I use Microsoft Windows every day. Mainly 64 bit versions of Windows Vista because I use the Home Premium variant at home and the Business version at work. I have used Windows on computers for as long as I can remember and it’s so familiar to me and easy to use.
As for photography, in Windows I can pop in a memory card and have Lightroom grab the images and file them all away in the right place, tagged up with metadata templates applied and then happily browse the photos and make RAW or other adjustments, right-click and export to Flickr or do a multitude of other things with them very easily.
Considering how easy this process is, I wondered if it was possible to achieve the same thing using Linux. This is out of curiosity more than need.
So far though, it all seems like going back in time to when graphical user interfaces had just been invented. Everything seems very rudimentary and there are lots of basic things that don’t quite work right that are getting in the way even before I get to looking at a decent photographic workflow.
The issues that I have so far:
- I haven’t found any good way to browse a lot of images quickly
- The image editor (GIMP) doesn’t show me previews when I try and open a file (it just says “Loading Preview…” and sits there (for JPG as well as RAW)
- My mouse doesn’t have enough buttons available! - this one sounds silly, but I have a mouse with five buttons, the usual 3 on top including the clickable mouse wheel but also two buttons where my thumb lives. I’m so used to using these for forwards and backwards when browsing files or web sites.
- Graphical acceleration doesn’t work properly with my graphics card. This I find particularly odd because I’m using probably one of the best known manufacturers of chip sets - Nvidia. You’d have thought if any of them would work properly it’d be them!
- Adobe haven’t released a version of Flash 9 for 64bit Linux so a lot of web sites don’t display correctly.
Despite these problems, which I’m going to look at sorting out, it is quite pleasant to use for browsing, email and general bits and bobs.
And after a bit of mucking about I managed to get a music player to find my music and was able to listen to music and have it register with last.fm again. It’s amazing how much more pleasant using it is when you have access to creature comforts like a nice desktop MP3 player - Banshee is quite nice but it does do odd things sometimes. For instance, I paused a track and later closed the application. I later noticed that it was still running and had a little musical note icon near the date on the task bar - so I moved the mouse over it, it displayed a pop-up window showing my paused track, started playing on it’s own for about a second, then closed the application!
The bit I’ve not mentioned so far is installing. I started off with downloading Ubuntu - mainly because it seems to be flavour of the month and while there is a lot of activity around something, it should in theory be easier to get information and help. However, that turned out to be a right pain. The installation didn’t get very far before I just got a screen full of flashing colours. Another installation attempt and turning on graphical compatibility mode I got further still but then it took exception to my installation CD and bombed out right at the end. Is it honestly too much to ask to check the files on the CD at the start and put them on the hard disk to install from. By this point I was sick of Ubuntu. I thought that if I’m starting off by having to use compatibility modes at the installation point, then it doesn’t bode well for actually using it later.
So, I did some more digging and research and downloaded another installation image. This time OpenSUSE. I just downloaded a 60Mb boot disk that could install over the internet and fetch whatever it needed. I popped that in, told it where to find the files and let it do it’s stuff. It seemed to correctly identify all of my hardware, suggested the right place to put the disk partitions (something Ubuntu didn’t get right). The placement of partitions was especially impressive becuase my set-up is probably a little unusual. I had prepared two partitions for this prior to starting but Ubuntu didn’t think they were a good first suggestion to use - OpenSUSE did.
At the moment then, there is no way I can use it to process my photos so I’ll be booting in to Windows and doing it (and probably staying there most of the time). But I’m going to keep looking at this periodically to see if I can sort these problems out and get something nice working.
Comments 3
Yeh. 64-bit Linux is still a way behind the rest of the Linux crowd. It’s, quite frankly, embarassing - I wouldn’t recommend it. That’s crazy given that Linux has a (well deserved) reputation for working on multiple platforms without any issues. It’s one area where Linux needs a serious kick up the a………
That said, I’m surprised Ubuntu took issue with your machine; the nVidia graphics card should “just work”, though that seems to be the core of your problems. Which release number did you use? 8.04 (the current release candidate) has much better support for 64-bit than before.
You’re right about SUSE’s default desktop style - it’s a horribly retro design. Thankfully though, that’s very easily fixed. There’s no shortage of MUCH better themes at http://www.kde-look.org/ (for KDE) or http://gnome-look.org/ (for GNOME).
Your nVidia card will probably need the correct drivers installed; that’s an easy fix - just search for nvidia in the application list (dunno what it’s called in SUSE, sorry!) and install them. My best guess is it’s using the default VESA drivers right now. Ick. You should be able to configure the mouse to your liking in the preferences somewhere - again, I’m no SUSE expert.
For fast image browsing and organizing I recommend Digikam. That’s a terrific app with much good built-in editing controls that most of the time there’s no need to open up an image editor.
Phew. Hope that all helps! :)
Posted 24 Apr 2008 at 11:15 am ¶Thanks for all that.
I did have the official Nvidia driver but to no avail. But after trawling the forums I discovered people recommending getting a newer version of CompizFusion. I installed that and things look nice and the Gimp previews work which is nice.
The initial install I tried was the 8.04 release candidate - the live CD version of which worked in graphics compatibility mode but whenever I tried to use the normal mode, I either got flashing colours or my monitor telling me it’s not playing!
No luck with the mouse yet, but I’ve not really looked for a solution yet. I did have a look at a mouse configuration screen that showed me a picture of a three button mouse and let me know that I had clicked button 4 and 5 - so it knows they’re there - I just need to find a way to map them to functions.
I’ll have a look at this Digikam software - it looks promising from what I’ve seen on it’s web site.
Posted 24 Apr 2008 at 10:15 pm ¶Hi there. I use Vista (32-bit, Business flavour) and Ubuntu (older - 6.06) on this laptop, and find that my workflow is actually marginally quicker with Ubuntu as the OS due to RAM considerations: 2.5GB is just about enough with Vista, and is more than ample with Ubuntu.
I use the File Manager (or whatever it’s called) to view my files - up to 400% on preview compared to Vista.
However, I use GIMP on both platforms, and ipernity as my internet photo displayer (used to use Flickr). And Open Office for many other things I hobby about. The fact that Ubuntu installs with GIMP and Open Office out of the box saves oodles of time, and my entire re-installs have taken less than an hour, complete: the longest thing is downloading the latest flavour off ‘tinernet, and creating an iso disc that has to be checked to make sure it works (did you do a checksum on yours ?).
Oh, and I have a very old laptop which still manages to work, albeit slowly, with an older version of GIMP and xubuntu (6) - and 184MB of RAM :-D
I’ve tried OPENSuse, too, but that requires several CDs, not just one.
Partitioning has been a breeze, and is highly customisable: but I tend to perform clean installs, with fresh, formatted hard drives - I can imagine that a well-used and consequently fragmented hard drive would be a nightmare to sort out, with the risk of data loss.
So, I would say it depends what you use as to which works better: I’m no uber-techy, and only stick with Windows ‘cos I need it for work (or, rather, haven’t converted work to Ubuntu / Linux). But my workflow is actually a little quicker in Linux, and more pleasant for its customisability - and the fact that it is not Microsoft :-D
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