Moving to Linux What Flavor do You like?

RocketMan

So I’ve finally given up on Winders (it has crashed Way To Many Times) and was getting so slow (due to all the crap it stashes everywhere!) I just want to throw my laptop out the winder….
I am now moving to Linux for my home system. While I’ve been a Unix admin for years I've only fairly recently (in the last year) moved into a linux based environment with my new job (moving away from turn-key systems such as Sun and HP) and damn if Linux hasn’t come a LONG way since I last touched it. So my question is, for those using Linux, what flavor do you use/like and what tools (Gimp, Rawedit, Raw Therapee, etc) have you found best for photo work? Any preferred X-Windows, as in Gnome or KDE?
Since most of our environment is geared toward scientific applications running a version of RedHat without the GUI interface I’ve been mostly working at the command line (as in previous jobs) so as yet am not that familiar with the Various X-Windows systems on Linux. I am currently evaluating Ubuntu 10.04 on my old laptop (which is also going away soon) and so far am impressed with the tools and layout and speed. though there is a few bugs I'm finding.

Thanks

Jeff

Art Scott

Quite sometime ago Shay Stephens, who was an Artist in Residence here, was using Ubuntu and he was a contributor on the Ubuntu
forum also....before he just dropped off the face of the earth.......at that time to use ubuntu or any other form of Linux one had to be like you,
quite good with the coding and bug fixing.....

Good Luck

operknockity

Ubuntu is still probably the easiest to use for a non-geek.

41magnum

I'm running Fedora Core 13. Fedora tries to keep to the cutting edge of Linux, and is what Red Hat is derived from. Since you mentioned you were familiar with Red Hat, I suggest sticking with some derivative such as Fedora or CentOS.

I'm using Rawtherapee for RAW conversion, but Bibble is also available in RPM or DEB packages if you decide to go commercial. Unfortunately GIMP is only 8-bit right now, but there are plans to upgrade it to 16-bit (don't hold your breath, it will take a while yet). Cinepaint is 16-bit, but I haven't been able to get it to work.

JC

Ubuntu- with KDE packages.

Digikam- love this for photo organizing, georeferencing, etc. I do most of my point and shoot editing direct from digikam.

Gimp- with the plug-ins package

Hugin for panorama creation

QTPFSGUI for HDR

Haven't found a clear favorite for RAW processing.

I had some good results using the free trial of zerene focus stacking.

What I'm missing is a good way to calibrate my monitors in linux- my laptop screen is really bright, my desktop LCD is pretty dark, and I have no idea about the color calibration for either one.

41magnum

I haven't come across a way to generate an ICC profile for a monitor yet, but some calibration can be done.

Monitor calibration under X. This is an older article from 2005, and I'm sure things have changed since then.

RocketMan

Thanks for the input, keep it coming...
Here is what I’ve been looking at so far. I found something called LightZone which has a nice interface and tons of tools for RAW, its commercial software but for $99 might be something I'll get. Doesn't seem to support my Pen EP-1 raw though. I like RawTherapee as well. Hugin and QPT seem to have some issues but still working with those. I'm finding I prefer Gnome over KDE as the default desktop, runs faster less crowded but I did add the KDE4 package as they have some nice tools, mostly Non-graphics. On my netbook is use command line tools for raw conversion dcraw or ufraw, which are two the backends that many of the GUI programs use along with align_stack_image and then enfuse (both these come as part of other packages like hugin and QPT) since I have a small screen on the netbook. They also run faster than a GUI and I can then use a GUI editor if needed to tweak them. That should work nicely when traveling, esp. since I often travel by motorcycle and need to keep things small for packing reasons. I’ve salso looked a few photo managers, don’t like F-spot simply because it wants to remap your directories into a calendar based database, but something from Google looks promising, have to see how fast it is as I have something 41,000 photos on my outboard drive. (yeah I’m a horder!)

Also found a good article here http://photoblog.edu-perez.com/2009/02/hdr-and-linux.html about command line HDR. Next I’ve got to decide on a good replacement for my old laptop and where to spend money on options. I like the idea of a touch screen but can’t decide if I should go there or drop the same money into more memory (from 4 to 6 or 8 Gig), more disk space or faster processor. *sigh* decisions decisions….

RM

RocketMan

41magnum wrote: »

I'm running Fedora Core 13. Fedora tries to keep to the cutting edge of Linux, and is what Red Hat is derived from. Since you mentioned you were familiar with Red Hat, I suggest sticking with some derivative such as Fedora or CentOS.

I'm using Rawtherapee for RAW conversion, but Bibble is also available in RPM or DEB packages if you decide to go commercial. Unfortunately GIMP is only 8-bit right now, but there are plans to upgrade it to 16-bit (don't hold your breath, it will take a while yet). Cinepaint is 16-bit, but I haven't been able to get it to work.

I did consider that, but having been using Ubuntu Netbook remix on my netbook, I have found that in testing it is far better for what I'm looking at than the version of redhat we are using and gmone is a faster/cleaner frontend than KDE, esp on lower speed systems. I am looking at cinepaint and got it working on my work computer running ubuntu 9.04. I still have to try bibble but since the full version of LightZone is the same as the light version my go with that if I go with a commercial package. Using Lunix for me is not about the money saved, but rather getting rid of a sucky OS for something I can control and modify as I need.

yeah, I'm a geek (but NOT a Nerd!):D

Thanks

RM