Re: Should I go Mac or PC?. Neither!!
- From: T.C. <Devil505@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 03:36:42 +0200
On Fri, 23 Jun 2006 09:12:52 +0100, BearItAll <spam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Kristen wrote:
The problem is that the Linux software solution has not improved any in
years. There's still no decent support in many areas. You Linux boosters
keep talking about how Linux is set to explode and take the desktop
world by storm, yet it never does. Not only that but the software
solutions like GIMP, INKScape, and Scribus are still toys, unable to
compete with similar shrink-wrap titles for Windows and Mac like
Photoshop, Coreldraw, Canvas, InDesign, Illustrator, QuarkXpress, or
Framemaker.
Sorry for jumping in here half way, I don't have the complete thread.
But I can't stand by and let this poster tell fibs. Linux software has
grown, not just the OS, but the applications too. But there is more to it
than just slapping new paint on top of old, which is very often all that
happens in the MS world.
That's a bit simplistic - you surely find loads of "revamped" stuff on
windows machines, but you'll find major improvements too - sometimes
the newer versions are even "against the trend" by being more
efficient in handling resources and being faster...
Concider this, how many New applications have you seen for MS platforms in
the last five years? Hasn't the whole thing narrowed down a few
applications, that are revamped every so often. You must have seen
applications that you went out to buy because you liked the previous
version, only to find that all that has really changed is the splash screen
and reordered menu.
One could argue that the perceived need for "new" applications in the
windows-world is not as big as in the Linux world as the area covered
by applications under windows has been much wider for a long time -
but that's only half of the truth too - the situation is a bit more
complex...
In linux applications you get much less of that, because when you are giving
your development time for free, you are not going to waste time on
pointless updates, instead you will only put in the time and effort for
those things that have purpose, essential updates or application features.
Again I partially disagree - sure, it's for free - but the decisions
about what is a useful feature or functionality in the past was quite
often that of a programmer/ team that only had their own ideas about
the use or usability in mind (quite understandable, considering how
much of their spare time went into these projects) - not always did
they come up with a decision or design that was compatible with what
others would have preferred (a problem btw. you have exceedingly often
with shareware under windows too)...
You mention Gimp, my main graphics program, a major advantage of Linux,
which it inherrited from UNIX, over MS, is memory handling. Even hardened
NT IT people will tell you that, so any application running on Linux
benefits from that. Gimp then was very capable of handling many
hi-resolution pictures right from it's birth even on a low RAM pc. A
simmilar scenario of MS would cause the system to grind to a halt.
That might be true under Linux, but whoever is responsible for the
windows implementation of GIMP did a less than perfect job - I just
had a recent experience with GIMP (2.2.10) under windows XP that was
quite unsatisfying in that regard: my machine has 1.5GB RAM available
and I tried to turn a 420MB uncompressed TIFF 90° - took me more than
30 minutes with extreme HD-usage...
....Adobe Photoshop did the same job in about 30 secs...
Even playing around a bit with the memory-configuration settings of
GIMP didn't make any difference I was able to notice - this of course
is just a statement about the windows-implementation of GIMP, so I
expect there's a bug somewhere in that, because the whole operation
could have (as demonstrated) easily been done in RAM in a matter of
seconds rather than minutes...
Because of this, gimp developers could arrange their software to deal with
hi-res right from the first versions. You could go for lossless editing of
any format, including jpg and gif (both of which are lossey, try
compressing and uncompressing one a few times).
I don't get that part: what is "lossless editing" supposed to mean?
Apart from a few very limited functions, like the orientation of a
JPEG which could be changed by the header-information, you cannot
load, edit and save a JPEG without additional losses - btw: GIF is
"lossless" format, it's just compressed - the "loss" you might
experience is if you convert any picture with a resolution of more
than 256-colours to GIF - but there too, if you edit a former GIF
picture as (for example) 24-bit picture and write it again as GIF
you'll experience an additional loss from the colour-reduction... a
simple compressing and decompressing of GIF doesn't change anything
and amounts to no losses at all...
....in general, windows applications handle non-lossy formats the same
way as GIMP does with exactly the same kind of losses: usually none...
....how well the applications handle the memory usage is a matter of
implementation, and given: in the past there were reasons why several
applications tried to do their own memory handling rather than leaving
it to windows by simply allocating the memory...
Even now Paintshop still can't handle these as well as gimp can. Try
opening, depending on your resources, say 20 hi-res pics on MS, then
perform some filters. I bit it chokes to death.
Paintshop is by far NOT the only application for handling pictures
under windows, so to use it implying it's the "state of art" under
windows is a bit unfair...
Then if you are into the extras, picture filters etc, performing these on
the hi-res version of the picture is a great deal better than having to
perform the function on a low-res version.
I helped out a company we get our advertising done by, they were held up
because they were trying to do the sort of work in graphics that should
really have been done on a proper graphics workstation. Just rendering
their pictures in a document was killing their XPs. The same thing on
Linux, well the Gimp seemed to be looking at us as if to say 'I'm bored,
haven't you got anything a bit more strenuous for me to do?'. I haven't
converted them totally yet, but I suspect that I will in time because they
were very impressed.
Office. OO version 2, I'll admit that the previous version went through a
bad time, slow to open and some poor document handling. This was a bug,
because the versions before and after didn't have that problem. But it was
repaired and now the whole OO suite is very definately the best it has
ever been. Now, if you sat in front of an earlier version you will not see
a great deal of difference. The thing is that OO did it right from the
beginning, in nearly all areas, so everything you expect from a Word
processor/spreadsheet/presentation is there throughout the versions. The
menu system as it is works, no need to change something that is right. The
database handling, Sun aren't daft, they not going to put together an
office that can't tie in with the databases, so they did that right too,
right from the first versions the proper standard database connection
methods. MS have changed that part at least twice to my knowledge, it was
only in Access 2000 where they first properly acknowledged that they were
other database engines out there that people need to connect to, but even
then they kept just far enough away from the standards to make it more
awkward than it needed to be.
Claiming that OO "had a troubled past but now it's ok" but in the same
paragraph stating that MS Office "just now finally got some points
worked out" - sounds a bit like using two different means of measuring
the way you do it...
New developements. Just go to source forge and have a look around. Ok, many
of these people are into web stuff, so you find a lot working in php/rails
etc, but also many on applications, either improving what we have or
working on alternatives.
Source forge by no means only provides Linux-Software...
As for taking the desktop world by storm, I think China and Koria could be
concidered a little bit more than a breeze. MS were practically giving away
their system just to score a goal. Linux won, not because it was cheaper,
but because it was better.
Can you prove that by numbers?
Personally I didn't see statistics to that yet, I only know that Japan
for example tended to use it's very own hard- and especially software
for a long time - neither windows nor Linux, because it seems both
were not suited to their specific needs (especially regarding charset
and usability related to that)...
Mind you: personally I don't propose a specific operating system - I
use mostly windows for certain practical reasons, so I'm reasonably
experienced in its annoyances and flaws, but I never really understood
ANY kind of missionary zeal in regards of operating systems - ALL have
their strength and weaknesses, and all have a certain clientele of
users that consider them as suitable and can accomplish whatever they
like best with their operation system of choice...
I'm quite comfortable with the idea that especially recently Linux got
much more usable for "standard users", for though it's still far from
making me considering a change to Linux, it puts some pressure upon
Windows - and competition is healthy for EVERY "competitor" in that
field, so I wouldn't want to see any of them vanishing...
In my opinion there is no "best operating system" - only "one best
suited for my needs"
T.C.
.
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