Wow, articles can actually get this bad
Some guy wrote an article that explained how Compiz on Linux is “cool” and shows how much “cooler” Linux is than the graphic designers who smugly carry their Macs at his office. I understand the author’s intent despite starting with the worst possible examples. Compiz is eyecandy (a lot of it useless and gimmicky) for Linux desktop and the right way to win converts to any tool is to make your tool better, more compatible, and easier. Certain Linux distros are doing that on many fronts, but you still need actual graphic design applications if you are going to do anything but make more than a shallow impression on people. Compiz is great, but it’s not for graphic design.
I started commenting on his shoddy article, but realized that the effort is wasted on it and I could just print here on my site. I do that a lot. Too far into a comment, I realize that it will be wasted on a crappy article miles down the comment list. So here you go:
This (the article linked above) is the most stupid article I have read in a while for several reasons. Compiz is solving a “problem” that a Mac-toting designer doesn’t have. If you’re talking about a graphic designer at least. Maybe other designers of other things can use Linux. But Compiz is NOT a program that produces design content. The author seems to think that a designer might prefer a Mac only because it is designed well and the OS looks good. They might say they love their mac because of this or that GUI candy, but a designer REQUIRES that certain design applications allow for creating designer content. A designer designs, they don’t just sit there and fiddle with the OS’ overlapping windows, making desktop water droplets, window fire or spinning a desktop cube.
I’ll weigh in to improve this travesty.
1. There is no Photoshop, Flash, After Effects, InDesign, Quark or Corel for Linux. Nothing even close in quality or price. Sure GIMP does a lot, but the latest Photoshop has things GIMP cannot do and won’t for a long time. Photoshop does genuinely great, efficient image editing. Sure you have other work arounds on Linux, (like using Blender for 2D motion graphics for example) but designers have to share files with other designers, print houses, and content reviewers. Linux doesn’t have this kind of ‘juice’ yet. What kind of designer really wants to screw around with these limits? An enthusiast like me enjoys it a little, experimenting with format conversions and such. But time for dollar, it isn’t worth it to create a limit for yourself using Linux instead of Mac or Windows. I have only met one other guy that did some photography and graphic design and wanted to screw with Linux. One other guy besides me and I’ve met a lot of designers. The rest of them buy their PCs or Macs and buy Adobe apps and the Final Cut Studio or Corel suite of progams. They don’t follow the advances of Linux when Windows came “free” with their PCs and will come free again when they buy their next PC.
2. A lot of designers (not me) actually like the way Macs feel. Not the hardware necessarily but the actual mousing cursor. It IS different and I think that perhaps even if you trick out a linux theme to look exactly like a Mac, it will still not have the feel for them. I don’t like Mac cursor movements, I prefer Windows. Linux is OK for me too, though I’m bothered by the fact that it doesn’t support my special ergonmic mouse buttons out of the box. I have a Mac but it feels funky to me for designing, like I’m mousing through mud. You can’t argue with people’s ‘feel’ for an OS.
3. Both the iMac and the Macbook’s are not that expensive as the author suggest. They are highly capable computers priced in range of many other computers. In other words, they are affordable, dare I say reasonably priced, not mind blowingly overpriced as the author suggests. I believe the Macbook Pro is a huge unnecessary price jump which I have yet to understand, but as long as people are willing to pay for it, Apple will sell at the highest price they can get. With software, Apple is priced pretty good. iWork, iLife and OSX overall are priced really well. GarageBand and Comic Life are great programs that come with a new Mac free.
4. GIMP, Blender, Scribus, Inkscape are the players on Linux for design. Add to that maybe a video app or two. I think Cinelerra was big for a while, and Maya runs on Linux if you want to buy Maya. But you have issues with nearly all of those. GIMP requires relearning with a couple major quirks Photoshop users trip on right out of the gate. Blender is difficult. Scribus is simply never done and is quirky in many ways. Inkscape crashes like hell (for me at least, and the page refresh is funky). You can do Flash with Flex tools, but it’s programming over graphic design, so that’s a stopper for many designers too. I could complain more about these apps. And I could complain about the Adobe suite, but it is very strong and complete at the same time with a massive and deserved following, especially now more than ever.
5. Until software development is more accessible or cheaper, companies haven’t been able to justify developing design programs for Linux. They don’t see an ROI. That’s it! Otherwise I think many companies are platform agnostic. Game makers are the same so this isn’t a surprise. Just ask Adobe. They don’t create Photoshop for Linux despite it being the most sought-after Linux application because of the ROI problem. Otherwise they say they would do it. And with their new GUI development and the AIR and other Flex tools you will see some changes in the direction that makes Linux a possibility. Just not right now. I have stated before that I believe Adobe could create their own optimized Linux distrobution and smash a bunch of Microsoft’s market share. But they probably need to see how to properly deal with the conflict of theirs and the GPL license.
6. I liked Compiz for while, but much of it was useless to me. Still it has NOTHING in it that helps me actually design, other than maybe switching between apps. Since Mac has a nice Expose feature, Compiz isn’t going to convert many people on its own from OSX. And you know what, this is all coming from a Linux and open source fan. I can’t program in C++ for , but I understand the purpose and philosophy and try to contribute to the advancement of open source programming where I can. It takes a person who a.) knows about open source b.) cares about it enough to avoid attractive commercial software and c.) accepts and wants to work through the problems of Linux and lack of standard design software. Plus dualscreen, printer driver and other buggers.
7. There is a category of software that looks great and has gems only on Linux. I’m referring to the audio editing programs that have emerged in the past few years such as Rosegarden, Ardour and many others including live DJ tools. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_audio_software This category is interesting in that you can justify converting to Linux because these full featured programs are there and work well. The categories of graphic software, office tools, video editing programs do not have this kind of leverage at the moment to convert people to a Linux desktop.
8. It continues to surprise me that more general office workers care about Windows. I believe it comes down to 2 main reasons. Outlook/Exchange/working with others AND just being used to MS Office. Some people need MS Office for specific efficiencies too, whether it’s Access capabilities or Excel or they just like Word and will part with their money to get it.
9. The world is waiting for some great 2D animation, page layout, multimedia authoring, and graphic design programs for Linux, free or not. The world is also waiting for more games for Linux. You want a purpose in life, there you go. Get to programming graphic software and games for Linux. You will make a difference in peoples’ lives.
One Response to “Wow, articles can actually get this bad”
March 5, 2009 at 10:44 pm | general | 1 comment
Thanks Fred for these insights here. I do appreciate them and I’m glad to know another enthusiast who has traversed a lot of ground both on the desktop and in systems mgmt. You’ve outdone me in that you’ve been able to lock into Linux more effectively. I have to keep checking back to see where the Lightroom-style Linux software is. I recall seeing several programs that were fairly good commercial Linux photo management apps. This is an area covered pretty well, wouldn’t you say? ~MS
Your comment was spot on (found it randomly through my daily Google Alert on “Linux photography”).
I’ve been using Linux/Unix as my main platforms on the desktop for over 10 years and have gotten back to semi-pro photography in the last 3 or 4 years. And it works fine for me. I used a Mac OSX laptop for about a year but didn’t like it much, felt a bit like Windows to me. Glad to hear it. I gotta look into a photography workflow with Linux as I believe that it would be effective. If you’ve ran across a good workflow article for photography, or written one, I’d read it today. =) ~MS
Apart from that I work a lot in switching antiquated (Windows mostly) infrastructures to open ones, mostly using Linux. So I’m very familiar with the issues involved.
With most users, I’d say “go with what you know and what you’re comfortable with, they finally all more or less work now”.
On the Unix side, there has been enough progress that major distributions can (and are) be used as drop in replacements for Windows in pretty much any small or medium shop. Larger ones will often have become entangled in a number of data flows that completely rely on MS proprietary tools and which will have to be completely redesigned, requiring a major planning and programming effort.
For the average home user, the open systems work fine with the exception of games.
In niche markets, it depends. In photography we have a number of very good open apps which can be supplemented by some great commercial apps (which apparently sell pretty well). I never really needed the complexity of photoshop since I just make photos and not graphical compositions.
As you pointed out, the music area seems to be fairly well furnished. On the purely graphic side, things are definitely lagging behind other platforms. There is a huge effort being undertaken though so maybe we’ll see things happening this year.
Re. development difficulty… I don’t really know. For most applications it’s much much easier to write stuff in Unix than in Windows. And most Linux users will readily buy software if they need it and if it’s standard compliant and doesn’t lock them in. I think you’re right about developing for Unix Linux is easier. I wish I knew first hand, but I don’t grasp programming tutorials very well so it’s an area I can only dream of knowing at the moment. ~MS
Anyway that attitude you poked at is unfortunately all too prevalent with users that *still* haven’t figured out what people use their computers for. Tools and not toys to dick with. They’re a nuisance.