Dairygoat

You are so right. Linuk is the best. I have been using Linukway back before any of them had a GUI desk top.

Crichmond Loc: Loveland, CO

Thanks for the AfterShotPro info!

I have one machine that I'm running Linux Mint on and was looking for a robust photo editor for my Linux machine. I've been using the Adobe family of products for some time and am used to the shortcuts and protocols of Photoshop. One problem with Photoshop is that it is a hog when it comes to computer resources. AfterShotPro is blazingly fast as compared to Lightroom and Photoshop.

Right now Corel is selling it for $47.99, so that, for me was a real bargain.

I now have a new learning curve to conquer!

So, again, thanks!

JerryOSF Loc: Bristol, VA

You may want to try Digikam. It is a "do it all" photo program. Great for organizing, also can be used for editing. The nice thing about Linux is you can try many options, all are free. If you don't like it, delete it.

Crichmond Loc: Loveland, CO

I'll take a look.

Thanks!

NoSocks Loc: quonochontaug, rhode island

Lots of Mac fanboys on this thread and I'm happy to count myself among them. Since making the switch 7 or 8 years ago, I've never had I problem that wasn't my own fault. With Windows, I seemed to have a problem every 15 minutes.

radiojohn

GIMP is kinda like photoshop. Check out distrowatch.com for all the Linux variations. Linux Mint is pretty easy to use, Ubuntu and Ubuntu Studio may offer a lot of graphic programs right in the installation. Some run right off a DVD so you can "try before you buy (or install). A Windows program call Rufus will put many distros on a USB stick. One of my favorites is Puppy Linux which is small enough that the whole thing (OS and apps) load and run in memory. I have an old Toshiba laptop with 4 GB of memory and no current hard drive. "Precise Puppy" runs on it very well. Just be sure to save your work to another USB stick!

Sadly, you will not find the gamut of professional tools, but it is all free. There is a Linux program called WINE that will run some Windows programs, so some of yours may still work. And you can easily dual-boot your PC if you want to keep Windows on for some essential programs.

There is a service on Distrowatch if you want a DVD of any certain distro. Otherwise you need to download an ISO disk image file and burn your own.

Have fun!

radiojohn

Thanks for the info on AftershotPro...but is it for Windows? The fellow is trying to use Linux.

chfrus

Yup get a MAC.

bascoggin

I've been real satisfied using a Linux version called Zorin OS for photo work and general word processing, etc. using Gimp and Shotwell for 4 or 5 years now. Zorin "feels" a lot like Win 7 so it doesn't take long to get familiar with using it. Can't remember but seems like both of these were included in the install.

Reinaldokool Loc: San Rafael, CA

My three Windows 10 computers are permanently connected to the Internet. Yes there are constant attempts by "bad guys" but there are protections and they have never succeeded in getting through the defenses. As to the updates, I keep hearing about the unreliable updates, but I have not experienced any problems. Besides, you can set up the system to reject any updates. (I'd never do that as it is part of the value of Windows 10. ) No, I don't own Microsoft stock, but have found Windows, especially since Win 7, quite reliable.

Linux has the potential to be an excellent option. You can set your system to run both Windows and Linux and many do that; mostly running Linux but when wanting to use software only available for Windows, that becomes possible. Linux simply lost the commercial battle. No one could make sufficient money supporting it. Of course, I haven't kept up with the latest Linux news in 15 years. Maybe there are some amazing new software products.

blackest Loc: Ireland

Yes pretty sure there is a linux version (personally never used it thou)

Osx has bsd at the core of it. To cut a long story short. First there was Unix and many people contributed and later were locked out of the software they developed which pretty much led to another implimentation bsd (many variations) linus torvolds came along and started up Linux the names a cross between linus and unix.

Also works very like unix. Macs tend to do things graphically but they still have a commandline coming from linux to mac I was pleased to find brew and macports these are package managers and have ensured that most linux / bsd software has a mac version.

Macs can run OSX Windows and Linux even all 3 at the same time if you run the latter two in a Virtual machine (a Virtual machine usually uses a large file (or several 2GB files as a hard drive) They support usb hardware so you can connect external drives to them to. Generally the virtual machine manages to run about 90 ish percent the speed of the guest os running directly on the hardware but as a general rule tend not to allocate more than half of the hosts physical Ram. Windows prefers around 4GB+ of ram so you would prefer to have at least 8GB of physical ram, Linux can run on less, (much less if its not running a gui and for some tasks it isnt needed many linux servers are managed from a web browser remotely). Of course any operating system can be the host OS although OSX is restricted to being a guest on OSX systems. A mac can boot directly Windows or Linux as well but it's a pain to shutdown and restart. A virtual machine can be suspended at anytime and resumed any time later.

If you have windows hardware you officially only have the choice of Windows or Linux (unofficially there are hackintoshes which run on a subset of windows compatible hardware).
Company I work for has us all subscribed to microsoft online. Since it runs in a browser window (usually for me Chrome) it doesn't care about the underlying Operating system. So you can have Microsoft office on any operating system capable of running a webbrowser.


Linux command line is very much like the OSX command line and generally with a desktop linux system you don't need to use it much. Although there are many times you may want to. If your administrating a Windows Machine in a networked environment cmd is a common command to open a windows command line as is (ipconfig and ping). Its just faster at times to just hit the command line.

Linux is a kernel and has a fair number of desktops or user interfaces available, android is essentially a linux desktop as is chrome OS the ones used on 'linux systems' are gnome and kde but there are others and a few variations. Most of the programs are the same anyway.

For me osx is like a super linux i can do pretty much everything I could do on Linux within OSX and get the commercial software such as Lightroom which wasn't available under Linux. Even administration of a Windows domain server is done by using a remote desktop session it doesn't matter what operating system runs that session its just passing mouse and keyboard commands to the remote system and displaying the screen.

Virtual machines are the big thing these days Amazon Microsoft and Google all offer them. Google can rent you a machine with 96 cpu cores and 8192 GB of ram (by the minute) or a small slice to run a service. If you are rendering video frames then 96 cores is very handy but hopefully its a blockbuster not a home movie :) it's not a small bill for that kind of power.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

My 27" cost twice that in 2012. I don't recall if it was refurbished or not - usually what I look for first. Then I bought memory, bringing it up to 16GB.

Jaackil Loc: Massachusetts

A couple of points. I never said not to move to Linux But for the average user there is a learning curve that they need to be aware of. Also you said you have a son who is Linux certified which most of us don’t have as back up. Third point you said you still use Windows environment for photo editing. Well I think the OP came here because they are interested in photo editing.

Bmarsh Loc: Bellaire, MI

I believe it also runs on Windows but definitely runs on Linux.

Bmarsh Loc: Bellaire, MI

Another option which I use is to run Windows in a virtual machine under Linux. It seems to run better that way, really. And given enough disk space for the images, you can have as many versions as you want. I have both Windows 10 and Windows 7 available.