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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."
The real issue is with patents. Stallman wrote about this last year.
http://www.fsf.org/news/dont-depend-on-mono
Similar to WINE in a way, it's good to have an open source project to allow us to run more software. However, that doesn't mean that software developers should make their applications depend on them when specifically targeting a GNU/Linux environment - it's an unnecessary risk.
It's GNU/Linux dammit!
just had the same experience. png support will be added in 0.6. it's kind of ridiculous, but whatever, it's in 0.x. also going to fullscreen and then back appears to totally fuck the interface (ubuntu lucid).
also: no way (?) to zoom into images.
I don't know if I like the event paradigm. They should combine it with a date-based view like f-spot. My pictures are a combination of daily snapshots and events. Also I'd like a "random crap from the internet" dumppile which is totally separate from my life... Kind of like keeping Playboys away from the family photo album. :-/
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
There are a few developers who I feel indebted to. Icaza is one. I use Midnight Commander every day. I give these developers "the benefit of the doubt". Icaza is up there with Bram Moolenaar (VIM). VIM is more important, but MC also "gets it done". And has for almost 15 years.
So, when Icaza said "Mono is important", I tried to suspend my disbelief. And, it was difficult for me; the JVM also had a 15 year history for me.
I'm STILL trying to see it. I "dutifully" installed Moonlight into Firefox. I've tried F-Spot. But, there appears to be no broad-base support for the CLR, even now. No CLR support for Unix... To quote a Microsoft MVP
"Shinma,
I would not recommend trying to run .NET on a unix platform. While
there are attempts (there is a CLR based on a source project released by MS
named ROTOR, and there is also the MONO project), not all of the
functionality is there.
What are you trying to do? Which parts of the framework do you want to
leverage? I think that there might be an ASP.NET implementation up and
running.
--
- Nicholas Paldino [.NET/C# MVP]"
Now, MONO claims to have Solaris support, but I haven't yet tried it (can you get support for this from Novell?) And what about AIX and HP-UX?
JAVA supports these platforms, and so appears to be a more universal delivery system.
Was Icaza wrong? Maybe. It is possible that the CLR offers features that are not possible with the JVM (I don't know, the only thing I have personally done in this space is a COBOL to JVM system, and I haven't ever really looked at CLR -- after all Alchemy offers a commercial COBOL to CLR compiler already).
Now, I have never stressed F-Spot, but what I did try appeared to work just fine. I'm all for competition, and if the CLR is superior to the JVM, let it win! I just don't understand why it hasn't been pushed into the Unix space. Are IBM, HP and Oracle wrong?
Just curious on the thoughts of some fellow developers here. Especially from those companies. Some insight would be valuable.
Thanks, Ratboy666
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
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.
xsane, or at least its libraries, forms the core of every scanner program for Linux worth using. The GUI is about the same as typical scanner programs released by manufacturers, which is to say it's weak but functional. Also, it has worked with every single scanner I have thrown at it for years and years... HP, Canon, Mustek... and I've been through about eight or nine scanners since I dropped Windows. In fact, my current scanner is an HP scanner for which there is no Windows 7 driver, the last release was on Vista, so the prior owners sold it. My prior scanner was another HP scanner for which there were no drivers after Windows XP. The one before that was a Mustek scanner which also last had XP drivers.
The plural of anecdote is not data, but you're outnumbered.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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?
And in that vein, why doesn't Ubuntu go back to gThumb? That was the default camera app till 8.04 Hardy. F-Spot as introduced was comparatively bloated, crash-happy, and didn't respect the directory structure so many of us already had our pictures in. The switch to F-Spot didn't make sense then, and I'm not surprised it's being dropped now, but why Shotwell-beta over going back to gThumb?
Like, is it personal? Or are there actual feature reasons for avoiding gThumb that I've managed to miss?
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.
> GIMP is awesome, but it dosen't really fit into the "lightweight" niche.
If you are dragging in the rest of Mono just to have an image editor, it kind of does.
GIMP could sorely use some sort of "bookmarked UI" so that recently used stuff is
up front in a manner similar to iPhoto but without it being static. GIMP does some
stuff better because it's more sophisticated about how it does anything. The UI is
a bit of a drag though. Finding stuff can be cumbersome.
It's like searching through 1800 videos to find that show that you were watching
and didn't finish last night.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.