Quote from Terje Gulbrandsen on April 8, 2024, 5:13 pm

So you've heard about Linux, and know that it's a free operating system (free as in open source, and as in pay nothing) and maybe you have thought that Linux is not for photography/photographers, either way, you are curious and want to learn more about why Linux is a good OS to do photography on.

Well, I don't want to make an too long introduction, however I feel some introduction to Linux is maybe needed. Let me start with telling you that Linux is not a perfect operating system!

There are some flaws and there are some problems with Linux and photography .Let me name some of them as they pop up in my far to crowded mind.
Dependency hell, us that have used Linux for a while knows far to good what that entails, you try to install one certain application only to experience that the application in question a; needs other packages in order to install, however your distribution of choice do not offer those packages, and they are not to be found in other repositories so you then have a few options;

Option a: You drop your current distro for one that actually offers the package. Option b: you try to find other suitable alternatives (or drop the package) Options c: you try to build and compile the application your selves and hope for the best or; Option d: none of the above/back to windows/mac. The listed issues is less prominent these days, we have fortunately systems like flatpaks, Appimages, snaps or even pre-compiled programs (you simply run from a uncompressed local lib, ART may be one of those) So things are a whole lot better on that front these days, however we are still faced with issues, one of my favorite (payed) applications (pixeluvo) on Linux recently stopped offering that application on Linux due to the hassle the developer where faced with thanks to dependencies. Now let me just finish my digression with saying that both mac and windows are as well faced with dependencies.

I'm now realizing that this article will be to long if I go into each and every problem Linux are faced with, so let's move on.

I genuinely feel that Linux is in many ways a better operating system for me (than windows/mac) and maybe even for most people. Linux is today a very secure os (even though we have our problems to deal with as well) and it's an operating system with (usually) lesser of an overhead (meaning it uses less of your system resources)
Another (debatably) advantage is options, we have a ton of options to chose by (sometimes the options may feel overwhelming) we have different desktop environments, such as gnome, kde, xfce and a few others, we have different window managers, different package managers and other things and then we have an ridiculous amount of different distributions to select by, with and without derivatives (focuspoint linux may be considered a derivative) to be honest I personally don't know if Linux needs all these options, however most Linux users thinks it's an huge advantage. After using Linux for a few years you start to realize that what distro you are using is less important.

Apparently I can go on forever about these things, but I feel I need to address the topic; Why photography and Linux fits!
Open Source: that is a keyword for Linux, and it basically means freedom in every sense of the word! Most photography applications for Linux are open source, meaning you can change the application in any way you want, you can even copy all of the source code, re brand the application and call it "Eric's best photography app ever!" and release it as your own project. focuspoint Linux is a "forked/re-spin" project of another forked project of another forked project (you see how that goes).

Open Source means that if the interest for the project is great enough the project will be very strong as it will draw coders (and what else is needed) to that project, think Gimp, darktable, rawtherapee, krita, libreoffice, VLC player, Blender, Inkscape, etc. To name a few What they all have in common is a strong community with a really strong source and it's all developed so you and I can enjoy it all for free as in pay nothing and free as in do-what-you-want with it, and that on top of a free operating system that are backed by a strong development team. Remember, Linux powers your fancy car, your cool fridge (pun intended) your android phone, the lift at your work space, aviation, server parks, maybe even your hand held gaming device, etc. Even Microsoft now codes for Linux. Linux is strong!
Come to think of it, wordpress the engine that powers this site and millions other site is Open Source, to quote wordpress.org "the freedom to build.the freedom to change.the freedom to share."

The above is a huge advantage as long as it's all securely managed.
"OK, OK, but Linux does not offer anything as good as Lightroom, Capture One, Luminar etc etc" Well that is debatable of course, I personally do feel that i.e darktable can easily match for-example Lightroom when it comes to the features I care about. I don't care one bit for AI features (which is more and more baked in to premium software) If I cared about that I would definitely need to stay on windows or mac, but strip away the AI features and darktable (rawtherapee, ART, etc) is just as strong as Lightroom, and even stronger in my opinion, however LR is very fast compared to darktable. By the way, just to mention it, my new favorite application is LightZone b5! and you can find that in FocusPoint Linux.

Maybe you don't need the library features? then Rawtherapee will win any comparison to Lightroom, with exception to speed that is. Now the listed options here are only a few options we have in Linux, if you need a specific tool chances are it's available.
Maybe you really feel you need photoshop to finalize your images?
Well maybe you should consider Gimp or even Krita? Gimp is a really good and strong software that in many ways can rival Photoshop, there is a learning curve though, but there are lot's of plugins (focuspoint linux offer gimp with tons of extra features)

"But I don't mind paying for premium features" OK, if that is the case you only have a few options for Linux, you have AftershotPro 3 (a blazing fast raw developer) that only really works on a limited number of distributions (Ubuntu based, fedora based and sometimes Arch based) it's so hard getting Aftershot Pro working that we (focuspoint linux) offer an installation script just to get you up and running.

You also to a certain extent have Pixeluvo, but development for linux is stopped (because of mentioned "dependency hell") and it only works on a few Linux distros (it works on focuspoint linux with the correct tweaks)

Now not so good news there!? Well there are some good news, if you don't mind paying and don't mind big corporate closed software you can always go with Lightroom Online which I must say now works OK and Adobe are adding more and more features to it, it however requires an internet connection.

Alright, so what it all comes down too is maybe not the quality as much as you would maybe believe (because Linux can match it) but it's what features you need and your willingness to learn. To be honest the learning curve from Lightroom to darktable is in some situations steep, and I often say that a person who have never touched Lightroom or similar will learn darktable or even rawtherapee much quicker than a person that have been situated in a certain Lightroom (or similar) workflow for years, it's not that the difference is that huge, it's just that the likeness between them all is all to obvious, once you understand the likeness you will have a better time and you will find that developing images on free and open source is just as good and sometimes better.

That concludes this opinionated(?!) article, you can take what you want from it, but I personally came to the conclusion some time ago to go all in on Linux and photography, I don't mind that corporate earns money from me as a customer, but I definitively prefer open source just because of quality and options. Many people on Linux is all about open source and refuse to use anything not open source, and even though I'm not 100% there, I certainly understand why they are in that camp, and I feel that I maybe belong there, I have just not concluded as much yet.

Finally, we will go more into depth on the alternative applications mentioned in this article in time.