March 16, 2006
OpenSource and Other Alternatives to Adobe
Ben asked me if I knew of any programs that were comparable with InDesign. Thanks to my experience with setting up community portals, I’ve become quite familiar with the OpenSource industry. For those of you who haven’t heard of this term before, OpenSource is free (Sometimes they require you to pay a license fee.) software that you can download onto your computer. The most popular spots on the web are Freshmeat.net and Sourceforge.net.
At any rate, at Ben’s request, I’ved searched for Page Layout/Desktop Publishing software. I also found this article (Choosing Desktop Publishing Software), which you should read before downloading anything.
Artstream-Linux: This beta software can perform vector graphics as well as page layout. Free trial. Linux only.
Scribus: DTP for Linux (appears to work with Windows as well)
Aquascribus: A GUI launcher for Scribus on Macs.
PagePlus SE Free download for Windows
Another resource to check out is Ebay. Sometimes you’ll find an older version of Quark or InDesign. Once you get that, you can always upgrade later, provided your copy isn’t too old.
I downloaded PagePlus, and so far, so good. It’s much like Publisher, but better I think.
Great, Ben.
Let me know if you’d like to post a review of this on this blog. I think that will be very helpful to readers who are looking for alternatives to Adobe.