Good Open Source Alternative for Paid Software, that are Free.

[solweb]

Not actually sure what Pastel has to do with my original post about Open Source - but if you want there is a South African Open Source Accounting package that has been around for some time.

http://www.turbocash.net/

[irneb]

Free, could be divided into 3 categories:

1. The Bad: stuff like addware. These are free programs but come with baggage where they (at best) display adds while using the program. These days the most common examples are free apps for Android / iPhones. But you do get similar on computers too, e.g. Skype / Kindle / the entire Google suite (if free) / Facebook / etc.
   1. The worse: malware, which range from spyware (stealing information about you) all the way through to actual virusses. IMO Google falls just inside the spyware category as they snoop on your emails / documents / searches and then sell this info on to companies who then bombard you with designed spam.
   
   
2. The reasonable "Freeware" / "Shareware" - these are usually cut-down / time-limited versions of a proprietary program. It's usually meant as a try-and-test advert to entice the user to buy the full program. Many anti-virusses go this route (e.g. AVG / Avast!). Others include MediaMonkey, XnView, Opera, Winamp, etc. Some of these stray into the adware area though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_freeware
3. The better: Open Source. These include stuff like nearly all Linuxes / BSD / FireFox / Open Office / ThunderBird / etc. The main difference of this from the above 2 is that to fall under this category their source code must be freely available to anyone. Thus you generally find that these tend to not be ad-/malware since everyone can look at what's actually going on and knowledgable programmers would then quickly raise a red-flag on such immoral code. Actually Open Source does not definitively mean free, some programs are sold for mainly their support (e.g. RedHat / StarOffice). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source#Lists

Re: Open Office / Libre Office ... they're basically the same thing. LO was created when Oracle bought out Sun microsystems (the creators of Star Office, which had a spinnoff open source project called Open Office - much like Linux Fedora is the free "testing" version of Linux RedHat). It became unclear what Oracle would do to this code as they've started making licensing changes to some other "open source" projects like MySQL (which is arguably the most used database on the internet).

So after a lot of Sun employees were retrenched due to the Oracle takeover, some started up the Libre project. As far as I can tell, LO is basically just adding some extra plugins by default and rearranging the menu/toolbars a bit. Actually because of this I prefer LO, since most of those addons are things I'd have installed into OOo myself.

As for Open Source in general: There's good and bad as per everything else. In theory OS can provide for much better programs than proprietary programs can. The theory goes that because all the source is open to everyone to view / edit, bugs can be found much more easily, other already written code can be used and thus speed up the production process, and since OS means all programmers throughout the world could contribute the possible bandwidth of code writing is always going to be a lot more than any single company (even a behemouth like MS).

The downsides of this:

• Open Source is not foremost meant as a "free" alternative. It's meant as a collaborative effort to produce better programs. You do get users who simply use it for free (as most do), but they contribute very little to the Open Source idea. And by contributing I don't just mean donations / bounties, but even testing betas and / or filing bug reports could help the project. Best would be if you could code yourself and contribute some extra functionality / bug fix, but obviously not all of us can do such.
• Due to the format of open source, it's supposed to be community driven. But more often than not a democratic system doesn't prevail as it becomes more of a burocratic committee driven project. This tends to slow down the innovation inside the project drastically (e.g. redesign of Open Office / Libre Office's user interface has been in the planning stage for several years now with very little actually being accomplished).
• Connotations of "free" in the general public equates to "near-useless", so most never even consider it. Thus open source tends to have a difficult time in becoming a mainstream program. Perhaps the most effective example is FireFox. The least IMO is Gimp - most CG artists "feel" that PhotoShop is simply a much better program (even though it costs around R7000 to R12000), but near to 99% of all of them never use the features which are available in PS but not in Gimp.
• For Open Source to succeed it needs a huge user base to engender interest from contributing programmers to further the program. Also a huge user base causes bugs to be found much more quickly and feature requests to be more prevalent - thus making th program better quicker.

Thus I've found that as a rule of thumb, programs which cater for a great many users (such as operating systems, office suites, web browsers, and to a lesser extent email clients) tend to have Open Source alternatives at least comparable to their proprietary counterparts. In some cases the "free" open source version is actually better than the proprietary one (IMO like Libre Office vs MS Office, and Thunderbird vs Outlook). But where the user base is limited the programs available are less than stellar (e.g. LibreCAD vs AutoCAD).

[Upstairs]

I started using ubuntu and libre office. I have no interest to move back to Microsoft. Just have to figure out how to make a Vodacom dongle work in linux...

[Upstairs]

Have a look at this if you are a linux user and using pastel. I have no clue about accounting but perhaps this could be a solution. https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ub...il/010299.html

[Upstairs]

For those of you who struggle with a 3G dongle on linux this may help. http://digitalgotcha.blogspot.com/20...wei-k3770.html

[irneb]

Just have to figure out how to make a Vodacom dongle work in linux...

I've actually got some strange experience with internet connections: A few years ago (around 5 or 6) I was using my Nokia E65 as my internet connection. On windows I had to install the drivers, on Ubuntu it didn't need any drivers - plugged it in and Ubuntu recognized an internet connect device, no settings whatsoever (just click the connect message and it was done).

Now with an Android phone it's not working on either Windows/Linux through the USB cable. Have to install drivers in both cases. Fortunately though the Android does come with a Wi-Fi-HotSpot, but you need to plug it into charge otherwise the battery dies within an hour while the WiFi is running.

Do you know the true make/model of that Vodacom Dongle? It's usually some Hauwei device. I know Hauwei E220 works on Debian with some tweaks. Basically it seems you have to tell Linux not to tread it as a mass storage device, then it starts to recognise it as a communications device instead.

If your dongle is the new K4305, then from the original branders (VodaFone) the manual actually lists Ubuntu as one of the supported OS's: http://www.business.vodafone.com/sit...stick_2row.jsp

[chris_kzn]

Just wanted to mention, a good 3D free application for all you interior decorators and construction developers is a package called sketchup which is available at http://www.sketchup.com/intl/en/download/index.html

Even a non-constructional person like myself can use it and they have training videos available for download in order to get you started.

With regards to the 3G modem problem, I am experiencing the same on Debian but I know it is because Debian is seeing my modem as a USB-Storage device rather than as a COM's device. That is why I prefer Slackware - lol. I know this problem existed in Windows Vista as well and you had to remove and uninstall the picked up device before it would configure it as a modem. Was quite a painful experience.

[irneb]

With regards to the 3G modem problem, I am experiencing the same on Debian but I know it is because Debian is seeing my modem as a USB-Storage device rather than as a COM's device. That is why I prefer Slackware - lol. I know this problem existed in Windows Vista as well and you had to remove and uninstall the picked up device before it would configure it as a modem. Was quite a painful experience.

Yes, the link in my previous post as well as that in Upstairs's post show how to disengage the storage device so the comms device can be used.
As for SketchUp, I know of it, used it before - in some respects I find it easier to model in it than most other 3D creation programs (though these days I'm using Revit at work - around R45k per license!!!! ). It used to be something which Google had bought from another company. They've since sold it. There's a free version with decent capabilities, but the paid-for version does provide more. Unfortunately though, it's only available on Windows. For those looking for a decent CAD for free, try something like nanoCAD - unfortunately also only on Windows. The only CAD I know which is even approaching decent on Linux is BricsCAD, though it's not free (a lot cheaper than AutoCAD around 1/10th the price, and about the same capabilities as a 2008 version of ACad, uses the same file format as a 2013 version).