I guess it has been 3 months since I started my LINUX UBUNTU w/DARKTABLE journey. It was a constant battle all the way. Linux gave me fits, with the unstoppable parade of updates, bug fixes, crashes - constantly having the wrong parts under the hood, and no clear way to get it sorted. Not to mention the SLOWNESS of everything involved. It just crawled on my PC. Every program was constantly timing out. I tried reinstalling, and all the usual baloney. No joy.
As for DARKROOM, I’m sure many people enjoy it, I simply could never adapt to the design of the software. It was too fiddly, and dense and close, and tight, and crowded, and hard to navigate. Just not my cup of tea.
I reinstalled Windows 10 on the PC, and purchased ON1Photo Raw for $50. It works almost exactly like LR, which I used for years. SO far, it looks very useable, and I can print from it.
Popular discussion. People all over social media were extoling the virtues of Ubuntu. I tried to discover as much as possible and it was very commonly regarded as stable, easy to use,etc. I was worried about Darktable, because many people mentioned steep learning curve, but it was commonly regarded as capable.
I had my 20 year photo library that no longer had access to LR, and I needed to get on with my photography. Next thing you know, I was a Ubuntu user.
Cheers,
Mark
Use what ever software you enjoy. For me Darktable is the best software I have ever used. I invested the time to learn its unique layout and just love the creative control it gives. Its not for everyone. LR is a very easy to use software. You want to brighten a shadow you slide the one slider they give you and the job is done. You want to brighten a shadow in Darktable and there are a potentially overwhelming number of options to do this task ranging from tone equalizer, color balance RGB, other modules or even the shadow and highlights module.
In LR shadow and highlights are two simple “intuitive” sliders while DT is
For me personally I could never go back to LR with its “intuitive” sliders. I prefer the creative control that Darktable gives. But photography is meant to be fun so use what ever software you enjoy and don’t let anyone tell you different.
I had the same frustrating experience with Ubuntu and almost gave up on Linux until I decided to give Fedora a try. I found that Fedora is very
stable and much easier to maintain than Ubuntu. I am still using dual boot tough (Fedora+Windows) .
As for darktable, it has been my main editor for the last 2+ years, after many unsuccessful attempts using it prior to that. The learning curve is very steep and the image pipeline and scene referred concepts require some mental adjustment. But now that I am used to it, it’s the other software that feel awkward.
I am still using for now Lightroom for my iphone dng images, but I might soon switch to RapidRaw for these.
Since you’re just complaining generally about Linux and darktable without providing any specific details, it’s difficult to respond or offer advice.
I’ve been working with darktable on Linux for 14 years now, and my experience has been the exact opposite. A properly configured Linux system (including graphics hardware, such as an NVIDIA GPU) runs stable and fast.
The slowness you’re experiencing could be due to underpowered hardware or issues with utilizing your GPU (drivers), if there is one. But these are just vague guesses since there’s no specific information available.
RapidRaw has support for iPhone ?? Natively? Then - theoretical - it should be possible to have iPhone support in darktable since the license is compatible
The licenses for the two programs may be compatible, but that would not protect against a claim for patent infringement. Not sure if that’s the issue here, but it has been in some other cases. (Whether patents pose a risk will depend on the situation, but if you have to defend against an infringement claim, it costs, a lot.)
I’m always extremely puzzled by posts of this kind announcing someone has decided to NOT use software on the platform which popularizes that very software. Seeing the post history, I’m not surprised either.
There’s no pleasing some people obviously but if all you wanted was
then maybe you are indeed better off using less powerful software. Good luck!
PS: there really is no need to announce your departure online.
I think it is a why to let off steam. Maybe a way of letting the people that love and nurture the software (in this case darktable) know that is not what they expected and that they are very disappointed. I am not sure @desertratt has any other intention, because I don’t see anything tangible in this post for us to really act on and improve.
I am may be wrong, but it seems that he just jumped on the Linux hype that is going on and the moment and installed it, assumed he could just use everything. I am wondering how much planning and consideration went into this.
Because doing a lot of research before making a jump to a whole new system will save you a lot of time and frustration because you will come prepared.
I don’t know the type of hardware you use, but there must be something terribly wrong.
here’s ,my setup:
Main box: A 2021 Lenovo core i5 laptop with 16 gb and 1 TB disk, rescued from a bin because of a broken Lcd (fixed that for EUR 60)
experiment box: A 2017 Asus core i7 laptop with 32 gb and gtx 1060ti, loud as a jetfighter and broken keyboard.
Both run Kali linux (basically Debian testing, so base is same as Ubuntu).
Kali is NOT know as the most user friendly Linux distro, but I have absolutely no problems with Darktable. Both the appimage and later the github version run very stable. No glitches at all, no vague error messages or anything else.
updates are smooth.
My only complaint: please dev’s give us a notification when imports are finished.
Then my Adobe experience on Windows at work: 2024 Lenovo with core i5, 16 GB memory Windows 11, very comparable with my ‘rescued’ lenovo.
Lightroom is slow to start, lags when importing photo’s and the famed AI tools are barely usable due to lack of decent graphics card (which my private darktable box also does not have btw)
When I was away for about 6 weeks and no internet on my work laptop, I couldn’t use Lightroom because it was complaining about connecting a license server. How…in the middle of nowhere without reception and no satelite phone. I had to wait a day to get to a spot with cellphone reception so I could use the hotspot.
