I got a bit excited reading this and going to look up Wine! which I hadn't heard of before. I'd be over the moon if I could move away from relying on Microsoft.
But unfortunately I think the answer to both halves of your question is probably yes, for now.
It must be some years now since I actually bought anything which was Win-only, but I've got a lot of archive stuff from before then, especially in WordPerfect and LocoScript, as well as a few crucial things in current use.
For WPWin, the most significant that springs to mind is what amounts to a program I wrote - in WPWin's mail-merge language - for assembling a page full of badge artwork. (The content varies every time, depending on which designs need replenishing in that colour.) Recreating that in another language would be a tedious and possibly difficult task.
Wine's database reports that WordPerfect will start up but then falls over a lot. LocoScript isn't in there.
Also there are several devices I link the PC to. The main three are my Dragon digital recorder which gets backed up using Via Voice, my digital camera which is a Minolta and has what I think is proprietary software, and of course the Psion (3mx) - though maybe the Psion has a Linux link program by now, do you know?
Can't find those mentioned in the Wine database except that Dragon NatSpeak itself is in as partly working (but that's not the same thing as Via Voice, even though they came together).
Also I have Mindmapper, Smartdraw and JotPlus, and archive stuff in those formats. Smartdraw is in the Wine database as not working; the other two aren't mentioned.
It looks like I'd also need to learn a new email prog (to replace Turnpike) and a new graphics prog (to replace Picture Publisher), although the same archive considerations don't apply there.
I suspect there would be other implications too, of the kind that "only dawn on one later" :-)
If I were starting from nothing now, then I would most likely choose multi-platform applications for everything (if possible - the hardware-link software might or might not be available). In general I'm heading in that direction. In the last few years I've become very aware of at least not locking myself any more into Windows than I already am. (E.g. doing less and less new writing in WPWin, and more in HTML or XML formats using EditPad Pro.)
But I'm not really close enough yet to "jump". The more I think about it, the more I realise it would still be a doesn't-bear-thinking-about-ly huge investment of time (and almost certainly some money too) to get a setup on Linux equivalent to what I have on Windows now. That's on three fronts - (a) useful content I've created in the past, (b) software and (c) learning-curves-already-climbed. Wine would fill the gap brilliantly if all the above programs worked on it, but it looks as though that'll be a while yet.
So, enticing idea though it is, I think it'll have to wait till the Wine has matured :-)
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branchandroot
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Date: 2007-03-17 07:43 pm (UTC)But unfortunately I think the answer to both halves of your question is probably yes, for now.
It must be some years now since I actually bought anything which was Win-only, but I've got a lot of archive stuff from before then, especially in WordPerfect and LocoScript, as well as a few crucial things in current use.
For WPWin, the most significant that springs to mind is what amounts to a program I wrote - in WPWin's mail-merge language - for assembling a page full of badge artwork. (The content varies every time, depending on which designs need replenishing in that colour.) Recreating that in another language would be a tedious and possibly difficult task.
Wine's database reports that WordPerfect will start up but then falls over a lot. LocoScript isn't in there.
Also there are several devices I link the PC to. The main three are my Dragon digital recorder which gets backed up using Via Voice, my digital camera which is a Minolta and has what I think is proprietary software, and of course the Psion (3mx) - though maybe the Psion has a Linux link program by now, do you know?
Can't find those mentioned in the Wine database except that Dragon NatSpeak itself is in as partly working (but that's not the same thing as Via Voice, even though they came together).
Also I have Mindmapper, Smartdraw and JotPlus, and archive stuff in those formats. Smartdraw is in the Wine database as not working; the other two aren't mentioned.
It looks like I'd also need to learn a new email prog (to replace Turnpike) and a new graphics prog (to replace Picture Publisher), although the same archive considerations don't apply there.
I suspect there would be other implications too, of the kind that "only dawn on one later" :-)
If I were starting from nothing now, then I would most likely choose multi-platform applications for everything (if possible - the hardware-link software might or might not be available). In general I'm heading in that direction. In the last few years I've become very aware of at least not locking myself any more into Windows than I already am. (E.g. doing less and less new writing in WPWin, and more in HTML or XML formats using EditPad Pro.)
But I'm not really close enough yet to "jump". The more I think about it, the more I realise it would still be a doesn't-bear-thinking-about-ly huge investment of time (and almost certainly some money too) to get a setup on Linux equivalent to what I have on Windows now. That's on three fronts - (a) useful content I've created in the past, (b) software and (c) learning-curves-already-climbed. Wine would fill the gap brilliantly if all the above programs worked on it, but it looks as though that'll be a while yet.
So, enticing idea though it is, I think it'll have to wait till the Wine has matured :-)