The apps are utter dogshit.
You know what's great about Photoshop? Workflow. As in, "it's sane". Yeah, there's a whole bunch of annoying bullshit that goes with Adobe products (mostly around licencing), but when you get to actually doing work, damn if they don't get you where you need to be.
Photoshop has a whole pile of tools that do amazing things (seriously: the content-aware healing tool is witchcraft) and they work together. The plugin ecosystem alone is worth the price of admission. And now that PS plugins work with Lightroom (which also integrates with PS), you got yourself a proper photo editing and organising system.
You know what's great about GIMP? The price, and that's about it. It's an image editing app designed by programmers, practicing cargo cult app design. "If we make a bunch of dialogues that sorta look like the ones in Photoshop, and we use the same vocabulary as Photoshop, then obviously our app will be usable and loved just like Photoshop, right?"
Heh, no.
Darktable is slow, buggy, and makes bad images. Its white balance tools are hopeless, which holes it before the waterline for all but the most trivial photo work and immediately puts it completely out of contention for professional work (example: you take a bunch of pictures of the inside of someone's house or an office; you need that blue folder on the desk and the whiteboard on the wall to be the same colour in all shots - well, you do if you want to get paid).
Outlook 2016 is simply irreplaceable for me. I need a good email experience integrated with a good calendar, and I don't want to do it in a browser. Everything that runs on Linux is either broken, unmaintained, or lacks features. Everything. Lightning, Evolution, KOrganiser, California, GNOME Calendar, etc. Outlook on the Mac ain't all that (disclaimer: I last used version 2011) but Mail is plenty good and the Apple Calendar is fine, too.
These are the kinds of real problems that need to be solved before Linux will go forward as a commonly-used platform. Being able to fix a broken graphics driver by working at the command line is great, but this is no more useful to most people than having to RRR in Windows - they can no more recover the system that way than they can juggle chainsaws.
In fact, it's by no means certain that just giving up and RRRing (esp. as installing Linux is easy these days) is any slower than locating and persuading a tame nerd to fix things. For folks who stash everything in the cloud, like my wife, it's a no-brainer. Nuke and pave, because life is short.
I totally understand and agree that Linux is a great platform for development. But that's not what I'm talking about.
I have burned hours and days and weeks just trying to get to the same place on Linux (and FreeBSD) that I am now in on Windows.
And you know what? I just want to take and process my photos, arrange my personal life and my Round Table, and play games. I don't want to be a computer janitor.
You know what's great about Photoshop? Workflow. As in, "it's sane". Yeah, there's a whole bunch of annoying bullshit that goes with Adobe products (mostly around licencing), but when you get to actually doing work, damn if they don't get you where you need to be.
Photoshop has a whole pile of tools that do amazing things (seriously: the content-aware healing tool is witchcraft) and they work together. The plugin ecosystem alone is worth the price of admission. And now that PS plugins work with Lightroom (which also integrates with PS), you got yourself a proper photo editing and organising system.
You know what's great about GIMP? The price, and that's about it. It's an image editing app designed by programmers, practicing cargo cult app design. "If we make a bunch of dialogues that sorta look like the ones in Photoshop, and we use the same vocabulary as Photoshop, then obviously our app will be usable and loved just like Photoshop, right?"
Heh, no.
Darktable is slow, buggy, and makes bad images. Its white balance tools are hopeless, which holes it before the waterline for all but the most trivial photo work and immediately puts it completely out of contention for professional work (example: you take a bunch of pictures of the inside of someone's house or an office; you need that blue folder on the desk and the whiteboard on the wall to be the same colour in all shots - well, you do if you want to get paid).
Outlook 2016 is simply irreplaceable for me. I need a good email experience integrated with a good calendar, and I don't want to do it in a browser. Everything that runs on Linux is either broken, unmaintained, or lacks features. Everything. Lightning, Evolution, KOrganiser, California, GNOME Calendar, etc. Outlook on the Mac ain't all that (disclaimer: I last used version 2011) but Mail is plenty good and the Apple Calendar is fine, too.
These are the kinds of real problems that need to be solved before Linux will go forward as a commonly-used platform. Being able to fix a broken graphics driver by working at the command line is great, but this is no more useful to most people than having to RRR in Windows - they can no more recover the system that way than they can juggle chainsaws.
In fact, it's by no means certain that just giving up and RRRing (esp. as installing Linux is easy these days) is any slower than locating and persuading a tame nerd to fix things. For folks who stash everything in the cloud, like my wife, it's a no-brainer. Nuke and pave, because life is short.
I totally understand and agree that Linux is a great platform for development. But that's not what I'm talking about.
I have burned hours and days and weeks just trying to get to the same place on Linux (and FreeBSD) that I am now in on Windows.
And you know what? I just want to take and process my photos, arrange my personal life and my Round Table, and play games. I don't want to be a computer janitor.