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Ubuntu Replaces F-Spot With Shotwell
climenole writes "Finally! The much discussed F-Spot vs. Shotwell battle is over. The new default image organizer app for Ubuntu Maverick 10.10 is going to be Shotwell. This is a much-needed change; F-Spot was simply not enough. Most of the times when I tried F-Spot, it just keeps crashing on me. Shotwell on the other hand feels a lot more solid and is better integrated with the GNOME desktop. Shotwell is also completely devoid of Mono."
so is it an ideological move or a technical one?
I don't know whether to comment on a tech site or daily kos
So the summary is just copy/paste from some blog.
Gnome made the change, not Ubuntu.
That version of Shotwell has been out for well over a month.
This is not news, for nerds or for anyone.
For fuck sake, editors.
EDIT!
Where was this discussed? Are there links that describe the finality of this decision in greater detail? I had heard about the debate, but didn't hear about the resolution.
Shouldn't it then be named G-spot? If a program of such a name were to exist, would any male users be able to find it, let alone use it?
XSANE should never be made available. The GUI is a complete mess, looking like something that belongs on the Amiga. Also, it has yet to work with a single scanner or webcam I throw at it.
"Finally! The much discussed F-Spot vs Shotwell battle is over. The new default image organizer app for Ubuntu Maverick 10.10 will be Shotwell. This is a much needed change. F-Spot was simply not enough. Most times when I tried F-Spot, it crashed on me. Shotwell on a other hand feels a lot more solid and is better integrated with the GNOME desktop. Shotwell is also completely devoid of Mono."
There, fixed that for you. Now it's in English.
A lightweight equivalent of MS Paint. GPaint for example has all kinds of flashy transformations, yet lacks something as basically necessary as edit "undo" and "redo" functions.
Most of the times when I tried F-Spot, it just keeps crashing on me.
Do we need such silly commentary?
I'm using Kubuntu btw, so I couldn't care less about F-Spot.
Shotwell is also completely devoid of Mono.
I take issue with this last line. I LIKE c#/.net. If I get to use it in more places, this is a good thing.
Isn't the whole shtick about open source the fact that we get more options?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Is Google's Picasa for Linux stable yet? I would much rather see a piece of free software from a company that will continue to develop it over the years and that is cross-platform. Seriously, isn't this the second or third time it has changed. They should use either software that is developed and supported by a major company (like Google's Picasa), or they should assign some developers to the project they choose and not change it.
I'm always glad to hear about mono being used less on Linux.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
or what ever they call it now
As much as I like having one less set of libs to install I have to say shotwell is way behind F-Spot on the usability front. I would say Shotwell needs another year to mature before it gets even near what F-spot is "now". Ubuntu is a key representation of Linux on the desktop and if users have to deal with a very beta experience of shotwell I dare say it wont reflect positively on Linux as a whole (I personally prefer Digikam over F-Spot).
I have never heard about shotwell, so I went to its website (it would be nice if the article actually included a link to that). As far as I can tell, there are some important features missing from shotwell. Namely, there is no information about raw, integration with ufraw or another raw developing software, editing photos in external editors (GIMP), or running external filters on photos.
Also, it does not seem to have as many export options as f-spot.
I am definitely not happy with f-spot, and always keep looking for a replacement, but so far I was unable to find one, and, as far as I can tell, shotwell with its current set of features is not going work for me.
AccountKiller
Why crap on about MONO AGAIN..!!! ENOUGH.. (yes the f-Spot is a JAB at MONO..)
If your so anti-patent... Try and use your linux box without:
* DVD
* H264
* Blueray
* MP3
* etc etc etc etc..
Or the other stuff which is stolen/questionable in origins.
If people don't want MONO.. simply uninstall it.. Just like they can uninstall/install DVD/MP3/etc etc..
But don't go pushing your BIASED 'pure linux religon' onto everyone else..
Linux is a great OS.. And I wish it all the success in the world, but with idiots constantly complaining about MONO, but not other patents is just proof of double standards.
It's worked with all the scanners I have tried (3 different multi-purpose devices) without any trouble. It may not be the best piece of software in the world but it works fairly well - what are you going to replace it with? Or should users just go without completely until there is scan software meeting your standards? I can tell that if there was no XSane or equivalent I would not be using Ubuntu on any of my machines (currently 5 running various flavours of Ubuntu).
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
Changes in Fedora for Desktop Users
F-spot makes duplicates of my photos. Good riddance! One copy of each pic is enough, thank you!
The latest Fedora release, 13, already has Shotwell enabled. And the good package maintainers help getting the experience right the first time, too.
As long as developers keep rewriting apps from scratch every 2-3 years, they'll never become truly stable or usable. And they won't progress much beyond tech demos or the basic feature checklists.
When will we see true progress in integration, usability or features?
When I said VP9 I actually meant VP8.
Your observation is spot on, and part of the cause is the iron fist of the original devs, often imitated by for forkers.
In time, they learn how to do things better, but (possibly sadly) a new cohort of devs come along ready to learn the same lessons.
It may not be good for the code-base but it's good for the humans.
So we see how coding helps anti-social computer geeks learn how to be better humans! Pretty neat!
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
I've been following developments of gthumb lately and I've seem a significant increase in improvements the last year. I'm pretty sure it's triggered by competition with F-Spot and possibly Shotwell. The main reason for me to use gthumb is the superior import facility for your digital photos. You can store them in your own hierarchy/folders in the way you like it.
Unfortunately it seems that shotwell doesn't import f-spot's tags database. That's a big annoyance for anybody who tagged an extensive photo collection and it could be a motivation to keep using f-spot. The ability to import data from competing software has been a very important feature for any new program that wants to divert users from an existing one (Firefox imports IE bookmarks, Thunderbird imports mails and address book from Outlook Express, etc) so I'm surprised the shotwell didn't do that from its very first release.
Who gives a tinker's spit about "managing" your "photos"? I want to edit images, so I'll install GIMP and set all the filetypes back where they belong. Iff I connect my camera, then perhaps I want to invoke something to offload selected pix and file them by date. F-Spot was about as useful as a wet paper bag at managing photos, with an incomprehensible interface and no editing.
Seriously, it gets the job done and if you need more you inevitably have to go all the way to GIMP. Constantly being asked to use F-Spot has been aggravating as hell so hopefully shotwell is less intrusive, but I just use EoG + GIMP and that covers all my usecases.
Well... this is a way lesser evil. But still vala is not in my heart, and tomboy has to go away too: gnome official dependence on mono must become optional.
Ballmer and other people at MS go on and on about their precious patents.
The best way to avoid them is not to use anything that originates at MS.
Although C# is clearly inspired by Java, and thus any patents on this regard would mots likely be baseless, why should people risk it?
You like C#? Then install Mono on your own, you have the choice, but distro makers have to make sure that they use as little as possible stuff that may be MS tainted.
just tested shotwell: -it does not support png (wtf?) -the "improve" option sharpens the image without any options or preview wtf, shotwell seems even worse than f-spot. gthumb was pretty good, though.
WHO CARES?
One day, a scorpion looked around at the mountain where he lived and decided that he wanted a change. So he set out on a journey through the forests and hills. He climbed over rocks and under vines and kept going until he reached a river.
The river was wide and swift, and the scorpion stopped to reconsider the situation. He couldn't see any way across. So he ran upriver and then checked downriver, all the while thinking that he might have to turn back.
Suddenly, he saw a frog sitting in the rushes by the bank of the stream on the other side of the river. He decided to ask the frog for help getting across the stream.
"Hellooo Mr. RMS!" called the scorpion across the water, "Would you be so kind as to give me a ride on your back across the river?"
"Well now, Mr. MS! How do I know that if I try to help you, you wont try to kill me?" asked the frog hesitantly.
"Because," the scorpion replied, "If I try to kill you, then I would die too, for you see I cannot swim!"
Now this seemed to make sense to the frog. But he asked. "What about when I get close to the bank? You could still try to kill me and get back to the shore!"
"This is true," agreed the scorpion, "But then I wouldn't be able to get to the other side of the river!"
"Alright then...how do I know you wont just wait till we get to the other side and THEN kill me?" said the frog.
"Ahh...," crooned the scorpion, "Because you see, once you've taken me to the other side of this river, I will be so grateful for your help, that it would hardly be fair to reward you with death, now would it?!"
So the frog agreed to take the scorpion across the river. He swam over to the bank and settled himself near the mud to pick up his passenger. The scorpion crawled onto the frog's back, his sharp claws prickling into the frog's soft hide, and the frog slid into the river. The muddy water swirled around them, but the frog stayed near the surface so the scorpion would not drown. He kicked strongly through the first half of the stream, his flippers paddling wildly against the current.
Halfway across the river, the frog suddenly felt a sharp sting in his back and, out of the corner of his eye, saw the scorpion remove his stinger from the frog's back. A deadening numbness began to creep into his limbs.
"You fool!" croaked the frog, "Now we shall both die! Why on earth did you do that?"
The scorpion shrugged, and did a little jig on the drownings frog's back.
"I could not help myself. It is my nature."
Then they both sank into the muddy waters of the swiftly flowing river.
Self destruction - "Its my Nature", said the Scorpion...
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
try ranger instead of mc. It doesn't have VFSs but it is much faster and nicer. I especially like the tree traversal key strokes, and the fact that each directory remembers marked (tagged) files separately, so you don't lose your Ctrl-T tags just because you temporarily dipped into a subdir to see what it contains.
And the multiple tab feature is very nice too...
... but mine tastes better.
*TaDUM* *Crash* *Thud*
Thank you, thank you. I'm here all week.
Try the fish.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I use Shotwell and it has a feature not to import the same photo twice, so err, that makes half of your post invalid right there dopey.
Second point. Saying that an application cannot import 'PNGs' (which are a relatively small subset of all image files) does not justify the question, "What use is an photo manager that can't import images.." which implies a comprehensive inability to open all image files. These are schoolboy debating tactics. If you persist with them nobody will trust what you say, and you will be left wondering why.
Try using DigiKam.
No, wait, that's a KDE app. Guess its time to switch.
Funny how Ballmer has no problem despite being a loon and extreme in his outlook. Jobs is abrasive in getting his point across. Still, no worries there.
The difference is that these two are raking in shitloads of money and for many libertarians, these people are therefore GODS.
If they are going to copy something, they might as well copy Picasa.
It is FAR less annoying.
Sure, take a hierarchy of photos and flatten out the organization
so scared housewives can't cope with it anymore so they end up
burning their photo archive onto CD instead.
There should be something in the HID guidelines about intentionally
subjecting end users to unnecessary information overload.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Yeah, I draw 'tashes on family photos too...
Oh, hang on, no I don't. Out of ~5,000 photos NOT ONE has a bit of line art on it.
geequie (or gqview) is almost exactly the same as irfanview. But it's better, cuz it's not windows.
[...] for some reason rotating a picture to the right is a lot faster than the same operation to the left.
That is because the implementor is a big fan of Karel the robot. Rotating the picture to the left is the same as rotating it three times to the right. ;)
Picasa 3 is much better IMHO.
Shotwell is still lacking basic features is why I knock it, but almost there for me.
You're kidding, right? There is no distro that "most Linux users run". There's a lot of popular ones, none comes close to being "the distro most users run"
That actually is a pretty good list of crap that people have pretty roundly rejected. Thanks for proving the other guy's point.
ps: having something forced on everyone by upstream is not an indication of popularity. In this case it's more a sign of abuse of influence by Migel and friends.
Great now they add more buggy software by default...
http://admincentralforums.com
Ah, the irony of Slashdot UID's - it's the only dick measuring contest where the winner is the smallest one...
Interesting coincidence though that in the /. digits contest most people are around six though. Plus, I've heard people have paid to enhance their UID (sure four digits might be worth braggin about but paying to have yours made one digit is absurd).
I'm sorry, by "most" I didn't mean 50% or more, I meant "majority".
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
I don't understand all the bitching about Mono, it is a nice platform and runs very well in my experience. I love F-Spot and never have it crash, with my 100's of photos i take and import into it and export to my smugmug account. Also, Tommy Boy is a very well put together application that works great. Also, last i heard Shotwell was not as feature complete as F-Spot is, which is a stupid move, hey should we use this app that does 100% of what the users want and need as well as being pounded on for awhile being it was included in, at least, the defacto linux install for most linux users, or go with this new thing that does about half? That is a easy choice, lets remove functionality and throw out the more validated application. just stupid
Most of the times when I tried F-Spot, it just keeps crashing on me.
Thanks, we now know you are biased. This is something based on personal experience, much like how Linux would "not work" for some people on some computers.
Less Mono is good, though. Better speeds, less dependencies.
I am not devoid of humor.
s/majority/plurality/. Majority means over 50%.
Wikipedia says "plurality", except in British English where it means the same as "majority", means the greatest subset, not 50%. So I meant non-British plurality then. But whatever. =P
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
Another APP that doesn't us MONO is alway welcome