New to Linux/ have Ubuntu running on a spare PC

Need web development tips/tools for Linux

[hal12b]

Hi all -

I am fairly new to Linux, been using Ubuntu for about two weeks, reading more, learning something new each day.. etc.

I have 15+ years of experience with Windows and roughly five years experience programming with ASP and ASP.net.

I am familiar with PHP, but was wondering if there is a program out there similar to Visual Studio or Visual Web Developer for Linux (free is good)? In the Windows environment I use Dreamweaver or Expression Web (formerly FrontPage).

Gimp seems to be an OK replacement for PhotoShop, but I am not convinced yet.

Any help on development tools that a webmaster could use will be much appreciated.

Thanks

[wheelie34]

I am new as well, I have dreamweaver, fireworks running in WINE its free also have filezilla (ftp program) also free.

I installed kubuntu (dual boot) on my wifes machine but will be formatting soon as she needs sage accounting software which only runs in windoze, so she installed Virtualbox and has it running fine.

you install windoze into the virtualbox, I havent tested it but it looks good, i on theother hand don't want to run windoze at all so chose wine.

google those names and read for yourself, everything seems possible.

wine
virtualbox
filezilla

I didnt (yet) come across a good substitute for dreamweaver, if you find one let us all know

[hal12b]

Wheelie,
Thanks for the info. I picked up an book on Ubuntu and it is roughly 1000 pages of useful information. There is a program called Nvu which is an HTML editor (free). It is for Linux and Windows, but I am not sure about it yet. I installed it on my windows machine about a year ago and found it so-so. Maybe it is better now.

Do you use GIMP? What about Krita (part of the Koffice download)?
What would you recommend as a replacement for PhotoShop?
Hal

[wheelie34]

I believe NV is now Kompozer, I tried it but it had problems opening php or css files, it wasn't seeing them, I didn't test it properly after that.

Yup used GIMP, again not thoroughly tested but have done a few things in it and it seems quite good!

I have just finished setting up my sons pc with kubuntu as he's home for 3 weeks (he's at uni), we just setup virtualbox and installed windoze, if you have licenced discs for anything M$ based virtualbox is far better than wine, wine seems to stutter a bit maybe there's some settings, I need to look around a bit.

Krita I did download and didn't think it was brilliant, but never really tested it either, I have only been on linux for 2 weeks now but want to soon move all my work onto it and obviousley then is when the real learning starts, whats good whats bad time will tell.

[hal12b]

Wheelie -
I need to do some further testing with applications and I thank you for your input. I am running Ubuntu on a Dell I got for $65 from a leasing company that was turned in. It is a 1.7ghz P4, 512 ram (ubuntu recommends 384, windows xp recommends 1 gig, vista 2 gig!). The hard drive is only 20 gig, but I have to say that NOTHING has frozen, locked up, or crashed to date. I have this computer running as good as my windows PC at literally a fraction of the cost. I could have an office up and running with $65 pc's (plus monitors) compared to the windows comparable which would be at least 5x as much... plus the software expense!

I really like it a lot and if I can get my main applications to run on it, I will use it more, if not permanently.

Does virus protection even exist for Linux, or is this a Windoze issue only?
Hal

[wheelie34]

from what I have read so far (my eyes hurt I've read so much) you don't need anti virus software, now there's a saving heh

[hal12b]

I need to find out about this. I am used to installing Windows and immediately getting the updates installed, then installing anti-virus software and malware software on my computer ASAP. Keep me posted on your progress. You can email instead of posting here. I am sure people are getting tired of reading our posts! ha
Hal

[graeme_p]

I dislike Nvu: I far prefer Quanta (part of kdewebdev, which also includes a link checker, an image map editor and a xslt debugger).

Quanta also has support for PHP development. There are lots of IDEs, but I do not know how the compare with the MS visual tools.

Gimp works well for me, but it may not be for everyone. I did not like the Krita UI, but did not find anything actually wrong with it. If you want a Photoshop like UI there is a fork of Gimp called Gimpshop which provides it). Cinepaint may also be worth trying.

You may also want to install the plugins to import RAW format photos.

You do NOT need anti-virus, anti-adware etc. It is a good idea to configure the firewall, especially if you are going to have servers running. There are various guides to doing it on Ubuntu depending on how complex our requirements are.

As for security updates to your software, that should be done constantly from the Ubuntu repository. There should be a little panel (taskbar) icon that indicates when you need to run an update.

[wheel]

Bluefish is another html editor you can try. Gimp is fine for regular editing but high end graphic designers complain about it (it does everything I need it to do though).

As Graeme noted, you'll configure your firewall to block traffic instead of a virus program. Not that there couldn't be viruses, just that most viruses you're likely to come across just won't work on linux. There's likely a GUI program to do the firewall setup.

In terms of updates, most distributions have various repositories for updates (at universities and the like). There will be a GUI program that will allow you to download updates from the various repositories - works probably pretty much like windows updates. I don't know what that program is on your distro, they vary by distro. I update my servers once a week just bu running the gui and selecting all the updates for programs that have been installed on my computer.

[Sharper]

Since you're trying php, you might try the php-specific version of eclipse.

[mikedee]

The php version of Eclipse is being sold by Zend now (as well as being free). Zend Studio 5 was good for PHP development, the only problem is it is a bit slow. I do not get on well with Eclipse at all even though a lot of people say it is good.

I would recommend Zend Studio 5 if you can still get it (its not free) - otherwise Quanta used to be good but a bit basic for pure php. Zend is the most comparable to VS (including the fact it is not free), it also has a very reasonable license though which allows you to install a copy on every computer you have access to.

KDE4 has Krita which is more like Photoshop than Gimp, and it has KDevelop too but the PHP support is not very good for that.

P.S. Take a look at sshfs - it is invaluable if you are working on remote Linux servers.

[hal12b]

Thanks for the input. I appreciate it and if I have time this weekend will do some further research.
Hal
p.s. keep the advice coming this way!