ok, i'm jumping on the bandwagon with ubuntu

i've found a little bit of discussion while searching, but i did not see a thread dedicated to ubuntu. i love my mac, but the g4 is a bit too slow. i'm bored with windows. i've been saying i was going to run a linux machine for the past 10 years. i just acquired a little P4 that i think i'm going to install ubuntu. what are some must have apps? and or any advise?

thanks

Nope... Thats the agony of leenux distros for the past 10 years, no major apps are written for it that are worth anything anyways. No real decent 'raw, Post processing and printing' software for leenux. Only real app ever released is Autodesk:Maya and Softimage:XSI....

No major applications available for Linux ? What about :-

* The Gimp (and Pixel and LightZone)
* OpenOffice
* Gnumeric
* Firefox and Thunderbird

I've been using Linux (and UNIX) as my desktop environment at home and work since 1992 without a problem. Now if you don't like Linux, that's fine but don't spread complete lies about it.

Does The Gimp work with RAW ??

There is UCRaw IIRC.
Gimp will work, but has certain drawbacks. Also, If you are used to (and work with) PS, the Gimp is too different.

I've run Ubuntu on an ancient iMac, and found the biggest drawback the use of 'Windows like' keystrokes. (Ctrl-Z instead of Cmd-Z, etc.)

Thanks.. I don't use a lot of PS so The Gimp shouldn't be too hard.

René Damkot wrote in post #3565085
There is UCRaw IIRC.
Gimp will work, but has certain drawbacks. Also, If you are used to (and work with) PS, the Gimp is too different.

I've run Ubuntu on an ancient iMac, and found the biggest drawback the use of 'Windows like' keystrokes. (Ctrl-Z instead of Cmd-Z, etc.)

I think you mean UFRaw:
http://ufraw.sourcefor​ge.net/

xa-coupe wrote in post #3565033
Does The Gimp work with RAW ??

See above -> UFRaw

I haven't used it yet, but plan to shortly.

Steve Beck wrote in post #3563649
Nope... Thats the agony of leenux distros for the past 10 years, no major apps are written for it that are worth anything anyways. No real decent 'raw, Post processing and printing' software for leenux. Only real app ever released is Autodesk:Maya and Softimage:XSI....

What's the latest linux distro you have installed and used? It's 2007 now, you realise?

troypiggo wrote in post #3565351
I think you mean UFRaw:

Oops. Yep.

thanks for all the input y'all!

isn't there someway to run windows and/or mac apps in linux? i don't think i'm ready to step away from lightroom yet.

If you install WINE (check in Synaptic) you can run some Windows apps in Linux, not sure about Mac apps though. I've been successful with Canon DPP as well as RawShooter Essentials. DPP has a few things that don't work perfectly, but for me they are very minor issues.

There is a list of Apps and their compatability with WINE at http://www.winehq.org

If you're looking for something more Linux-native I'd take a look at RawStudio, it's a little more limited as far as features go, but it handles the basics of RAW conversion decently. Also you may want to look at LightZone for Linux. I haven't had a really good chance to play with it, but it also looks promising.

I checked the AppDB on the WINE website and so far no results for Lightroom

Have any of you tried raw therapee? It works really well and is cross platform. The only thing I don't like about it is the folders are not sorted in linux, but the author said they will fix this soon.

You can get photoshop cs2 running with wine now pretty easy. Not sure about lightroom, but setting up vmware or dualboot is cake. I use cs2 under vmware and it is very quick.

I use kubuntu myself as I think KDE is a better gui than gnome, but both are very good. Switched away from windows about 11 months ago and it has been great. Updates can sometimes cause problems, but viruses and spyware is now non existant. There really hasn't been anything I have missed except for the adobe stuff which I vmware or dualboot for. Here is my list of must have apps:

MythTV: What else can I say, MythTV is the best PVR software out there and it just plain rocks. All the plugins and extras are amazing. I installed the web front end component for it and now I can watch/listen to all my videos and music through a web browser from anywhere. It auto transcodes and streams it on the fly. I can also schedule program recordings and stuff. Another amazing plugin is called zoneminder. It lets you use the mythweb frontend to let you monitor your home remotely with security cameras and watch a live security feed through a web browser:
http://www.zoneminder.​com/screenshots.html

FreeNX: Basically it is remote desktop for linux. It is superfast and rides over ssh so very secure. I use this all the time to do stuff on my server.

Blender: 3D modeling and animation software. This thing is unbelievably advanced...check out the screenshots:
http://www.blender.org​/features-gallery/features/

Vmware: Couldn't live without it.

Raw Therapee: The interface is allot like ACR with many of the same features.

Digikam: I don't care much for the photo editing tools except for quick stuff, but I love it as a photo manager and prefer it to bridge and lightroom.

Inkscape: If you don't have the newest Adobe Illustrator and need to do vector graphics
this is the best.

OpenOffice: Where as many MS office programs make me want to kill myself, OpenOffice is a pleasure to use. Unlike Word which is unfuriating , you can actually type in Writer without it jumping 10 spaces and inserting a bullet. And when you hit backspace it will actually consistantly delete the preceeding character, imagine that! Calc is allot better than Excel for me as well. Things in the menu tree are easy for me to locate and it is much faster. I needed to do a find replace for a database project on 200,000 records. In excel this took my computer close to 5 minutes, in calc it took about 35 seconds.

Konqueror: This is what explorer in windows should be.

Apache/PHP/MySql: If you do web programming, this is where it is at.

Samba: This way if any windows or macs get to your network, they can all share
each others files.

Kaffeine: My prefered video player.

Amarok: The best music player I have seen. It is kinda like itunes but better. More feature rich, better interface, and you can use any media player, not just an ipod. Works great with my archos and clix.

Google Earth: Love it.

Amule/Ktorrent: For all your p2p needs.

If you go for ubuntu you might want to check out Automatix2. It sets up allot of codecs and other odds and ends for you in a few easy clicks. If you are a noob this is a very nice thing to get up and running.

I've been running Ubuntu on my laptop for a little less than a year now and it's fantastic. I used to dual-boot Ubuntu and Windows but I found there weren't that many programs that I needed to use in Windows. For the few that I do use. I use VMWare to access programs like CS2 and InDesign but that's about it. Everything else is more or less open source... and it's a great alternative.

A lot of the software has already been aforementioned but these are the ones I've tried and for the most part, love...

Inkscape: I love using this vs. Adobe Illustrator. For someone who doesn't do a lot of vector graphic design but still needs a simple program to fit their needs, this is it.

OpenOffice: Couldn't live without it and each update improves it more and more.

GIMP: I used this when I started out with post-processing, but after having used CS2, I find that there are some functions that are lacking that I need.

Stellarium: If you're into looking up at stars and planets in the night sky, this is one kick-ass program.

Scribus: I've only used this a couple times for page layout but it's an alternative to InDesign and it's not too bad.

Google Earth: If you haven't tried this yet, you're seriously missing out on some cool stuff.

VLC Media Player: This will play pretty much any media format and is easy to use.

Firefox/Thunderbird: I will NEVER go back to IE. EVER.

All of this programs can be installed on Windows too, if you wanted to give them a shot before installing Ubuntu. I think I'm going to switch my desktop over to Ubuntu pretty soon... just haven't gotten around to it.

Cheers,

Jenne.

Bibble will do RAW conversions in Linux, and is a very nice program also written for Windows and Mac, but it is not free.

I use it for all my RAW conversions actually.

wow!! TONS of information here. thank you so much. i tried to get it going last night, but couldn't juggle it with a photography deadline. i appreciate all of your input. thanks again

hmv wrote in post #3564825
No major applications available for Linux ? What about :-

* The Gimp (and Pixel and LightZone)
* OpenOffice
* Gnumeric
* Firefox and Thunderbird

I've been using Linux (and UNIX) as my desktop environment at home and work since 1992 without a problem. Now if you don't like Linux, that's fine but don't spread complete lies about it.

if you call those major apps, then great for you . Just like you I am giving my opinion and find the OS useless. But you dont good for you. Don't come bickering at me for telling my opinion though....