’s products, and as much as I really, really want to play ET:QW, I’m not even going to consider buying it until there’s a release for the Linux platform.

I don’t usually take a hard-line stance on these things, but the only desktop I have that would even be capable of playing ET:QW is the centerpiece of all of the technology in my house, and I can’t “Just install Windows,” run ‘dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda’, or any other ideas you may have for screwing up my perfectly good build.

So you can take your Windows binary and shove it, oh tosser of the Vista salad. I’ll wait for the real thing.

Fortunately, the retail release should be followed in a few months by a Linux installer, so I only have to wave my middle finger in the air until, oh, November or December.

Posted in etqw, games, linux | No Comments »

Analysis of 300 Digg top stories

September 10th, 2007

I wrote earlier about Digg Ubuntu headline analysis, but this time I decided to pull the top 20 pages of stories from the last year and run those through the counter. 300 stories later, here is the count of words within the headlines:

70 the
45 a
42 to
34 of
32 digg
25 you
25 s
22 in
22 and
21 pic
21 on
19 this
19 for
18 your
18 iphone
17 is
16 new
14 video
14 from
14 ever
14 apple
13 it
12 picture
12 i
12 google
12 best
12 amazing
11 t
10 how
10 d
9 with
9 website
9 firefox
8 why
8 what
8 vista
8 pics
8 not
8 free
8 at
7 like
7 kevin
7 have
7 buy
6 windows
6 should
6 one
6 most
6 james
6 gets
6 c
6 by
5 will
5 we
5 users
5 steve
5 right
5 photos
5 photo
5 my
5 make
5 mac
5 kim
5 jobs
5 ipod
5 if
5 dvd
5 drm
5 computer
5 as
5 an
5 all
4 worst
4 work
4 without
4 water
4 under
4 time
4 thing
4 that
4 system
4 so
4 shows
4 see
4 rose
4 riaa
4 pictures
4 photoshop
4 people
4 out
4 or
4 microsoft
4 launches
4 itunes
4 hacked
4 get
4 coolest
4 can
4 button
4 be
4 awesome
4 are
3 youtube
3 xp
3 world
3 woman
3 ve
3 up
3 unveils
3 tv
3 touch
3 store
3 something
3 sites
3 sign
3 show
3 seen
3 section
3 secret
3 save
3 re
3 pc
3 pay
3 page
3 over
3 other
3 old
3 no
3 net
3 needs
3 nbc
3 missing
3 me
3 list
3 linux
3 letter
3 laptop
3 key
3 internet
3 images
3 hd
3 got
3 good
3 geek
3 file
3 face
3 f
3 do
3 desktop
3 design
3 day
3 comment
3 comcast
3 colbert
3 cellphone
3 bill
3 b
3 anything
3 any
3 announces
3 almost
3 access
3 about
2 years
2 year
2 yahoo
2 would
2 worlds
2 wi
2 while
2 web
2 was
2 warning
2 wallpapers
2 w
2 use
2 ur
2 ultimate
2 two
2 tutorials
2 turn
2 tries
2 trick
2 traffic
2 totally
2 top
2 today
2 think
2 they
2 take
2 strangest
2 stop
2 stephen
2 stealing
2 steal
2 station
2 start
2 squad
2 space
2 some
2 site
2 shirt
2 search
2 screwed
2 screen
2 runs
2 revolt
2 results
2 responds
2 porn
2 plus
2 please
2 pirate
2 phone
2 perhaps
2 per
2 path
2 password
2 owned
2 own
2 open
2 online
2 officially
2 official
2 off
2 nsfw
2 now
2 nokia
2 nightmare
2 neighbors
2 need
2 myspace
2 music
2 mozilla
2 maps
2 makes
2 made
2 m
2 love
2 loses
2 look
2 logo
2 live
2 line
2 kill
2 kid
2 just
2 its
2 into
2 inside
2 idiot
2 high
2 hate
2 has
2 happens
2 had
2 hack
2 gmail
2 girl
2 gates
2 fun
2 found
2 first
2 fire
2 fiasco
2 fi
2 features
2 feature
2 every
2 effect
2 ebay
2 e
2 don
2 does
2 digging
2 desk
2 default
2 dear
2 cuts
2 customer
2 css
2 cracked
2 cover
2 could
2 cool
2 convert
2 connection
2 comic
2 com
2 color
2 cnet
2 clock
2 click
2 class
2 cheap
2 card
2 car
2 cake
2 but
2 business
2 building
2 build
2 browser
2 blue
2 blocked
2 billboard
2 been
2 back
2 around
2 anti
2 announced
2 animation
2 alex
2 again
2 ads
2 across

Some of the top items, when read in succession, are almost headlines in themselves!

Maybe next time I’ll pull a few thousand headlines. That sounds like a good project for tomorrow.

Edit: Trimmed off entries with only one result.

Posted in digg | No Comments »

Xargs is your friend

September 10th, 2007

If you don’t know what xargs is, here’s the definition of xargs from Wikipedia:

xargs is a command of the Unix and most Unix-like operating systems which eases passing command output to another command as command line arguments.

It splits its often piped input at whitespaces (or the null character) and calls the command given as an argument with each element of the split input as parameter. If the parameter list is too long, it calls the program as often as necessary. It often covers the same functionality as the backquote feature of many shells, but is more flexible and often also safer, especially if there are blanks or special characters in the input.

This is often used in conjunction with the Unix commands find, locate and grep.

So, what can you do with xargs?

Well, let’s say you want to put up a torrent on a tracker, but you want to include a file with the MD5 checksums of every file. We’ll assume that the files you want to put on bittorrent are in /home/me/mytorrent/
To generate an MD5 sum of every file in the directory and dump it to a file, you can do the following:
find /home/me/mytorrent/ -type f|xargs md5sum >> /home/me/mytorrent/md5sums.txt

Now you’ve got a list of the MD5 sums for every file in the torrent you want to publish.

You can also use xargs to call grep to look inside files. For instance, if you’re editing a web page and you want to find all instances of a PHP class, you can execute the following:

find /home/me/mywebpage -name '*.php'|xargs grep -Hn adminClass

This will return a list of each file ending in php, and then for each item in the list, grep will check for the string adminClass. The -H flag will make sure that grep prints the filename in each match, and the -n flag will make grep print the line number as well.

xargs is an invaluable tool in command-line work because it prevents you from having to write a for or while loop in a shell script. xargs will run the command you specify on every line of output. Granted, find has an -exec capability, but xargs has its utility. Being slightly paranoid, you might like to check the output of a command before you pipe it to xargs or run an -exec in find. For instance, if you were removing everything in a cache directory, it would probably be better to pipe the find output to more first, and then after you have verified the output, you can pipe it to xargs rm -f -r

For usenet users, you can also use xargs to PAR check all of your files.

ls *.par2|xargs par -r

Windows users take heart, there is an xargs for windows in the Findutils package for Windows .

Have any other xargs tricks? Leave yours in the comments.

Posted in linux, xargs | No Comments »

Digg.com Ubuntu popular headline analysis

September 8th, 2007

I was curious what the most popular keywords were in the Ubuntu headlines, since it seemed like some of them seemed identical.
So I saved the top 10 pages of results for the search term Ubuntu, sorted by Most Diggs.
With all of the pages in a directory, I cut out the headlines and stripped the HTML with the following command:

$ cat *.html|grep news-body|sed -e 's/<[^<>]*>//g' > diggubuntuheadlines.txt

Now I have a list of each headline. Unfortunately, though, this also returns headlines from articles that just mention Ubuntu, so I killed the lines that didn’t have Ubuntu.

$ grep -i ubuntu diggubuntuheadlines.txt > diggubuntuheadlines2.txt

Now I want to pull out a list of unique words in the file, the number of occurences of each word, sorted by the most occurences descending. Thanks to this short perl script posted by planetscape, I have a solution.

I paste the contents into a file, change the first line to read /usr/bin/perl, save it, then chmod +x the file.

Next I pipe the contents of the file into the script, and save the output.

$ cat diggubuntuheadlines2.txt | ./countwords.pl > diggheadlinecount.txt

Well, I guess that’s enough foreplay, what’s the verdict?

117 ubuntu
25 to
22 linux
20 windows
19 a
14 in
14 dell
12 with
12 on
12 for
11 the
9 and
8 install
7 vista
7 of
7 how
6 your
6 you
6 from
5 released
5 pcs
5 out
5 new
5 is
5 guide
5 feisty
5 by
4 without
4 what
4 users
4 than
4 s
4 has
4 free
4 best
3 xp
3 video
3 ultimate
3 time
3 switching
3 should
3 running
3 run
3 over
3 os
3 official
3 mythtv
3 more
3 microsoft
3 media
3 logo
3 like
3 know
3 installing
3 get
3 fawn
3 fast
3 edition
3 edgy
3 dock
3 boot
3 based
3 as
3 anything
3 about
2 x
2 world
2 will
2 way
2 vs
2 vote
2 using
2 up
2 tutorial
2 top
2 this
2 there
2 t
2 support
2 studio
2 stickers
2 side
2 shuttleworth
2 review
2 read
2 powered
2 pic
2 pc
2 password
2 osx
2 online
2 one
2 officially
2 now
2 need
2 multimedia
2 mount
2 mce
2 mark
2 make
2 magazine
2 looks
2 look
2 laptop
2 it
2 installed
2 gifting
2 full
2 eye
2 ever
2 dual
2 distribution
2 desktop
2 days
2 core
2 completely
2 compiz
2 cheap
2 center
2 cd
2 candy
2 breezy
2 box
2 books
2 beryl
2 be
2 are
2 applications
2 almost
1 year
1 xps
1 xorg
1 xgl
1 write
1 writabable
1 wpics
1 would
1 working
1 wireless
1 winxp
1 wins
1 wine
1 why
1 whole
1 while
1 wga
1 wep
1 welcome
1 web
1 weapons
1 we
1 was
1 warranty
1 warcraft
1 want
1 wall
1 voted
1 vmware
1 virus
1 victorious
1 versus
1 validates
1 uses
1 user
1 useful
1 us
1 unmount
1 ui
1 ugly
1 tweaks
1 tweaking
1 tutorials
1 try
1 truth
1 triple
1 tricks
1 transparent
1 transform
1 today
1 tips
1 tier
1 thursday
1 thinks
1 things
1 their
1 ten
1 technical
1 tad
1 system
1 switches
1 switch
1 supported
1 super
1 sun
1 strip
1 story
1 still
1 sticker
1 steps
1 stable
1 squad
1 spread
1 spotted
1 spiffing
1 software
1 smoke
1 single
1 simple
1 shrink
1 shirt
1 shift
1 shell
1 server
1 searched
1 seamless
1 screwup
1 screenshots
1 screen
1 satanic
1 root
1 rom
1 rising
1 right
1 reviewit
1 repository
1 reported
1 release
1 redesign
1 really
1 readable
1 ran
1 ram
1 quietly
1 purchase
1 progress
1 products
1 preview
1 prettier
1 preinstalled
1 prebuilt
1 pre
1 posters
1 possibly
1 popularity
1 popular
1 pm
1 player
1 picture
1 physics
1 photoshop
1 performance
1 perfectly
1 partition
1 part
1 parliament
1 or
1 onto
1 office
1 offers
1 offering
1 ntfs
1 nrg
1 notebooks
1 not
1 non
1 next
1 network
1 n
1 mod
1 million
1 might
1 mdf
1 mcgee
1 mcdonalds
1 marketplace
1 manufacturers
1 makes
1 macbook
1 mac
1 looking
1 links
1 lifehacker
1 life
1 less
1 just
1 issue
1 iso
1 introducing
1 internet
1 interface
1 instlux
1 installer
1 installation
1 insane
1 inaccurate
1 impressed
1 immediately
1 images
1 image
1 if
1 i
1 hungry
1 howto
1 house
1 hours
1 hot
1 holy
1 hippo
1 heron
1 hell
1 hardy
1 happen
1 guy
1 gui
1 growing
1 great
1 gnu
1 gnome
1 glass
1 girl
1 getting
1 gets
1 genuine
1 fusion
1 french
1 forces
1 followup
1 fixed
1 first
1 firefox
1 finally
1 few
1 father
1 faster
1 fantastic
1 extended
1 explains
1 explained
1 expensive
1 expect
1 existing
1 excellent
1 exactly
1 everything
1 everyone
1 engine
1 embargo
1 eft
1 easyubuntu
1 easy
1 easier
1 dvddecrypter
1 dvd
1 dualview
1 drops
1 drivers
1 download
1 door
1 doesn
1 does
1 do
1 disturbing
1 distributing
1 dismissed
1 diggers
1 demo
1 debian
1 customs
1 customization
1 cst
1 cs
1 cracking
1 could
1 converts
1 controls
1 confirmed
1 conf
1 computers
1 complete
1 comparison
1 community
1 commercial
1 coming
1 com
1 colors
1 click
1 cleartext
1 cleaning
1 circle
1 choose
1 card
1 canonical
1 building
1 build
1 bug
1 booting
1 black
1 bittorrent
1 billboard
1 better
1 been
1 beautiful
1 basics
1 badger
1 awesome
1 award
1 available
1 at
1 artwork
1 arrives
1 arrived
1 april
1 apps
1 any
1 an
1 american
1 amd
1 amazing
1 alumni
1 after
1 advantages
1 administrator

No surprises here, but it may be helpful when you go to write your next Digg headline.

Until next time

-LightningCrash

Posted in digg, headlines, ubuntu | No Comments »

10 ways Linux can breath life into your old PCs

September 7th, 2007

Yesterday, I was trying to figure out what to do with a spare Athlon XP 1600+ box that I have. I wrote down some of my ideas and threw in some others I’ve used in the past. If you’re looking for ways to reuse that old PC, just peruse this list.

MythTV:

If you haven’t at least heard about MythTV, you’re missing out. For the uninitiated, you should probably try out Knoppmyth. You can spec out hardware a few ways with this, but for run of the mill SDTV, you can get by with older hardware via the use of hardware encoding/decoding. A Hauppauge WinTV PVR-350 can handle the encode and decode operations just fine, even on slow hardware. Look at the EPIA C3 boxes for proof. a 1GHz C3 seems to be about the floating point equivalent of a Pentium III 500. You just need enough CPU power to write to/from the disk, and you’re set. A Hauppauge PVR-350 and a 500GB SATA drive should set you back about $250, and then you’re on your way to your own home-brew DVR!

Firewall:

You can use just about any computer you want for a Linux-based firewall. I use an old Pentium II 233 with 128MB of RAM and a 4.3GB hard drive. It works great. You’ll need two network cards in the unit, but those are easy to come by. For a software selection, I highly recommend IPCop. Before I set up my IPCop router, I handily froze 4 variants of consumer grade Cable/DSL routers. I set up the IPCop router at home and I have been trouble free ever since.

Photo Frame:

Ok, so this may not be the most electric-bill-friendly use of older hardware, but it works. Install any version of Linux that will run on the box, load up your pictures in a directory, and point your screensaver to that directory. I have a Dell GX110 connected to a 17″ LCD just for this purpose and it never fails to start conversations (usually due to the crazy photos I’ve taken throughout the years.) Set up a Samba share and let your spouse/roommates drag some photos over, too. It can also serve double duty with some other tasks in this list.

CNC Controller:

The only real requirement for this is that your computer have 192MB of RAM in it. That’s the minimum requirement to install Xubuntu. The folks at LinuxCNC.org have given the world a great little CNC package for Linux. You need not be limited there, you can do other sorts of Linux-powered work with an old PC. This is a prime example. He’s using DOS to run his BASIC programs, but there are plenty of BASIC interpreters for Linux, too!

Classic Game Console:

You can run Linux and ZSNES on just about anything, but you’ll probably want something with at least USB ports on it. Pick up a couple of cheap USB game controllers, grab some NES ROMs, fire up ZSNES and you’ll be playing Street Fighter 2 in no time! Not to mention all of the other emulators you can find. The MAME project will let you run your favorite arcade games, as well. This doubles up well with a MythTV box

Home Server:

So you’ve been eyeballing Windows Home Server for a while and want one of those fancy HP boxes with the 4 hard drives? Save yourself the trouble. You can build a Linux box that will do that and more, including BitTorrent downloads, FTP, NFS, Windows Shares, print serving, iSCSI, whatever you want. A Linux home server is really a how-to in itself, and I think bit-tech.net did a fine job of explaining it, so I’ll just leave it to them.

Kitchen Computer:

If you’re planning on actually browsing the web with this computer, you will probably want at least a 1GHz processor, just to preserve your sanity. However, a computer in your kitchen can really be handy whenever you’re cooking. You can look up recipes, or just kill time while you’re waiting for the food to finish cooking. Aged laptops work well for this purpose as you can keep more of your precious counter real-estate. Xubuntu, Ubuntu or Fedora Core would be fine for these.

Mp3 JukeBox:

If you’re a party kind of person, this would be perfect for you. Have a computer where your party crowd could pick out and queue up the music that they want to hear from your personal collection.
LinuxDevices had a great article on setting up a Music Server, go have a look here.

Webcam Feed:

Any computer with a USB port and a network card could qualify for this one. Tired of your neighbor relieving himself in your lawn? Well, put that computer next to your window and follow this guide.

Asterisk Home PBX:

Admittedly, this isn’t for the faint of heart. You have to be ready to tinker for hours and hours and hours to want to do this. Still, there’s no easier way to get an Asterisk PBX up and running than with Trixbox. You can go all VoIP, you can go hybrid VoIP/Telco, or even all Telco. Asterisk is very flexible and has many very cool features for the tinkerer at heart. Just don’t forget to take your blood pressure medicine.

Oh, and I still haven’t decided what to use the old PC for. Then again, there’s always the option of tax-deductable donation to a charity!

Posted in cnc, firewall, linux, mame, mythtv, webcam | 2 Comments »

Linux and the most-wanted Windows applications, pt1

September 4th, 2007

Earlier this week I asked on my local LAN party’s forums, “Windows users: What would it take for you to make the jump to Linux?” I got a lot of good commentary and many well thought-out answers, you can read it here.

But there’s a problem. Nobody really asks these questions on a larger scale. I set out on Google to find a list of the top requested Windows applications for Linux. Surprisingly, nobody has really asked this question in the past. That is, except for Novell. In 2006, Novell hosted a survey asking what Windows applications Linux users wanted. You can read the published results at Linux.com here.

The list isn’t all too surprising, most of the big-ticket applications are listed:

QuickBooks
AutoCAD
Photoshop
iTunes
Dreamweaver
Visio
Lotus Notes
Quicken
Macromedia Studio
Act!

Nothing unexpected here, although you can tell this survey ended up with more business respondents than home users. Although with iTunes at number 4, you can tell that the home users still made a big showing.

So, where do these applications stand right now in Linux? Do they work via WINE? Are there any plans for a Linux port? I want to know these things. First, I want to focus on the applications that aren’t typical business/profession oriented software.
Which, arguably, only make up 3 items:

Photoshop
iTunes
Quicken

These are important pieces of software for many people. I don’t know why more focus isn’t put onto 100% support for these products, but it seems to fall by the wayside. A number of editors and writers come up with these catchy headlines for Linux as a whole, like “Is 2007 the year of the Linux desktop?” but they miss the boat. Until a user can install these applications as easy in Linux as they can in Windows, it will never be the year of the Linux desktop. These three just have to work and work well, period.

So I guess we’ll go through the list one at a time. I’ll start with Quicken.

Quicken
Is it possible to make Quicken run under Linux? The short answer is maybe. See this thread here. We’re still miles away from just popping in the CD and installing, though. This is a big hangup for would-be users who have jobs and pay taxes. Not so much of a hangup for Ed and Elaine Brown, though.
What do people do when they have 10 years of Quicken data and are faced with the temptation of Linux? They stay right where they are, in a Windows environment.

iTunes
Doesn’t work. From scouring the internet, I’ve yet to see anyone get a fully functional iTunes installation operational via WINE. While your iPod may work with a WINE install of iTunes 4.0, you still can’t buy anything from the iTunes store, and just for another kick in the pants, the iPhone requires iTunes 7, which isn’t even close to useable in WINE. It’s just not there under Linux.
Luckily, though, there is an alternative which even the most devout iTunes users end up liking if they have to: Amarok. Here‘s a post on how to switch from iTunes to Amarok.
It’s little consolation. If you have an iPhone, you’re going to end up booting OS X or Windows anyway.

Photoshop
From my research thus far, it looks like none of the Photoshop CS releases work properly in WINE right now. It seems that Photoshop 7 works rather well, which would be fine if you’re content with the best that 2002 has to offer. It seems that Photoshop CS has a bronze support rating from the WINE apps db, which means it works with some gotchas. CS2 and CS3 appear to be right out, though.

What to do
So you wish these applications worked, and you want to know if you can do something to help?
Fortunately, you can help contribute to the process in the following ways.

Register for the WINE App Database and contribute your results in getting these applications to work.
Vote for your favorite applications at the WINE App Database
Donate to WINE (down the page and to the right) via PayPal and tell them to get these apps working ASAP.
Write Apple, Adobe, and Intuit and voice your desire for a native Linux port of these applications.

As it stands, there are only two paths for full support: Native Applications for Linux, and 100% WINE compatibility.

Part 2 of this series will cover the other 7 apps in the list. Part 3 of this series will involve me personally testing every one of these Top 10 applications that I can get my hands on, and reporting my findings.

See you on the next go-around!

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