I am a long time Linux user. Ubuntu at home, opensuse and redhat in work. I am fairly competent, enjoy tinkering, not afraid to compile. I plan to continue with Linux for years to come. I mention all this simply to say that this isn’t a Linux bashing question.
I have been experiencing some issues lately, and it has led me to ponder if Linux is just too difficult for photographers who just want to get stuff done.
Ubuntu 26.04 has now dropped support for X11, and uses Wayland. (Well, I think it’s GNOME 50 that has dropped support). Wayland colour management is incomplete. I am currently running Ubuntu 22.04, and Darktable 5.0.1 so I do have a colour managed workflow. However, Darktable is the Flatpak variant, and the sandboxing stops the lua scripts from working, such as integrating with Hugin. I could compile Darktable, but Hugin is also a Flatpak.
Spent this morning trying to install Ubuntu 24.04, but the installer constantly crashes. Plenty of info on the various forums, possibly due to Nvidia graphics card with a workaround of editing grub to apply nomodeset at boot. Doesn’t fix the issue for me anyway.
Does anybody else feel that the Linux eco system feels disjointed lately, or am I just bei g too unfair?
Yes, Linux is too difficult. It took me several days and two tries to get a good system set up earlier this year, and I’m a professional programmer who’s been running Linux for years, and it involved a Windows VM.
But you know what else is too difficult to set up? MacOS. Just today my wife’s computer’s TimeMachine backup didn’t complete. Digging into it, it couldn’t complete because the disk is full. You’d think MacOS would tell you somewhere that there’s zero bytes left. But no, it just fails silently. Then we wanted to install DaisyDisk (the Mac original of KDE’s FileLight), which I had purchased on my Mac App Store, not hers. It took me ten minutes to figure out how to log into my account on her computer. I use MacOS daily, but stuff like this is infuriating. Finally we deleted sone files. Did Disk Utility show that? No, it didn’t. It will, eventually, but not today, apparently. Then we wanted to watch a movie on the Apple TV. The app was already connected to our NAS and showed all the movies on there – exceit the new one we wanted to watch. Why? Nobody knows. During this whole mess, I needed a file from my Mac. It was asleep, so I mashed some keys on the keyboard to wake it up. It didn’t wake up. It sometimes does that. No idea why. I’ve tried many times to fix the issue, but haven’t been able to.
This was just one random day in my life as an Apple user. Not every day is as bad as this. But many are.
On Monday, I’ll go back to work, after a nice vacation. I’ll get back to my Windows work laptop. I know for a fact that by Monday night, I’ll be able to write a similar diatribe about Windows. And another one on Tuesday. And on Wednesday.
Phew, writing this was cathartic. So much pent up rage from everything being broken everywhere. I can’t not see it. It’s everywhere. I feel like the guys in They Live, when they put on the glasses and see the Fnords.
So. Yes. Linux sucks. Windows sucks. MacOS sucks. Maybe AI will solve it all. More likely, it’ll just deepen the quagmire.
(PS: this was somewhat tongue in cheek. I hope that’s obvious. I’m not actually fuming with rage all day.)
For me, as a Linux user for many years, I use Debian13 KDE using both the Darktable dev appimage and flatpak version and have had no issues at all. The flatpak sandboxing issue I agree is a quagmire that creates more issues than it solves pertaining to integration with other apps, GIMP included. But then again, as I learn more of Darktable and am increasingly finding I don’t need these other apps. I’ve been reading lately that Ubuntu has been making changes under the hood that could be causing issues in themselves too. I’ve come to the conclusion that the best Linux experience over all is found in using the distro others use as their base. For me that’s Debian, for others that might be Arch or Fedora. There are reasons these other distros choose one of these three as their base.
I have tried Linux several times, but I’ve been on Windows for the past 3 years. I don’t miss Linux all that much, considering I couldn’t get a stable system for long enough. It’s mostly been a hodgepodge of workarounds holding it together somehow.
As I have said some time ago, solving issues on Linux can be really fast and efficient compared to Windows… IF you know what you’re doing. I just refuse to spend all my free time tinkering with the system and browsing half of the public internet to get something working – which is what Windows has solved for me. I have mostly set it and forgotten it. I have some troubles with updates, but so far (a long time, actually) the system runs fine and I almost forget that something is wrong… and I can get things done instead of having my patience tested by my computer.
(Btw. I’m running Win 11 23h2, which is a very old version, so idk what horrors might await me on the newest one)
With Linux it feels like it’s about picking your poison. One distro is hard to use with games. The other can’t install Nvidia. Another has basic component problems… There are so many distros that do something very well, but usually have a bad weak spot that makes them hard to justify for me…
Tongue in cheeck, but with a slice of truth. You know, the irony of me posting this question is that I was having a conversation this past week on the Nikon Cafe forum, discussing the obsolete Nikon NX2 editor. In short, the OP was explaining why he wants to stick with NX2, I was saying that time marches on and we have to develop and make progress. A side conversation popped up about wether a company needs to evolve, or just wants to evolve. Today I found myself thinking hmm, maybe that guy had a point about not wanting to change.
I just feel that in recent time (maybe a few years, it’s hard to pin point exactly) things have just become more disjointed. I fully accept that I am not a programmer, and this stuff is complicated, and the developers really are producing great code. I get to use it for free.
Flatpak is a good example. Great concept. Complicated code. A real feat of software engineering. Genius. But Flatpak Darktable doesn’t talk to Flatpak Hugin. As a simple computer user, one would be forgiven for saying it just doesn’t work.
My wife, of all people, used Linux on a surplus Dell laptop for about three years. All the same apps as she used on Windows were available, she didn’t notice much of a difference. Took me a bit to get it installed, but nothing too complex. She moved back to a Windows machine when she had to have Microsoft Office for something I can’t recall, and LibreOffice wasn’t doing it (at the time, don’t know about now).
Oh, she’s not a photographer, nor is she ‘normal’ - she’s extraordinary…
I confess that I wish Linux was as easy to use as Windows to run my Epson scanner, my Canon and Epson printers and Microsoft Image Compositor which I use for panorama stitching. But Linux is not super user friendly.
However, I have installed Linux Mint on three older computers at home and it runs fast and smooth and keeps these computers from landfill. I am hoping that as some European Governments instruct there departments to switch from Windows to Linux that the support to make Linux more mainstream occurs.
The average photographer or user doesn’t want to hear words like compile or sandbox. They just want to download and run the app/program that they need.
BTW, I switched to LibreOffice on all my computers so that is one less reliance on a US corporation.
Linux certainly isn’t perfect but I think for your average use cases it’s perfectly fine. The problem for Linux is that (for the vast majority of cases) people are users, not cu$tomers, but people approach things with cu$tomer mentality. Nobody really owes you anything and really most users get more out of the relationship than any devs do.
As a hobby photographer and above-average tech person, Linux is fine for me. There are sometimes problems, and I’m not too bothered by having to work through them. Using Linux is a choice and that choice comes with some considerations users have to accept. It’s no different than with Microsoft and Apple though. Choosing Windows means you’re accepting some degree of Microsoft’s decision making or accepting that you’re willing to put work in to circumvent things. Using Apple stuff means you’re accepting Apple’s ecosystem and the issues that might come with that.
Not to say you can’t be annoyed or mad about the direction or decisions that certain distros or programs make, but at least in Linux-land, there are options.
Linux could be better, but i think it is at least as good as Win or MacOS.
But with Linux you have choices (between distros, window managers, …). Sometimes more than you need/ want.
Hi, I’m running dt 5.4.1 from OBS under Ubuntu 24.04.2 with the Ubuntu Pro free option (personal use for up to 5 machines) that "extends the life of every Ubuntu LTS from 5 years of standard security maintenance for the Main repository to 10 years for the entire Ubuntu Archive (Main and Universe repositories) and 5 more years for security updates.
So as long as OBS provides dt for Ubuntu 24.04 I remain confident.
Now, when it’s no longer the case, I’ll check what is wrong with Wayland, but things like:
Wayland colour management is incomplete.
doesn’t really help. I’m no expert in color management, and when I read this, I couldn’t say what is missing.
Anyway, if something’s actually missing in Wayland regarding colour management, I think the Wayland team would take it if dev asked them, whether it’s from dt, ART, or any other image/video software.
I’ve been using Ubuntu for 20 years this year. I’ve kept using winslop for years at work, and I know many mac users too. Most of the time, when something does not work, at least as it should, they just “forget it…”.
I’m pretty sure I won’t ever use anything else than a Linux distro.
In a way, it is now more complete than X11, just not in the areas you might want. But if you already have your monitor profiles and don’t need profiling, there is nothing missing in wayland that you might need color management wise
You are quite right in stating Gnome has dropped support as Ubuntu states: Alternative Desktop Environments: If you strictly require a native X11 desktop session, you can install alternative desktop environments (like XFCE) that still maintain X11 support. Alternatively, you can use flavors like Xubuntu or Lubuntu that default to different desktop managers.
I had a little spat on Manjaro where KDE Plasma session support for X11 was dropped but it was easy enough to add it back in and I can now choose either X11 or Wayland whan logging in.
My laptop is on Wayland but my desktop is on X11 mostly due to the fact I have two monitors hooked up.
And no, I don’t use color management beyond what’s already built-in to Darktable.
Upgrading to ubuntu 24 was tedious for me. Plasma doesn’t just support the running of programs, it fights for your attention. Took me hours of work to calm it down. It still randomly re-arranges my desktop sometimes. Perhaps I should have gone for a different desktop at outset, but that’s quite a bold move in itself if you’re not an expert.
The saving grace is that with AI, I no longer have to sift through forums looking for solutions to issues, I follow (carefully) what Gemini says and it nearly always works.
