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Why Linux Rocks For Photography

Saturday, June 18th, 2011

If you’re a photographer, Linux may not be the first thing that leaps into your mind for managing your images.  That is your loss, my friend, both financially and in terms of functionality.

I originally got into Linux mainly for surfing on the internet because Linux didn’t run all those wildly popular Windows viruses and trojans that were circulating in the days when Windows XP was king and Windows 2000 was reaching the end of its days.  But the more I used it, the more I started to discover functionality and automation that made managing images a lot easier.

Oh, I’ve got a Windows laptop, mainly for watching movies, but also for video work.  For photography, it would be tough to move away from Linux.  There are two tools that I’d be lost without.

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Digikam – The image program your Windows buddies wish they had

Friday, June 17th, 2011

DigiKam - Your Windows buddies should be so lucky

DigiKam - Your Windows buddies should be so lucky

Sadly it’s difficult to get Digikam to run under Windows.  It can be done, but it’s a painful exercise.  That leaves Digikam as one of the jewels of open source applications only available to Linux users.  I don’t use Linux and Digikam for lack of other options, I use them for image work because I haven’t found anything better.

I use Digikam to organize my image files, trim, edit, run batch processes, include watermarks and just generally keep my image libraries organized.

A few of my favorite features:

16 Bit Per Channel Editing

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The Battle Is Over – Linux Won

Wednesday, June 15th, 2011

It wasn’t that many years ago that every year was “the year of Linux”.  That was the year we were going to gain enough credibility to topple the giant of proprietary operating systems.  That was the year we were going to break 1 percent of the market!  Yeah!  Always there was the constant, amused recounting of OS sales by the Windows faithful, we went back and forth constantly.  The mouse and the elephant.

That was what?  Seven or eight years ago?  The heady days of 2004 when the first version of Ubuntu, 4.10 the Warty Warthog, burst on the scene.  Seems funny now, doesn’t it?  Linux has clawed its way to near 2 percent of the desktop market but the reason it’s funny now is those numbers are no longer relevant.  The battle is over, decided by forces that ultimately had nothing to do desktop numbers.

The desktop market is entering its twilight phase in computer history, edged out by an exploding array of inexpensive phones, mobile devices, tablets, and specialty devices such as ebook readers, many of them running some variation of Linux.  If you were paying attention, you could see it coming.  Japan was where the device market started to take hold and, once it got going, it just kept on growing.  Still growing today.

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