[Johnny Brown]

No, I was referring to not being able to run Photoshop, Lightroom, Aperture, and no doubt many other industry standard pieces of software. I'm very open to learning more about computing, when neccessary, with Linux I've got as far as 'computer says no'. And its a no from me too. Cheryl?

[Jaspersharpe]

Ah divvent think Ah've evah herd ov Lyenux man. Is hei that gadge off Peenuts leik?

[slackline]

No, I was referring to not being able to run Photoshop, Lightroom, Aperture, and no doubt many other industry standard pieces of software. I'm very open to learning more about computing, when neccessary, with Linux I've got as far as 'computer says no'. And its a no from me too. Cheryl?

Sorry for the misconception over the analogy, in the absence of details I was basing it on the content of this thread.

Anyway, as I say, not everyone has to understand computing, but their experience would be enhanced from understanding a little bit more about what they are doing.

It might not cut the mustard when it comes to your image editing requirements, but I guess it depends what industry your in. 

GNU/Linux is certainly "where its at" when it comes...

• Web-site hosting (Linux Apache MySQL and PHP/Python/Perl or LAMP) sits behind some of the largest web-sites on the net (e.g. Amazon, Flickr, Wikipedia, hordes of free web-based CMS such as Wetpaint/Wordpress/etc., and possibly even UKB as SMF is PHP based, ).
• Google use their own customised Linux distribution on their servers that sit behind search, gmail, Google docs.  Tools used by millions daily.
• Innumerable companies that produce NAS and wireless routers opted to use embedded Linux distros which the user community has taken full advantage of and has expanded dramatically (I've added tons of functionality to my WRT54g precisely because of this).
• Android, the OS for mobiles from Google, is Linux and is on an increasing number of manufacturers handsets.
• As Jim mentioned pointed out above there is investment from large traditional blue-chip companies such as IBM.
• On the graphics/movie/CGI front the industry standard is to get a farm of several thousand machines for your CGI rendering.  As Cinepaint is a fork of GIMP that brings 32-bit colour channel frame editing and is used by Sony Pictures in films like Elf, Looney Tunes: Back in Action, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Duplex, The Last Samurai, Showtime, Blue Crush, 2 Fast 2 Furious, the Harry Potter series, Cats & Dogs, Dr. Dolittle 2, Little Nicky, The Grinch, The 6th Day, Stuart Little, Planet of the Apes, Stuart Little 2, and Spider-Man.*

So I guess it depends what industry and what level within that industry you're in as to how much you perceive "Computer Says No" to be a barrier/problem.  As has been said before (can't find the thread), with your specific niche of being a pro-photographer your not really a good representative of your average computer user (nor am I though!) who wants to be able to email, surf the web, write letters and personal spreadsheets, and some basic image editing (photoshop etc. being huge overkill for most users), all of which can be easily achieved with a relatively simple walk-through Linux install (I'd argue that even the above mentioned problems BB had with NFS# aren't what most users do, they'll just get an external USB drive and plug that in to back shit up).

Its all a bit  .  Now where can I get a bike that doesn't need servicing, I mean we went to the moon sixty years ago in a tin can, surely technology should have solved this simple engineering problem by now!

* You might not be interested in the fact that Disney, DreamWorks, and Pixar funded development of an emulator (WINE) to get Photoshop running under Linux so they could do the equivalent.  So this particular industry still plumped for Linux as an OS, despite not having native program support.

# And my apologies BB, for maybe misguiding you.  On an unmodified NAS its more likely to be using Samba to serve up NFS shares, as these can be mounted by M$ systems whereas normal NFS exports on Linux can't be mounted by M$ systems, so I may have sent you on wild goose chase there  .

[Johnny Brown]

That's all great. Didn't you forget about academic institutions though?

All these uses have dedicated programmers to get, and keep, these things running. As you have yourself. For the home user who has work to do and doesn't want programming as a hobby, Linux just seems like tying one arm behind your back to save a few quid.

( And if we're preaching, you don't need to be a pro photographer to NEED Lightroom or Aperture. I'm not, and I do. Its as important a part of digital photography as the camera. For anyone interested enough to shoot RAW, or more than 500 images a year, its a necessity.)

[dave]

Its as important a part of digital photography as the camera.

Except that it blatantly isn't.

[cofe]

[Johnny Brown]

Except that it blatantly isn't.

I disagree. Its like shooting neg film and having them processed at snappy snaps. You may think you are in control, but you aren't. Stick in a roll of slides, and you find out what its all about.

I damn near gave up on digital before the Lightroom beta was released. It was a massive pain in the arse. Now its a pleasure.

[slackline]

I work at an academic institution, I've set up and installed servers because they are required.

According to a colleague I share my office with the computer science courses he did here at Shef Uni used Linux for all their students (I think his course was focused around database development, but not sure).

Yes CICS does have dedicated system administrators and help desk staff, but it would be a massive backwards step for a trained programmer to spend their time/life doing IT help desk support.  I've also very limited programming experience myself, having only learnt some very rudimentary C some ten years ago, dabbled in high-level scripting languages such as Perl and become proficient in a couple of Statistics packages.

Not academia, but 12,000 desktop systems were migrated to Linux in the tax authority in Lower Saxony.  There are other such stories where Linux its been implemented in large institutions (if my memory serves me correctly I think a UK local authority also did this).

You don't need to be a programmer to keep a computer up-to-date and understand what its doing behind the scenes.

I take more than 500 pics a year, but have no need or desire for Photoshop et al as I have little interest in post-processing, just as I'd never considered learning how to develop film, which probably puts me in the ludite camp  but to turn things around I want a camera that "just works" and doesn't require me learning how to use post-processing, my balance point for this is entry-level SLR which gives me the control I feel I need to achieve what I want (i.e. slightly more control than P&S).

I disagree. Its like shooting neg film and having them processed at snappy snaps. You may think you are in control, but you aren't. Stick in a roll of slides, and you find out what its all about.

And that analogy pretty much sums up my feelings about M$, "You may think you're in control, but you aren't" (not that you care whether you're in control or not, but I do, hence my choice).

[cofe]

I'm not quite following this. So, which is best?

[dave]

Except that it blatantly isn't.

I disagree.

I'd love to see you go out to take a photo with just a copy of lightroom under your arm.

[slackline]

I'm not quite following this. So, which is best?

No such thing as "best", just "most suited to your needs".

In light of BB having an Acer Aspire One I recommended Kuki as its tweaked specifically for this model.

[cofe]

Don't worry word. I know there's no such thing as best. I was being sarcy. 

[Johnny Brown]

I'd love to see you go out to take a photo with just a copy of lightroom under your arm.

Ah, I get you now - you can use no computer at all. Sounds brilliant. Is that what that button on Cofe's camera is for? There isn't one on mine.

[Yossarian]

Except that it blatantly isn't.

I disagree.

I'd love to see you go out to take a photo with just a copy of lightroom under your arm.

Oh I dunno?  Make a small hole in the middle of one side of the box, paint the opposite side of the inside of the box with a solution made of equal volumes of 8% potassium ferricyanide and 20% ferric ammonium citrate, allow to dry, then grow a moustache, put on some stiff brogues and a decent suit, then ascend a fell with your whippet Tim and look for some dead fit (and very still) girls...

[slackline]

Don't worry word. I know there's no such thing as best. I was being sarcy. 

  the sarcasm completely passed me by (again!)

[cofe]

No worries. I think you were in 'the zone'.

[dave]

I'd love to see you go out to take a photo with just a copy of lightroom under your arm.

Ah, I get you now - you can use no computer at all. Sounds brilliant. Is that what that button on Cofe's camera is for? There isn't one on mine.

Ok i'll throw in a laptop to run the software on, a printer, and some colour management hardware. You still won't be able to take a photo though without a camera. Hence why the raw processing software isn't of equal importance as a camera.

[Tris]

Slack---line is this you? (one use for Linux I suppose)

[slackline]

No, I don't have any children (nor any great desire to have any) and my PC case has a 'door' on the front that would look untidy if left open all the time for the CD-ROM to open/close (not that the rest of the "study" is particularly tidy!).

[SA Chris]

This thread is cracking me up!

(MS) Word!

[cofe]

No, I don't have any children (nor any great desire to have any) and my PC case has a 'door' on the front that would look untidy if left open all the time for the CD-ROM to open/close (not that the rest of the "study" is particularly tidy!).

Tell me that was a sarcastic response word. Otherwise I think you need to go on retreat from the sciency threads for a week or two.

[slackline]

No, I don't have any children (nor any great desire to have any) and my PC case has a 'door' on the front that would look untidy if left open all the time for the CD-ROM to open/close (not that the rest of the "study" is particularly tidy!).

Tell me that was a sarcastic response word. Otherwise I think you need to go on retreat from the sciency threads for a week or two.

No, my case really does have a door on the front, its a Hiper Anubis Midi-Tower...

[cofe]

Retreat it is...

[tomtom]

I had a daft VB program ages ago (10 years +) that was called cupholder. You simply pressed a button marked cup holder and the CD draw ejected 

Almost as funny as the program I got our MSc students to write last year in a VB class. It had a dialog box with the question are you stupid? and underneath it a yes and no button, when you hovered over the no button, yes and no swapped etc...

Actually, none of the students thought it was particularly funny but I pissed my sides....

OK... I'll get my coat...

sorry....

[Paul B]

my stroke of genius with VB was a combination of text boxes and a print screen of the network login screen. Sign in on my account, run my program. Student/Teacher fills in username and pass, click logon, it mysteriously restarts the machine and then of course goes back to the normal logon screen and works fine.
My failing was forgetting to remove the line that sent all the info I robbed directly to the printer (put in to test if it worked). Oops. They weren't happy, I had a rather smug grin on my face I was reprimanded.