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Ask Slashdot: Switching To a GNU/Linux Distribution For a Webdesign School
spadadot writes: I manage a rapidly growing webdesign school in France with 90 computers for our students, dispatched across several locations. By the end on the year it will amount to 200. Currently, they all run Windows 8 but we would love to switch to a GNU/Linux distribution (free software, easier to deploy/maintain and less licensing costs). The only thing preventing us is Adobe Photoshop which is only needed for a small amount of work. The curriculum is highly focused on coding skills (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP/MySQL) but we still need to teach our students how to extract images from a PSD template. The industry format for graphic designs is PSD so The Gimp (XCF) is not really an option. Running a Windows VM on every workstation would be hard to setup (we redeploy all our PCs every 3 months) and just as costly as the current setup. Every classroom has at least 20Mbit/s — 1Mbit/s ADSL connection so maybe setting up a centralized virtualization server would work? How many Windows/Photoshop licenses would we need then? Anything else Slashdot would recommend?
Slicing PSDs is crude, antiquated (even though most shops still do it), and reinforces the fallacy that web design begins in Photoshop.
Modernize your curriculum to teach progressive enhancement of wireframe layouts in the browser. At some point you teach about creating the individual image assets for what they are (backgrounds, icons, etc) rather than treating a PSD as a giant slab of source material. For this, you can use GIMP, Inkscape, or anything else Free.
You are perpetuating Adobe's dominance by furthering a bad workflow that benefits them. Your course isn't about Photoshop, that shouldn't be the keystone of it.
Slicing PSDs is the equivalent of beginning a construction project from a child's crayon drawing of the not-yet-existing building.
Nothing needs windoze in webdesign. Also gfx design is covered with Krita, Inkscape, Gimp and Blender. The only department where Linux is tailing is desktop MMO games. In every other areas you're only held back by your ignorant self.
Nothing needs windoze in webdesign.
maybe not for design, but you have to have at least one windows system for testing so you can see what your web app is gonna look like on it