[reh321]

Running a business with software maintained at the whim of hobbyists

Many Linux developers are professionals who choose to do this in their spare time, and the organization is maintained to professional standards. I trust it much more than I trust Windows, Apple software, and Android software, because it is "open" - no secret agenda, no secrets period.

[MossyRocks]

I've been using Linux since RedHat 5.1

Noob .
I started with Slackware 3.1 (mid 90s) when that was new. Was that RedHat 5.1 (late 90s) or the more modern RHEL 5.1 (about 10 years ago)?

I mostly stick with RawTherapee and Gimp when editing with a smattering of other programs (Hugin and enfuse mostly) for other tasks when working on Linux. Even on windows I mostly work with them but I still continue to use my old copy of photoshop CS3 there too as there are a few tasks where it just seems to do them better: final image alignment and auto blending. For what ever reason I also get better results, to me anyway, using the curves tool in PS than in GIMP. The other thing I use exclusively on windows is MS ICE which will never run on Linux.

[ThorSanchez]

Running a business with software maintained at the whim of hobbyists

Running a business with hugely expensive software that you can't see the source code and have to implicitly trust the for-profit corporation is acting in your best interest.

[Wasp]

Running a business with software maintained at the whim of hobbyists

IBM should have spoken to you before writing that cheque.

IBM to buy Linux leader Red Hat for $34-billion - TechCentral

[boriscleto]

IBM should have spoken to you before writing that cheque.

IBM to buy Linux leader Red Hat for $34-billion - TechCentral

RHEL isn't FOSS...

[BigMackCam]

RHEL isn't FOSS...

No... but Ubuntu is, and it's supplied as a point-of-sale option on several manufacturers' PCs and servers by request. HP, in fact, goes to great lengths in explaining how to install Ubuntu for maximum compatibility with its business workstations and servers - since a lot of businesses use Ubuntu and other FOSS products in commercial scenarios.

The point being, FOSS operating systems and applications are prevalent in business use. There's nothing laughable, odd, nor indeed new, about companies running their businesses - in part, at least - on free and open source software. Global organisations have been doing this for years, because in some cases that software makes better sense than the commercially-available options. So a professional photographer going down the same route makes sense, assuming the software capabilities, stability, maintenance and release frequency and support network meet his or her needs. And for the more popular tools, that's generally the case

[Neuse River Sailor]

Noob .
I started with Slackware 3.1 (mid 90s) when that was new. Was that RedHat 5.1 (late 90s) or the more modern RHEL 5.1 (about 10 years ago)?

The old one, from the 1990s. I bought a shrink-wrapped copy from Red Hat to get the user's manual. That was back in the days that half the time when you asked for help at the forums, you got a quick reply - "RTFM".

I went straight to Linux from OS/2 on my home machines. Of course, I used Windows at work for my whole career, starting with Windows 3.11 for Workgroups and ending a few years ago with Windows 7. Back in the day we would reboot Windows at lunch time because it wouldn't run all day long without locking up. The newer versions were far better but still not as stable as Linux.

[MossyRocks]

That was back in the days that half the time when you asked for help at the forums, you got a quick reply - "RTFM".

That is one of the things I didn't like about Linux back in the day. Far too often beginners just needed to get pointed in the right direction but instead got RTFM. Although starting with Slackware and continuing to use it I have found that some of the more esoteric things I learned have come in handy, especially now at work where I am securing Linux based control system. So much of what happens is hidden from the user and so long as it works and you aren't straying too far from the default you don't need to know what is really going on but go too far and you quickly find that you still need the deep knowledge.

I bought a shrink-wrapped copy from Red Hat to get the user's manual.

I also bought a shrinkwrapped RedHat version with the manual but I think it was 6.1 as it seemed to be getting some traction as a distro. At the time I thought that distro was going to take off more on the desktop since at the time it was being sold at retail right next to Win98 and figured I should learn it. Shortly there after it disappeared from store shelves and never really made a dent in the home PC market.

Back in the day we would reboot Windows at lunch time because it wouldn't run all day long without locking up. The newer versions were far better but still not as stable as Linux.

I think I have been pretty lucky as for most of my career I have been working with various Unix systems and really only had to deal with Windows at home. I have probably used most of the major versions including HP-UX, Tru64, AIX, Solaris, IRIX, and one of the BSDs (I forget which one) either in college or at work. In my current job we have lots of machines where each year their uptime gets to around 365 days and then they all get shutdown for the annual building power maintenance over a weekend. These aren't production machines at customer sites as those delivered systems are five 9 systems, but are development and support systems.

[RAART]

Back in the days I was buying OpenSuse (not sure about version or if it was just Suse or OpenSuse) also just to get manual. KDE desktop was nice and I liked it. It was my choice distro through the 90's...

[ThorSanchez]

I went straight to Linux from OS/2 on my home machines.

I ran a dual-boot OS/2 and Windows system in the 1990s. It looks like a company is trying to keep the dream alive, with a version released last year. It might be fun to play with, but they're actually charging $99 for a home license. I don't know how they'd have sold 10 of them.

[MossyRocks]

Running a business with software maintained at the whim of hobbyists

You would be shocked at what that hobbyist software is running. Throw in BSD (a true Unix SysV derivative but also hobbyist supported) and you cover a sizeable portion of the infrastructure modern societies depend on. Then there are all those glorious Also it isn't just hobbyists that support these software projects. Companies that make use of it frequently provide fixes, patches, and enhancements. Also Red Hat is a huge contributor to Linux and the open source community, as is Google, and even Microsoft. I've contributed back to a number of projects through my job, some of which are in very widely used packages that everyone depends on.

That is the great thing about FOSS software. I can fix something, give the fix back and then not have to maintain that fix going forward. If the project ends I still have the source and can patch or port as needed provided I throw some resources at it. Where as if I have some software from some company that only made it for Win95 and has long gone out of business I'm stuck caring for an old out of date machine and OS as well as stuck with software I can't do anything with. This happens a lot and I still see lots of old machines that are needed for one specific thing like running a piece of equipment.

[ThorSanchez]

That is the great thing about FOSS software. I can fix something, give the fix back and then not have to maintain that fix going forward. If the project ends I still have the source and can patch or port as needed provided I throw some resources at it. Where as if I have some software from some company that only made it for Win95 and has long gone out of business I'm stuck caring for an old out of date machine and OS as well as stuck with software I can't do anything with. This happens a lot and I still see lots of old machines that are needed for one specific thing like running a piece of equipment.

Or the flip side of that is that I have perfectly functional hardware that Microsoft has basically abandoned because each version of Windows and Office ratchets up the basic requirements to run. I have an Acer netbook that I wanted to use for travel, but it came with WinXP and it wouldn't read the SD cards I use in my camera. So I got a lightweight Linux distro (Xubuntu), it's modern, it's supported, it runs well on old, slow hardware, it's free, and I can keep using a perfectly fine piece of hardware instead of shelling out hundreds of dollars to replace it. Win 7 or Win 10 would have cost $hundred(s) for a new license, and probably wouldn't have run acceptably on the old machine.

[Breakfastographer]

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...

List of Linux adopters

Major OpenOffice.org deployments

Executive summary: The cities of Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Prague, Munich, Birmingham, Bologna, Bristol, and Gdansk rely at least partly on OpenOffice, as well as 70,000 desktops in the French gendarmerie alone, and more in a range of government departments in France (National Assembly, Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Equipment (!), Tax Agency, Board of Customs, and MPs), 1,500 in the Metropolitan Court of Budapest, 80,000 in Extremadura, Spain... it's a looong list, and that's just Europe (some regions are lagging behind, though).

[Lord Lucan]

Running a business with software maintained at the whim of hobbyists

Nice troll ! I'll help feed it. Linux and other FOSS software is primarily written and maintained by companies such as IBM, Google, Red Hat, Canonical and HP, with contributions these days even by Microsoft. These companies (except MS of course) joined the co-operative effort to counteract Microsoft's (until recent) dominance in software. Some hobbyists! Most of the internet runs on Linux, including, you might be upset to learn, Pentaxforums itself. https://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://www.pentaxforums.com

RHEL isn't FOSS...

Red Hat is very much a FOSS company. From their home page, the strapline is "Making enterprise software using an open source development model since 1993". Their business model is tailoring "solutions" for companies. If you want to download their version of Linux for your own use it is called "Fedora" Fedora (operating system) - Wikipedia

In fact an increasing complaint against Linux is that it is becoming too professional in its basis, the fear being that some FOSS company could turn into another Microsoft with all those monopoly abuses. Currently within the FOSS world Red Hat is considered by some to having too much influence (worse with IBM buying it), and Google is another potential threat.

[acero]

Oh, well. As I bought my used K200d, I got an unuseful CD, running only in Windows.
Then I found Rawterapee, to edit the RAW files. It can make more than I can do, and it takes so little resources. I collect the wasted computers of my relatives (mostly my wife, and my mother), and they do the job!
Reading similar articles online, it seems like Rawterapee could be quite difficult to use (I subrscibe!), but seems also it works fine. I was always sure about this, but I am not a professional, nor I ever tried Adobe products.