: What are some differences between Scribus and Indesign? I recently heard that scribus is a good free alternative option to Indesign. I recently opened Scribus up, and none of it makes any sense,

@Nimeshi706

I'd say if you're just starting out without having existing InDesign files, and customers/colleagues working with InDesign, Scribus could be good. But for more serious work, you run into its limitations pretty quick.

Scribus pros:


Free
Available for Linux and other OS's
With that, you can theoretically collaborate with anyone


Scribus major cons:


Much less advanced typography capabilites
Lacking documentation and community/knowledgebase is much smaller
Cumbersome and rather slow UI
Can't open or write INDD files
Doesn't support Pantone colors
Requires scripts to do many things InDesign does natively, like Data Merge

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@RJPawlick971

Like most open source graphic design software, it's competent and capable, but isn't going to posses the same range of features that the commercial alternative will typically have. In addition, OS graphic design software is often lacking in CMYK/Print support.

So, generally speaking (applies to most OS graphic design software):

Pros:


price (free)
no licensing hassles


Cons:


typically limited feature set
not as widely supported in the industry
may have a less polished UI

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