I could write a similar post titled “is Nikon just too hostile to normal photographers” 
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Is Linux just too difficult for normal photographers?
No. It is, when running cross-platform applications such as browsers, mail, raw processors, etc, identical. There is no need to even be aware of the underlying operating system.
But what about problems? And the Demon Terminal?
I’ve never used Mac, but Windows has problems too. And they very-well might need recourse to… a terminal. And they are much more obscured and buried than they are in Linux.
Yes, I’m biased.
I detest Microsoft and (almost all) it’s software.
Windows spoiled my life but made my career!
A two man team. My boss knew the business very well and I filled in the Unix-techie stuff, having joined an insurance company with very little knowledge of Insurance, but I knew the accounting package they used, and I knew (at least enough) Unix especially AIX which they used.
We pottered along happily for a while. PCs were expensive and most desks featured a “dumb” terminal. And it was me who said, “You don’t have to buy expensive IBM! Let’s put a Dell machine on every desk.”
But life changed. From being a feet-on-the-desk sysadmin, who had set up stuff to just work I had to deal with the myriad problems that Windows created daily. And a two-man team became a department of five. And I was able to delegate most of the windows stuff.
Windows problems are hard. they often defy both logical and intuitive diagnosis. When problems happen, Windows is much harder than Unix/Linux. And when they don’t happen, there is no difference.
Mostly. Hardware support is mostly plug’n’play. Never buy without googling to check.
I’m not taking any oath to never have a Windows machine ever ever again. But it is not in the foreseeable future. I do not want the MS problems, hassles, intrusions etc etc.
On the other hand
To those who have started to use, for instance, darktable or rawtherapee, and then wonder if they should buy into the whole FOSS world including Linux, I say, “You don’t have to: you are probably better off sticking with what you have and know.”
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For years I’ve seen Windows report the modified timestamp of files as consistently before than the created time. Uh?
You should profile at least every six months!
Wayland is not more complete than X.
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I’ve been using Linux for years and I struggle to do much more than the basics in Windows these days. Certainly when things go wrong it’s much easier to work out why on Linux because everything is so much more open. Of course I’m far from a normal user, most of whom (I guess) want things that just work, for which the best solution is probably closed ecosystem stuff like Android and Apple
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I guess you’ve checked that the timezone is correctly configured on both devices…
I have used Linux exclusively since around 2010, but on Arch Linux I’ve had no trouble dealing with darktable. Arch still lets me run X, though. If they switch to pure Wayland, I may have to sing a different tune.
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It is because of color management or something else?
Yes, that is the main thing.
It is correct, and time zone seems to be part of the problem -
Apparently the camera’s SD card uses a file system (FAT32 or exFAT) that stores time as “Local Time” without any timezone or Daylight Saving Time awareness. Ubuntu, however, tracks time in Universal Time and calculates local time on the fly. When Ubuntu reads the SD card, a mismatch in how the two systems handle daylight saving causes a 1-hour shift.
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@betazoid , Anna I think you know a lot about Wayland. Suppose in due course I go to Ubuntu 26, and I set Darktable’s screen profile to Adobe RGB say, and I set my monitor to the same, knowing that it works well enough for me, will I be able to tell Wayland to do nothing with the video, no ICCs, no system-installed profile, just let the video go through. If that’s the case I think I’ll be ok.
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Yes, in default mode it does nothing, if you dont set a screen profile in the kde plasma display settings. You can even profile your screen with displaycal under wayland.
Dont know much about Gnome though, i think its possible that gnome messes something up.
Great, thanks
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I use both Windows and Linux, typing this on a Windows laptop. Beefy desktop with vkdt-runnable GPU is in the basement, at this instant serving more as a server, repository for pictures and projects. In daily use, switching between the two is mostly a matter of searching for the needed desktop icon for whatever application I need to use.
Even my C++ work is cross-platform, thanks to gcc, and msys2 and mxe for Windows. mxe in particular, lets me build BHSLEs (Big Honking Statically Linked Executables), my answer to AppImage and Flatpak for Windows. rawproc runs the same wherever I go.
As a ‘licensed computer professional’, what I see in the software stacks supporting most consumers (Windows, Linux, and Android for precious cellphones) is a rickety Zenga-amalgam of libraries comprising each environment. Thank God for the least-common denominator, the shell… 
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I switched from Windows to Linux Mint 3 years ago (2 desktops and a laptop). There are 2 possible problems I can see that a (very) non-technical person might have.
First Linux has much more freedom in how you configure your computer while Windows makes you do everything it’s way. This freedom may cause some frustration but it is not difficult to figure out - and it leaves you with a lean, fast, smoother running computer that doesn’t spy on you.
Second problem is that Linux has a shortage of drivers for things like printers and scanners. There are usually drivers available but you may have to pay. The good news is that this is pretty much the only money I have had to spend on software since converting to Linux.
Bottom line for me - most Linux variations are developed and maintained by programmers wanting to make the best possible operating system they can. Windows code may be written by programmers but it is developed and directed by MBAs that only want to extract as much money as possible from their software on behalf of Microsoft.
Just an aside - while using Windows I spent many years using Adobe followed by a few years of Capture 1 followed by a few years of DXO. I started using Darktable when I converted to Linux and find the philosophy of “making the best possible software” results in a far superior product to anything that involves MBAs and the extraction of money.
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I have the same impression. On Linux, the logs are accessible and it is at least possible to narrow down a problem. Now this does not always mean that there is a solution (eg one has to wait for new hardware support), but one learns what the problem is.
While Windows also has logfiles, they may not be detailed enough (not all software emits detailed logs) and in any case IT people trained in Windows often lack the knowledge to do anything with them. The most common approach I have seen is try rebooting, then reinstalling, and if one has to do the former a few times a day and the latter each month, on desktops it is considered a “solution”.
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A Gentoo user speaking. It’s as always - free things compared to actual products made by multi-billion corporations. Free stuff almost requires more knowledge (and time to gain knowledge) compared to paid alternatives.
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@thehatterman I feel your pain. After similar issues with both Flatpak and Snaps, I’ve started using AppImages or debs instead. No issues with them on Ubuntu 26.04.
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That was the clincher for me, I needed a Windows VM for my photo printer and scanner. And additionally, for my banking software. But those are fairly niche needs, and workarounds do exist, so I wouldn’t really hold that against Linux.
Frankly, not being able to play video games on MacOS is a far bigger deal.
The biggest issue for me is application support in general. There are just a bunch of commercial applications that don’t run on Linux, and require a VM or Wine as a workaround (such as the aforementioned banking software). To an extent, this goes both ways, a bunch of Linux software is not available on MacOS or Windows, either. But if you like to play with commercial tools every now and then, like me, then that’s a fairly big deal.
Still, I did run Linux for many years. And stuff like SteamOS even make Linux systems very appropriate for some mainstream use cases.
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Yeah, I do all my printing from the Windows laptop. Last time I tried it in Linux, had all manner of driver issues, but this was years ago. When I need to print, just want to print, not tease apart driver issues.
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