"Linux Desktop: A Collective Delusion" - an unhinged rant
tadeubento.com
Linux has made significant strides, and in 2023, it’s better than ever. However, there are still individuals perpetuating a delusion: that desktop Linux is as user-friendly and productive as its mainstream counterparts. After a few discussions on Lemmy, I believe it’s important to provide a clear review of where Linux falls short as a daily driver for average users.
EDIT: can I just make it clear I don't agree with this article one bit and think it's an unhinged polemic?
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Factual reasons for this please. Besides the horrible, privacy braking, AI stuff, what can photoshop do that gimp can not?
If you are professional you use what your colleagues are using. You can’t have 8 people in photoshop and 1 person in Gimp. You are not going to get a studio to flip over to gimp if they are a Photoshop house because it will cost a lot of time and money. Especially not larger operations.
Individual freelancers? Sure. Industry capture? Way more difficult.
This is a reason, but it has nothing to do with alternatives. It would still hold true if you have 8 gimp and one photoshop users
Wrong: this is the only thing that matters, the rest is wishful thinking and delusions.
So, if you are in a company that uses Gimp, and you want to use PS, it is still gimp's fault that this will not work?
I guess it depends on how likely that company interacts with external people who use PS. The problem is that PS is the industry's standard and if you go against it and things break your fault.
Windows is an industry standard. And so is office. As long as we treat it as such. If we want things to change we have to go against such standards.
The big difference between Office and Photoshop is: Microsoft opened their file format. And has support for open standards.
Adobe locked their eco system down to build a monopoly. This is not gimps fault. It is 100% on Adobe.
While the outcome is the same, I would love to see a different wording: nothing is an alternative to Photoshop, because Adobe has a monopoly.
Even with an open format MS Office and LibreOffice and others have compatibility issues. Microsoft keeps certain features kind of exclusive to their solution and then there's the bigger picture called the Microsoft ecosystem. They are now very focused on that and that's really hard to beat.
This is true. But in reality, it still works.
And yes, the expansion of their Ecosystem is an issue. But to be honest: the cloud version works, and if I get a docx that is broken in Libreoffice, I use 365. At least I have this option.
It's a complicated topic with no real solution
The only real solution was to get something like Wine or some type of virtualization working better. We will never be able to beat Microsoft, their formats and ecosystem the alternatives will always lag behind in features and the web version isn't feasible for everything and everyone.
There is one alternative: anti monopoly legislation. Maybe, some day, if the EU gets their heads out of their asses, throw their privacy braking chat monitor out of the window, and start thinking again. In 30-40 years maybe
That's a very hard topic, how can you legislate features? The thing about ecosystems isn't just about Microsoft blocking others like they did in the past, ecosystems bring a TON of new issues, even if everything is open and based on open standards the open solutions might not implement all features. Also, where's the line? Simply opening a Word doc on LibreOffice and it works just fine, or also allowing for remote data served from Microsoft servers? Even if Microsoft allowed that data access from their severs wouldn't that turn LibreOffice into a client such as MS Office? What happens if Microsoft shutdowns or changes their API?
Collaboration with other Adobe users? Same thing with Office. If one lives in a bubble and doesn’t to collaborate with others then native Linux apps might work and might even deliver a decent workflow. Once you’ve to collaborate with others who use Windows/Mac it’s game over – the “alternatives” aren’t just up to it.