For the last month I’ve been using OpenSuse Linux as my main operating system on my home computer. I have now switched back to using Windows Vista Home Premium (64bit).
During the month I tried to just use Linux and not switch back to Windows for anything. In theory, anything I needed Windows for, I should make the effort and search out a useable alternative in Linux. This was usually possible, even if I wasn’t entirely happy with what I could find.
General desktop and office type tasks were fine. Browsing the Internet was perfectly pleasant except for the fact that I used the 64 bit version of OpenSuse and there isn’t an official version of the Flash player for 64 bit versions of Linux. It was possible to get it working using a bit of jiggery pokery but this wasn’t quite right. There were still places that used Flash that just didn’t work properly. It didn’t seem that stable either and Flash playback would stutter if you tried to do anything else at the same time.
My biggest problems though were trying to process photographs. I tried a number of free programs, the best of which was called DigiKam, but after using Lightroom, it felt like very basic. Comparing Digikam against a commercial product isn’t really fair though. I had a look at some of the commercial offerings for Linux and found Bibble Pro and Lightzone. Lightzone seemed very basic as well. Bibble Pro seemed to be quite good, but it didn’t have any support for my Ricoh GX100’s RAW format (which is DNG format, but standards aren’t really standards I guess).
The end result of trying to use all of this software for processing photographs was that it slowed me right down and I just couldn’t process my photos nicely, easily or quickly.
Using Linux full time seems a lot more plausible this time than any time before when I’ve tried it, but there are still problems. Not having a standard installation mechanism seems to be a huge problem that needs to be sorted out. Some of the installation instructions I followed seemed downright bizarre. Some software installed and didn’t let you know it had completed correctly, or even give you a choice or tell you where it had installed to. On a couple of occasions I found myself browsing the file system looking for clues to where something had gone. There were plenty of other foibles, but one of the most irritating occurred after I plugged in a USB hard disk. An icon appeared on the desktop and it just worked – so that was nice. When I had done with it, I right clicked on the icon and told it to unmount, then switched the drive off. The next time I booted up the computer, I found myself at a command prompt with some disk and partition mounting errors listed. No GUI to play with. From that point on I discovered that I had to switch on my USB drive, then boot up so that the error wouldn’t prevent booting up. I could turn the drive off afterwards without later problems. Trying to geotag photos with data from my Gisteq Phototrackr probably wasn’t impossible, but it wasn’t easy. I had to download some Perl scripts to get the data and then trying to get something to edit the metadata. It’s all such a painful process that just worked when I used Windows – it definitely wasn’t worth all of the extra effort.
There were things I did like though. Even though I use two monitors, I started using virtual desktops to switch between. I had never considered using virtual desktops, because I thought two actual monitors would be enough. In practice though, I could fill the two monitors with windows relating to the task at hand – processing photos for example, and quickly switch to another virtual desktop where all of my music playing and info was. This is only really worthwhile if it’s fast and easy (instant and easy really) – which it was thanks to a few keyboard shortcuts to flip around.
The other thing I found useful also wasn’t Linux specific. It was a feature in the Opera browser called Speed Dial. Thankfully there’s a plugin for Firefox that does the same thing. Basically you get a grid of thumbnails showing your most used sites (you set them up manually) when you open your browser or a new tab (lots of options). I find using this faster than my old approach of having several tabs open right at the start when I open my browser.
Maybe I’ll try Linux again one day, but there would have to be a good reason for it and I’d have to be sure that I stood a fighting chance of being able to process photos at least as easily as I can already with Windows and Lightroom.
![Portrait with a Clumber horse [10/52]
I actually intended to try and do quite a straight portrait and include the horse at the side of me. I stood with my back to the horse with my camera at ...](http://publicenergy.co.uk/Projects/52-Weeks/20100306-1145-0017-Edit/803460292_nQg6M-Th.jpg "Portrait with a Clumber horse [10/52]
I actually intended to try and do quite a straight portrait and include the horse at the side of me. I stood with my back to the horse with my camera at ...")
Joe Lencioni 7:32 pm on May 25, 2008 Permalink |
There’s http://www.codeplex.com/vdm“ rel=”nofollow”>a vista application for virtual desktops that I’ve been using for a while. It’s been pretty nice. It’s pretty fast and is definitely easy (Windows Key + Desktop Number to switch, for example). Give it a try, maybe you’ll like it.
Rick Harrison 1:59 pm on June 1, 2008 Permalink |
Did you look into the Wine stuff for linux? the other year Google invested quite a bit into it under the Google Summer Of Code specifically into getting photoshop to run nicely under it (im guessing they want to ditch windows completely), aparently CS2 ran very well under it, im guesing cs3 might do too. bit fiddly – you need to export your registry settings having first installed it on windows, but im quite keen on giving it a try with ubuntu.
publicenergy 7:20 pm on June 1, 2008 Permalink |
I did try Wine to get some apps running which were maked ‘Platinum’ in the compatibility list but it wasn’t really that good.
For the time being my life is easier with Windows.