linux for web design
 

is linux a good platform for web design/development? i'm thinking of switching platforms but i've got to be able to do web design/development.

All depends. For development, there's nothnig wrong with it. You can develop in any text editor, so emacs, vi, pico, Kate, etc would all work fine. For design, if you can use the Gimp you'll be ok, otherwise, if photoshop is your answer, I wouldn't do it.

But linux is a great platform for all development stuff.

yes, GNU/Linux is a good platform for Web Design / Development only if you don't stick to any specific technology that wont work on GNU/Linux.

I am just listing out the tools that would not stop you from changing the platform

For ASP, Sun's Active Server Pages can help you
Apache server can b installed
JSP/PHP can be easily worked with
GIMP Image/Photo editing software

GUI tools for HTML
You have tools like Composer (Comes with Mozilla)
Bluefish (I did not try this...)
lots more..I can't recall everything.......

The GIMP handles well as an image manipulation application, but doesn't have the range of features that Photoshop boasts. It is, however, free, which is a factor in its favour. But professional graphics designers should probably stay with the OS they currently use.

Nvu is a GUI web page designer, based off Mozilla Composer, but rather more advanced than it's predecessor. There are also a number of text and code editors available for Linux, as you might expect from an OS created by volunteer coders.

On the server side Linux competes well. Indeed, Linux dominates the web server market by a considerable margin, and the majority of server-side tools in popular use are available for Linux.

I think that no reason to change platform for web design/development because linux hasn't any real advantages in this

Honeslty, web design is, IMHO, a lot easier on a Mac than other systems. Mac OS X is a great operating system. Most professional web and graphic designers work on Macs more than on Window and Linux machines.

My friend just brought a Mac Mini for his music editing business. he loves it and prefers it over Windows anytime. Mac OS X is also an Unix-based OS like BSD and Linux.

I'd argue that if you don't use Photoshop, it doesn't really matter what OS you use. They all have decent text editors, image viewers, FTP applications, etc. It just boils down to what you prefer.

Obviously, if you need Microsoft Office, Photoshop or similar, you're limited to Windows and Mac OS.

"is linux a good platform for web design/development?"

Yes.

GL&HF (Newbie, Join Date: Jul 2006, Posts: 3):
I get a strong sense you just don't know what the advantages are. Linux has its usual advantages over Windows (It's stable, it's free, and development tools are easier to come by, especially if your budget doesn't stretch to the likes of Photoshop). The GIMP can be used to create really very professional looking graphics, although I would have to admit in all honesty that it's not as easy to pick up and use as Photoshop.

But web development is not just about what editor you use; I use Linux for virtually all my own development (and Windows to develop software for my employer, so I do have some basis for a comparison) and I find that what Linux offers you is flexibility.

Flexibility gives you options, which gives you a range of approaches to a given project. If I want to build a website, I can develop my server-side machinery in Perl, Tcl, C, or PHP for instance. I can decide which of these best suits my application. I've been known to mix two or three of these from time to time. I know that you can do a bit of this on a Win32 system, but it's nowhere near as easy to get into and set up, and you're often lumbered with the ungainly bulk of IIS, ASP and the massive and often unnecessary footprint of the .NET framework.

One of the best things about developing on Linux, whether for the web or anything else, is the freedom to set up multiple instances of the OS and most applications without giving any consideration at all to licensing. If I want to set up 20 virtual machines with various Linux configurations on them, I can feel free; if I want a C++ compiler and a GUI IDE on every one of these, I don't have to consider the cost like someone forking out for Visual Studio would.

Linux's robustness makes it a great development platform too. I regularly belt seven shades of crap out of my linux box with faulty code and heavy workloads and despite being a pre-Coppermine Celeron with only a half gig of core it's like water off a duck's back. My last reboot was months ago, and that was because of a power cut. I have no plans for any other reboots or shutdowns until I get around to replacing the PSU.

Toro:
Granted, MacOS is often the tool of choice for arty types, for a mixture of historical and very good rational and modern reasons. (Also, Macs don't look out of place in an arty setting, which is a tough thing to say about ix86 boxes; usually, the swisher and sleeker they try to look the more of an eyesore they become...) - and as you say, since MacOS X it's not just a cute, nice, easy little system, but actually has a real engine under the bonnet (Americans read 'hood').

I've always liked Macs and lately they've only been getting better. I'm too at home on my Linux PCs (plus, the hardware can often be picked up for free; the machine I'm using right now didn't cost me anything for example since it was donated to me after being retired by a local primary school) to own a Mac, but I did have a couple back in the days when my computer collection was bigger and you don't hear many people around who actively dislike them.

Windows is definitely not a serious platform for development. It's relatively difficult and awkward to develop portable software on Windows, and it's very easy to slide down the slippery slope of proprietary crap. The licensing makes Windows cumbersome for developers, too, and expensive for hobbyists and beginners. Anyone who learned .NET 1.1 and then found themselves adapting to .NET 2.0, or who learned VB6 just in time to discover VB.NET was completely different, or who tried to move seamlessly from years of ADO experience to ADO.NET, knows that Microsoft development is not a stable world in any way; I mean, how many people are developing COM components these days? I mean, profitably?

Skills picked up developing on Win32 aren't even transferrable to later versions of Win32 it seems. I guess MS just make too much money running MOC courses to allow peoples' hard-earned (and heavily paid-for) knowledge to be worth anything for too long.

Anyway, I'm drifting into an unrelated rant. If you're a beginner programmer, a hobbyist, or anyone who wants and expects to have a long term career in development of any kind, Linux has massive advantages (although as I say, I mean that more over Win32 than over MacOS).

Yes!

I do all my development on linux systems. For my image editing i use GIMP, which is super powerful IMHO. Some people might argue that GIMP isn't as poswerful as photoshop, but in reality it is just as good or better most aspects. GIMP will let you create your own scripts to do repeitive tasks, or to re-create a cool effect that you made. For the actual code of the sites, i tend to use vim or gvim, but that's more out of personal preference. Linux has a few good web development IDE's out there that i know of, one of which is Quanta Plus. I haven't used it that much, but from what i have seen it's pretty good, it even has autocompleation for php built in.

You might want to check out the kde web dev project. It looks to have a few tool that you might be able to make use of.

and if all else fails, google is still there :-)