[RAART]

Photography and Linux | Linux Journal

[photomatx]

Nice article, I've always wanted to build a linux machine.

[Paul the Sunman]

Photography and Linux | Linux Journal

It's actually a great resource for those looking for photography software for linux.

[kaseki]

Photography and Linux | Linux Journal

Thanks! I had wondered whether RT was multi-threaded.

[aaacb]

Nice article, thanks for sharing.

I've been editing digital photos in Linux since I got a raw-capable camera again a few years ago (when I got a Pentax)...

Just the other day I switched the last bit that was on Windows, the Epson scanning software for film. I'm using Ubuntu primarily, so this removed the need for having both.

[BigMackCam]

This is a good article. What I particularly like about it is that this guy is actually a professional photographer who is bucking the trend. I realise he's by no means the only one doing so - but writing about it and sharing his approach on the web is helpful in publicising the fact that Linux-based photography software is strong enough for professional use.

I'm a little surprised he had so many problems with the printing side... something that doesn't affect my particular use case, admittedly. Hopefully this will be dealt with in time via driver updates for the respective printers...

Of the software he mentions, I use digiKam, Darktable, GIMP and DisplayCAL, and I'm a big fan of all of them. I have no desire to go back to my previous setup of Lightroom, Photoshop Essentials and Colormunki's own colorimeter software. My hardware lags behind his, but it's worth bearing in mind that most Linux distros and all of these tools will perform well with considerably lower-specification hardware. Quad-core processing and > 8GB RAM certainly helps, but isn't essential...

It's also worth considering that for those users who prefer Windows, the software I've mentioned above is also available for that OS. These are no longer alpha or beta versions, but fully-formed equivalents of their Linux siblings...

[reh321]

Nice article, I've always wanted to build a linux machine.

I was really upset with the way Microsoft pushed Win10, so when our Win8 machine died, our older daughter cobbled together a machine from the case/motherboard/processor from her fiance's retired gaming machine, memory/display/mouse/keyboard from our old machine, and a new disk drive, and installed Ubuntu Linux on that new drive.

[photomatx]

I was really upset with the way Microsoft pushed Win10, so when our Win8 machine died, our older daughter cobbled together a machine from the case/motherboard/processor from her fiance's retired gaming machine, memory/display/mouse/keyboard from our old machine, and a new disk drive, and installed Ubuntu Linux on that new drive.

That's awesome, at work I've been slowly replacing older PCs with ones I've built. So now I have a pile of older I5 machines I've been wanting to piece together and make a linux machine.

[Neuse River Sailor]

Great article. I've been using Linux since RedHat 5.1, too long ago to remember the years, currently on PCLinuxOS. I use Geeqie, RawTherapee and Gimp as my stack for post-processing. As the article author pointed out, even with the low overhead of the Linux OS, RawTherapee demands resources, and I am looking to replace my old Atom-based Shuttle with something a bit more powerful.

[twilhelm]

Good article. I really need to look into Rapid Photo Downloader.

I had a lot of the same printing problems the author did. Especially with my wide format printer. The Mint community turned me on to TurboPrint, which I had to pay for. While it works great, it works as an add on to Gimp. Fine for single prints, but I export images to a windows machine when I need to print larger runs.

[rullrich]

Really greate article! I nearly have got the same setup: rapid photo downloader, darktable, rawtherapee and gimp and don't regret the move away from adobe. Especially darktable (even more in the upcoming version 2.6) and gimp 2.10 are more than I need.

[kiwi_jono]

Thanks for posting, as its great to see articles like this.

I'm using Ubuntu 18.04, and I can't think of anyway it limits me photography wise. And as a bonus my machine gets to be the most reliable and responsive in our household. Like anything thats different it does come with a bit of a learning curve though.

[ThorSanchez]

I'll read the article when I get a chance, but I'm about 80% of the way to transitioning from Win7/Lightroom 6 to Xubuntu Linux/RawTherapee/RapidPhotoDownloader. It's not been a totally smooth and easy transition, but I'm getting there. I probably boot Win7 20% of the time, Linux 80%.

[boriscleto]

Running a business with software maintained at the whim of hobbyists

[BigMackCam]

Running a business with software maintained at the whim of hobbyists

It's a common misconception that development, maintenance and quality of open source, enthusiast-developed software is somehow inferior to commercially produced products, but that really needn't be the case. There's some poorly designed and maintained stuff, for sure, but the same can be said of many commercial applications. I get far better support response via the darktable forums and developers than I ever got from Adobe for my Lightroom 6 stand-alone edition.

Many servers in global organisations run Linux distros, along with open source utilities and drivers. Several banks I did work for in the early 90s right the way through to just a few years ago were running Linux workstations and using them for financial modelling. Less exciting but equally relevant, a few of those banks ran OpenOffice instead of Microsoft products...