You command line, I command line, we all command line for Linux. (^o^ ) <3

Lord Lucan · 01-09-2018, 07:33 AM

Originally posted by The Squirrel Mafia

How about you? Since when did you start using Linux? What's your favorite distro?

I started with Mandrake in about 2000, went through Suse, and eventually settled on Debian, or Debian based distros. For some years I was on Mepis, and it was brilliant - everything just worked straight after installation - I don't want to spend hours setting up. Then (2 years ago?) the Mepis maintainer suddenly disappeared, so, looking for a replacement and seeing the systemd mess, I went for Devuan which is systemd-free fork of Debian. I have Devuan on about four PCs, with KDE on my main one (a monster) and LXDE on others. I dual boot into Windows for games occasionally, and I can boot Windows XP in a VM specially for baiting any Indian "Windows" callers who offer to eradicate my "viruses" - I sit back and watch the show.

I do occasional maintenence on Lady Lucan's Windows 7 laptop and it drives me crackers - almost everything I try to do throws up a "Gotcha" and there are nagging pop-ups going off all the time - how does one know if those "updates" it constantly wants me to accept are not just scams? I guess modern Windows needs a mindset of being happy to surrender control to someone or something else. You remain in control with Linux, and it is bullet proof.

Incidentally, the title of this thread is unfortunate : it promotes the myth that Linux is a command line system. Linux inherited from Unix (of which it is a variety) an immensly powerful set of line commands which are there for low level admin work, but I believe that the same set has been ported to Windows too. Windows always has had its own command line mode of course (originating in DOS), something that many millenials seem to be unaware of, but the native Windows/DOS command set is rubbish compared with the Unix/Linux set of commands.

Last edited by Lord Lucan; 01-09-2018 at 07:42 AM.

**ThorSanchez** · 01-11-2018, 06:29 AM

I always liked the idea of Linux (I was an OS/2 user back in the 90s), but never got around to using it until a couple years ago. I have a couple of decade-old Acer netbooks that had XP, but the performance was never great and they wouldn't read my larger SD cards. I wanted to use them for travel, to backup photos, but I was about to toss them because of the SD card size limitation and the old hardware.

But instead I used that as an excuse to finally play around with Linux. I did about half an hour of research into lighter distros, and just went with Xubuntu. Installed it on the Acer in no time, got it up and running easily, and low and behold it reads all my SD cards. So on a trip to Yosemite and Tahoe I took the netbook and it operated brilliantly to do daily double-redundant backups of all my photos to both the Acer and an external drive. I also posted some pictures online from the road, but that required me to shoot RAW+JPG, which I'd rather not. Since then I installed Darktable, but...

One pretty major limitation is the hardware - the Acer has an old Atom 32-bit processor and limited memory. So Darktable screams at me with popups that it really shouldn't be running on 32 bit, and it's slower than is tolerable. So I recently installed Shotwell and early indications are that it'll be just fine for the occasional RAW conversion and very light editing, just for posting online or emailing to family/friends. Performance seems good even with the ancient hardware.

Also, when one of my kid's old laptops HD died, I replaced the drive. But didn't have an easy way to go back to Win7, so I put Xubuntu on there, too. There are a few things he doesn't like (no Microsoft Flight Simulator) but otherwise no issues. He happily plays Steam games on it, watches YouTube. Good to have a nine-year-old who sees Linux as just another OS.

When Adobe went all-in on their subscription model I used that as an excuse to install Xubuntu (go with what you know) dual-boot on my home desktop, to get Darktable. Definitely some hiccups... not with Linux so much but with Windows and the boot process. Went through a bunch of gyrations to get dual boot to work but now it's all right. Right now I think I boot into Xubuntu 75% of the time, it's faster, cleaner than Win 7. I mainly go back to Windows for Lightroom 6, since I'm still pretty far down the learning curve on Darktable. I also haven't found a suitable Linux replacement for Quicken for bank account management but I haven't tried all that hard, either.

Excalibor · 08-01-2018, 04:33 AM

I got into Linux back in the early 90's, as an OS/2 user I found that Linux had a much better LaTeX environment, and also better GNU compiler support. Since then it has been Linux all the way down. My first distro was Slackware, and later I switched to an early RedHat distro. Years later I switched to Debian and I have finally settled into Ubuntu (although I also have enjoyed Linux Mint and have to suffer CentOS at work).

With the development on the last years of high-quality tools for photography (like Darktable), it's a real pleasure to do all kind of things, and it only gets better and better with time... :-)

Wasp · 08-01-2018, 05:07 AM

Long time Linux user here - in my professional as well personal capacity. Over the last few years, I have used Fedora, Centos and Ubuntu distributions.

I am currently running Ubuntu 18 on my laptop. For photography I mainly use Darktable, with the occasional Gimp thrown in. Darktable has a lot of functionality. I suspect that I am not using it to the fullest extent - must find the time to read some manuals and watch tutorial videos...

**ThorSanchez** · 08-01-2018, 06:17 AM

I need some motivation. As I mentioned a few posts and six months ago I have Darktable. It's now running in Xubuntu that I can dual-boot on my main system at home. But I've just never gotten good enough or comfortable enough with Darktable to get acceptable results. My Lightroom 6 workflow is automatic, the muscle memory is just there. When I edited the 500+ photos from my Iceland trip it was all in Lightroom/Win 7 because I got the results I wanted in a reasonable amount of time and effort. The thought even crept into my mind that I'd go get the new Adobe subscription suite.

Philosophically I'd love to totally transition to Linux/Darktable or maybe even RawTherapee. But the learning curve is large. How can I not let it defeat me?!

The Squirrel Mafia · 08-01-2018, 07:49 AM

Originally posted by ThorSanchez

I need some motivation. As I mentioned a few posts and six months ago I have Darktable. It's now running in Xubuntu that I can dual-boot on my main system at home. But I've just never gotten good enough or comfortable enough with Darktable to get acceptable results. My Lightroom 6 workflow is automatic, the muscle memory is just there. When I edited the 500+ photos from my Iceland trip it was all in Lightroom/Win 7 because I got the results I wanted in a reasonable amount of time and effort. The thought even crept into my mind that I'd go get the new Adobe subscription suite.

Philosophically I'd love to totally transition to Linux/Darktable or maybe even RawTherapee. But the learning curve is large. How can I not let it defeat me?!

I've kind of given up on darktable. Don't get me wrong, it's a really great piece of software, but I can't seem to get the results that I get out of RawTherapee with it, especially when it comes to high ISO photos. I can easily create PP3 files for different ISOs in RawTherapee & then go into a folder, start a search for photos at different ISOs, apply that PP3 file, & then send them to queue.

You basically do a search from lets say ISO 801 to 1600 & it'll grab all the RAW files that are in that range. Then you Ctrl+A, right click on one of the files, select the PP3 with the ISO 1600 settings, send to queue, & voila! You'll get your photos in no time. Easy peasy lemon squeazy. Yes. There are a few things to set up, but once you set them up, you never have to set them again, unless you need change them for a specific reason.

**ThorSanchez** · 08-01-2018, 08:51 AM

Originally posted by The Squirrel Mafia

I've kind of given up on darktable. Don't get me wrong, it's a really great piece of software, but I can't seem to get the results that I get out of RawTherapee with it, especially when it comes to high ISO photos. I can easily create PP3 files for different ISOs in RawTherapee & then go into a folder, start a search for photos at different ISOs, apply that PP3 file, & then send them to queue.

You basically do a search from lets say ISO 801 to 1600 & it'll grab all the RAW files that are in that range. Then you Ctrl+A, right click on one of the files, select the PP3 with the ISO 1600 settings, send to queue, & voila! You'll get your photos in no time. Easy peasy lemon squeazy. Yes. There are a few things to set up, but once you set them up, you never have to set them again, unless you need change them for a specific reason.

That's my (limited) experience, too. I tried to edit some files from an indoor soccer match that sometimes floated up to ISO 6400 on a K-3II. With Lightroom I could make them easily usable. I was actually kind of amazed how good they looked.
With Darktable they were a mess, grainy, noisy... not even Facebook usable. I know I do not have the Darktable skills, but I was stuck and the suggestions I found here and elsewhere barely helped.

With low ISO files I got mostly reasonable results, but still not up to my Lightroom standards.

I have RawTherapee installed, and have briefly toyed with it. Thought about using it for the pixel shift images I've never taken. I'll have to dive deeper.

The Squirrel Mafia · 08-01-2018, 09:47 AM - **1 Like**

^ All RAW converting programs have their pluses & minuses.

Lightroom is the most common program with tons of online tutorials available & it's relatively easy to get very good high ISO images out of it. The downside is the subscription model, especially for those that don't put much use to it.

RawTherapee can hold on to fine detail quite well, but as you start to go high ISO, you'll see that it also holds on to chroma noise a bit more. If you use the aggressive NR settings, then is smears out the color. The amount of settings available can also be overwhelming to the newcomer.

Darktable is supposed to be the Lightroom alternative, but it seems more harder to get good looking high ISO images out of it. The tiny little slider buttons also get on my nerves at times as I try to hold & slide them. I would love to see someone put up a darktable thread on this forum to share their processing tips & tricks.

The Pentax DCU has hands down the best color available at high ISO, but the fine details will start to get smeared. Not to mention that its very laggy & buggy.

One thing is for sure. They all produce better images that what the out of camera jpeg engine can produce once you learn how to use the program. I'm kind of dead set on RawTherapee. I even compile my own version on Windows on occasion. I do use DxO & Pentax DCU on occasion, but it's kind of rare. DxO doesn't batch as easily & Pentax DCU is extra laggy on my machines.

timw4mail · 08-02-2018, 10:11 AM

I generally use Kubuntu for a desktop distro, and Gentoo for my web server. That said, I use linux as a desktop less than Mac, or Windows. And I don't quite count Chrome OS as linux.

I'm an early adopter when it comes to software, and I've yet to find a balance between software availability, fast upgrades, and ease of use that really works for me. Gentoo is great for the server, but it's too much work for setting up a proper GUI desktop.

Maybe my use of KDE is the reason I've gravitated towards Digikam for my editing, but I've used Digikam more often on Mac and Windows than Linux...

Wasp · 08-03-2018, 06:22 AM

I have also had a bit of trouble with high ISO files in Darktable recently. My Samsung NX1 does a pretty good job of capturing low light images. For the moment the best approach seems to be using the JPEG files generated by the camera. That means that exposure tweaking is a bit limited. I am trying to figure out the Darktable noise reduction, maybe the problem can be overcome.

RawTherapee as installed from the Ubuntu repository does not work (for me, at least). I am goint to compile it from source next.

**ThorSanchez** · 08-04-2018, 06:32 AM

Originally posted by The Squirrel Mafia

One thing is for sure. They all produce better images that what the out of camera jpeg engine can produce once you learn how to use the program. I'm kind of dead set on RawTherapee. I even compile my own version on Windows on occasion.

I know you have that long RawTherapee thread here that I haven't completely read through, but what would you recommend as a RawTherapee 101 tutorial for someone who knows his way around RAW files, and knows Lightroom pretty well but might want to switch?

Excalibor · 08-04-2018, 12:54 PM

Originally posted by Wasp

I have also had a bit of trouble with high ISO files in Darktable recently. My Samsung NX1 does a pretty good job of capturing low light images. For the moment the best approach seems to be using the JPEG files generated by the camera. That means that exposure tweaking is a bit limited. I am trying to figure out the Darktable noise reduction, maybe the problem can be overcome.

RawTherapee as installed from the Ubuntu repository does not work (for me, at least). I am goint to compile it from source next.

Install RawTherapee from the dhor PPA. I'm on mobile, just Google it, it works perfectly.

Good luck!

The Squirrel Mafia · 08-04-2018, 09:50 PM

Originally posted by ThorSanchez

I know you have that long RawTherapee thread here that I haven't completely read through, but what would you recommend as a RawTherapee 101 tutorial for someone who knows his way around RAW files, and knows Lightroom pretty well but might want to switch?

There really aren't too many tutorials out there. RawTherapee is more of a RAW converter than anything else. It doesn't catalogue or do stuff like that. You basically open up the raw file, process it, & export a jpeg or tiff. That's it. It's more like ACR than anything else, but with way more options.

I have some processing profiles attached to that thread that make getting started easier for beginners. It does have a slightly steep learning curve due to the amount of settings available, but once you get the hang of it, you will fly through it.

**ThorSanchez** · 08-06-2018, 05:07 AM

Originally posted by The Squirrel Mafia

There really aren't too many tutorials out there. RawTherapee is more of a RAW converter than anything else. It doesn't catalogue or do stuff like that. You basically open up the raw file, process it, & export a jpeg or tiff. That's it. It's more like ACR than anything else, but with way more options.

I have some processing profiles attached to that thread that make getting started easier for beginners. It does have a slightly steep learning curve due to the amount of settings available, but once you get the hang of it, you will fly through it.

Thanks, I just need to work with it more. I'm sure I'll get the hang of it. I also have Rapid Photo Downloader for import into a pretty organized file structure, and although I know I should do better I only sporadically keyword tag, so I think I could make a program like RawTherapee work if I'm getting good images out of it.

**savoche** · 08-06-2018, 06:22 AM

My first taste of Linux was a Salckware distro in the mid 90ies - I believe it took some 25 floppies to fit all of it on download. I later started working with UNIX (Solaris and OSF/1) and installed Redhat on a few web servers to make use of some cheaper hardware. By the time I left Redhat was the main compute platform. I've worked a lot with Redhat/CentOS from then on. Still do even though I now work at a mainly Debian shop. I much prefer Debian anyway. I find the package management more robust - and it's straight forward to upgrade servers across releases. Not at all recommended with Redhat.

For desktop use I have used Debian derivates since Ubuntu entered the scene (back then Debian was years behind with their 'stable' releases!). These days I usually pick Debian Mint.

Originally posted by paulh

Mandrake

Hah, had forgotten all about that

I used Mandrake for a short while on my laptop before Ubuntu came along.

Originally posted by The Squirrel Mafia

Darktable is supposed to be the Lightroom alternative

The editing part of it I suppose is - and I really like how the "auto" feature of Darktable brings me a heck of a lot closer to a usable result than does anything auto in Lightroom. What's mainly making me stay with my (non-subscription) Lightroom is the catalogue. It's painfully slow but it has a lot of nice features - and moving away from it will mean a lot of work. It's not something I'm prepared to do until I find a very good and smooth alternative. (And I don't really care what OS it runs on - I don't mind too much running Windows on my PP computer.)

Oh, and I have spent some time setting up automatic import presets in Lightroom, based on ISO and camera so that the ISO performance of that particular camera decides e.g. the amount of noise reduction is applied. Works really well. This would not be necessary with better "intelligence" built into the software, though.

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01-09-2018, 07:33 AM	#46
Lord Lucan Pentaxian Join Date: Sep 2017 Location: South Wales Photos: Gallery Posts: 2,961	Originally posted by The Squirrel Mafia How about you? Since when did you start using Linux? What's your favorite distro? I started with Mandrake in about 2000, went through Suse, and eventually settled on Debian, or Debian based distros. For some years I was on Mepis, and it was brilliant - everything just worked straight after installation - I don't want to spend hours setting up. Then (2 years ago?) the Mepis maintainer suddenly disappeared, so, looking for a replacement and seeing the systemd mess, I went for Devuan which is systemd-free fork of Debian. I have Devuan on about four PCs, with KDE on my main one (a monster) and LXDE on others. I dual boot into Windows for games occasionally, and I can boot Windows XP in a VM specially for baiting any Indian "Windows" callers who offer to eradicate my "viruses" - I sit back and watch the show. I do occasional maintenence on Lady Lucan's Windows 7 laptop and it drives me crackers - almost everything I try to do throws up a "Gotcha" and there are nagging pop-ups going off all the time - how does one know if those "updates" it constantly wants me to accept are not just scams? I guess modern Windows needs a mindset of being happy to surrender control to someone or something else. You remain in control with Linux, and it is bullet proof. Incidentally, the title of this thread is unfortunate : it promotes the myth that Linux is a command line system. Linux inherited from Unix (of which it is a variety) an immensly powerful set of line commands which are there for low level admin work, but I believe that the same set has been ported to Windows too. Windows always has had its own command line mode of course (originating in DOS), something that many millenials seem to be unaware of, but the native Windows/DOS command set is rubbish compared with the Unix/Linux set of commands. Last edited by Lord Lucan; 01-09-2018 at 07:42 AM.

01-11-2018, 06:29 AM	#47
ThorSanchez Site Supporter Join Date: Dec 2012 Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 2,806	I always liked the idea of Linux (I was an OS/2 user back in the 90s), but never got around to using it until a couple years ago. I have a couple of decade-old Acer netbooks that had XP, but the performance was never great and they wouldn't read my larger SD cards. I wanted to use them for travel, to backup photos, but I was about to toss them because of the SD card size limitation and the old hardware. But instead I used that as an excuse to finally play around with Linux. I did about half an hour of research into lighter distros, and just went with Xubuntu. Installed it on the Acer in no time, got it up and running easily, and low and behold it reads all my SD cards. So on a trip to Yosemite and Tahoe I took the netbook and it operated brilliantly to do daily double-redundant backups of all my photos to both the Acer and an external drive. I also posted some pictures online from the road, but that required me to shoot RAW+JPG, which I'd rather not. Since then I installed Darktable, but... One pretty major limitation is the hardware - the Acer has an old Atom 32-bit processor and limited memory. So Darktable screams at me with popups that it really shouldn't be running on 32 bit, and it's slower than is tolerable. So I recently installed Shotwell and early indications are that it'll be just fine for the occasional RAW conversion and very light editing, just for posting online or emailing to family/friends. Performance seems good even with the ancient hardware. Also, when one of my kid's old laptops HD died, I replaced the drive. But didn't have an easy way to go back to Win7, so I put Xubuntu on there, too. There are a few things he doesn't like (no Microsoft Flight Simulator) but otherwise no issues. He happily plays Steam games on it, watches YouTube. Good to have a nine-year-old who sees Linux as just another OS. When Adobe went all-in on their subscription model I used that as an excuse to install Xubuntu (go with what you know) dual-boot on my home desktop, to get Darktable. Definitely some hiccups... not with Linux so much but with Windows and the boot process. Went through a bunch of gyrations to get dual boot to work but now it's all right. Right now I think I boot into Xubuntu 75% of the time, it's faster, cleaner than Win 7. I mainly go back to Windows for Lightroom 6, since I'm still pretty far down the learning curve on Darktable. I also haven't found a suitable Linux replacement for Quicken for bank account management but I haven't tried all that hard, either.

08-01-2018, 04:33 AM	#48
Excalibor Senior Member Join Date: Jul 2018 Posts: 353	I got into Linux back in the early 90's, as an OS/2 user I found that Linux had a much better LaTeX environment, and also better GNU compiler support. Since then it has been Linux all the way down. My first distro was Slackware, and later I switched to an early RedHat distro. Years later I switched to Debian and I have finally settled into Ubuntu (although I also have enjoyed Linux Mint and have to suffer CentOS at work). With the development on the last years of high-quality tools for photography (like Darktable), it's a real pleasure to do all kind of things, and it only gets better and better with time... :-)

08-01-2018, 05:07 AM	#49
Wasp Pentaxian Join Date: Mar 2017 Location: Pretoria Photos: Gallery Posts: 4,660	Long time Linux user here - in my professional as well personal capacity. Over the last few years, I have used Fedora, Centos and Ubuntu distributions. I am currently running Ubuntu 18 on my laptop. For photography I mainly use Darktable, with the occasional Gimp thrown in. Darktable has a lot of functionality. I suspect that I am not using it to the fullest extent - must find the time to read some manuals and watch tutorial videos...

08-01-2018, 06:17 AM	#50
ThorSanchez Site Supporter Join Date: Dec 2012 Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 2,806	I need some motivation. As I mentioned a few posts and six months ago I have Darktable. It's now running in Xubuntu that I can dual-boot on my main system at home. But I've just never gotten good enough or comfortable enough with Darktable to get acceptable results. My Lightroom 6 workflow is automatic, the muscle memory is just there. When I edited the 500+ photos from my Iceland trip it was all in Lightroom/Win 7 because I got the results I wanted in a reasonable amount of time and effort. The thought even crept into my mind that I'd go get the new Adobe subscription suite. Philosophically I'd love to totally transition to Linux/Darktable or maybe even RawTherapee. But the learning curve is large. How can I not let it defeat me?!

08-01-2018, 07:49 AM	#51
The Squirrel Mafia Pentaxian Join Date: Jan 2015 Posts: 3,054 Original Poster	Originally posted by ThorSanchez I need some motivation. As I mentioned a few posts and six months ago I have Darktable. It's now running in Xubuntu that I can dual-boot on my main system at home. But I've just never gotten good enough or comfortable enough with Darktable to get acceptable results. My Lightroom 6 workflow is automatic, the muscle memory is just there. When I edited the 500+ photos from my Iceland trip it was all in Lightroom/Win 7 because I got the results I wanted in a reasonable amount of time and effort. The thought even crept into my mind that I'd go get the new Adobe subscription suite. Philosophically I'd love to totally transition to Linux/Darktable or maybe even RawTherapee. But the learning curve is large. How can I not let it defeat me?! I've kind of given up on darktable. Don't get me wrong, it's a really great piece of software, but I can't seem to get the results that I get out of RawTherapee with it, especially when it comes to high ISO photos. I can easily create PP3 files for different ISOs in RawTherapee & then go into a folder, start a search for photos at different ISOs, apply that PP3 file, & then send them to queue. You basically do a search from lets say ISO 801 to 1600 & it'll grab all the RAW files that are in that range. Then you Ctrl+A, right click on one of the files, select the PP3 with the ISO 1600 settings, send to queue, & voila! You'll get your photos in no time. Easy peasy lemon squeazy. Yes. There are a few things to set up, but once you set them up, you never have to set them again, unless you need change them for a specific reason.

08-01-2018, 08:51 AM	#52
ThorSanchez Site Supporter Join Date: Dec 2012 Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 2,806	Originally posted by The Squirrel Mafia I've kind of given up on darktable. Don't get me wrong, it's a really great piece of software, but I can't seem to get the results that I get out of RawTherapee with it, especially when it comes to high ISO photos. I can easily create PP3 files for different ISOs in RawTherapee & then go into a folder, start a search for photos at different ISOs, apply that PP3 file, & then send them to queue. You basically do a search from lets say ISO 801 to 1600 & it'll grab all the RAW files that are in that range. Then you Ctrl+A, right click on one of the files, select the PP3 with the ISO 1600 settings, send to queue, & voila! You'll get your photos in no time. Easy peasy lemon squeazy. Yes. There are a few things to set up, but once you set them up, you never have to set them again, unless you need change them for a specific reason. That's my (limited) experience, too. I tried to edit some files from an indoor soccer match that sometimes floated up to ISO 6400 on a K-3II. With Lightroom I could make them easily usable. I was actually kind of amazed how good they looked. With Darktable they were a mess, grainy, noisy... not even Facebook usable. I know I do not have the Darktable skills, but I was stuck and the suggestions I found here and elsewhere barely helped. With low ISO files I got mostly reasonable results, but still not up to my Lightroom standards. I have RawTherapee installed, and have briefly toyed with it. Thought about using it for the pixel shift images I've never taken. I'll have to dive deeper.

08-01-2018, 09:47 AM - 1 Like	#53
The Squirrel Mafia Pentaxian Join Date: Jan 2015 Posts: 3,054 Original Poster	^ All RAW converting programs have their pluses & minuses. Lightroom is the most common program with tons of online tutorials available & it's relatively easy to get very good high ISO images out of it. The downside is the subscription model, especially for those that don't put much use to it. RawTherapee can hold on to fine detail quite well, but as you start to go high ISO, you'll see that it also holds on to chroma noise a bit more. If you use the aggressive NR settings, then is smears out the color. The amount of settings available can also be overwhelming to the newcomer. Darktable is supposed to be the Lightroom alternative, but it seems more harder to get good looking high ISO images out of it. The tiny little slider buttons also get on my nerves at times as I try to hold & slide them. I would love to see someone put up a darktable thread on this forum to share their processing tips & tricks. The Pentax DCU has hands down the best color available at high ISO, but the fine details will start to get smeared. Not to mention that its very laggy & buggy. One thing is for sure. They all produce better images that what the out of camera jpeg engine can produce once you learn how to use the program. I'm kind of dead set on RawTherapee. I even compile my own version on Windows on occasion. I do use DxO & Pentax DCU on occasion, but it's kind of rare. DxO doesn't batch as easily & Pentax DCU is extra laggy on my machines.

08-02-2018, 10:11 AM	#54
timw4mail Pentaxian Join Date: Apr 2017 Location: Driving a Mirage Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 1,670	I generally use Kubuntu for a desktop distro, and Gentoo for my web server. That said, I use linux as a desktop less than Mac, or Windows. And I don't quite count Chrome OS as linux. I'm an early adopter when it comes to software, and I've yet to find a balance between software availability, fast upgrades, and ease of use that really works for me. Gentoo is great for the server, but it's too much work for setting up a proper GUI desktop. Maybe my use of KDE is the reason I've gravitated towards Digikam for my editing, but I've used Digikam more often on Mac and Windows than Linux...

08-03-2018, 06:22 AM	#55
Wasp Pentaxian Join Date: Mar 2017 Location: Pretoria Photos: Gallery Posts: 4,660	I have also had a bit of trouble with high ISO files in Darktable recently. My Samsung NX1 does a pretty good job of capturing low light images. For the moment the best approach seems to be using the JPEG files generated by the camera. That means that exposure tweaking is a bit limited. I am trying to figure out the Darktable noise reduction, maybe the problem can be overcome. RawTherapee as installed from the Ubuntu repository does not work (for me, at least). I am goint to compile it from source next.

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08-04-2018, 06:32 AM	#56
ThorSanchez Site Supporter Join Date: Dec 2012 Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 2,806	Originally posted by The Squirrel Mafia One thing is for sure. They all produce better images that what the out of camera jpeg engine can produce once you learn how to use the program. I'm kind of dead set on RawTherapee. I even compile my own version on Windows on occasion. I know you have that long RawTherapee thread here that I haven't completely read through, but what would you recommend as a RawTherapee 101 tutorial for someone who knows his way around RAW files, and knows Lightroom pretty well but might want to switch?

08-04-2018, 12:54 PM	#57
Excalibor Senior Member Join Date: Jul 2018 Posts: 353	Originally posted by Wasp I have also had a bit of trouble with high ISO files in Darktable recently. My Samsung NX1 does a pretty good job of capturing low light images. For the moment the best approach seems to be using the JPEG files generated by the camera. That means that exposure tweaking is a bit limited. I am trying to figure out the Darktable noise reduction, maybe the problem can be overcome. RawTherapee as installed from the Ubuntu repository does not work (for me, at least). I am goint to compile it from source next. Install RawTherapee from the dhor PPA. I'm on mobile, just Google it, it works perfectly. Good luck!

08-04-2018, 09:50 PM	#58
The Squirrel Mafia Pentaxian Join Date: Jan 2015 Posts: 3,054 Original Poster	Originally posted by ThorSanchez I know you have that long RawTherapee thread here that I haven't completely read through, but what would you recommend as a RawTherapee 101 tutorial for someone who knows his way around RAW files, and knows Lightroom pretty well but might want to switch? There really aren't too many tutorials out there. RawTherapee is more of a RAW converter than anything else. It doesn't catalogue or do stuff like that. You basically open up the raw file, process it, & export a jpeg or tiff. That's it. It's more like ACR than anything else, but with way more options. I have some processing profiles attached to that thread that make getting started easier for beginners. It does have a slightly steep learning curve due to the amount of settings available, but once you get the hang of it, you will fly through it.

08-06-2018, 05:07 AM	#59
ThorSanchez Site Supporter Join Date: Dec 2012 Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 2,806	Originally posted by The Squirrel Mafia There really aren't too many tutorials out there. RawTherapee is more of a RAW converter than anything else. It doesn't catalogue or do stuff like that. You basically open up the raw file, process it, & export a jpeg or tiff. That's it. It's more like ACR than anything else, but with way more options. I have some processing profiles attached to that thread that make getting started easier for beginners. It does have a slightly steep learning curve due to the amount of settings available, but once you get the hang of it, you will fly through it. Thanks, I just need to work with it more. I'm sure I'll get the hang of it. I also have Rapid Photo Downloader for import into a pretty organized file structure, and although I know I should do better I only sporadically keyword tag, so I think I could make a program like RawTherapee work if I'm getting good images out of it.

08-06-2018, 06:22 AM	#60
savoche Master of the obvious Join Date: Jun 2011 Location: Lowlands of Norway Posts: 18,311	My first taste of Linux was a Salckware distro in the mid 90ies - I believe it took some 25 floppies to fit all of it on download. I later started working with UNIX (Solaris and OSF/1) and installed Redhat on a few web servers to make use of some cheaper hardware. By the time I left Redhat was the main compute platform. I've worked a lot with Redhat/CentOS from then on. Still do even though I now work at a mainly Debian shop. I much prefer Debian anyway. I find the package management more robust - and it's straight forward to upgrade servers across releases. Not at all recommended with Redhat. For desktop use I have used Debian derivates since Ubuntu entered the scene (back then Debian was years behind with their 'stable' releases!). These days I usually pick Debian Mint. Originally posted by paulh Mandrake Hah, had forgotten all about that I used Mandrake for a short while on my laptop before Ubuntu came along. Originally posted by The Squirrel Mafia Darktable is supposed to be the Lightroom alternative The editing part of it I suppose is - and I really like how the "auto" feature of Darktable brings me a heck of a lot closer to a usable result than does anything auto in Lightroom. What's mainly making me stay with my (non-subscription) Lightroom is the catalogue. It's painfully slow but it has a lot of nice features - and moving away from it will mean a lot of work. It's not something I'm prepared to do until I find a very good and smooth alternative. (And I don't really care what OS it runs on - I don't mind too much running Windows on my PP computer.) Oh, and I have spent some time setting up automatic import presets in Lightroom, based on ISO and camera so that the ISO performance of that particular camera decides e.g. the amount of noise reduction is applied. Works really well. This would not be necessary with better "intelligence" built into the software, though.