Table 3 2   Example bridging applications

Application used in Windows

Linux/Open Source equivalent 

Internet Explorer

Mozilla.org/FireFox

Outlook (Express)

Mozilla.org/Thunderbird

MS Office Word

OpenOffice.org

a

 Writer

MS Office Excel

OpenOffice.org Spreadsheet

MS Office Powerpoint

OpenOffice.org Impress

Paint Shop Pro

The GIMP

b

Messenger Client (MSN,Yahoo,ICQ,...)

GAIM

c

a. http://www.openoffice.org

b. http://www.gimp.org

c. http://gaim.sourceforge.net

3.2.2  Functionally equivalent utility applications

The designs of utility applications such as file system browsers, archivers, and 

viewers are more closely tied to the host operating system. They cannot be 

bridged in the sense that we describe for the applications listed in the previous 

section. One of the reasons Linux is considered to be approaching equivalency 

with Windows is the availability of many choices for utility applications. In many 

cases, these applications may in fact have more powerful feature sets than the 

equivalent utility applications in Windows.

Table 3 3 provides some examples of equivalent utility applications available in 

Linux.

Table 3 3   Examples of equivalent utility applications in Linux

File managers

Konqueror (KDE)

(Windows Explorer)

Nautilus (Gnome)

Archivers

Karchiver,ark (KDE)

(like WinZip)

FileRoller (Gnome)

Viewers

Konqueror, KView(KDE)

(like ACDSee)

Nautilus (Gnome)

Adobe  Acrobat  Reader  for Linux

Multimedia players

xmms, xine, RealPlayer

(like Windows Media Player)

 Chapter 3. Organizational and human factors planning 

31