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The Gimp from the Eyes of a Photoshop User
Eugenia writes "Many in the F/OSS community are raving about the Gimp, however pros who have actually used Photoshop think differently: This Mac professional designer goes through the steps of getting Gimp 2.0 up and running on his Mac, only to get baffled by the chaotic interface in general and its non-standard UI compared to other Mac apps, its slowness to open large files and to apply filters, the unintuitive tools that accompany it and its very visible bad quality of text and lines/shapes. That designer even bought a 'supported' version of MacGimp by an OSS-Mac company, Archei, but he never heard back for his support requests (free Gimp for Macs here). I think that's one of the best-written articles I've ever read about the reality of most open-source geek-driven projects vs their equivelant professional/proprietary ones. Personally, before I get persuaded to use Gimp again for my photography projects, I would need --in addition to the author's peeves -- full 16-bit per channel support, high-quality scanning/printing drivers with integrated GUI (a'la SilverFast), and a 'crop and rotate' feature (as seen in PS/PSE). Besides, both Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop Elements cost bellow $100 (with PS Elements getting bundled with most scanners/printers/digital cameras, albeit without the much needed 16bit support either)."
Or Achilles!
Wait, nevermind...
I'm sure the author intended it as a compliment (12 year olds get "kinda funny" when it comes to older women), but what a depressing observation of the status quo of geek girls.
If Eugenia's the pinnacle of what geekdom has to offer it's males, I'm really surprised that I don't run into more gay IT guys.
Her looks SO don't make up for her personality...
I sure hope the whinner that started this post, the one who stated demands of the Gimp developers is funding his demands! You can bitch after your payment has made NO differences about the OSS project. Get the hint eh!
The immature mind measures.
I, for one, can't really get Windows or MacOS to work the way I like, so I don't use them. I don't post to slashdot saying "I would move to Windows if..."; why should you?
....So why do I use Linux? See my earlier comments. I too hate "big evil empires".
Seems obvious to me.
It's all about the attitude. (Most) People naturally hate "big evil empires." So obviously a lot of people are going to want to get away from all things Microsoft. Even Apple is an underdog compared to Microsoft.
There isn't that big of a motivating factor to purposely move to a "big evil empire" if Linux is already working for you.
I have been using Linux exclusively on the Desktop since last August/September. There are some pretty major issues with it*, but I accept them because I like to tinker, and I feel like Open Source is "the right thing".
* Open Office can be a real PIA sometimes. It's unpredictable behavior has cost me more than one migrain headache. OO is ugly - in my opinion. But I've learned to look past it. When I'm working on a document, I don't really notice the borders anyway. But I would really like to see a great looking Office Suite for Linux that was still functional.
* Unpredictable hardware issues. Sometimes when I turn on my external hard-drive I'm able to mount it, sometimes I can't. Sometimes a reboot will "fix" the problem, sometimes it won't. (I got tired of screwing with lsmod, rmmod, modprobe, and insmod all the time. A reboot is usually faster.)
* Games. Fortunately most of the games I like to play actually have native Linux ports. Unfortunately, compared to playing them under Windows, the quality/performance *sucks* under Linux. But I plan on building a Small Form Factor Windows XP "frag box" one of these days. So games won't be an issue under Linux any more.
* Stability. In my opinion, *Desktop* Linux really isn't all that stable. I have programs hang or core dump even more often than they would in Windows 98. (And WinXP has always been very stable - *for me*)
* Problematic audio/video play back. This issue use to be huge, but it's better now. But still not as "problem free" as it is in Windows (even Win95 had no problems with video files.) Explaining all the video play back problems I've experienced under Linux would take pages and pages so I won't bother.
Hopefully by the end of this year I'll be able to buy a PowerBook.
It'll raise the odds of relatively new stuff like removable hard disks (USB and FireWire, at least) working flawlessly OOTB.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing