Five Linux Equivalents of Windows-only Apps

By , Published July 2, 2010

Windows converts will find that many of their favourite applications are already available on Linux; Skype, Firefox, Google Chrome, VLC, etc but there are many Windows staples that don’t have Linux ports. The applications listed below make perfect drop-in replacements.

Windows Movie Maker ~ OpenShot

Whilst Ubuntu ships with a video editor, PiTiVi, it lacks fancy-pants effects & transitions – something that windows converts will have found staple in Microsoft’s Windows Movie Maker.

Switch to OpenShot if you love creating short good looking videos as it comes with well over 60 different effects and transitions, has an easy title creator, a sane export wizard to save your movies when done & best of all it is very, very easy to use.

I don’t call it the ‘iMovie of Linux’ for no reason!

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Windows Snipping Tool ~ Shutter

Windows Vista introduced an easy-to-use screen capture ˜Snipping tool‘ that made taking screengrabs of whatever you want easy as pie. Shutter provides all of the great features that Snipping does and then some!

Instead of pasting your screengrab into Paint to add effects you can edit it directly in Shutter – tons of cool effects can be applied and you can also add arrows, text, freehand drawing, shapes, callouts, icons & even inserting other screengrabs or images!

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Microsoft Paint  ~ GNOME Paint

Whilst Ubuntu used to ship with popular image editing programme ‘The GIMP’ default installs of late lacks any basic image editing app at all (not counting photo enhancement via F-Spot). For a simple Microsoft Pain clone look no further than GNOME Paint. It has every tool, features and design quirk that the actual MS Paint has – but it’s native Linux! Hooray!

Download links are below. Download, save and double-click to install.

download1sdownloads

CCleaner ~ Ubuntu Tweak

CCleaner is one of the must have apps for Windows – a capable, through and user-friendly system cleaner. Sadly it doesn’t have a Linux port – but what is similar?

In a recent poll on ‘the best System Cleaner for Ubuntu’ the titular app came out on top with an impressive 52% of votes. It’s easy to see why as it provides an extensive range of cleaning and package management options, allowing you to easily flush out the following:

  • Downloaded packages no longer needed (installed packages)
  • Sweep up the update cache (E.G. .debs of all the updates recently installed)
  • Old configuration files for applications since removed
  • PPA Purge (Remove all packages installed from specific PPAs)
  • Old kernels

It works flawlessly too- click, clean, done!

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Bleachbit is perhaps the most comparable alternative to CCleaner but the amount of options provided is perhaps too extensive for casual users to feel comfortable with.

Windows Live Writer ~ Blogilo

I'll get the caveat out of the way first: Blogilo is neither as easy to use as Windows Live Writer or as capable. That said it’s easily the best desktop-bound blog editing solution. It supports Blogger, MetaWebLog, MoveableType & WordPress with the latter receiving the most attention feature wise.

You can edit in HTML or WYSIWYG, you can add pictures, links, preview your posts in your blogs’ style, schedule posts, fetch recent blog entries, it boasts a spell checker, tag support and much more.

It’s worth a try if you’ve looking for an actively developed blog editor.

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Related posts:

  1. Ubuntu applications that run on Windows
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  • http://blastfromthepast.se/ Tommy Brunn

    I think it’s funny how in windows pressing Print Screen doesn’t actually invoke the snipping tool, so to use it you have to go into the menu, find it and launch it manually. To me that kind of defeats the purpose, since regular Print Screen requires you to go into the menu and open an image editor just to save the image.

    • Seventh Reign

      Hah. So true.

    • Anonymous

      Oh and finding stuff on that menu is horrible! The best way is to pin it to the taskbar.

  • http://maethorechannen.livejournal.com/ Scot

    “For a simple Microsoft Pain “clone” ”

    Freudian slip?

  • http://ojetivolpic1.blogspot.com/ Martín

    Two really hard ones:

    - Corel Draw: Every alternative sucks harder than the other.
    - Adobe Flash CS3: Not a single realistic alternative.

    They’re the ONLY software I would still use on Windows (not even with Wine, they’re way too heavy)

    • Sebco

      FastStone Image Viewer: this viewer is the best one I ever found. It is user friendly, quicker that any other, and doesn’t build a huge database before you can open your photos.
      This viewer (and the fact that Wine cannot make it work on Linux) prevents me from moving to Linux.
      ShotWell is nice, but there is so much to do before providing the same level of functionality :-(

      • http://twitter.com/Heimpjuh Heimen Stoffels

        Then you should definitely check out Gwenview. Has most of the features Faststone has, and doesn’t build a database either. If you install kipi-plugins, you also have some effects, resizing, web export etc. in Gwenview.

      • http://www.powells.com/blog/?author=104 mxyzptlk

        Or check out gthumb. It’s pretty quick, doesn’t need a database, and manages basic editing just fine.

      • daas88

        I’ll check that faststone, because most windows’ image viewers suck. The new integrated image viewer can’t even play animated gifs!
        It’s kind of funny that I find a windows app in an ubuntu blog^^

    • francesc

      http://sk1project.org/ intends to be a Corel Draw clone, but it is in slow (but steady) development

    • Jay

      “Corel Draw: Every alternative sucks harder than the other”
      Inkscape

  • http://twitter.com/SmackBoxPortal SmackBox.org

    Interesting article! Good work!

  • Longnt_76

    Cool…we need more equivalents :D

    • Anonymous

      We DO NOT need “equivalents”. We need some innovation, some leadership, something that turns this upside down and blogs start writing about Windows equivalents for Linux apps.

      Or desktop Linux will be the kingdom of mediocrity forever.

      I’m surprised this blog has fallen in this old trap.

      • http://scaine.myopenid.com/ Scaine

        Nah – equivalents are important. When you have 30 thousand apps to chose from and you need a job done, articles like this help you do it.

        I’d prefer if the article were more focussed though. Equivalents for blogging, for photo professionals, for video editing, etc.

        I’m just disappointed that the article recommended Blogilo and offered an apt link – I hit that to try it out and ended up starting (quickly cancelled) a 75Mb download of KDElibs, when I’d prefer to keep my Ubuntu install focussed on Gnome apps. Well, not disappointed that it was recommended, but disappointed that there no mention of KDE in its box out.

      • http://openid-provider.appspot.com/mark_c@markecurtis.com Merk

        There will never be a Linux free software app that is superior to the Windows version.
        Why?
        Because if some Super Linux App “FOO” were released, given it would be open source, it would soon be ported to Windows.

  • Doclight

    Adobe Lightroom -> nada.

    • http://olympusdigitalpen.blogspot.com/ dr. watson

      Adobe Lightroom : VirtualBox + WinXP + Adobe Lightroom :)

      I run XP inside VB on my netbook with Ubuntu 10.04. Lightroom/ PS CS3 work well under this configuration.

      • aquatix

        Or try Bibble5 Pro by Bibblelabs, it’s awesome and cross-platform

  • Wine Curmudgeon

    Bleachbit is dangerous, even if you know waht you’re doing.

    • Seventh Reign

      As is Ubuntu Tweak. I’ve lost track of how many systems UT has hosed.

  • http://twitter.com/orgulho_geek Orgulho Geek

    Blogilo looks good, but just looks. You can’t resize images without edit the number of pixels, instead of just move your mouse with button pressed at the image corners…and does’t support drag’n'drop feature to put images in the text.

    I have one virtual machine with Windows Live Writer installed just because Ubuntu does’t has any software like WLW.

    • Meronem

      ScribeFire extension, if you use Firefox or Chrome

  • Anonymous

    Shutter and OpenShot kick major ass!!!

  • Pixelmed

    i wish there was a coda-like for ubuntu :)

  • Eduardo Battaglia

    I’d say UbuntuTweak is more like TuneUp Utilities.

    • Ryan

      agreed, bleachbit is more like ccleaner in my opinion

      • daas88

        exactly.

        • ActionParsnip

          +1 for bleachbit

  • Gokulakrishna

    @d0od
    You have forgotten to make “apt:shutter” On the “Install shutter” image.

  • http://twitter.com/GlennDCitrix Glenn Dobson

    What I really need is an equivalent of Publisher that is easy to use and has good documentation/guides for learning it.

    • ActionParsnip
      • http://twitter.com/MaxFragg Maximilian Henry

        imho, publisher could be replaced by any tool, since its really one of the worst commercial layout tools, for most cases scribus should do it, even though I’m not a big fan of it, after having used inDesign :-D

  • http://www.powells.com/blog/?author=104 mxyzptlk

    Edited for the short attention span audience

    There might some other parallels that better suit people’s needs, however some caveats might also be in order.

    For movies, Pitivi was once handy, but now comes crippled with a gstreamer issue that they can’t seem to fix. It’ll basically only export vorbis/theora vids, if it renders at all, and it generally renders with a giant black border around the video. OpenShot is more functional, but its navigation isn’t nearly as intuitive as Pitivi (for instance, you can’t simply select a chunk of a project to cut out — you need to slice the two edges of what you want to cut first and then remove that chunk, which just means extra unintuitive steps).

    OpenShot does have transitions that some people might find nifty, but it can also be crashtastic when applying said effects. When rendering a project, it’d also be nice to have something that shows how long it will take — OpenShot just gives you a status bar, but nothing saying if it’ll take five minutes or five hours. It’s also not possible to manually adjust the dimensions of a project — it’s presents or nothing.

    • Anonymous

      tl;dr

      • http://www.powells.com/blog/?author=104 mxyzptlk

        too short — why post? Or do you make a habit of telling people everything you don’t read? Here — I’ll edit it for your tired eyes.

    • http://www.powells.com/blog/?author=104 mxyzptlk

      I’m not sure how Ubuntu Tweak made it on here as a CCleaner alternative, since Ubuntu Tweak has a much broader scope of features, and BleachBit is already in the repos. Ubuntu Tweak cleans out a few things, but be careful with old kernels — it will sometimes leave you with errors, and it’s not doing anything that apt can’t do. (Maybe there are no more kernel removal errors, but I just stopped using it to remove old kernels because of past problems.)

      However, BleachBit is very configurable, gives you fine-grained control over a wide variety of applications and their settings, removes all kinds of cruft, temp files, etc., and will overwrite deleted files for a secure erase. The only problem with it is the developer refuses to create a Launchpad PPA, so although there is a version in the standard Ubuntu repos, it’s a few versions behind, and you’ll need to go to his sourceforge page to get the latest ready-built .deb file. (In my case, it regularly clears out a gig or two of crap.) It comes with two versions, one for cleaning out a user’s account, and an admin one for cleaning out the system.

    • http://www.powells.com/blog/?author=104 mxyzptlk

      As for Paint, if you’re not Mono-phobic, Pinto is a new entrant into this field. It’s pretty snappy, and a bit more powerful than regular Paint applications, but isn’t the mega-tasker that the Gimp is.

    • http://www.powells.com/blog/?author=104 mxyzptlk

      But if you have Compiz installed, enable the Screenshot feature, either through the CompizConfig Settings Manager (Extras > Screenshot), or in gconf-editor, it’s under apps > compiz > plugins > screenshot > allscreens > options; set the initiate_button to Button1.

      All you need to do, then, is hold down the Command (windows) key while clicking the left mouse key, drag your mouse over what you want to get a screenshot of, release the keys, and the shot just appears as a .png on your desktop. It doesn’t get any simpler. You can even set the directory for our screenshots in the CompizConfig Settings Manager or in gconf-editor if you don’t want to save to the desktop.

    • http://www.powells.com/blog/?author=104 mxyzptlk

      Shutter is fine for screenshots, but is probably more appropriate if you’re a screenshot power user. Gnome’s native screenshot tool is find for the occasional use, and can be called up with the PrtSc button, or use Alt+PrtSc to get just a current window.

    • http://www.powells.com/blog/?author=104 mxyzptlk

      If you’re looking for some simple video editing that will render to a variety of formats, or at least render reliably, check out Avidemux, Handbrake, Kino, or even Kdenlive. Personally, for quick, simple editing, I have a lot of luck with Avidemux, and I’ve nearly given up on Pitivi, becoming quite disappointed after a couple years of regular use. Avidemux has loads of configurable settings if you choose to dig into it, including telling it how many threads to use when rendering, and gui settings for all the different x264 and xvid options. There are transition effects, but you need to dig into the filter effects to get to them, and I don’t have much experience with them beyond fade.

  • Anonymous

    It’s good that there is a paint clone in progress for gnome, but gnome paint is not yet usable. You can’t copy pasta, use text and undo acts weird etc.

    Kolourpaint works great, and it has some support for opacity! Too bad it’s written using qt

  • http://twitter.com/explodingwalrus Carl Draper

    Windows/Linux Equivalents:

    Foobar 2000 –> gmusicbrowser
    Mp3gain –> easyMp3gain
    CloneDVD –> k9copy
    Nero –> K3B (yes I know Nero is available on Linux but it’s not free, it’s out of date and it sucks)
    Easy CD Creator –> Brasero
    Windows mixer –> Gnome alsamixer (because pulseaudio’s sound preferences sucks!)
    Outlook –> Evolution

    • ActionParsnip

      Why install K3b on a gnome based system. Space may not be a luxury and pulling in tonnes of Qt deps may not be wanted. Gnomebaker / XFburn are great and use GTK+ which is ready installed. Also why install both Braser nd K3b. Doesn’t make sense to me.

      • Felixalberto26

        Even having BRasero and Gnomebaker, xburn. I still use K3B it’s the best burning application for Linux. It has the most options, and is the most versatile. I’ve tried to burn a movie DVD with gnomebaker and it never worked because for some reason it erases empty folders before burning them to the DVD so it erases Audio folder and the movie never works.

    • http://el-bhm.myopenid.com/ el-bhm

      foobar – deadbeef, gmb is far from being close to foobar.

  • ActionParsnip

    Instead of ubuntu tweak for ccleaner you can use bleachbit, watch the settings for browsers or it’ll clean your browser stuff. also avoid steps which say they will take a long time.

  • carlf

    I’m posting this from my 17 inch laptop running WIndows 7. I have not installed any Linux Distribution on it yet. What I have installed is Gimp, Scribus, Oxygen Office Professional, Blender, Synfig, LMMS, Inkscape, Digikam and the other KDE apps it requires, Audacity and Rawtherape. You don’t need Lightroom etc to do professional work. I take pictures for a freelance journalist who writes for a newspaper in WV and will have a feature in Goldenseal. These are the same apps I have on my mobile studio Acer Netbook with Ubuntu except I have Ardour and Shotwell on it also.

    After the 4th of July weekend I’ll install Ubuntu.

    I’ve found out Windows still sucks for me and that Itunes makes me sick and I saw no reason to upgrade from Nero to a full version.

    I’ll miss Netflix. How in the world can they have an app for an Ipad and nothing for Linux?

  • http://twitter.com/grayglove Graham Glover

    very useful…

  • Ha

    PINTA????

    • Anonymous

      Paint.NET-> Pinta, its awesome

  • http://twitter.com/JoshDressel Josh Dressel

    Blogilo is far from a replacement for Windows Live Writer. The interface is more along the lines of Scribefire. It certainly looks cleaner but dealing with images (which default to a size of 0 until you fix them) and simply copy+paste can be choppy. Then there’s the annoying bug where Blogilo will not publish the final product to Blogger, stating the credentials are not valid.

    As of right now, there just isn’t anything close to Windows Live Writer for Linux. To get around this, I use a virtual box and run Windows inside Ubuntu so I can use both Live Writer and MediaMonkey. These are the two Windows programs I just can’t live without.

 
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