Installing a development environment was your first mistake. I spent 25 developing on Unix/Linux and the nice thing is the relative simplicity, with command line development tools that have been around since the 70s, and no need for any commercial tools that just lock you in to their environment.
It’s no easier coming from the Unix world and trying to find your way around Windows/Mac development.
Not for quite a long time now: it’s no harder to install a major distribution like Ubuntu than to install Windows from an iso. Of course, even that’s a bridge too far for people who aren’t tech-savy, so I agree completely that it’s not yet an option for a lot of people who just want to install a photo app and start editing.
People complain about how hideous Apple or Microsoft are (I don’t always disagree), but in the Linux world there’s way too much fragmentation and choice. Everyone and their dog wants to start a Linux distribution these days. You have to be a geek to even know where to start.
I prefer to use and complain about all of the OSes.
You are literally the bad boss trying to stop improvement or even any discussion of it, Mark. This kind of talk is more suited to 15th century nobles trying to prevent peasants from obtaining access to their own mills. The goal was to preserve the lords’ economic and technological advantage.
Unless you are the official spokesman for DxO, then frankly we’ve heard enough of your naysaying and excuses why nothing is possible and everything should stay the same. You’ve become stuck in 2010, Mark.
Either DxO will take up this challenge, or someone else will. In the latter case, DxO will be left in the dust again, despite having the advantage of much superior demosaic and noise reduction algorithms for more than ten years (the first-move advantage more or less went away in 2023 with Lightroom AI Denoise).
If DxO were to follow your advice, what they would do is double-down on bilking their existing users with more and more licensing and update restrictions. DxO would not try anything new or to open new markets and would focus on milking the old cow to death.
What with all the size, proportion and flow constraints between parts of the interface, there is no way you could do that with a non-visual designer. That’s in addition to creating all the multi-lingual resources that the visual designer links up for you with no effort.
While I am no longer in the market (too many years have obsoleted the graphics on my last Linux box - for the moment at least), there is a multi-platform development environment of which you (being within a generation or so my my age) will probably have heard: qt.
Software I was happy to pay to use - like Bibble - and that ran happily on MacOS, Winsowds, and the Linux platforms that used apt was based on qt. AFAIK Corel (the asset strippers who bought Bibble, Word Perfect, etc) are still using it for the same triad of plafforms.
No one is trying to take your mac from you, Joanna. Calm down. You’re too set in your ways at this point to switch OS, and that’s okay. I understand how you feel.
We are talking about a new generation who don’t accept either US spyware or the annual breaking updates or having their computer locked down by a corporation. Yes, Linux was difficult fifteen years ago. It’s not any more and there’s more and more people switching, particularly from Windows.
Imagine that! Apple evangelists and Microsoft hardliners are finally united on one issue – Linux users must not gain access to software exclusively on macOS and Windows.
Which makes me think that Linux isn’t that good for UI development.
Don’t do that Mike. Qt Design Studio brings me out in cold sweats. Themes that are neither Windows, nor Mac, nor Linux. Keyboard shortcuts that don’t align with anything. I have experimented, long, long ago and I still get that nervous twitch when I encounter even the sniff of it.
Phewww!
It doesn’t look any different to me. Fairly much the only thing I use the command line for nowadays is to access metadata through ExifTool.
As I said before, when Linux becomes as easy and intuitive to use as macOS, I might consider it but, if apps like DarkTable are par for the course, count me out.
For now, I am first and foremost a photographer and printer, not an OS wrangler.
2018 @Joanna A lot has changed since then. One can no longer clone one’s startup disk on macOS. The system is basically locked down and filled with telemetry and services which are extremely difficult to disable. One cannot install recent macOS without permission from Apple headquarters. The Mac will phone home for authorisation first. It’s a bad situation and getting worse.
Microsoft was still talking about rolling back telemetry in Windows 10 at the time. Instead Microsoft doubled down with Windows 11 which is effectively full time spyware with an EULA which bans opting-out. In 2025, Microsoft started force upgrading Windows 10 users to Windows 11 against their will (or just disable the computer).
In the meantime, major Linux distributions like Fedora and Ubuntu have taken enormous strides in ease of installation, hardware compatibility and user interface. In real terms, as @Ruzgfpegk has pointed out the Linux userbase is vastly larger than in 2018, somewhere around 5% of desktop and expanding. The new Linux users are not FOSS neckbeards but people like me who are happy to spend money on good software but wish to maintain their independence and privacy.
DxO can get ahead of that wave, or wait for someone else to steal the cheese before they get there. Again.
Multiple distributions argument:
as @Ruzgfpegk mentioned, there is flatpak and snap now engineered for cross-distribution compatibility. Flatpak and Snap both work very well.
Incompatibility and expense arguments:
Technically, PhotoLab is very well-positioned for a Linux port.
Many of the frameworks used to develop PhotoLab have Linux versions or even better are part of core. C++ drives the Linux kernel and is in use in Blender, Krita and DarkTable. Qt drives KDE Plasma. OpenCL powers the rendering in DarkTable, Blender, RawTherapee, LuxRender.
Further economic argument:
Being the first major photo program on Linux will gain PhotoLab a lot of press and mindshare. DxO won’t be running from behind for once. Early Linux launch is a marketing goldmine.
Wow! based on your last response I guess I am the devil incarnate!
Did you actually read and understand the words I wrote in my last post. It was a simple post. I actually said I would be in favor of a Linux version being created as long as it did not impact support and development of the existing platforms. I also said that so far DxO has shown no interest in porting their apps to Linux and asked whether those wanting a Linux version really believe that there is a reasonable chance that DxO will provide one. Finally I suggested in response to your insult. that perhaps I was not the one being naïve. Where did this totally unrelated angry diatribe come from. I am mystified by it. I am used to reading logical well thought out responses from you that make sense, but this was just strangely way over the top.
For the record I never said or implied that I am trying to stop improvement or even a discussion of it. That is ridiculous assumption on your part. The 15th century reference was just bizarre. I am, of course, not a spokesman for DxO and never claimed to be. However, from years of being a very active member here on a daily basis and having numerous private conversations with staff members, I do have some reasonable expectations of what DxO will and will not do. As a result, I am rarely surprised by anything that DxO does, both good or bad . Mostly bad. That doesn’t make me a spokesman, or a DxO sycophant, merely an observer expressing my personal opinion based on years of first hand experience.
Finally, I gave no advice. None. Do you believe that wanting to ensure DxO’s software running on my platform of choice, that I paid for and use regularly, will not be negatively impacted by its development on a platform I don’t use means I am advising not to consider a Linux version? If so, that is a big stretch on your part. As per your last paragraph, in exactly what way have I advised DxO that would ultimately send them down the road to perdition?
I have been retired for near on 20 years, and it was eleventy million before that that I last wrote any serious code. As Alec has pointed out there have been other cross platform development tools since.
Since I have no shares in DxO, and as the lenses I have and plan to buy are all supported in PL, VP, and FP, I don’t terribly mind whether the company takes this commercial opportunity or not.
I have no objections either as long as it doesn’t negatively impact the software I have paid for and use daily.
Mark
4 Likes
Stenis
(Sten-Åke Sändh (Sony, Win 11, PL 6, CO 16, PM Plus 6, XnView))
274
That is just a very biased way to see it. The Linux-world looks very much like the secteristic left wing in my countru during the sixties. From the the Social Democratic Party SAP all the way through all our communist fractions with ties to the Soviet Union like the Leninists, Stalinists, Marxist-Leninists, Trotskists, and all sorts of other leftist secteristic there at the abyssal abyss that had seen the light in the writings of chairman Mao Tse Tung or the peasant revolution in Campuchea that ended in the killing fields.
As long as there isn´t one single version of Linux that OS will never take off. It has to be crystal clear what you are developing for. If that had been the case there would have been a DXO Photolab even for Linux 20 years ago.
The Linux-world seem as messy as the UNIX-world was. When will they ever learn to standardize and get together??
“The applications are everything the OS is nothing” really than an inteface for users to start their applicatinons from and with.
It is far to early to rule out Microsoft for example, because they still sits on the most important “Office-suite” and that suite just got AI-boosted by OpenAI that Microsoft partly owns to new productive hights. Windows still has a market share of around 70% to my knowledge. The MS Office suite is probably stronger than ever as Office-productivity tools.
The only real world competition I see to MS Office is Google’s Office Suite that I have used a few years side by side and together with MS Office - they can share files resonably well even if not perfectly. So there is an Interoperability between Googles and Microsofts Office Suites. See the real lowest common denominator is not even the Office programs but the file formats they creates and at least partly have in common.
I feel a little bit sad over all these Linux-altruists that worked so hard to build an “open” alternative when that later on got hijacked by the corporate world like for example Novell when Microsoft managed to make Novell Netware (that then had a market share of Network OS’s of 60% in just a few years) totally obsolete.
Novell jumped on the Linus movement and happily discovered that the world wide Linux-community could provide the R&D they had previously had to pay for completely free of charge. In this way, Novell was able to “resurrect” itself from the dead - something they probably couldn’t have done on their own. Nobvell isn´t the only example. IBM, HP just to mention the big guys has also been there and so has Microsoft and still is more active than ever. So if you are looking for rounding Microsoft by not using Windows I guess you have mist a few things lately.
Isn´t Linux quite popular in China too? That seems like an interesting spin off too.
Stenis
(Sten-Åke Sändh (Sony, Win 11, PL 6, CO 16, PM Plus 6, XnView))
275
Just wonder what will happen if DXO starts to port Photolab to Linux when they barely manages to keep the Mac- and Windows-versions floating. Do you really think that sounds like a good idea??
1 Like
Ruzgfpegk
(Sony A7III, Linux CachyOS, DxO PL8E+VP4+FP6E+NC7)
276
Oh no, I know full well that no amount of arguments would change your mind, but you provide good starts for answers that could change other people’s minds, which is why I reply to your posts: this is not a waste of time.
As stated above multiple times, Linux users can already use Adobe products through their web versions.
Lenovo sells Linux-certified laptops at companies, and I wouldn’t be surprised that they’d use this argument to inflate the price.
In practice, just searching if a particular model works well before buying is enough.
There are other vendors with Linux-certified laptops like System76 or Tuxedo.
Furthermore, laptop prices these days are heavily inflated due to the RAM price crisis: were those prices the same a few months ago?
And I’m sorry to burst your prejudices, but I’m always shaven and never wore sandals: maybe I should try!
Yes, this has happened a lot these past few weeks due to the previously mentioned RAM crisis.
Linux can be installed on a laptop with an already installed Windows OS.
It can also be installed on a USB stick as long as you can boot on it.
But the best way to install it is on a dedicated drive because when Linux and Windows boot on the same drive it often happens that Windows wipes the Linux boot loader during updates to replace it by its own that doesn’t list Linux (how helpful!).
If your laptop only has the internal space for one drive and you want to keep your Windows drive somewhere, then you can swap it and put the Windows NVMe in a USB adapter. You can also install Linux in the NVMe of the USB adapter if you prefer.
In practice most mainstream distributions are compatible with most Linux apps, exceptions are very rare and usually workarounds for those exist.
You write the ISO file of the distribution to a USB drive and boot on it: after the initial steps (selecting the drive, creating a local user… like a Windows install!) the install then typically only takes between 10 to 15 minutes to get a base system ready.
Only a select few distributions require using the command line during installation.
Then you’ll do it and type inside it whatever the documentation will tell you to write.
I still also use WIndows a lot, and I’ve been using the Windows command line a lot in these past 30 years, whether with the good old CMD or with PowerShell.
The command line is not a disease: it’s a tool among others, and one that limits errors (you don’t have to search for a specific button and risk clicking the wrong one: at worst you just copy-paste text from trusted sources).
Unless my memory is wrong, even in 1999 SuSE Linux 6.3 came with a graphical tool (YaST) to install software, so I don’t know where your assumptions come from.
I’m sorry but judging by the points above, searching for true facts also seem beyond your comfort zone.
You do you. The main Linux switchers were and are still on PC anyway.
Many users prefer the Apple walled gardens and that’s okay.
As already explained above, Linux distributions have their version of the DMG package format: AppImage. You don’t even have to drag them anywhere, just executing them from the Downloads folder is enough. There are Snaps and Flatpaks too as @uncoy pointed out.
Wikipedia lists Kylix as being first released in 2001.
Are you really basing all your current arguments on a bad experience from 24 years ago?
When you learn any new software, expecting to understand everything in less than 5 minutes is a bit much.
It took me weeks to really understand Adobe Lightroom which was my first software of the sort, and then a few hours for DxO OpticsPro (that became PhotoLab) afterwards: the same way it took me a few hours for DarkTable.
If your club member is a fan, there’s a reason why.
It may not be yours, but it may be the one of many others.
The insulting terms you used against the software only reflect on you.
It’s really weird, on one hand you have an incredible amount of developers working in Linux and/or cross-platform apps for almost nothing (if any), and on the other hand employing a few of the same people would bankrupt companies of already ~100 people?
That’s true if you really want to find a distribution tailored towards special needs (like gaming with Bazzite or CachyOS), but any of the big ones is good enough and, the beauty of choice is that switching to another distribution is a relatively easy process if it’s ever needed, with all user data being on their home folder that can be moved from one system to another way more easily than Windows profiles (or that can even be kept in place if /home has its own partition, but I’ll stop here to keep Joanna from having a panic attack).
“long, long ago”… it’s true that older versions weren’t the nicest, but I fear that you’re still basing your arguments on whatever trauma you suffered 20 years ago.
Now tell me, is the PhotoLab interface language aligned with the Windows OS running it? Exactly: not at all. So that’s a non-issue.
I was in the same boat regarding Blender (an open-source 3D modelling program): its interface was horrendous back then.
Now its interface is praised by most including me, and I was a strong hater back then.
Users can try the KDE Plasma desktop for a ultra-configurable desktop resembling Windows 10 by default.
If it’s not for them, Gnome offers a more minimalist desktop resembling more OS X.
If it’s still not for them, there are tons of other desktop environments, but there’s no need to know them all: just know that if the one you use doesn’t suit your particular tastes, there may be one that does if you dare to try it.
On a desktop, I prefer to be overwhelmed by options than by ads or buttons that do something else than what I expected (I’m looking at you Windows 11).
Yet you act like one, including alluding to “private conversations”:
Moving on…
I believe we’re on the same page about this point.
Yet you followed this by what may very well be the most biased post of this thread, invoking extremist political groups in your arguments while we were mostly discussing availability of software.
Sorry but to me it it reads the same as:
”As long as there isn’t one single type of shoes, then shoes will never take off.”
At my workplace, the multiple Linux laptops also use Office through the web versions of these tools (via Office 365).
Not a single word about LibreOffice?
The Document Foundation (publishers of LibreOffice), IBM, Microsoft, Google, and many others as part of the OASIS Open consortium, maintain the OpenDocument formats that allow for easy exchange between Microsoft Office, LibreOffice, KDE Calligra Suite, and many others. The era of closed office formats is behind us.
Yet they still closed down in 2014, and the Linux distribution they bought (SuSE) survived them.
True. Many branches of Microsoft rely on Linux.
The Microsoft Azure cloud powers a lot of Linux servers, and due to this Microsoft became one of the largest contributors to the Linux kernel because it was in their own interests.
Their WSL2 subsystem also allows to run many Linux distributions under Windows directly.
Their .NET framework shifted to a cross-platform model that allows apps to runs under Windows as well as OS X and Linux.
Their ONNX library for AI mentioned a few days ago can run in Linux too.
I’d even argue that most sectors growing within Microsoft are the ones using or targeting Linux, how weird is that.
That’s the beauty of open-source: it’s written for the whole of mankind, friends and foes alike.
Chinese developers contributed a lot to open-source too: everyone can look at their code, use it, and change it if needed.
But commercial software, even running on open-source systems, doesn’t have to be open-source.
That’s what I’ve been arguing for in previous posts. The “tl;dr” is “yes”.
Linux is predominantly a server operating system with a GUI tacked on. Approximately 50% of the web runs on Linux.
I have a Raspberry Pi 5 with 8Gb RAM and a 2Tb SSD running my web pages and my personal NextCloud cloud storage at home. No keyboard, mouse or monitor connected and it just runs and runs well. This setup cost me about A$300. The RP runs Linux. The whole computer fits in the palm of my hand!
Yes, DxO should turtle all new initiatives and only try to fleece their existing and aging userbase out of more money every year.
That’s a great plan for future prosperity!
Gaining some mind share and having a platform more or less to itself and appealing to privacy focused users (lots of us among photographers) would be a way to fight back against creeping obscurity and get a lot of the positive press DxO desperately needs.
This would get tons of free publicity. Instead, DxO spends hundreds of thousands on advertising. Not sure to what effect. The only effect I see from the advertising expenses are higher license fees and more frequent paid updates and zero grace period on upgrades (except 1 version for PhotoLab for now). Oh, and almost impossible reinstalls (three weeks arguing with Riley before I could get a working install).
This marketing and strategic brilliance at DxO has me down to very reluctantly renewing PhotoLab, back from happily renewing Nik, PhotoLab, ViewPoint and FilmPack.
A Linux version would reopen my pocketbook and my heart. I’m not alone.
I’m sorry, but you miss the point. I am taking the side of someone like my friend Helen, who hasn’t a clue how computers work beyond turning it on and using a couple of apps. Except there are thousands of folks like her who do not have a tame IT-savvy friend like me who can help. The command line is not something they want to touch.
I am basing my arguments on being a very satisfied Mac user for some 15 years, who cannot dream of any sane reason to get embroiled in having to change OS when I have got my photography to get on with.
Of course, but after days of tinkering with DarkTable, I still couldn’t find my way around it. Whereas it took me less than a day to feel very comfortable with PhotoLab as I found it to be much more intuitive and customizable.
2 Likes
Stenis
(Sten-Åke Sändh (Sony, Win 11, PL 6, CO 16, PM Plus 6, XnView))
280
Seeing is believing and sorry to say, I haven’t seen anything yet. Linus Torwalds student project was released in the beginning of 1991 and that is 35 years in less than a couple of months. Still just a few % as a personal computer OS and that despite that enthusiastic developers all over the world has done their best? Pretty poor outcome isn’t it?
You talk about Office-alternatives on the Internet sponsored by IBM but it is a long time since IBM was relevant as a PC software company and manufacturer of personal computers. They sold all that to the Chinese (Lenovo) 25 years ago.
The net is fine in static controlled environments but it not always sufficient for many users of mobile computers - laptops. Here in Sweden we have a large archipelago with 240 000 islands and just around Stockholm they are 30 000 and many are still in Internet-shadow and that goes for a big part of the sparsely populated inland too. We are probably the least densily populated country in Europe. This us also the case in many other areas on the globe and that is why we just can’t rely on software just accessible on the net. That’s why we probably will need local operating systems many many years to come.
MS Office and Adobes softwares are still undisputed industry standard software that all of the worlds industries still are relying on. Your suggested alternatives are at best student-like dreams not very different from the ones Thorvalds once had 1991 and they haven’t lifted yet after 35 years.
Ruzgfpegk
(Sony A7III, Linux CachyOS, DxO PL8E+VP4+FP6E+NC7)
281
The amount of approximations and disinformation in your post is so high that I cannot believe this is not bait.
I believe most IT professionals (and I mean, those currently in the field and not those who were in it 20 years ago) would read your post cringing.
If you are serious and choose to double down then I will reply with sources to counter all the lies and approximations.
If not then I won’t entertain the obvious troll.
