Why not Linux?

What would convince you to try Desktop Linux

[mack]

I have been a Linux user for in excess of a decade. I can honestly say the last time I even used a Windows machine was around about 5 years ago. I use Linux for all my work and day to day computing tasks.

What factors are at play that prevents more people from experimenting with Linux? Does it sound too techy and complicated? is there perhaps a large learning curve? Or does it come down to software requirements and perhaps old habits?

What would make you personally want to try a Linux distribution and have you perhaps tried before? Did you go back to another operating system and if so what drove that descicion?

Mack.

[tangor]

This thread exhibits the sheer number of flavors of Linux out there ... and for those on the outside looking in, there is an understandable concern on which to choose, which to learn, and which will still be there 20 years from now. (sigh)

Thus: why not Linux...?

[tangor]

I use my Linux box to host a dev version of my site ... but also have it mirrored on a Win machine as well... belt and suspenders kind of thing. Reality, not a problem as I am covered both ways and the Linux is keep some older hardware still in use.

[mack]

I agree with what others have said about the number of different versions of Linux out there. That I guess can be very confusing. I think a good analogy here would be Android phones. They are all based on Android, yet look at the differences between the different phone manufacturers with their add on software and user interfaces. At the end of the day, it's still Android much like all the Linux distributions are at the end of the day still Linux. You could almost say each distribution is like a different "skin" on the Linux OS (it is, however, a bit more complicated than that)...

For someone who is just thinking about making the move, I would recommend either Kubuntu or Linux Mint. The reason I have mentioned these two examples is they are based on the Ubuntu OS. Because of this, you will find it easier to get support and you are less likely to experience hardware issues. Both Linux Mint and Kubuntu also have an extremely easy to use interface that any Windows user will be able to understand fairly quickly. The last thing you want to do is need to re learn how to use a computer.

Mack.

[dstiles]

One thing I forgot to mention about my attempt at Mint 20...

I forgot to unplug the 3TB USB backup drive. I noticed just in time that the installer had selected that drive to wipe and install. Be careful - possibly applies to other OS's. Unplug all external drives before installing.

[mack]

dstiles good point. When doing an install make sure you follow along with the disk formatting section and make sure you understand what it's about to do. This can be very important if you are setting up a dual-boot system.

Mack.

[explorador]

Yes, different Linux flavors, that's good but it can create confusion. Some things work the same on all distros but some don't. So it's good to do some research if someone is not exactly within the standard software.

One thing I enjoyed is the almost bulletproof "backup", I used RemasterSys, it only ran when I called the program and it would create a full backup that I could place on USB or DVD and boot from it anytime (yes, even from DVD) and would have absolutely all my files and configurations, including personal webservers or anything placed there, and I could install it back to any hard drive. This was better than any other "backup" I've seen, specially on Windows and this tool didn't need to run on the background every time or launch permanent services. I don't know in what stage that program is right now.

To be honest I never quite felt comfortable with dual boot systems. Had Win/Linux and even Beos and MacOS but not every backup software handles it well when it comes to fully restore your system in case of problems. Had experiences where everything looked great but wouldn't restore the full multi boot or wouldn't boot at all. To me that's very important because time of recovery during issues is vital. TRIED, but then decided to stop trying, or it works or it doesn't, didn't make sense to keep experimenting because it takes time.

[not2easy]

@explorador - I had a dual boot Win (years ago) with Ubuntu installed, but as you mentioned, recovery is not always smooth. I gave up on that and and coincidentally was finally able to get a Mac. I use a backup option that works as you describe, cloning the hard drive to an external drive or even a USB drive. It has come in handy.

I have toyed with the idea of setting one of my old Win machines up with Ubuntu again, but the time cost:benefit ratio doesn't seem worth it for me. I'm shorter on time than things to do.

[graeme_p]

A lot of people seem to find the variety a problem. It is, but I want to put the positive side of this.

First, is it worth the effort of choosing? Well, consider how much effort people put into researching other purchases like cars. An OS may not be as expensive as a car, but if its some thing you use every day, and your computer is a tool of your trade (as it is for most of us here) I think its a more important choice. Its worth a bit of research to get what you want.

In fact its not that bad. A lot of distros are aimed at particular audiences or usage: servers, old hardware, extreme privacy or security precautions, penetration testing, containerisation..... You can eliminate them all if you are looking for an alternative to Windows. If you look at the suggestions for what to start with, there are a handful that stand out.

for those on the outside looking in, there is an understandable concern on which to choose, which to learn, and which will still be there 20 years from now.

Which to choose: you will not go far wrong with any of the safe choice I, and others, mentioned above.

Which to learn: unless you are tinkering with your system, or doing something complex, there is not all that much to learn. In terms of day to day experience the biggest difference are how you install software (usually an "app store" style GUI - but there are a number of these) and which desktop environment you use.

Which will still be there in 20 years: the short answer is the big ones. This in terms of families rather than distros: Red Hat and Centos, Debian derivatives including Ubuntu and Mint. its generally pretty easy to switch between different members of the same family. In fact, its not that difficult to switch to another distro. One of the biggest problems with Linux is the temptation to "distro-hop", trying one after the other in the search for perfection. Its fun if you enjoy it, but obviously a time sink if it gets out of hand.

The biggest element in your day to day Linux environment is your desktop environment. Most Linux distros let you install most desktop environments at the click of the button and you can choose which you use when you login. I used Debian family distros for about a decade, and I recently switched to OpenSUSE. The only times I do anything different are when I am installing software, or using OpenSuSE's admin GUI (the most extensive I have seen on any OS - one of the reasons I switched).

Of course the biggest advantages of choice, are 1) that you are not tied to a particular vendor. If they make a change you do not like, you can switch to something else and 2) you can use a distro tailored to your needs.

[nomis5]

Techie comments above ignore the massive elephant in the room for non techie (95%) people.
When they buy a PC it comes with Windows installed. Windows works OK. Linux is just some unknown to most people. Why risk it when the PC works fine already.

[explorador]

True, and there is also another elephant in the room: countless of threads on tech forums describe nightmares of specific apps that just won't work well on Windows/Mac unless you have specific versions of software + OS + without/without specific updates, without other specific versions of software installed. People who discover by accident that one day everything works fine until some update, or things are fine until some app is installed upgrading some Microsoft Visual C++ redistributable package or .Net. I've been there... And while I didn't witness or experience too many of those issues on MacOSX, it happens there too, specially regarding developer tools, but it's been 4.5 years since I don't fully work on Mac, things might be different (or worse).

In those cases, power users have fine tuned machines. Switching to another OS can be as trickier/difficult/impossible as upgrading your own OS to a more recent version. In those cases (like mine), it's not about loving or not Linux, it's about "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". But yes, I often think of going back to Linux 100%, my reasons keeping me from doing it were described previously.

There are countless of apps out there, including alternative or equivalent software solutions, but it's not that simple. Linux is way better now but many apps are still a long way to go, still "glued together". And a lot of people underestimate the fact of how attached people can get to specific software and specific versions of the software, small things that make them ultra efficient and thus avoiding changes.

[graeme_p]

@nimis5 True. I took the conversation here as being at people here who are in the techie 5%.

Also, we have somewhat veered onto answering the questions like "what are good reasons for using Linux" and "what version should I use". I think its reasonably relevant, but maybe we should have a separate thread for that.

Those of us who do use Linux naturally do not think Windows does work fine by comparison!

One good reason for webmasters to use Linux is that most of us deploy our sites to *nix servers. Quite a lot of us admin *nix servers. Using Linux makes our production and development environments more similar, and makes us more familiar with the production environments.

@explorador, You second paragraph gives a good reason not to use Linux, your first gives us a good reason to use Linux. After nearly 20 years of using Linux for home (myself and wife to start with, kids as they appeared, multiple machines for most of it) and work (small office for four people at one point), I can only recall one incident of software not installing because of version conflicts on a standard system, one or two issues with an extra repository (third part app store) not being kept up to date, and one failed upgrade (which was easily fixed after looking at the forums). The reason is that most of that software (especially the basic things like compilers and libraries) comes from a repository specific to the distribution and version so its all tested and fixed to ensure it works together.

Power users are still more likely to break stuff though!

[dstiles]

I have only two Windows "machines". One is a local Windows 2000 VPS on top of Manjaro, used to run software in DOS that I designed back in the '80s plus an ancient accounts package that my wife refuses to give up. The other is an online Windows 2012 server used to host web sites.

I was suckered into a windows web server about 25 years ago; before that I used a Unix server. I have regretted that decision for most of this century but I thought the conversion back to linux would be too horrendous.

About eighteen months ago I began a project to recode all of my IIS/ASP sites into Apache php to run under linux. At present I'm about a third of the way through. The apache server is running on my mail server, which itself is a VPS running on the Windows 2012 server (I escaped from Windows mail servers about ten years ago). My aim is to eventually ditch Windows.

Why am I doing this? One reason is having to pay a premium for Windows over free linux (I'm a tight old B) but also because security (viruses, hacking etc) has been so abysmal on Windows generally. In a few years I will have to upgrade from Windows 2012 to some other flavour which, having seen Windows 10, I am not looking forward to. I will probably have to modify my sites to run properly (I did when moving from Windows 8 to 2012) and the IIS manager is anything but consistent across versions. The essential MySQL, I consider, runs better on linux. I also see no reason to run separate Windows and linux servers for web and mail, even if one is a VPS on the other. Another reason: in a few years I will either retire or expire. It would be nice to hand on my and my clients' sites in a common working format; good Windows IIS programmers are scarce.

All of the above has been decided on the basis that my linux desktops have been stable, have all the software I require (I accept this is not the case for all other people) and given good and reliable service. I could not go back to a windows desktop now.

[mack]

There have been a few mentions of backups. I don't have quite the same level of backup as many would, but I find under linux it is fairly simple to depoly an effective backup. I have my main PC running Kubuntu and I have a "recycled" PC that I call my server. The server Runs Ubuntu Server 20.04

All of my software is from the repository or app images. If they come from a repo I simply add "apt-get install [name]" to a text file. If I ever need to recover all my software. I just execute this file as sudo user and it will go through each line installing the software one after the other. If I have app images I install these in a folder /home/username/apps

I then use rsync to back up my home directory from the PC to the server. The server has a raid 5 setup, so I have some level of redundancy. Anything that is very important is also in the cloud.

Mack.

[graeme_p]

@dstiles I was trying to remember who used Linux desktops and Windows servers! Classic ASP, right? Did you consider Mono, .NET on Linux or other languages closer to to your current code? PHP might not be the easiest target to port to.

@mack I use rsync and rdiff-backup - simple and efficient but configurable.

[JAB Creations]

Customizable GUI.

Waterfox "Classic":
https://www.fixedfirefox.com/images/fixed-firefox-10.0-developer.png [fixedfirefox.com]

My Windows 7 Start Menu from a few years ago that is not as refined as it is now:
https://www.jabcreations.com/images/start-menu-fixed-full.png [jabcreations.com]

Windows Explorer on Windows 7, again, not as refined as it is now:
https://www.jabcreations.com/images/windows-explorer-fixed.png [jabcreations.com]

Another problem has been the terminal. Most Linux people explain that to solve a problem that you need to open the terminal. Don't get me wrong, I respect what can be done with it but a GUI gets things done faster.

Permissions. I'm the Administrator. Everyone screams not to use root. So WTF do I need to type SUDO all of the time? I liken that attitude to the same as those who scream that you should never run an OS without a pagefile though I've only had better performance without one since the early 2000s.

Compiling: yes open source is great and all but I need BINARIES! I need to use the software, not poke around in it while sitting in a basement. I do production as in making money by solving problems for people which means not having an environment that fights me.

Hard drive folder garbage. Even on Windows 10 there are only five directories on C:\. Linux? My host has like two dozen. That's a garbage dump! Linux simply isn't organized.

I'm generally willing and have in brief stints over the years toyed with Linux. Gnome 3 was a complete and utter failure as a GUI and I specialize in GUIs! I'd be up for testing another Linux and desktop environment in VM Player, it's been a few years. I don't dual-boot. I doubt I'll be able to do much until I can pay a few thousand a month to hire Linux developers to fix GUI problems for starters.

John

[dstiles]

> Mono, .NET
Mono cannot manage Classic ASP and I never had the time (nor inclination) to convert to proper .NET - the impostition of that in order to run ANY kind of ASP is bad enough. I have looked at translation and "run-as" software but nothing really works. Converting to php has been an education and not as serious a problem as I thought it might be. Once I'd converted all my "library" code the individual sites are more or less straight-forward. My experience of designing software in C decades ago helped, of course. :)

> rsync
I have used luckyBackup since first moving to linux. That is basically a GUI front-end to rsync. I've read recently that it may no longer be supported but it still works for my data backups. On the other hand, recent OSs seem not to run it properly for root backups. I've tried Timeshift for that but am not happy with it. I can build rsync lines to add to cron but I ran grsync front-end to get an initial one which I then modified.

[graeme_p]

@JAB Creations do not understand the point you are trying to make with the Windows and Waterfox screenshots

The advantages of the terminal are

1. Its faster and more repeatable - you want to do something again just up arrow or search history
2. its much easier to give and follow instructions like "copy and paste these lines into the terminal" than "click on this icon then you should see a tab, click on that, then a few lines down you will see...."

if you prefer to do things in the GUI, use the GUI.

Everyone screams not to use root. So WTF do I need to type SUDO all of the time?

Its not a big deal. If you prefer to use root, use root.

Compiling: yes open source is great and all but I need BINARIES! I need to use the software, not poke around in it while sitting in a basement.

So install binaries. its the default way to install software in most Linux distributions. I have not compiled anything other than my own code for years.

Gnome 3 was a complete and utter failure as a GUI

So use KDE or XFCE or whatever you like.

Hard drive folder garbage. Even on Windows 10 there are only five directories on C:\. Linux? My host has like two dozen. That's a garbage dump! Linux simply isn't organized.

Its organised in a different way, and has a lot of advantages. For example needing to specify the drive/partition identifier in the path means paths are inconsistent across machines. Yuck!

I think you may just have shown that Linux has a problem with misconceptions about it.

[JAB Creations]

@graeme_p I still stand by my comments, especially the terminal. Don't get me wrong, some scripting can be great! I have a script for Windows to open programs and the open certain files so one double-click and besides having to organize the order of windows on my taskbar I'm not doing excessive clicking.

Start Menu issue I forgot to mention: I've never been able to get the properties of a shortcut and manage the parameters, I can do that in Windows. Now, don't get me wrong, the pin option in Windows is as limited and therefore dumb as shortcuts on Mac OS X are.

I tried to user the Start Menu editor a few years ago and it still had the same bug from years before that where I couldn't move or delete the Education folder.

Two dozen folders isn't organized. Frankly an OS should only use one directory on the root of a drive, anything more is just a mess. Maybe a second if you want to make user directories easier to access.

Speaking of drives: I'm a single partition per physical drive kind of man. I can't stand the excessive partitioning Linux does, STOP THAT!

And if you can't specify which physical drive with a letter like in Windows then how the hell are you supposed to differentiate between C:\test\ and D:\test\ on Linux?

Again, I'm not against Linux though there are some serious issues. Once I get my business really going I plan on paying Linux devs to fix the multitude of bugs and eventually just commission my own Linux desktop environment.

John

[graeme_p]

@JAN Creations if you do not want to use the terminal, do not use it. its fairly rarely that you have to use the terminal. A lot of Linux users I know (my wife, my father, my younger daughter) never use the terminal.

As for the rest, your comments about needing to compile, being forced to type sudo, etc. are simply factually wrong or the result of picking a particular choice (Gnome, for example) that does not suit you - there is a reason that while Gnome is probably the most widely used desktop, most of us here use KDE. Gnome is meant for users who do not want to customise and want everything complicated hidden.

With regard the start menu, you do not say on what desktop environment. I can certainly do that on KDE and XFCE as I have done so. Right click on it and you get the menu editor.

You can install Linux on a single partition if you want to. Its an option in the installer. You lose the advantages of having multiple partitions.

"C:\test" and "D:\test" would be mounted on different paths. Its very rarely that you need to care which drive they are on- I cannot really think of any reason to other than checking free space.. On most set ups, if you ever need to know, its something simple like /home is on one drive and / everything else is on another.

Why only one directory at root? There are lots of different things that should go in different directories. In fact, Linux comes closer to that in having a single directory for everything at "/".

If there are bugs the people currently funding Linux cannot afford to fix (IBM, Intel, Samsung etc.) you must be planning on making a lot of money! I am also mystified about this multitude of bugs given I find Linux to be a lot more reliable than Windows.

[explorador]

One word: attitude. We often underestimate how attached we become with OS's, and how easily we can grow to "hate" certain OS's or features-lack-of-features that make our everyday life a pain, specially when at work due to corporate limitations you don't have a saying what to install. There are lots of unfinished things on Linux and Windows (and even MacOS), and lots of ways to tweak it.

One thing quite appreciated in the Linux community is how easy you can separate the USER folders (diff partition) and install whatever you like, want to change your OS? you can do so and still retain your configuration in more ways than you can do on Windows. BTW I have two partitions on my Windows machine exactly like that, in my case I can restore full OS backups without hurting my user folders and documents.

Again we underestimate how strong the specific-APP effect can be. Lots of users would refuse moving to Linux just because one or two apps do something they like and love the way it works, even if there is an alternative on other Os's. Linux wasn't built for desktop from ground up, it REALLY lacks the foundations other Os's had as they were improved, specially the commercial agreements between the OS and software developers on companies. Yes Linux is more mature today and I hope it continues that way because I actually like Linux and I would like to move again there, but in my case it's not the right time yet.

I would have moved to BeOS first instead of Linux, I loved the OS and it was amazingly fast, great, but it didn't catch the market and was somehow murdered. NeXT took the chance and history reveals why. At the end of the day what REALLY saved the chapter was Apple having strong negotiations with software developers creating the apps, and both would work together to make it happen (you just can ask Adobe to build something, there must be an agreement and the OS must facilitate the build), and so when MacOSX was ready, Adobe was also ready. And the desktop publishing ecosystem facilitated the business.

Chris Cox describes why there is no Adobe for Linux, and why it probably will never by. It's too fragmented, what's behind the curtains is not great for software stability and investment, if you think about it... regardless of how much you/me can love Linux, probably the chance of confirming Chris words was palpable on different situations. Who is Chris Cox? is one of those behind Photoshop (developer), there is a thread somewhere about this with his own words.

Well same thing happened to BeOS, the Apps were not enough to make a change happen. And some markets are too dependent on specific software, and those who say "there is Gimp", well they don't know what they are talking about, at all. Not everything can be solved that easily.

I do like Linux, hope things get better over time.

[graeme_p]

Linux wasn't built for desktop from ground up

Few OSes were. While the original MacOS was, MacOS X is a BSD and BSD was even less desktop oriented than Linux was.

A lot of people loved BeOS. it was killed by anti-competitive measures by Microsoft (MS settled out of court). The BeOS company was also foolish to turn down a takeover offer from Apple. If they had accepted the replacement MacOS would have been BeOS based.

You have a point about certain apps, and Photoshop is one, where it is very hard for users to move because they have invested so much time in learning it. Then there are things like industry vertical apps that only support one OS.


On the other hand, most people do have good apps for what they do on Linux.

I am a bit sceptical about Linux "fragmentation" being a reason not to develop for it. It does not seem to be a serious problem for anyone else and I cannot see why it would be a problem for developers of desktop apps.

[tangor]

I remain passionate about my work ... not the tools in my tool box. Though some tools do work better for some things than others...

[n0tSEO]

I'm sticking with Windows on my main laptop because of my art programs and some SEO software. Soon I'm getting a new laptop with Windows and more RAM, so I can move all art tasks there and keep this one for freelance writing and studying only, for which I don't need Windows. I already have two older computers running on Linux: an Acer laptop with Ubuntu installed that I use to learn programming, and a small Asus netbook with CentOS 6.

If I had to say which one I like better, I'd say Linux. More versatile and kinder on the CPU.

[explorador]

On desktop, there is a nice story and documentation of how Apple launched their OSX, Linux has been unable to do that with software developers, did I say "Linux?" in that term "who is Linux?", it's not a company that can talk to another company in order to make a strong agreement software based, it's not the same structure, diff animals, diff worlds. When Apple launched their new OS, they had stuff ready with Adobe, besides Apple makes a lot of noise regarding software tools among developers each time they make a change on architecture or OS.

Photoshop is an special example in many ways, it's not just what people learned to do on some app, it's also... some apps can't do the same. We had examples like Aldus Photostyler supporting CMYK but it was killed along with the other Aldus and Macromedia apps when Adobe bought them, anyway there are apps, well not exactly, color support and color management is something on itself, something too specific, I would call those functions "high end production grade" or something like that. Corel tried to come with a Linux distro and they already have products that can do what many Adobe apps can do, but that doesn't mean those are real alternatives or competitors, many products don't even appear as an alternative to the final user because it's a different market.

Besides there another elephant in the room: UX, oh yes it matters. We could talk about the whole Adobe products dedicated to graphic designers and artists, and what happens when we tell them to use Linux and some "pretoshop, freepictureshop, doggy-photo-retoucher", this strong market reacts this way: what the hell!, it's not a good idea to tell such specific users there is an alternative that looks unfinished, this is something that has hurt Linux for years, -if it's not finished: don't show it-. But that's also the beauty of Linux, software that does the job (even if it looks unfinished, or even if the interface behaves elastic when it shouldn't. Another problem there is... such trauma won't go away fast, many users will refuse to even revisit Gimp, or Blender.

Back to the original post: I invested lots of hours trying to make things work on Linux, and on some chapters I could and remained there for a couple of years. In some other cases things worked amazingly great for specific stuff, even better than Mac and Windows. I was happy, but some things needed too much tweaking and never really worked. Besides there is a HUGE DIFFERENCE between installing software, using an alternative that "does the job" and make a note "yes it works on Linux VS working for 5-8 hours per day a whole year in depth operations in the same software.

Office? I was happy. But sometimes exchanged documents changed, we needed pixel precision and things staying on the same page where we originally put them. So I tried diff office tools. I actually was pretty happy finding and using SoftMaker FreeOffice, works amazingly on Macintosh, Windows and Linux, still have it and still use it. It works with MS Office documents without issues, but I don't know to what extent (in depth conversions), anyway for me the best suite, light, fast, useful. Till this day I'm impressed on how good this is (German production)

Text editors for coding? lots of them. No need to mention.

Image Manipulation? still used Photoshop over Wine after too many failed explorations of apps. I needed a fast, useful and transparent transition instead of experimentation.

3D? Blender? tried several times but hated it, yes it has changed but the hate is so strong I'm not even interested on trying it again. I was more used to and free on 3DS Max, good luck making a life with 3DS Max on Linux. It can be so specific within Windows too, in fact I didn't like the new versions so I downgraded. Maya 3D? nice option, I like it and worked on it, but have a preference for 3DS Max and most importantly: many original files on 3DS that work well there.

Video Editing? sorry, tried everything I could fine and didn't like anything I found at the time on Linux, maybe except one that I don't remember, but it didn't offer multi-angle-multi-camera editing, something that I used to work with on Premiere (shooting video with multiple cameras and editing the result with an app that supports multi angle, not one that "allows you to mount and place multiple videos and to extensive cuts on them", very different things. At the end, hated Premiere (the new versions), so I joined the many running away from Premiere and Final Cut. Today? I don't do that anymore as often, but I know Davinci Resolve runs on Linux, it's free and I'm finding it does multicam editing.

Apps? tried but some stuff is too specific and need MacOSX or Windows, sure there is an alternative for that but... sure you can also do your own parachute with bed sheets, it should work, right? no it's not the same, in some cases impossible.

Music? damn, there are absolutely ugly apps for something as simple as listening to music on Linux, bananaplayer, rambo-music-player, chimpazeetunes, terminator-II-vs-game-of-thrones-player, even the names are terrible. I found myself surprisingly missing iTunes way too much, got it working with Wine.

Don't get me wrong, again I like Linux and loved working on it, and yes it's free, but couldn't shake the feeling of working on something "cheap".

Graphic design? I hate Corel, dislike Publisher, InkScape, even hate Indesign (despite making a living out of it for years) so I used my old and faithful Macromedia Freehand for some stuff, Indesign for other stuff.

Desktop Software coding? I actually liked, enjoyed and created some stuff on KBasic, very similar to Visual Basic and you can compile binaries for both Linux and Windows, that's good, also free. Gambas? interesting, didn't continue exploring.

Battery low... end of the post, need recharging.

[JAB Creations]

@explorador I agree with the disorganization of Linus applications. I'd rather have three good solid choices than a hundred rag-tag options. Linus devs need to get better organized with each other. Wine can only carry any given person's transition to Linux so far.

John

[Jackleo7878]

Thanks for the community answers, It will be helpful for me.

[graeme_p]

@explorardor essentially, if you prefer the apps available for Windows or Mac to those available for Linux, then you would not be happy using Linux. They are all in the same general area of graphics and multimedia editing.

I will say there are plenty professional users of those apps who are happy with them. For example, the special effects for Man in the High Castle were done using Blender - and they are pretty impressive: [youtube.com...]

Incidentally, although GIMP does not do CMYK, Krita does (and L*a*b as well).

Your choice of platform for desktop software development is not popular among those developing on Linux, and therefore have tiny ecosystems - and you were still reasonably happy.

What I am more interested in is why people are not using Linux for things it excels in - like server software development, cross platform desktop software development, web design, and so on. That should be of interest to people here!

[explorador]

Long comment not needed, so I edited this, many points were already made by different forum users.

What I am more interested in is why people are not using Linux for things it excels in - like server software development, cross platform desktop software development, web design, and so on. That should be of interest to people here!

I don't see that happening, I was really interested on that too and I did create cross platform apps running on diff systems (cross platform, Linux, Mac and Windows), that's desktop, also did my time on mobile for cross platform, and that meant I took my time to research and read about it... and I didn't find any of that here in this forum, or perhaps it would be one of those cases "I've done this and that but I won't tell", or what I mentioned on a few other posts here, that dark chapter on WebmasterWorld where there was absolute no contribution on ANYTHING just saying things like "I've done that but... [insert secretive and wont tell]", it's a topic that didn't happen here to have a reference of people talking about the things you can get done. There is no serious discussion about cross platform software here... it's good that you mention it, perhaps it's time it happens (I highly doubt it).

Among the things I researched and tried, it's a long list so I won't mention every single one. Cross platform? (desktop), Kbasic was good enough for me, allowed me to create great stuff that works, some things were not powerful, and the creator left it behind (as many other software on Linux). RealBasic got things done for me (also cross platform), but Lazarus looked more powerful to me, I liked it. The winner for me was Kbasic but not because it was the best, and I would work both on Linux and Windows, later only on Windows then building the binaries for Linux in Linux. Realbasic allowed me to do everything inside the Mac, even creating the binaries. But that's not the only things I researched, there are tons (don't even mention Gambas, that's not cross platform), the thing is many tools for cross platform require a long story on why I didn't stay there. Not to mention my quest on creating those apps meant nobody in my region had any idea or interest to discuss, here on WebmasterWorld? nope, software development is perhaps one of the least discussed topic here, not even Mobile where I also showed interest and found answers or stories elsewhere. In that regard Linux is also a dead end but not their fault, mobile development is doable in certain ways but finds stops in specific areas where you just need to go native, specially if on your list of "cross platform" you want to include Apple. Apple does many ugly things and the fandom follows, Linux tries to adapt but is a reverse universe perhaps.

Sure there are powerful tools that someone in denial can say "oh but you didn't try whatever...", nope, it's not that way, when you code something cross platform and you have experience, you take in count specific stuff in order to secure that your project won't find a dead end inside the tool you chose, and many times this means not just reading the features but also considering the support the creators offer, something that will last for years (active). Sorry, but many things "active" in Linux are not-active-at-all, and that's why they won't get nowhere, yes, even cross platform.. So, enthusiastic? yes, but realistic. Fan? yes, but Linux also let me down and I can't wait 10 years for it (yes, even cross platform). Linux is one of those things where enthusiastic people (me included) when asking... will receive answers they don't like and don't want to hear.

And... about that. I've seen far too many discussions where Linux enthusiasts get punched time after time and all they do is change the subject, yes, including cross software development (again, not something new for me), and the change of topic goes as far as the low level programming. X doesn't work? you didn't try Z, oh but you didn't try W, oh but... and then we reach... again: the never ending discussions about Phyton and C, or alike for supposed cross platform. That's not a valid argument. Diff people ended using diff tools for cross platform because in some way or another something did the job, that would be a very different discussion and should happen with the best mood and interest, not a coding war, and also: around software that got made for end users, distributed, installed, in production, or sold, not just for-oneself, that doesn't count as a real example.

Chris Cox, someone who coded stuff way more complex than any of us here mentioned how the Linux community refuses to understand, it's been said before: they are as enthusiastic as they can be, and they can be in denial too. I would be waiting to see that future thread of people here talking about cross platform desktop development, if it happens now it would be 10 years late but I would read it, I doubt something like that would gain space here. Again about Chris Cox, it's been mentioned in the relevant circles that people don't want to take the words seriously and think it's only a market thing about Adobe, it's not.

My best wishes for Linux, my laptop is here waiting for that golden moment where I get back there and live forever in that ecosystem, and I'm also one of those willing to pay (I'm not here waiting for others to do the work for free). But again as said before, there are things that I won't test or explore again, it's serious work: so I expect to make a transparent jump instead of exploring and taking long times to test. I can't do that anymore, and I understand people who in the past looked down on Linux for the same reason. Things will get better I guess.

[explorador]

BTW, the previous post (not the last one) had a dosis of humor, nothing bad against Linux, just humor. And even if someday I was hard on it... is because I really wanted it to work, I believed in it and failed to deliver. So no bad attitude against Linux, again as said: I like it, loved it, and hope it goes strong, but just like visiting Mars... it's something not probable to happen in my lifetime. Apple was faster to get things done to where it was needed.

The other thing is (clarification), Realbasic became Xojo. It did what I needed, so invested months of developing the cross platform apps and it worked amazingly well, I could even create binaries on Mac (didn't even need the Windows version) and there was no Linux version at the time. Gambas... I got bored, honestly. QT? no thanks, didn't sound as the right choice at those times, and research wasn't kind with it (and others): Toms Hardware and Stack Overflow have tons of helpful threads, realistic, pros and cons on many things, no the "I want to believe..." found in lots of Linux forums, wanting doesn't mean real. Fandom doesn't mean consistent. And no, not every coding software problem can be solved pushing people to go lower and lower level coding, that would be like the jokes on YT developer channels (one in particular -Tech Lead-) mocking people who would insist on go Fortran. Hey I need to create a todo app, cross platform: and many come to tell you to use assembly, not realistic, just a joke.

So my interest spark reignited: I will be waiting for those posts about cross platform (desktop) development.

[explorador]

Sometimes I'm vague on comments because I feel/think saying the original thought would sound too negative and personal, but that's not the case. And sometimes I avoid being too specific because it demands long details and people won't read it, despite sounding like smashing facts against what others think. Also, not the case.

graeme: Few OSes were. While the original MacOS was, MacOS X is a BSD and BSD was even less desktop oriented than Linux was.

I was saying "Linux wasn't built for desktop from ground up, it REALLY lacks the foundations other Os's had as they were improved, specially the commercial agreements between the OS and software developers on companies.". It's not "command line" and absolute the opposite of Desktop, it means what I expanded next to those words, because actually, Linux was an attempt to build a Desktop thing (Torvalds words). but MacOSX regarding the BSD origins WAS an absolute Desktop OS. So, how is it, that Linux WAS a Desktop attempt and failed? Linus Torvalds said "the desktop is really hard" and "and it's really hard to get it to happen", but also adds "this is my personal failure point in Linux". So sad... because BSD was not exactly desktop oriented but someone turned it into what many consider the best OS (not my words), and Linux is stuck. My comment was also in contrast, considering the state of the Linux GUI and how long it would take to install during times where Windows and MacOS already had decent graphical interfaces, lots of apps and a decent time for installation. Ugly? slow? absent of apps? how I wanted things to be different.

Then we also have Linus Torvalds not using Debian or Ubuntu. Not saying it's bad because he says so, but it's also the point on why many telling average users "oh it didn't work because it's not Debian" doesn't make sense, and Linus is not a low power user, yet describes the issues with the installation and work. And also explains he is not good at maintaining his machines (coding doesn't mean being part of the team of people who keep the machines running), also doesn't like running multiple distros.

I am a bit sceptical about Linux "fragmentation" being a reason not to develop for it. It does not seem to be a serious problem for anyone else and I cannot see why it would be a problem for developers of desktop apps.

We can find lots of developers actually coding or having tried, complaining about fragmentation (and a mess on the software behind, APIs, drivers, etc), and then we also have Linus Torvalds saying fragmentation from "vendors" is what has kept the desktop behind. To me it sounds optimistic because if the "creator" thinks this is happening, perhaps in the future they will do something about it, but then I am realistic and I see that's not the case, or it's not in their power. Besides someone creating the OS doesn't mean they can or would also create apps for their own OS... ouch.

I'm a big fan of Apple stories, not because I think its a positive exemplary company, or Steve Jobs was, nope, I'm aware of the goods and the bad ones, how many people were destroyed by them and still pay the consequences in their families (this is a separate thread), but it's admirable how far they went putting together teams and agreements to get their OS going. Intel and Microsoft are still struggling with what Linux partially achieved but Apple/MacOS managed to do well: change architecture and still preserve or create a strong OS with a pack of the same apps. Amazing.

As far as OS is concerned, lots of people would still be able to work fine even on MacOS 9 with a basic office suite, same with Linux, same with Windows (even Windows 7). Some ecosystems are easy to satisfy, some are not. About cross platform development (Desktop and Mobile)... arrhh, it's complicated, usually starts with a question or a naive comment, then it follows the assumption of people, that things do not work because the origina poster doesn't know what he is doing, does he know Delphi? ohh you don't know Phyton. Then what follows is a series of comparisons on why something is better than something else but still, the app does not deliver. Then after discussing the failure of a language or framework or whatever, it follows a discussion of exemplary apps made with "x", so if it worked there it's great, BMW uses it, Nestle uses it. And so on, but the original topic is never addressed, and just like that there are tons and tons of threads, only to leave the discussions without honesty on what something does and doesn't, or the realistic truth of how far (or not) the posters actually explored the apps. If something I know about software development is not everything works as the manual says, and there are bugs, things that do not work, and this goes to worse levels in cross platform.

In terms of cross platform software (desktop) development, many people end up going native, because many times it's just unrealistic otherwise. Or they go "Browser based" because then you can code on one platform and it will mostly work everywhere else. I spent countless hours researching, exploring and testing, then coding and delivering the product for real production, it worked, the choices were not my favorite after all but it worked and worked just fine (not "vaguely"), and along the way I would have love other options to actually worked, but they didn't. Still, after such a long road taken, sometimes even good faith comments based on experience bring back the same assumptions mentioned above. I'm in favor of reading and listening, and also trying to avoid falling in love with ideas or software, it's just not worth it.

BTW, unrelated? there was a nice Photoshop clone made by a German guy, it was awesome (still no CMYK, but if you do not print on CMYK devices it's ok), and it had lots of requests and people willing to pay. Yet it never went far, I can't find the web as for today, it was awesome in my opinion, then he made the joke of some company investing millions to buy his software but it was a joke, many of us were heart broken. I was absolutely curious on how or why something like that wouldn't take off crowd based, but that's the thing, some things ARE REALLY EASY to achieve on software like drawing a window with some buttons and database connections, but things get interesting and difficult as you go, often finding a dead end, even if the manual says "such function should be possible", and it's not fun to invest so much time to find a dead end, after all it's business, and if it's not business but passion...

then ... perhaps it's worse because you feel let down, really let down.