Linux Sucks - Page 3

what BT said.... ubuntu has been the simplest distro to install nvidia on thanks to automatix

I know I'm a little late to the party, but it really irks me when I hear someone say linux is hard, and windows "just works". The reason windows "just works" is because it was pre-installed by the manufacturer in most cases, and the exact drivers you need for your hardware are also already installed. Even if you have to do the install yourself, you have a CD with the drivers you need provided with the hardware. Try making windows "just work" without the drivers.

I find linux at least as easy as windows, just different. The only advantage of windows is that virtually every piece of hardware has windows drivers available almost immediately upon release, and that's not the fault of the linux community. It's the fault of the hardware manufacturers.

The other problem with Linux is that major software makers (eg Adobe) do not support it or support it minimally. Not Linux's fault,, but there it is.

i wouldn't knock adobe....they've been pretty decent to release Flash 9 (granted they skipped 8) and acroread.... no photoshop perhaps, but who cares when the community (debian-minded people at least) prefers gimp anyway

And we don't even need acroread... Unless i'm missing something, Evince is absolutely amazing. Plus we have ghostscript (which virtually every distro supports out of the box) and most word processors in linux has pdf support.

Photoshop is the biggest problem. Many graphics professionals want to use linux, but are stuck using mac's and windows because gimp doesn't cut it. Back when I was working n the game industry I always had photoshop opened with my 3d program. It was a staple that I needed constant access to. You have to look at it realistically... No windows or mac developers have been able to come close to creating a competing program(paint shop pro is the closest), so it's really not an OSS can't compete with commercial software issue... It's a nobody can compete with Photoshop issue.

Automatix is great for noobs but dont let it put you off editing your own xorg.config file or learning how to do things via the terminal and breaking things, thats how people learn about linux!. I was a one eyed Windows user until about 3 years ago and a copy of Suse came on a magazine cd. I tried it, loved the look of the interface (unfortunately it only looked pretty as my laptop at the time wasnt supported too well). I set about researching about the different distro's that are out there and I found Ubuntu Warty. Never had a problem since.
I have since bought a Dell 700m and everything bar the wifi light works (my wireless connected immediately all I had to do was manually enter the DNS servers) there is even a fix for the wifi light!
I feel so 'dirty' when I use Windows now, which is at work or when I look at the desktop we have here, BF loves to game, thats the only downside to linux at the moment, gaming, but it still doesnt make it suck.
Unless you are willing to learn and accept the fact you might just have to play around with the setup of your computer (OMG!!) then you will always think linux sucks. But who wants to be a sheep and follow everyone else anyways? Thats why linux will never suck!

GIMP is not in the same league as PS CS3.

the only place GIMP falls down is in CMYK support (there basically isn't any). Otherwise it IS in the same league. I've used GIMP quite a bit, and PS some. I find GIMP>PS aside from the the CMYK issue.

It's really not. Using my wacom tablet in gimp nearly drives me to insanity. I find masking to be much better in photoshop. Layer effects/tools in photoshop are MUCH better. You can actually do nice non-destructive font effects in photoshop (like drop shadows). CS3 supports HDR now. Gimp's select feature drives me crazy- If I have ctrl A select and then try to do a box select it drags the friggin image instead of canceling the full select in favor of the box select- that's nit picking but it happens to me every time. Plus, the window focus in gimp causes me so much grief. Like if I select the move tool, and then put the cursor over my selection I want to move, but I want to use the arrow keys... It won't work until I click on the window to focus on the work area window or else it'll be cycling through the tool menu. So frustrating.

The gimp interface is so convoluted that it takes me about 3-5x longer to complete a project than in photoshop. And i've been using gimp exclusively for a year now. It's not a bad program for web work, but it really needs to be reworked. I will say, gimp's image export tool is soooo much better than photoshop's.

I find people tend to strongly prefer whichever product they first cut their teeth on. I have no problems with the window focus issue, I just habitually click to change focus to the image and get to work. I dont even notice that I do it.

Honestly, I got ahold of a *cough* copy of PS from a friend, and I have a terrible time with the interface, it drives me nutz.

oh, and what do you mean "non-destructive"? I can do drop shadows from text without destroying anything. layers man, layers.

How do you do an overlay filter in the GIMP?

Hooo boy, I'm gonna get flamed for this

I wish Palm made a full-scale desktop OS...

I totally agree with this. While Gimp is a good piece of software, it doesnt compare to photoshop. I've never been able to get Gimp to work nearly as well as photoshop and I've been using both of them for the same amount of time. Gimp just doesnt have the same kinds of options.

how do you do an "overlay filter" in Photoshop?

you can make a new layer and set the mode to "overlay", but I have no idea if that's the same as "overlay filter" in photoshop, as I can only find passing references to it on the web, but nothing on what is, or how to do it.

I meant layer blend mode, sorry. The overlay mode gives me effects I cannot get in GIMP,

I went here to learn about layer blend mode in photoshop. If I understand it correctly, in the GIMP you'd go to the layers dialogue window, and adjust the mode. GIMP has all the same ones mentioned in the above referenced article (and more - as I'm sure photoshop does). I no longer have photoshop installed or I'd check.

Wow. Last time I looked at GIMP was about 3 years ago, and it had no overlay blend. But see below. Has it made major advances in the last few years?

I've only been using it for ~1.5 years (started with 2.1, now on 2.2), so I couldn't say really, all I know is I like it, and I've never (well once - but I honestly dont know if it was GIMP or my skills that were lacking) been disappointed in it.

It was a version ago now that I played with photoshop, and I'd like to mess around with the newest version for grins, but I'll be danged if I'm gonna pay several hundred dollars for it, when I'm happy with GIMP, and my friend that gave me the last one hasn't upgraded. maybe I need to encourage him...

If you haven't played with it recently, you should check it out again.

Well, that's very interesting! The GIMP was pretty far behind PS when I tried it, but all strength to them if they can catch up with Adobe! It shouldn't be that hard, since there are a limited number of features in PS. I wonder if it's similar to OO and M$Orifice? In that case, OO is about 70% of the way there, although I've switched to OO completely even on Windows.

same here (switched to OO on both platforms). I would say GIMP is at least 70% of PS (from what I can see). Those that have more experience with the newer photoshop can provide better input on that.