I do, I am a computer scientist and use a terminal, git, and a text editor more than 90% of use on computers.
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Gentoo. Everywhere.
It is utterly transparent computing. I take an intense interest in the tools I use. In an open source arena, building from those sources, the manner of how my tools are made is wholly open to scrutiny, to whatever degree I care to scrutinize. Read the Source, Luke.
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Sadly I’m in a Windows world at work, But at home I am Linux through and through
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Im your everyday guy in such I use my PC you watch youtube and porn…play a few games and dont want in a Russian bot network.
Ive settled on Fedora 25. Wayland … bring it on other distors!,it is nice…tear free porn and you tube is lovely.
Im very happy now…In a great place.
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I’ve used Linux for as much as possible since 1996, and haven’t used Windows for anything except keeping in touch with Windows problems in order to be able to solve them for others since around 2003, so almost 15 years at this point. It opens so many doors and possibilities, it is so enabling in so many ways.
Think of it like this: imagine you want to be a carpenter, and you’re told that you have to use simple power tools first and save up or take a loan for a lathe and a sawing table like the ones they had at the shop where you officially learned your trade, but they keep making the power tools that you can actually afford ever less reliable and keep making the more reliable simple power tools ever more expensive, and the pressure to take a loan out to buy a lathe and a sawing table becomes ever greater, but if you do that, you won’t be able to earn anything for the next three years. Now replace those tools with commercial software products and commercial mainstream computer hardware… and here comes open source software: performance of the tools is not artificially inhibited to make you buy stuff or pay for stuff, if fact, you never pay for anything, and you can make your own dream tools for free just the way you want it, the sky is the limit… there is no catch… the only thing is that you have to make the mental click of realizing that although you’ve always been taught to work for others in order to get money to buy stuff from others, you can also just work for yourself and make your own stuff to sell stuff to others instead… it really is as simple as that… it’s just a decision to make a stance.
There is no downside to freedom and self-governance, there are only upsides, lots of them. The only burden is to have to learn first how to regain freedom. After that, there is only one downside, and that is that the people that are still living in slavery, are constantly trying to criticize you, talk down on you, intimidate you, in certain cases even accuse you of stuff, and that you have the burden of the dilemma to help them free themselves by educating them or to just let them rot in their coveted bubbles of ignorance. Now that burden is solved by the principle of open source: what you make for yourself, also benefits others, so there is no dilemma any more, you’re doing your share by using your freedom… and the more you use your freedom, i.e. the better you understand it and can use it for yourself, the more you contribute to the overall freedom.
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The thing is Zoltan…Kids want the games. all the games all the time…And Im lazy buy some games too…There is a little gaming left in me.
Linux is getting better at gamers. and for desktop all that is lacking is games, UI can grow on people. games either work or not.
Yeah Windows is a software console for proprietary entertainment software, and that’s OK, it’s also OK to use a Playstation, which is the same for even less effort. I was never a gamer, I prefer real life entertainment myself to be honest, and if I have like 5 minutes to concentrate on gaming (which would probably be a personal record, I really can’t concentrate on a game all that much lol), I’ve always found software consoles very cumbersome, whether emulators or Windows. I’ve always found either simple linux games like red eclipse ideal because that offers a quick fix for very short term gaming needs, and it’s not exclusive, literally everyone can play, and I like that, there is no differentiation based on financial threshold. And for playing with kids, I’ve found hardware consoles much more enjoyable, well, Nintendo and Playstation, Xbox has always been a total pain with the same kind of waste of time waiting for updates of nothing and bugs galore. But like I said, I’m not a gamer, I’ve never understood fascination for video games, and I’ve never been willing to spend time on them, I’ve always had better things to do in my personal experience. As a kid, I would always use my last diskette to copy PCTools 6.0 with the new split screen hex editor instead of the latest Prince of Persia lol, it’s how I roll.
The legitimacy of digital entertainment however comes with a hefty price tag, that people would not be prepared to pay if they would realize just how hefty it is in terms of relinquishing rights and in terms of having to pay for things that were theirs to start with but were taken from them with what basically is a ruse.
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Like Zoltan I’ve been using Linux for over 20 years, 15 as my main OS. Over 20 years ago I was using Solaris and AIX professionally more than Linux but I haven’t used a proprietary UNIX for over 15 years now. I run a couple of HP Microservers, a Gen7 and a Gen 8, with virtual servers running mostly Ubuntu on KVM on Ubuntu. I do sometimes have to run Windows 10 for Photoshop and Lightroom as I’m also an amateur photographer but the rest is Linux. I use a Chromebook for general browsing etc at home and I use Ubuntu on my work PC. I don’t get to game much these days, I never seem to have time.
My personal projects are mostly IOT based at the moment with a combination of VMs, PIs and soon arduinos to be added to the mix. I’m very keen on Home Automation and retro gaming at the moment.
I’m a Linux user for about 4 years, but I’m using it as my main OS for about 2 years.
I’m rocking Ubuntu Gnome on an Asus G56JK RoG. Added some custom flavor: docky, zsh and redshift.
While I was new to linux, I constantly ran back to windows for all sort of chores like burning a CD or formatting a hard drive. In time I got the big picture that the same things can be done with different programs in different environments, you just need to find the right tool for the job.
At the moment, I use my windows machine only to game. I tend to keep things this way so I won’t get distracted from working while on linux. The steam icon is evil on any desktop.
I had a macbook for a few months. Besides the great battery life, Linux is missing MS365 and Adobe Suite. For the people who rely on those software, Linux can be a deal breaker. And this is the answer to what @FaunCB was wondering about in the main post: software unavailability.
Have you tried Darktable? I do think it is a good alternative to Lightroom but i have no idea how difficult it would be to transition from it to Darktable.
Many photogs are still using LR 3.6, because it was amazing. LR3.6 is much faster than any other program with similar features, including Digikam or Darktable, but Adobe screwed LR up when they brought the price down from 400 bucks for LR 3.6 to 150 bucks for LR4, because LR suddenly became very very slow.
LR 3.6 is amazing though for a fast workflow, but it doesn’t do recent raw formats. One of the reasons why many protogs keep using those 5DII’s is not only because the rendering is better (actually the rendering was best on the 5DI), but also because they can still take full advantage of LR 3.6 with those raw files.
LR was the most amazing workflow tool ever for photogs, it was better than digikam at that time, and digikam has been amazing for a long time. Adobe just screwed it up completely. The biggest problem of Lightroom for protogs was always the complete lack of network storage compatibility: Adobe products can only work from a local database file. That is just plain retarded in this day and age.
Darktable has one big flaw: importing takes forever and immediate backups while importing are not very reliable or user friendly. Lightroom has always had the same problem, but there was always Photo Mechanic in the Windows world to solve that. The magic combination in Linux is Darktable + Rapid Photo Downloader. Rapid-photo-downloader is a small noarch app that handles imports and immediate complex backups incredibly fast. With the burden of import and data backup taken away from Darktable, it is suddenly amazing and has much better workflow. Digikam remains the most amazing tool on any platform for photojournalists or large studios/image banks though, because of all the search intelligence and the speed with which it handles large data sets and massive amounts of metadata, much better than Photo Mechanic ever did in Windows.
I was also looking for such a thing…Interesting to know…
Yeah I have. You get what you pay for, Darktable is very good but it’s not Lightroom. It’s the time Photoshop and Lightroom save you. When you’ve got 300+ pictures to go through you want to waste as little time as possible
They are the same app except darktable is constantly updated with each update every camera gets. Olympus to Fujifilm.
Even iPhone updates.
Also, the quality of raw processing with open source libs is the best on any platform. Even the most popular commercial solutions use the open source raw libs because they’re just the best by far (Capture One and Iridient Developer). The difference is that in Darktable, there is actual OpenCL acceleration, a feature that no commercial solution has. It sometimes is a bit of a drag to configure, but it works. Adobe LR has never had any form of acceleration. LR is especially popular with Canon users because Canon uses a raw format that is not encrypted, it’s the fastest raw format after DNG. Nikon and Fujifilm raw files are coded and encrypted with the unique hardware identifier of the camera, that’s what makes these cameras so popular with press photogs and successful artistic photogs, because the files are always identifiable and you can always prove that something has been doctored with in post, it is a real negative, because there is only one out of camera original and you can always prove which one that is, so you can always prove ownership and you can always use an image in evidence because there is a way to check for originality. Press photo banks will require shooting in jpeg, except for Nikon and Fuji cameras, for that reason: there has to be digital proof of originality. The problem is that the conversion and preview generation take much longer. In Darktable, at least raw processing is OpenCL accelerated, so that takes away some of that slowness, especially on Gaussian operations. So Canon users have less benefit in speed from going open source than others. In fact, Leica and some medium format are fastest in post, because DNG raws. For creative and scientific photogs, Darktable and Digikam offer custom raw processing that is finetunable to an extent not offered by any commercial solution. For instance, pixel grid monochrome “passthrough” type processing, which is very useful for reverse engineering of for instance PCB’s, is offered in open source solutions, but not in any commercial solution, but also the raw processing algorithms themselves can be selected and finetuned, which is something commercial raw processors don’t offer.
There are many benefits to using open source software if you want an edge, a USP, if you want that extra added value over competitors. That’s one of the reasons I started using open source solutions back in the 90’s, because back then, I could afford standard commercial solutions, but I could simply not afford taylormade commercial solutions that offered the added value I wanted for my own product. In open source, I could make that happen for myself. Back in the day, that took a lot of work, but now that open source has evolved so much, it’s become much easier to find that extra added value leverage in open source software.
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I have for over 10 years now. My wife and several members of my family as well (I support them). We also have a Linux based NAS and media center (Kodi). Haven’t looked back so far.
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Darktable doesn’t integrate with Photoshop directly and Photoshop doesn’t run well if at all under Wine environments. I gave up on the battle of having to use an old version of Photoshop and having to crack it in order to get past the licensing under wine. I pay £8.97 per month and have the latest version of Photoshop & Lightroom in the photographer’s bundle. I’d love to see it on Linux but when you’re trying to edit photographs of Glamour models to a standard that will satisfy them, the last thing I need is an extra 3-4 hours of work. Believe me, if there’s one person who wants to have nothing to do with Windows it’s me!
ps. I’d show examples of the before and after but the pictures are generally not safe for work and would likely have me banned instantly 
Yeah I know the problem very well believe me lol. I don’t really edit pixels myself, it is not necessary for my style of portraiture, I have the luxury of not directly needing photography for income, and I can accept who I want, and am fortunate in that my trademark style of people photography is all about subject interaction and lighting and stylistically very very basic. So I don’t do frequency separation, but rather just add a skrim or use a larger softbox or put a sock on the dish lol. But in my company, there are also actual pixel pushers that make compos and all the marketing stuff for various purposes, and the big discussion always used to be about the necessity of the use of Photoshop because of two main arguments: 1. it was required by the print shops, because you really needed ProphotoRGB, 16-bit depth and PS* file formats, of course also on Mac because that’s what creatives use right, and 2. it was the only application that allowed for easy use of the tools required to get the job done. So they didn’t want GIMP and they didn’t want linux.
What I did was simply make the software devs in the company, who have no experience with pixel pushing at all, perform the same assignment of cutting out people from various raw images and compositing them into a certain composite background that was actually a composition itself of radically different images that required a lot of blurring and multiplication layering, and made it into a race: the 4 graphical designers on their Photoshop Macs against two devs on GIMP on Linux. The graphical designers used the pen tool like they had done for years, and got the job done with 4 people in just under an hour, including the complete compositing. The two devs first discussed the methodology for 4 minutes, because they had no clue on how to actually do things like that, and then got the exact same job done in 25 minutes with GIMP, using the more rational filter system GIMP offers. The printshop that went as far as to actually apply the wrong colour profile on purpose just to make a point on the file format, was thrown out because I don’t work with people that are not trustworthy and don’t realize that literally nobody needs 16 bit colour depth for the kind of marketing materials we produce, and I’ve been using a more modern print shop that works entirely on open source software since then, with great benefits with regards to speed of execution, price and quality.
The graphical designers in my company were deeply impressed and asked for a GIMP and linux training, which they got, but it didn’t quite work to enhance their efficiency at first, because they still used the old ways of the pencil tool, instead of actually rationalising the process. So I forced them to discuss everything with the devs, with people who know about software, but not about graphical design, and now they’re all GIMP masters.
There are certain assignments where 16 bit depth and medium format 16 bit raw and prophotoRGB and all of the diva bling is necessary, I understand that, and for those assignments, the GIMP is not an option, even though Darktable and Digikam are entirely capable of even higher technical standards than Photoshop, and offer much better proofing tools than Adobe products. But sometimes, it’s necessary to do extensive pixelpushing, it is what it is. The problem with open source is that it makes those products for which there are users. I guess there are very little open source software users that are into high end landscape or fashion or glamour photography professionally, so there is little demand and little motivation to bring the GIMP up to the standards that are used in that part of the industry, but I would still argue that it’s not entirely necessary to have 16 bit depth for end products, and would argue that the better colour profiling support in open source is at least as important for the actual end result than the colour depth, also because most digital cameras simply don’t offer 16 bit depth anyway. And the paradoxical thing is that those protogs who shoot with 16-bit raw capable medium format digital backs or shoot large format and use 16 bit capable high end drum scanners, simply don’t use Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw, because those applications don’t work with those cameras and scanners.
On top of that, Darktable offers a lot more editing capabilities than Lightroom, and can do channel separation and precise parametric editing to an extent that even Photoshop can’t do, and has layer and pooled mask support (which is more flexible and efficient than smart objects in PS). The only thing Darktable doesn’t do, is that is isn’t a dedicated pixel pushing application, it doesn’t offer plugin filters, etc… but in general, the number of photogs that could actually benefit in their workflow from forgetting what they had learned about Adobe products, and reset their workflow towards an open source based workflow, is growing immensely, it’s still not for everybody, but for most it is more efficient to use open source editing and bank management tools. Of course there is quite a learning curve, comparable to the learning curve of Photoshop, and I can understand that a lot of users don’t want to put themselves through that again if they can avoid it. The problem with that is that the market is evolving, and requires more added value these days, whereas the Adobe tools do not evolve, they pretty much simply provide a status quo, with the added remark that a lot of protogs will use early 2015 versions of PS, even though they pay for CC, because Adobe removed acceleration technology after the early 2015 version, and the workflow is seriously inhibited with the latest Adobe CC versions.
So it’s a very complex thing. I certainly is not nice to have to rethink and reconfigure and entire workflow, that’s for sure, but then again, that could also be avoided by going to open source, because there you’ll always have to option of the old workflow, but with the new tools, because open source is by users for users, it’s entirely user-centric, and users don’t have to fear decisions from developers, because they are the developers.
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I pretty much only use Windows for school programs that I have to use (Adobe stuff and also MS Office; LibreOffice won’t work for what we do). I use Linux for all software development, and most other general computer stuff. If I can use Linux, I do. I pretty much only keep Windows around for when I have no other option.
Darktable is similar, but it does not have the same polish and flow as lightroom.
Plus lightroom works fairly well in wine.