Slashdot Log In
GIMP Not Enough for Linux Users?
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Sun Feb 05, 2006 11:19 PM
from the professionals-still-think-gimp-is-gimped dept.
from the professionals-still-think-gimp-is-gimped dept.
nursegirl writes "Novell has been running a survey about apps that people need in order to convert their data centers or desktops to Linux. The online survey has been running since Jan 13, and Adobe Photoshop was at the top of the list as of February 1. Desktoplinux.com has an interesting article about why the existence of the GIMP isn't enough for many professionals."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
They have a point... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, like rezising a brush for instance! (Score:5, Interesting)
You mean stuff like resizing the brush with a keypress? After reading the manual, going to google, setting any arcanely named binding that might be it in the shortcuts preferences, the Gimp just sits there and stares stubbornly at me when I try it. Do these people never paint anything? OTOH, this is the same people that think that CTRL-K is much more logical for deleteing stuff than say, oh, I don't know... delete, maybe?
Apart from that, a lot of why the Gimp is such a struggle to use is those right click menus and image menus that the Gimp people are so proud of because they can do anything. Sure, they can do anything - but it also lists *everything*, always! It's called a context menu, and it could be incredibly powerful if it had any context. Oh, and things sorted in real categories.
I could very well live without a Photoshop interface, but I want a human interface.
Parent
Re:They have a point... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand why people find this so impossible to understand -- the MacOS APIs (Carbon and Cocoa) do not exist on other platforms. You can can compile vanilla Unix applications on MacOS X, but you can't trivially recompile (or wrap) a Cocoa app on Linux.
Parent
Re:They have a point... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:They have a point... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, for Cocoa anyway, there's GNUstep [gnustep.org], as, if I'm not mistaken, it's an implementation of the OpenStep specification that was created for NeXT and is still used today for MacOS X as Cocoa. Once GNUstep is reasonably completed, it would in theory be possible to have a certain amount of source-compatibility between any platform with GNUstep and Cocoa. Carbon, now that's a different story...
Parent
GUI perhaps? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe this is because GIMP has one of the most god-awful GUIs known to man. I mean seriously, it seems to be designed to hide functions and impede work, not t'other way round.
Re:GUI perhaps? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:GUI perhaps? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:GUI perhaps? (Score:5, Insightful)
That sucks. It should only bring up stuff relevant to manipulating bits of the image. The right-click menu is also known as the context menu - if I'm right-clicking on pixels I want something that relates to pixels. Some things that definitely should not be there: File, View, Image, and then most of the things on the sub-menus (which are also arranged in terms of GIMP internals rather than in terms of user-oriented categories).
The pull down menu above the photo that brings up every command?
It's not so much the menu as the fact that everything is impossible to find in the menu because it was apparently arranged by a seriously deranged individual bent on avoiding natural categories. Even when you can find something it takes 3-4 non-obvious menu options in sequence to do something that is one menu option in other drawing software. The floating toolbox that brings up every command?
The customizable tab box which permits instant access to your most important subset of commands?
Sensible defaults are better than telling people to customise what is out of the box the Worst... Interface... Ever.
That near every subset of commands can be 'torn off' as a floating toolbar?
What the hell does this have to do with anything? Actually, now that I think of it, it does have something to do with the problem since these floating toolbars don't - they sink right to bloody bottom of the window stack and you have to go hunting for the bastards (this doesn't happen in an MDI interface by the way).
Or the part that doesn't look like Photoshop's unique boxes-in-boxes interface, a GUI style last universally popular in the Windows 3.x days?
And yet a style that is retained in every serious image editor*... but nooo, the GIMP people are right and everybody else is wrong.
GIMP's user interface really is a festering pile of crap. Go ahead, GIMP-fans, do your worst to my karma - I have plenty.
* Yes I know GIMP doesn't have it. I meant what I said.
Parent
Re:GUI perhaps? (Score:5, Interesting)
Fact: Many users have experience with Photoshop and the GIMP.
Fact: Most of those users find Photoshop's UI to be vastly superior, or at least the GIMP's UI to be vastly inferior.
Fact: Those in charge of the GIMP dismiss such experienced users in the field as feeble-minded ignoramuses.
My $1,000,000,000 prediction: this comment will be just as applicable 3 years from now.
Parent
Re:GUI perhaps? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why not have a nice tabbed interface?
Also the name sucks. At best its confusing, at worst its offensive.
Its pretty sad when its obvious to everyone what the problem is, yet its still the same thing after what, six years?
Parent
Re:GUI perhaps? (Score:5, Insightful)
How's it offensive?
I was born with a left club foot. Fortunately, it was braced and reset before I can remember. Even though I've always walked with a slight (almost unoticeable) limp, I've never considered myself inferior in any way. The word gimp has never crossed my mind as being offensive. What I find offensive though, is when people try to tell me that I should be offended by. Gimp (in one of its definitions) is just a descriptive word for someone with a limp, so I'm a gimp, big fricking deal...
Parent
Re:GUI perhaps? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh My God. Oh My God.
That is the single least insightful thing I have ever read at /.. Could there possibly be another reason for things not changing? If Microsoft has kept something crummy for six years, would it be reasonable for you to state that it's not a problem for most users, and thus nothing to complain about?
My suggestion to all the people bitching about how GIMP sucks (...) is to become a part of the community.
This is so typical of what is wrong with the open source movement. In real life (which was what TFA was about) most people can't afford to "become part of the community" because they have real, actual work to do. I use at least ten applications on a very regular basis. I most certainly can't afford to "be part of the community" for all of those. In the real world, what counts is how well stuff actually works right now, not how good they could possibly become in the future if everybody would just help out. Sorry, but that's the way it is.
I think it's a little unseemly to bash people who give you something for free.
TFA is about why people don't use the free stuff. That makes this comment a bit disingenious, don't you think?
It doesn't make sense to be oblivious to real user needs and, simultaneously, to bash real users for not using specific stuff. I know I'm Captain Obvious for spelling this out, but it seems to be needed.
Parent
Re:GUI perhaps? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I'm not pissed off, but I am disappointed.
First of all, for the record it should be noted that I never use either GIMP or PS. I'm talking about the open source community and their attitudes in general. I do feel very strongly that the thoughts dicussed in the post I replied to applies to most, if not all, free software projects. That's my opinion, not a verifiable fact. If you differ, fine, but please be aware that just having a different opinion won't make me use alternative software. Nor will it convince many others.
Closed source companies in general, and Microsoft in particular, are incredibly much better at building applications that are usable for regular, professional users. By professional I mean users who use the software for work and who, accordingly, are prepared to pay for the service of using the software. I do not mean "super power users".
Too many people in the open source community dismisses these people as morons or worse. That's fine, I suppose. It's not like the "morons" care on way or the other. The problem is that a lot of pepople really want to affect lasting change, making users switch from MS to free stuff. And if one wants that, that attitude simply won't cut it.
This thread explains why perfectly clearly, but too many people here refuses to acknowledge that. To me, that is disappointing, because it means that Excel will continue to be better than the alternatives. So will SQL Server, Visio and Photoshop. It doesn't *have* to be that way, because usability isn't that difficult. But it requires a completely different mindset than what is currently prevailing.
Finally, good usability requires huge amounts of humility. Isn't it ironic (in the English sense of the word) that in this particular case Microsoft has that humility, whereas the open source community lacks it?
Parent
Photoshop (Score:5, Informative)
Then...Photoshop is a SDI application on the Mac. SDI vs MDI is hardly the reason professionals will not switch to The GIMP.
Like the article mentions, it's all about colour management and plugins. The former could be solved with code, but the latter is very much chicken/egg; third-parties won't write GIMP plugins until companies start using it, and companies won't start using it until their plugins are available.
Not to mention all the licensing fun of releasing closed plugins for a GPL application. That'd be fun...
Re:Photoshop (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Photoshop (Score:4, Insightful)
While spot colours may be a small part of the technical side of colour management, the ability to shave several hundred dollars off the cost of a print run by using a two or three tone Pantone process rather than full CMYK is far from trivial if you want to stay in the print business. And that's before you even think about special finishes (like metallic), which can't be specified in CMYK or RGB at all.
Parent
GIMP won't natively process in 16bpp images (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ugh. (Score:5, Informative)
For example, one technique used when shooting photos in high contrast lighting conditions is to shoot the photos a bit underexposed then go back and adjust them after the fact, since otherwise the camera can screw up the highlights, often causing them to shift colors due to saturation. Having the extra bits gives a lot more room to change the photo later.
RAW images are becoming increasingly popular, and though there are several different formats, just supporting Canon and Nikon will probably make 90% of the people happy. For those not familiar with raw image formats, most high-end cameras support more than 8 bits per pixel, often 12 bits and preserve the original CCD/CMOS mosaic pattern. Code like dcraw has already been written which can read most of the formats out there. I myself as a Linux user have fallen in love with Bibble, which allows me to quickly go through hundreds or even thousands of photos and fix things like white balance, shadow recovery, lens distortion, sharpening, etc. all while supporting the higher color depth.
Parent
Re:16bpp voodoo, show me specs. (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea isn't to try to actually view at that color depth. Its already beyond the capabilities of many video output devices, and even possibly the human eye. But again, thats not the point nor in dispute.
The issue is the accumulated filter effects and tranformations applied to a digital image. Each such effect can create subtle artifacts and degradations. When you start with 8bit/color channel (traditional 24bpp) then these can build up fast to become noticably visible in the final image.
But if you apply those effects to a 16bit/color channel (48bpp) image, the artifacts don't become noticable as quickly, if at all, assuming you are using a good quality image manipulation program. Then when all is done, you can convert your final image to 8bit/channel (24bpp) such as jpeg and have a clean image.
Parent
Krita (Score:4, Informative)
I've used both extensively... (Score:4, Interesting)
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's insanely too bad Adobe ported 1st to SGI (Score:5, Interesting)
The sad thing about this is that now there is almost no way that Adobe would consider doing anything like that again, with Linux. They've been burned before.
It's a shame. I'm sure that they'd sell many more than a few hundred copies to the Linux market. Maybe even a thousand.
Hardware is so cheap these days, though, that you might as well have a Mac or Windows PC around to run Photoshop when you need it. After all, the software is going to cost you $1,000 or so, you can spring for another kilobuck on some hardware -- or you can dual-boot your Linux box under Windows.
As much as I'd like Photoshop to run under Linux for my visual effects company, in the end I would prefer that Adobe just make better versions that run under the toy operating systems. My painters will be happier that way, anyway.
Thad Beier
Gimp is good enough (Score:5, Interesting)
On a side note I'm really impressed with how much work/research Novell is putting into the Linux desktop. Instead the gradual long-term effort Red Hat has invested, Novell seems to be thinking short-term. Novell desktop 10 looks really interesting [pcworld.com] and their sponsorship of XGL is also really great. I'm glad someone is stepping it up.
Gimp would get a lot more popular if... (Score:5, Insightful)
I use the GIMP for the same tasks, and get results that are just as good, though. I think that for most image processing, the GIMP does everything the average user needs it to do, and more. I'm not denying that it doesn't meet the needs of certain professionals. However, if people weren't able to get pirated copies of Photoshop readily, they'd find that the GIMP does the job they need it to do.
Re:Gimp would get a lot more popular if... (Score:5, Insightful)
Does Adobe even really care? Most everyone who uses Photoshop professionally pays for it (and it's obviously priced for that market). Photoshop probably owes some of its ubiquity in the professional graphics world to its wide availability for piracy.
The fact that pirated Photoshop lives on millions of personal computers owned by people who honestly would never pay the price Adobe is asking for it (mine included, I admit) is costing Adobe very little revenue while giving them huge amounts of exposure, which amounts to free advertising.
For the sake of their stockholders, they publicly mind, but I think the lack of any real attempt to prevent its piracy speaks a lot to how they truly feel about it.
Parent
Perfect example of OSS problems (Score:5, Insightful)
The primary colors of light (and therefore monitors) are red, green and blue (RGB). The primary colors of printing are cyan, magenta, yellow and black (CMYK). A digital image starts out as an RGB and is edited that way, but it must be converted to CMYK before it can be sent to an imagesetter for four-color printing. This isn't a "good thing to have." This is a showstopper not to have. It's like having a car without wheels.
I keep hearing OSS people breezily dismiss criticisms of software such as GIMP or just insist that it IS good enough for professionals. The very fact that some people are arogant enough to try to shove tools onto people that WILL NOT DO THE JOB shows why it's hard to adopt Linux on the desktop. Linux has done well in areas where geeks have written software for other people like themselves. It has not done well in areas where the geeks don't "get" what professionals in other areas must have. A commercial company has a serious incentive to make software that fits the needs of those other people. The people who write OSS tend to just want to write things that are fun and useful to them -- and that severly limits adoption of Linux in non-technical areas. Of course, it also doesn't help that so many Linux people seem to take the attitude that the Linux desktop is fine, but artists and other non-technical types are just too stupid to use it.
David
Re:Perfect example of OSS problems (Score:4, Informative)
There are many advantages to an RGB workflow - smaller image sizes and easier for software to work with is one, less RAM and disk space used, less data to crunch etc.
Using a fully ICC profiled workflow, from capture/acquisition through retouching and editing and finally to output means that the one source image can be retargeted at a number of different output devices and keep the highest possible quality. The days of using pre-separated CMYK images are drawing to a close, as once you've converted to CMYK you don't want to go flipping back and forth between that and RGB. Also, once you've got CMYK, you will find it very hard to use the same source image for, say, printing on newsprint at 75lpi and printing the same image in a glossy magazine on high-brightness stock at 175lpi, or using stochastic screening...
Anyway, having said all that, I totally agree with you that the GIMP is totally unsuited to a professional workflow.
Time is money, and the time you waste with GIMP over a couple of weeks will easily cover the purchase price for the entire Adobe Creative Suite where you have a heap of apps that all work together and, more importantly, are recognised in the industry as having proven themselves to work...
Parent
Re:Perfect example of OSS problems (Score:5, Insightful)
You also don't seem to understand real-world workflow in printing, at least based on the ludicrous suggestion that a job be sent to a printing company and let the printing company do all of the conversion. A normal printing company expects you to be bright enough to convert your own RGBs to CMYKs. If you want them converting RGBs for you, they're going to charge you extra for this useless work on their part. I've dealt with at least a dozen printing companies with lots of jobs over the last 15 years. If you can regularly send clean files that are ready to be sent to an imagesetter with minimal prep, you're going to get a better price on your work.
If you think lack of CMYK support isn't enough to keep GIMP from being used by people in the printing industry, you're either ignorant or just too stubborn to see that GIMP isn't ready to replace Photoshop in the real world. I honestly don't know which it is.
David
Parent
Re:Perfect example of OSS problems (Score:5, Interesting)
Thanks. That was a bloody good laugh. If you'd wanted to prove you have no clue about real world colour management and are, in your own words, a 'moron', then congratulations - you just passed with flying colours.
Seriously, learn something about the subject before you spout off.
As a starter for ten, show us your RGB -> CMYK and vice versa conversion functions, if they're "just the inverse".
Hint - consider the information lost when converting from CMYK to RGB. If that's too taxing, think about the Key component.
(Supplementary question - Photoshop is largely a bitmap editing application - guess how many people edit bitmaps by defining the Pantone colour used for each pixel. As other people have said, Pantone is a small part of the equation.)
Parent
Underrated point (Score:5, Insightful)
This really is the key. GIMP will never have more than a marginal user base because they don't understand their users. Their users--nearly all of them--are Photoshop users (or potentially ex-Photoshop users).
Good user interface design means not just creating an inteface that "makes sense," it's also creating an interface that works the way the user expects it to work. If over 90% of your users are used to the way Photoshop does function X, then you sure as hell better implement function X the way Photoshop does. Not because that way is better or makes more sense, but because that's what the user expects you to do, and any deviation from those expections means your app is "broken" in their eyes.
Competing on features in this sort of market is futile. Your program may be able to give me the moon on a stick; but if I can't easily make it work, it might as well do nothing at all. The success stories--those projects that have managed to supplant a deeply-entrenched competitive offering--have always acknowledged this fact and have modified the behavior of their own product to compensate. The failures in this arena (GIMP being the most famous) always refuse to acknowledge the effect on their users' expectations caused by their competitor's dominance. For projects like the GIMP, it seems a matter of pride to not be influenced by such an unworthy competitor.
Colour depth. (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is at the core of the GIMP developer team's culture. If you hang out on the GIMP mailing list for any amount of time, you'll find it's an unbelievably hostile list. The members of the team seem to hate each other with a passion! There is constant bickering and any questions that are even a shade off-topic (or even on-topic but in the mailing list archives) will be flamed mercilessly.
It is that innate hostility that drove a wedge between the GIMP team and the consortium of movie art teams that put together FilmGIMP/CinePaint. That the project had to be forked in order to get such a basic feature done is just criminal.
GIMP is great - yes - but it could have been so much greater. It's amazing that it's done as well as it has.
Re:Colour depth. (Score:5, Interesting)
What happened 3 months later? My graphic designer gf got exactly the same treatment in email off list for asking how to do something in gimp that she could do in photoshop, except carol added in the accusation that she could only afford photoshop if she's sleeping with the boss so she didn't have time to speak to people like her. That didn't stop her sending another couple of abusive emails.
This is an open source software mailing list, not a vicious political shitfight where nobody's allowed to question or suggest the slightest thing is wrong with Gimp. Works more like the latter from my experience.
Parent
Don't be different, okay? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think GIMP is in the same UI trap as Lotus products that are trailing Microsoft Office popularity -- "We're different, and we don't care that more popular product has different interface, we'll force users to get used to ours". Yes, there will be perver strange people who will say they like Lotus UI because "it's different" but for most people Microsoft Office interface works, and Microsoft got where it is now not only because of the monopoly tie-in with OS products, but because they copy good things into their products, including UI. By being "different" Lotus office products limited themselves to situation where user is forced to use them. And for home they run for Word or for something that looks and behaves like Word.
Every time you encounter radically new interface it takes time and effort to get used to. People don't want and don't have to do it. Leave the radical and ugly dysfunctional interface to hobbyists, and copy Photoshop interface for the rest of users. If you want to make a point how easier/better GIMP interface is, add a little window that says "You could have easily done it in GIMP native interface by pressing blah blah blah". And, perhaps, allow pieces of interface being switch to native mode, so once user is completely accustomed to GIMP way of doing things whole interface would be reverted to radical mode.
Instead of that all I see is people argue with foam at their mouth on how much better GIMP interface is.
GIMP is not Photoshop, period (Score:4, Insightful)
See, I said - could be. Yes, GIMP has it's own share of problems and it feels somehow stagnated, sure. It could be better. So it is just too little confusing in GUI and lacks good help mode. That's all.
For professionals it is completely other story.
GIMP sucks as a user experience (Score:5, Interesting)
A simple example which bugged me this weekend. I needed extra space to draw in so I resized the canvas. But I can't actually paint there! Why? Because the canvas size changed but the layer size didn't. This is so stupid. I only had one layer, so why didn't it ask me if I wanted to resize the layer too, or even provide that as a persistent checkbox preference in the Canvas size dialog? GIMP is replete with stupid little things like this. Such as the foreground / background colour selector where it is entirely non obvious how it works with the same tooltip covering 4 distinct actions. Or the scale selection (as far as it works in Win32) does not support proportional scaling and the grabber behaviour is totally insane.
Rather than attempting to play the same complex notes as Photoshop (another lousy experience IMHO), perhaps they should be simplifying its day to day use first. Make the next version a usability & bug fixing release only. People wouldn't be pining so much for Photoshop or any other decent tool if the one which ships with Linux didn't make them want to gnaw their own arm off with frustration.
Why not links in the article? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Gimp Isnt enough. (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:What about.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:How can we take this seriously... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:How can we take this seriously... (Score:5, Insightful)
*blink*
A web designer shouldn't have to look at HTML source much?
Parent
Re:How can we take this seriously... (Score:5, Insightful)
People aren't stupid. The elitests who believe the average user, and average person, is a gibbering idiot is usually just as dumb when they are confronted with tasks outside their element. A Linux guru might wonder why everyone else is just too dumb to use all the wonderful CLI tools and scripting capabilities, yet when confronted with an automechanical problem, the mechanic is chuckling to himself about how Mr. Linux Guru is too dumb to even perform basic maintenance on his own car.
Like I said, time is a limited resource. Everyone can't spend all their time being an expert at everything.
Parent
Re:How can we take this seriously... (Score:5, Interesting)
My conclusion so far is that while GIMP has a Photoshop resembling toolset it's really not a Photoshop competitor. Really. While Photoshop is overkill for John Doe, especially regarding the price (yeah, most people pirate it, I know), GIMP is quite sufficient. It's an awesome tool for removing red eyes in photos, fixing resolutions, brightness/contrast and stuff like that - but it's not competing with Photoshop. It's obviously not made for print due to the lack of CMYK-support, and for web production.. well, compare Photoshops "Save for web"-module vs GIMP's "Select a JPEG compression percentage please"-prompt.
I've seen work by one or two people who do some seriously impressing stuff with GIMP - and that's it. Those two people also seem to have been involved in the GIMP project since the dawn of mankind, might be a good indicator on how much time you need to spend before being able to use it fluently enough.
Some people who doesn't work with graphics professionally (or claim GIMPs awesomeness without even using it) will probably disagree with me and claim that I'm wrong. But hey, at least I've TRIED to use it. It's just completely pointless for me to even spend time with it when I have access to a (legal) Photoshop license. I don't think the GIMP project is useless though, as I said - it's good enough for the average guy, even though I think the UI could improve tremendeously.
Parent
Re:How can we take this seriously... (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems that Adobe and their patents play a role in that, but its true of course that this is a serious limitation for those whoms work is going to be used in print.
and for web production.. well, compare Photoshops "Save for web"-module vs GIMP's "Select a JPEG compression percentage please"-prompt.
If you are doing graphics work professionally, is it too much to ask that you have some idea about how different compression levels work out? This is pretty equivalent to knowing how different kinds of paper work out when you profession is printing.
I am not a graphics artist, but I do run some websites that are used by graphics artists for publication. I had to tell each of them to stop using the bloody 'save for web' module for their pictures because the result of it is crap. Rather, they should be using jpegs in 1280x1024 resolution or better, compressed at 90% quality or better. The website will do recompression when needed. Of course the recompression by the website is why you should feed it high quality sources, but the 'save for web' confuses the hell out of those graphics artists exactly because it explicitly hides what it is doing from the user.
Parent
Re:How can we take this seriously... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it comes down to the fact that the vast majority of graphic designers and artists don't work in a vacuum. Artwork gets sent to customers for approval. It gets sent to publishers and print shops for production. Those people have to be able to read those files with no hassle. They have to maintain color accuracy. They have to work.
If you're billing clients top dollar, and have print runs on the line that can easily cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, then risking that account just to keep from spending $600 on a professional-grade, industry-standard tool is... well... stupid.
Parent
Re:How can we take this seriously... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh come on!, a lot of people do not *have* the time just because they DO NOT CARE!. They prefer playing with their Playstation, getting drunk or fixing their car than to get into the computer.
You fail to see that, at the same way you (and I) enjoy hacking the computer, normally people enjoy hacking their cars, stereo system or any other hobby they have. And it does not mean that the society is failing.
We all have our priorities, and although for you, the computer could be a very important tool, there is people who only use it as a comunication tool. Think as the telephone, you do not care how your telephone work... you may not care how is it programmed, you just want to pick up the phone, press the buttons and speak.
We all have our priorities, and the fact that the priorities of other people are not the same as yours does not mean their are doing any wrong.
Although I arrived late to the article, let me state something. This last week, I have been working in some simulations. I made a simulation on the computer wich gave me as results something like 400,00 MB in numbers.
Now, I needed to do statistical analysis on those things, unfortunately, the deadline of the paper is for this wednesday, and I have never used any of those Statistical analysis tools. I didnt need anything too fancy, only std. deviation and averages.
Guess what I used, Excel, it has an OK statistical analysis package. Now, I wont "rant" about the absence of that on OpenOffice, I did everything I needed in MS Office, but to do that I had to import my text files (delimited by a space) to Excel. I did some simple C programs to process my code and then just imported with the File/Open function of excel, it detected it was text file and a wizzard guided me through the import stages.
Now, what does all of this have to do with the "linux still not ready"?, well, after finishing, I thought "how could I do it with OpenOffice" because you know, everybody says OpenOffice is as good as Ms Office (something I do not believe). Well, I tried to open one of those files with the File/Open IN OpenCalc and it just opened a OpenWrite window with the numbers HA!
I looked for an "Import" button, I tried with the "Document Import wizzard" without luck. So I could not even *start* to compare it.
Now there are a number of several details that I *doubt* OpenCalc has, that Excel does besides importing a file or being able to make cross references between worksheets and books but, you must see that the devil of the commercial vs open software is (as in everything else) in the DETAILS. Those small details that people take from granted when using Photoshop, Excel, Word, etc. And the fact that in some of those products you can go from 0 to a complete work in a few minutes (God, this is the first time I do a *real* statistics analysis).
Parent
Lorraborox (Score:5, Interesting)
Elitism such as yours is both misplaced and counter productive. There is no really hard reason why a Knoppix type system, and a bit of fine tuning, would not make a consumer level OS. The problem is not the underlying OS, the problem is at the GUI level, and as such is solvable by scripting at the VB level.
Parent
Krita is better alternative to Adobe Photoshop (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Artists' OS Knowledge (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the main reasons people don't care about GIMP, isn't just the questionably poor usability. It's still the features. Last time I check, things such as the ability to group layers, advanced typographical control, adjustable object effects, and color modes, were still far behind Photoshop.
Even in photography, I still find the GIMP lacking. The lack of LAB mode, which I often use, is one example.
The GIMP is a good project, and it sure has it's uses, but it's still far away from a Photoshop replacment for many people. It's like saying that MySQL is a suitable replacment for Oracles's top-of-the-line DB. For some; sure, for others; no F'n way.
Parent