Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
This month, rather than discuss an actual Windows feature, we’ll look at Linux equivalents to Windows applications. Please bear in mind that, although an application may be listed as KDE, it will still run in Gnome, XFCE and LXDE (and vice versa), so don’t think you’re limited by your desktop. So, let’s look at equivalents for Office (including at least a word processor and spreadsheet), Media Player, Image Viewer, Document Viewer, Photoshop, Outlook Express, Internet Explorer, and the all important Solitaire. Kubuntu Since Kubuntu is KDE based, I’ll list the KDE equivalents of the Windows applications listed above. While most distros install LibreOffice (I’ll let someone else talk about it), KDE does have its own Office suite called KOffice which is made up of: KWord (word processor), KCells (spreadsheet), and Showcase (presentations). For playing media, KDE comes with Dragon Player, but the ever faithful VLC can be installed with just a couple of clicks. KDE’s image viewer is called Gwenview. While I wouldn’t recommend it for sorting your family photos (digiKam is best for that), it’s fine for quickly viewing and rotating images. Okular is the KDE document viewer and will display all your files including PDFs. While there is GIMP to replace Photoshop, KDE does come with a nice drawing application called Krita - which has recently undergone a complete revamp and is trying to emulate real-world media. We artists can but hope! Your emails can be sent/received by Kmail, recently updated to version two and part of the KDE Kontact suite of apps. Kmail even looks similar (in layout) to Outlook. While KDE’s file manager (Dolphin) can, technically speaking, be used as a browser, KDE comes with Rekonq. It’s OK as a quick/temporary browser, but I’d recommend installing Chrome if you’re serious about your browsing. Fear not office workers - you are also looked after with KPatience. You can put that pack of playing cards away.
Ce mois-ci, au lieu de parler d'une fonction précise de Windows, nous allons regarder des équivalents Linux d'applications Windows. Souvenez-vous que, bien qu'une application soit censée être pour KDE, il fonctionnera néanmoins dans Gnome, XFCE et LXDE (et vice versa), ce qui veut dire qu'il ne faut pas se sentir limité par son bureau. Bon, regardons quelques équivalents d'Office (qui comprennent au moins un traitement de texte et un tableur), du Lecteur de Média, de la Visionneuse de photos, de la Visionneuse de documents, de Photoshop, d'Outlook Express, d'Internet Explorer et du très important Solitaire.
Kubuntu
Puisque Kubuntu est basé sur KDE, je vais donner les équivalents KDE des applications Windows listées ci-dessus.
La plupart des distrib. installent LibreOffice par défaut (je laisse à quelqu'un d'autre le soin d'en parler), mais KDE a sa propre suite Office qui s'appelle KOffice et qui comprend : KWord (traitement de texte), KCells (tableur) et Showcase (présentations). KDE intègre Dragon Player pour la lecture des média, mais vous pouvez installer le fidèle VLC en juste un ou deux clics. La visionneuse d'images de kDE s'appelle Gwenview. Je ne le recommanderais pas pour trier vos photos de famille (digiKam est le mieux pour cela), cependant, c'est très bien si vous ne voulez que voir et faire pivoter une image en vitesse. Okular est la visionneuse de documents de KDE et affichera tous vos fichiers, y compris les PDF. Bien sûr, GIMP remplace Photoshop, mais, il est vrai, KDE est livré avec une application de dessin sympa qui s'appelle Krita ; elle vient d'être complètement refaite et essaie maintenant d'émuler les média du monde réel. Il ne nous reste plus, à nous les artistes, qu'à espérer ! Pour envoyer/recevoir des courriels, vous pouvez utiliser Kmail, qui est passé en version deux récemment et qui fait partie de la suite d'applis KDE Kontact. La mise en page de Kmail est même similaire de celle d'Outlook. Alors que le gestionnaire de fichier de KDE (Dolphin) peut techniquement servir de navigateur, KDE inclut Rekonq. C'est suffisant comme navigateur rapide/temporaire, mais je recommanderais l'installation de Chrome si surfer sur le Web vous tient vraiment à cœur.
Employés de bureau, ne vous inquiétez pas - ils ont pensé à vous avec KPatience. Vous pouvez ranger vos cartes à jouer.
Gnome-shell/Unity
In Gnome, the standard web browser is Mozilla Firefox. Not a bad choice, I might add. Especially with the use of extensions, you can give the program a lot of functionality. My favorite browser however is Google Chrome, also extendable with extensions.
The standard e-mail client in Gnome is Evolution, adored by many, hated by others. What can I say, you can’t argue about taste. Evolution is a good email program - with everything an email program should have, including a calendar function. When you use an Outlook Exchange server at work, you can install an extra option in Evolution so the program can very easily make contact with that server, thus making it possible to read your company emails at home. It’s called Evolution Exchange, and it works with Outlook Web Access - so it is important the email server has that enabled.
For listening to music and/or watching movies, you can choose either Rhythmbox or Banshee. Not typical in Gnome, but very popular, is VLC - which plays almost everything audio/video.
The office program for Gnome is LibreOffice. In a very short time it has become a very good and popular program. It contains all necessary parts: word processor (Write), Spreadsheet (Calc), drawing program (Draw), presentation creator/viewer (Impress). One of the nice things in the Linux office programs is the export-to-PDF option. No hassle of installing a pdf printer, or buying an expensive option in MS Office; no, it’s just there and delivers high quality PDF files from your documents.
Evince is the standard Gnome PDF viewer. What can I say? It’s a program made for the job and it does that job very well. For viewing pictures, use F-Spot. It’s small, it’s simple, but it does what it is supposed to do: show pictures.
The photo-editing software for Linux is, of course, GIMP. No doubt about it. It’s an extensive program which matches Photoshop (almost). Many things Photoshop can do, GIMP can do as well, although sometimes with a different name for the function.
XFCE
Rather than shipping with a full office suite, Xubuntu simply provides Gnome Office’s AbiWord for word processing and Gnumeric for spreadsheets. Both of these applications have familiar interfaces for word processing and spreadsheets, and offer support for the popular document formats.
The media player that comes with Xubuntu is Parole, which offers the basic requirements of a media player for playback - as well as streaming and DVD support when you have the corresponding libraries installed. In addition to this media player, gmusicbrowser is also included for indexing and playback of your music collection.
The default image viewer is gThumb, which has the benefit of not only showing you a single image when you load it up, but also showing you thumbnails of other images in the same directory, giving you a more comprehensive “image browser” experience.
Just like Gnome, Xubuntu comes with GIMP for image manipulation, and Evince for viewing of PDF files. Firefox and Thunderbird are the web browser and email client of choice for Xubuntu. Finally, it pulls from Gnome’s suite of games to offer Aisleriot Solitaire, along with FreeCell, Mahjongg, Mines, and Sudoku.
LXDE
As already mentioned above, most Linux distributions support applications regardless of the desktop environment (e.g. KDE, Gnome, LXDE, etc.) for which it was specifically written. Lubuntu is no exception, and it will happily run such behemoths as LibreOffice, OpenOffice, GIMP, or Digikam, but since the larger, more “heavyweight” applications are discussed in the context of the distributions that are deliberately designed for newer and more powerful hardware (e.g. KDE, Gnome, Unity), this section will focus on the “lightweight” applications that correlate with older or less powerful hardware that is targeted by Lubuntu.
The default word processor in Lubuntu is AbiWord. It is a lightweight and very fast application! It is easy to use and surprisingly capable, providing 80% of what most people will want/need in a word processor - including styles, backgrounds, embedded images, hyperlinks, tables, and collaboration tools, to name just a few. The default spreadsheet application is Gnumeric, which is a marvel of conservation and functionality. Most users would not know that they were using a super-lightweight application because so much functionality is provided in Gnumeric; so much so that it’s not even worth trying to enumerate the features. In fact, many people who are currently using the “big boys” (Calc, MS Excel) might find they prefer the simple, functional, and blazingly fast performance of Gnumeric for most if not all of their work. And yes, both AbiWord and Gnumeric can save to a wide range of file formats for data porting, including (of course) MS file formats, ODF, CSV, and LaTeX.
The default media players installed with Lubuntu are Audacious (for audio) and Gnome Player (audio/video). Don’t be fooled by the extraordinarily simple interfaces of each of these applications; they are both very powerful and very good at what they do! Audacious is a fantastic audio player capable of playing a wide range of audio file types, CDs, and URLs. It provides versatile playlists, a surprising number of audio effects, and an audio equalizer. Gnome Player is a “full” media player capable of playing pretty much everything Audacious can play, plus DVDs, VCDs, and TV (analog and digital). The default web browser in Lubuntu is Chromium, the open-source version of Google’s Chrome web browser. (Surprise! Google Chrome is NOT open-source and tracks every move you make; Chromium doesn’t! [In case you wanted to know.]) Sylpheed is the local eMail client and Osmo is a very nifty personal organizer featuring notes, tasks, and a contacts database, all with some surprising (and useful) features.
You’ll find Pidgin as your IM client and xChat as your IRC client. For viewing images you have GPicView; a more than capable image viewer designed specifically for LXDE. Although there is no document viewer installed by default, Evince and other viewing apps are readily available in the repositories.
“Lightweight” and “graphics editor” seem to be an oxymoron when used together, but that’s exactly what you get with mtPaint. This program is certainly not in the same league as GIMP and Adobe Photoshop, but, as with the other lightweight applications you’ll find by default in Lubuntu, it will surprise you! It has robust color, brush, and shape palettes, supports channels, overlays, layers, and masks, and has many visual effects, drawing tools and view.
And yes, Lubuntu comes with games; the default selection being Ace of Penguins, which is a set of solitaire games including Canfield, Freecell, Golf, Mastermind, Merlin, Minesweeper, Pegged, Solitaire, Spider, Taipei (with a level editor), and Thornq. And of course, there are lots more games of all kinds in the repositories, which are two mouse-clicks away from the desktop.
Next month we’ll talk about sharing files and/or folders through a network.