Dianne Reuby wrote: > My son's just started college, and one of the programs he'll be using is > Macromedia (Adobe) flash.
Hi, I just started my second year of Applied ICT (I'm now at A2) and I have just found out we are going to be using Macromedia Director (Yes that's the shockwave creation tool!) for a large part of the course, Microsoft Project for another large part and Microsoft Access for another large part. With the exception (possibly - I haven't investigated what planner etc can/can't do) it means that I have no choice but to use the programs I just mentioned for the entirety of the remainder of my course. Having to refer to documents in .docx format is bad enough! > Neither of us want to waste disk space on putting XP back, so can anyone > recommend an alternative for him to use at home? Ideally he'd like to be > able to work on his files both at college and at home, but is there an > open source program that will create/edit files that Flash will accept? I would love to say yes... but there isn't and there isn't likely to be for quite a while. Flash is one my major bug bears in the free software world what with there not being a completely functional player or creation tools. > I'm using Ubuntu 8.04 So am I, and I agree that virtualbox (sudo apt-get install virtualbox-ose) is the best option, along with licenced copies of the horrible software. > Some I've seen in Synaptic: > Blender > Epix1 > GIMP-gap > Stopmotion All good programs, however I imagine the school will blank if they are mentioned. They aren't replacements or alternatives unfortunately :( > Whether these are what he needs I don't know - I know nothing about > Flash! I've been reading up on the Adobe site, but it's all greek to > me. :( > > Don't know if he'll survive this course - it's only day one, and he's > already roared with laughter when his tutors XP crashed, and suggested > he switched to Linux. :) On my first day the tutors recommended picing up "warm software" off ebay and called GNU/Linux "joe blogg's operating system" in the context of the One Laptop Per Child project. On the taster, day one of the computing tutors suggested c++ wasn't a worthwhile language learning. You might want to suggest http://dfey.freedomdreams.co.uk to your son if he is into ubuntu or open source/free software in schools :) . There are a group of us who are trying to "survive" ICT in schools from the student level. If I can be of any more help, please don't hesitate to get in touch. :) Tim -- www.tdobson.net ---- If each of us have one object, and we exchange them, then each of us still has one object. If each of us have one idea, and we exchange them, then each of us now has two ideas. - George Bernard Shaw -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
