Unutterably Silly So what are you doing RIGHT NOW?

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

Zelda, you might want to give wine (or crossover) a try.

wine is a linux version which can emulate pc, is that right ?

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

oh, no worries, all adobe's products are available for mac. but... you have to drop a LOT of dosh on them, after already shelling out for very pricey hardware.

i would be very happy to have a mac, but they're far too expensive for me, especially since i would also have to buy the adobe suite for mac, and that costs a FORTUNE.

Well, a lot of people say they are really expensive... but if you compare them to truly equivalent commodity machines like Dell and HP they are pretty similar.

For example, check out this article that compares the monitor on the new 27inch iMac to a comparable Dell monitor only. The Dell monitor is about the same prices as the whole iMac.

http://discuss.gdgt.com/apple/imac/i...f-the-27-iMac/

Yes, Apple doesn't do low end.

The funny thing on the other side is while the Mac hardware is a bit more I have found that most Mac software is very affordable and usually much better than Windows counterparts. For example, OmniGraffle which is $99 for the standard version and $199 for pro blows away Visio which is like $600 for the pro version and I think $400 for standard. There is also software for the Mac that has no comparable for Windows or the Windows version is a cheap copy... like TextExpander for one.

Of course, if you are home building you can blow it away in price. Of course, if you are building it yourself you can by Hackintosh friendly parts.

BOb

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

wine is a linux version which can emulate pc, is that right ?

Wine is short for "Windows Emulator" and it runs on top of Linux. I'm not sure something like Photoshop or Illustrator will run on it. Of course, I could be wrong.

BOb

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by phenomshel

You can ask, but if you laugh at me, I'm going to smack you. The programs were Paint Shop Pro and Incredimail. At the time, (2006/2007?) I was doing a lot of graphics and email stationery creating. And don't even whisper about GIMP to me... it's about as far from PSP as you can get. (I don't like Photoshop either...).

If I recall correctly, there's a repackage of the Gimp intended to make it look and act more like Photoshop. I looked at Paint Shop Pro a long time ago. What I use under Windows these days is Paint.NET, an open source application based on the .NET 2.0 framework, intended to replace the standard MS Paint application. It's not Photoshop, but I seldom need full Photoshop for what I do. (I do have an older version installed. The last time I ran it was to open an enormous graphics file nothing else would touch -- NASA imagery from the Hubble telescope.). If interested, see http://getpaint.net

And for some reason Linux software devs have this unreasonable prejudice against stationery and full HTML support in email programs.... I LOVED Kmail, but not enough HTML support. You *can* technically make stationery for Thunderbird, but by the time you do, you might as well have created a complete webpage, and I'm spoiled. I like my handy dandy Letter Creator program that goes with Incredimail.

No offense, but Linux devs aren't the only ones who despise that stuff. I go through some pains to make my email clients emit plain text email, and have sometimes filtered HTML and Rich Text mail. You might think it looks good, but for a lot of folks it's a pain to deal with. (I know people who read email through Unix shell acounts, and must download the mail and run a seperate program to read the HTML stuff because Unix command line email clients are plain text only.)

If you can't express yourself in plain text, fancy HTML formatting won't help you. If you can express yourself in plain text, the fancy HTML stuff is largely unnecessary.

(It's possible I'm unfair, but too much of what I've seen created in Incredimail or the like comes from folks who can't spell or write coherent English sentences, and compound that by having no design sense, so their messages don't even look good.)

I figure my needs are esoteric enough that it shouldn't discourage anyone else from trying/learning Linux; I just never did find/get used to alternatives to those two programs.

There are alternatives to the Gimp. I run one called MTPaint here under Puppy Linux. Puppy is intended for older hardware, and a premium is placed on small and efficient apps.

I haven't seen a Linux alternative to Incredimail, and Ghu willing, I won't see one.
______
Dennis

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

If I recall correctly, there's a repackage of the Gimp intended to make it look and act more like Photoshop. I looked at Paint Shop Pro a long time ago. What I use under Windows these days is Paint.NET, an open source application based on the .NET 2.0 framework, intended to replace the standard MS Paint application. It's not Photoshop, but I seldom need full Photoshop for what I do. (I do have an older version installed. The last time I ran it was to open an enormous graphics file nothing else would touch -- NASA imagery from the Hubble telescope.). If interested, see http://getpaint.net

Do you know if paint.net runs on Mono? I'm thinking since is it graphics intensive the answer if probably no.

BOb

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

*stomps off with ALL of the munchies and alcoholic beverages*

cut it out 'shel.... I got ALL of them!

You didn't get my hip flask of single malt...

______
Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Do you know if paint.net runs on Mono? I'm thinking since is it graphics intensive the answer if probably no.

BOb

The creator of Mono was involved in an effort to get Paint.NET working on Mono. It hasn't been updated in a while, but you can find it here:
http://code.google.com/p/paint-mono/

There's a gzipped tar source code archive available.
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Dennis

[EowynCarter]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Wine is short for "Windows Emulator" and it runs on top of Linux. I'm not sure something like Photoshop or Illustrator will run on it. Of course, I could be wrong.

BOb

Not a emulator. It add sone windows library, and convert windows system calls into unix system calls.
A version of crossover for mac exists too.
Best way to know how well (or bad) a program runs with wine : http://appdb.winehq.org/

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

wine is a linux version which can emulate pc, is that right ?

Wine is a Windows emulation layer that runs on various flavors of Linux, BSD, and Solaris. It's intended to let you run Windows programs under those OSes.

WineHQ is here: http://www.winehq.org/

A list of applications supported at various levels by Wine is here: http://appdb.winehq.org/

A lot of what Wine is used for is running Windows games, so they predominate the lists...
______
Dennis

[ShortNCuddlyAm]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

The funny thing on the other side is while the Mac hardware is a bit more I have found that most Mac software is very affordable and usually much better than Windows counterparts.

This was something that surprised me, too (excluding the Adobe stuff and the MS stuff that runs on Windows & OSX)

For example, OmniGraffle which is $99 for the standard version and $199 for pro blows away Visio which is like $600 for the pro version and I think $400 for standard.

I still haven't decided if I do enough flowcharts and the like to shell out for OmniGraffle. I've played with the trial version, and it is far, far nicer than Visio. And the Pro version exports to a format that Visio can import, too.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by devilsadvocate

I'll be honest: For the first 3 months that I ran Linux full-time (Fedora 4), I tried evangelizing. Didn't work. ONE person (besides my wife) tried it and "got it"; everyone else I knew personally still expected their computer to be smarter than they are.

Er, how many needed their computer to be smarter than they were to function?
______
Dennis

[devilsadvocate]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

oh, no worries, all adobe's products are available for mac. but... you have to drop a LOT of dosh on them, after already shelling out for very pricey hardware.

i would be very happy to have a mac, but they're far too expensive for me, especially since i would also have to buy the adobe suite for mac, and that costs a FORTUNE. plus it's possible (although i haven't checked) that there is some software i use which doesn't have a mac equivalent, although now i imagine that's much less likely. i always have custom-built pcs, and i can switch out single components as necessary so i almost never buy a whole new machine at once. i did last year and it cost me about 600€, for a really good machine, fast proc, lots of ram, huge hd... for an equivalent from mac i would have had to spend at least twice that, or more.

If you have big honkin' hardware, virtualization is a good option (lots of RAM = bonus). You basically have two real-world choices: VMware, which (at least for the superior workstation variant) costs money; and VirtualBox, which is open-source and/or freebies. From personal experience both handle Windows 7 just fine; VMware even runs the Aero eyecandy on 7/Vista now. I've been meaning to do a comparison of these on my site http://windowsanonymous.org but VBox is updated farily often, and if it's at a disadvantage this week it probably won't be next week. To sum up,

VMware: Costs money, a little more advanced
VirtualBox: Free, good for most purposes.

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

macs are fairly standard for designers, but i'm a webdesigner, so i write code as well. in webdesign i'd say it's a more even split, there are lots of webdesigners who work on pcs, if only for easier compability with their developpers, who are almost all on pcs.

Myth-busting time: Mac innards are commodity pieces; you can buy every internal part of a Mac at a computer supply place. There's no magic involved. It's all Intel/NVidia now.

[devilsadvocate]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Wine is short for "Windows Emulator" and it runs on top of Linux. I'm not sure something like Photoshop or Illustrator will run on it. Of course, I could be wrong.

BOb

WINE = "WINE Is Not an Emulator"

[Crusader]

Watching the Carl Sagan day live stream.

[phenomshel]

No offense, but Linux devs aren't the only ones who despise that stuff. I go through some pains to make my email clients emit plain text email, and have sometimes filtered HTML and Rich Text mail. You might think it looks good, but for a lot of folks it's a pain to deal with. (I know people who read email through Unix shell acounts, and must download the mail and run a seperate program to read the HTML stuff because Unix command line email clients are plain text only.)

If you can't express yourself in plain text, fancy HTML formatting won't help you. If you can express yourself in plain text, the fancy HTML stuff is largely unnecessary.

(It's possible I'm unfair, but too much of what I've seen created in Incredimail or the like comes from folks who can't spell or write coherent English sentences, and compound that by having no design sense, so their messages don't even look good.)

Yep, heard this argument before. I understand that lots of people feel this way, but the opposite is also true. I don't "inflict" stats or images on people who wouldn't appreciate them, or use them in business correspondence. However, there are entire groups dedicated to making/sharing stats/images/sounds/techniques (and I'm sure they're 99.9% made up of females, too ), and they/we enjoy making the images, putting them together and sharing them. I'm not trying to convince anyone that it's not a nuisance to get an email that takes 20 minutes to download and when it does, blasts your ears with a tinny sounding .wav; but I wanted the freedom to make and share my creations with those who also appreciated them. Some are badly done, yes. And some of the people doing them have no design sense or grammar/spelling skills. But when done right (and I'm picky), some of them can be very tasteful and nice, when used in the proper environment.

(and by the way, what you said in your post is why I told Bob if he laughed at me, I'd smack him. I've had this discussion ad nauseum and didn't really want to have to go through the whole "justify my hobby to someone who wouldn't appreciate it" again. )