Linux alternatives to Windows software

New Variety

PDF Readers

Many free programs and proprietary packages are available on Linux as alternatives to Adobe Reader on Windows, which is as omnipresent as it is cumbersome. Among the key free tools are Evince, Okular, Xpdf, and ePDFViewer, which you will find in the repositories of almost all distros. The proprietary Foxit Reader, which is available free of charge for Linux, offers one of the best displays of complex PDF documents, with its software showing exceptional agility (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Foxit Reader displays PDF files without errors and very swiftly.

Editing Images

Alongside numerous programs for viewing photos and images of all kinds, the top dog is market-leader Gimp. This software positions itself as a direct competitor to Photoshop, and can be found in the repositories of most distributions.

If necessary, you can replace the proprietary package Lightroom, created by Adobe, with the free darktable. This program chiefly works to edit RAW data. It can be found in many software repositories, which simplifies installation (Figure 4).

Figure 4: You can edit your photos in an instant with darktable.

Audio Players

Winamp is one of the most famous audio players on Windows and can cope with a wide array of file types. Linux, too, can support all the major multimedia formats. Thus, you not only have freedom of choice of codecs on the free operating system, but you also have your choice of software for playback.

Along with Rhythmbox and Amarok, which are already integrated into the major desktop environments, leaner alternatives like Audacious, XMMS, DeaDBeeF, Clementine, and Musique bustle are available in the repositories of the various Linux derivatives. The individual applications pursue their own concepts, depending on their focus, and have different interfaces. They range from a simple player to the richly stocked Jukebox, which is also suitable for managing large collections and will get the mood going at every party.

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