DXO Softwares on LINUX ! (please .....)

DxO PhotoLab Feature requests
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This thread started in 2018 and here, at the end of 2025, DxO still has not made the wishes of the Linux zealots on this forum come true. And yet the begging and imploring for a Linux version of PhotoLab continues.

In this amount of time, a plucky band of programmers could have gotten a good start on their own open source Linux-based raw decoder and editor! Or they could have been helping one of the existing open source photo softwares become everything that they ever wanted! Why hasn’t THAT happened? (Spoiler alert: Because it is easier to complain on someone else’s forum than it is to actually do something.)

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That has happened. RAWtherapee’s noise reduction beats even DxO PhotoLab (it’s a close race).

There’s lots of people working on that and DarkTable. Some of us though really like PhotoLab. And Linux.

Crikee, I feel like I’m in a retirement home here where there’s mostly cranky Windows cold warriors still applauding Ronald Reagan, Bill Gates and Oliver North.

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Interesting. What exactly do you mean and where’s the “proof”?

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Linux dominates datacenters, e.g. for CUDA development, WebServers, BigData, various appServers, even Oracle Db, cloud virtualization. However, individual user base is rather small and not willing to pay anything for software. No real business there.

  • Is there any commercial photo editing software available for Linux?
  • Can you run LightRoom or Photoshop natively on Linux? No.

See this link for C1 perspective: https://support.captureone.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002902958-Why-Capture-One-isn-t-available-on-Linux-yet .
Not too much technical detail there, but probably DxO’s position is similar.

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Hey, @uncoy , even businesses don’t want to pay anything unless they have to. Why else do you think “free” Linux has made such inroads into the computer rooms of corporations all over?

But even Linux isn’t free. The owner of each business has to pay smart people to buy and run their Linux and other compute resources, whether as an in-house group or as a service outfit like RedHat that charges to support your Linux installations.

As a “Creative Director in a Software Company,” you sound like a salaried guy. If your company goes belly up, you lose your job, but probably not everything it took to build the company from the ground up, as the owners would.

And yet, you’re just one of the many on this forum who think they can tell a small private company how to run their business and where to invest their human and monetary resources. And you’ve been doing it for years and never seem to notice that DxO is not interested.

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@Joanna , I would rather buy a Mac than that horribly overpriced Lenovo that probably heats up (and goes into throttling) like a furnace. And that says a lot! :smiley:

(I was given for work an i7 Lenovo with an Nvidia Quadro GPU a few years ago, and it was constantly running with the CPU at 95 °C under load: not good! That brand has an awful thermal design)

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What you say was true for a long time.

The whole point is that has changed. There are lots of well-heeled migrants from both macOS and Windows who don’t mind paying for software. What we value is control of our computers and our privacy.

DxO could be first and get some good press (for free) and some mindshare. Or DxO could listen to crybabies and naysayers and keep on squeezing the lemon of their retirement home userbase… Not much more juice in that lemon.

DxO should get ahead of the curve for once, and stop cruising for sloppy seconds from Adobe.

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As an Ubuntu 22.04 user at work (we use it as a compilation and testing environment), I CRINGE every time I have to use the command line.

It’s 2025, come on. No one wants to use a command line to do even trivial stuff. It’s really perverse.

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This is a broad generalization. Some people actually do like to use CLI. I have an engineer on my team who absolutely hates using a GUI interface such as DBeaver or PGAdmin to look through databases, for example, and would much rather use the command line to query it.

There is fine-tuned control you can get using a CLI that is not present in a GUI unless the UI/UX developers decided to put that control in the form of a button, etc. And, counterintuitively, the command line is sometimes more user-friendly in that you don’t have to go searching for which button does what – all you have to do is remember the correct command to use and type it, always, in the same place. Believe it or not, some people find that easier.

I’m speaking objectively here as I just wanted to level the playing field a bit. Myself, I don’t particularly like using CLI for most things and that is indeed part of the reason I have not switched to some flavor of Linux.

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I know some too! But, as I said, this borders on perversion. :smiley:

(and mostly they are IT guys)

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Thanks, I’m an IT guy.

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To be fair unsing command prompts is nothing unique for Liniux. We did that with Windows before Linux was even released. I still have to do it from time to time with iMatch DAM in order to activate for example new locally run AI-models. A lot of people has to do it to install nonsupported hardware when installing Windows 11 upgrades too :-). Nothing strange with that and it is absolutely not anything unique to Linux.

It is just to type CMD in the search window of the desktop to start it. it is almost like to use pre-Windows MS-DOS :slight_smile:

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A few lousy procent of the global PC-OS laptop/desktop market in 35 years. What is is you have hard to see and understand??? Why should DXO bother to port Photolab to Linux and a market of a few percent where no one want to pay for their software. I agree fully out with what Wlodek just wrote.

“However, individual user base is rather small and not willing to pay anything for software. No real business there.”

There is a reason why commercial software companies still strick to Windows and Mac OS on laptops/desktops and there is a reason many use local software or even fat clients too in many cases because as a rule it is far more efficient than webbclients. Otherwise all the leading RAW-converters would have been webbclients by now but they are not and I have hard to see they will ever be.

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I am 51, and I have been using computers since 1987 when I was 13. So OF COURSE I am used to command line stuff. It was absolutely my stuff until the mid '90s.

I have used/had Apple II, MSX, the first Mac (the one with the 68000 processor, the only one truly in my heart), CP/M, Vax/VMS, MS-DOS, all version of Windows, and dabbled with various Linux releases.

That said, Linux was never my stuff. The idea of having to recompile with a sequence of incantations (the command line strings) the kernel every time to suit new hardware was laughable when I was at the university, and it would be even more laughable now.

I appreciate guys who still can do that. At the time I could do it, as I was a computer nerd (hey, I have a degree in computer tech engineering). Nowadays, apart from job stuff (I still write the occasional C code, ARXML files, use GCC and VSC), my idea of stuff that I LIKE to do with a computer is use it to write, develop photos, listen to music, play movies. I have stopped having fun with the concept of tinkering with a computer just for the sake of itself. And even for work… Since I am a Control Systems Technical Leader, and I am paid to think of solutions to complex problems and advanced algorithms, I prefer to develop the concept with high level tools and graphical design (Simulink), and let the brute low level coding to automated tools and other engineers.

Kudos to those who still do command line wizardry if their job requires it (IT guys, database and server guys), but it should not be the ideal of enjoyment and an example of “user friendliness” for 99% of the rest. Me, I find it an hindrance in my creative side, the side that flows better with graphical tools that don’t require me to bother with the minutiae and the “how to do stuff” rather than the “what is the final goal”. When I am using a computer for fun stuff (photography) or for work (technical, yes, but of the problem solving and innovation kind), I don’t want to get distracted by low level and primitive technical implementation.

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Command prompts and scripting is fine for IT-professional working with servers and database-systems but there is a reson why we got graphical user interfaces like the one on Mac, Windows and there were others too like for example Atari ST TOS (The Operating System) that was based on Digital Research GEM (Graphical Environment Manager) ) and Amiga. For a while Atari was big in the gaming and music industry (It had built in MIDI-ports ):slight_smile:

Started in the eighties too with Commodore VIC 64 and even gave cources in schools for some years using CPM 86-based special school computers and character based interfaces and programs. Later PC:s and MS-DOS like everybody else. I really hated those black screens with green or amber text.

I liked the Mac-interface with its black on white interface but never became a Mac-user because in the industry there were only MS-DOS, MS-DOS/Windows that finally transformed into Windows in version 3.

Started with SQL Server 1.0 (a version made by Ashton Tate and not Miccrosoft) and worked with Windows Servers (Windows NT) over SQL Server-databases in more than 30 years. I have used windows from its very ugly days of version 1.03 I think it was. It was truely terrible until version 3 came.

Today I just want to use my photo-applications on Windows 11 to work without any problems and finally after all these Photolab 9 problems they do but it took an upgrade to a new tailormade PC especially designed to cop e with all the new AI-models I want to use.

It is a bit fun to see that this mentality that computer software and services has to be free even has a strong grip in the AI-world.

It’s a bit funny to see stinginess deceive wisdom so often even in this new beautiful AI world just like the free altruistic Linux on desktop world. When I run the AI-powered iMatch Autotagger in my DAM system with Open AI’s huge API over the internet, it gives the best quality for Description metadata and that at a very reasonable cost. There is no hint of a problem doing it with 6GB or 8 on the graphics card.

While the stingy instead runs significantly less powerful and worse free models locally on LM Studio and/or Ollama and then discovers that the graphics card suddenly, just like with AI masking in Photolab 9, has become a hopeless bottleneck that requires a new graphics card with at least 16 GB for about 1000 U$ to work. On top of that, 32 GB of RAM is needed, which has just increased in price from 120 U$ to 500 U$. When the graphics card then requires more power than your old power supply can handle, it too has to be replaced or even the entire computer :slight_smile:

Sometimes I actually wonder why it is so unusual for RAW converters to offer the option to use commercial APIs as an option. Then people would at least have a choice. With iMatch DAM, you have a lot of choice when it comes to AI support. You can run both locally for free and over the internet with commercial APIs. You can even opt out of American Open AI or Google and choose, for example, Mistral, which is developed in France instead. Maybe something for Alec, who seems to have a bit of a hard time with American companies.

I haven’t really gotten there yet, but I’m thinking of trying Mistral too. My most important photo programs like Photolab (French), Capture One (Danish), iMatch (German) and XnView (French) are all European.

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Finding the most uncomfortable aspects of something (in this case, an OS, i.e., “Linux”) to reinforce the idea that it’s unsuitable and then arguing in discussions where you don’t understand the subject—that’s called trolling.

None of the current Linux distributions require the use of the command line any more for the average user than macOS or Windows. To stay on the topic of photo editing (which is somewhat what brings us together here), I prefer using the command line (for these three platforms) for batch processing with EXIF ​​tools, when I’ve messed up a time zone change, or when I want to define (again, in batches) GPS coordinates on files that don’t have them.

Your image of the bearded, sandal-wearing Linux user is as yellowed by time as that of the bespectacled, manicured macOS user.

I spend 9 hours a day on macOS, so claiming that you never open a terminal on this system is a blatant lie unless you’re just a simpleton who’s learned to click the big buttons you need for your work and has no desire to learn anything else… And in that case, your quality of life will be exactly the same on Windows, macOS, or Linux, as long as the editor with the big buttons supports all three (you know what I mean).

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So, after more than 30 years of not needing Linux, why should I suddenly need to change?

We are discussing an image editor, not a metadata editor. Even there, I wrote my own UI for macOS because it is easier to use and I don’t need to remember commands and parameters.

When I was coding my metadata management app, I was spending 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, for more than 2 years and I hardly ever needed to resort to the command line. Because Apple provides the Xcode IDE., which, apart from writing code, uses a GUI to design the app’s GUI. Logical eh?

My quality of life is that I can get on with the job in hand, rather than having to mess around with typing commands.

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Who are you replying to? Who are you calling a troll?

Who said this in the current thread? Where did you get this idea about Linux users? Is it your image of Linux users?

You are not persuasive when you call people names and demean their experience and intentions.

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This entire thread has gotten out of hand. I feel like I’m possibly going against my own integrity by even participating in this madness, but I just feel the need to referee.

This is general advice, so no need to ask who this is directed to, because it’s not to any single person:

  • Anybody has the right to request a piece of software be ported to another OS (the right to request anything for that matter); whether it is likely to happen or not is irrelevant.
  • Stating that something is unlikely to happen (such as those saying that the Linux port is unlikely to happen) is not necessarily a vote against the feature request. I myself think it is unnecessary to even say this to anyone, but to each their own.
  • None of this, and nobody here (that I’ve read in this novel of a topic – I admit, it’s possible I missed something) is implying that anyone needs to switch to Linux from their current OS.
  • People are proud of what they have and use. It would be against their own survival if they weren’t. Don’t mistake praise of one’s wares as criticism of others.
  • Let’s not criticize the choice another person makes when it is harmless to everyone else. It is not right to do that and it is not necessary either. You are wasting your time and theirs.

Also, and only because this is in the most recent post, and because I happen to know the source, am I directly pointing this out:

Here’s the quote:

On the actual topic of discussion; the original request… As many here have innocuously stated, I am in 100% support of this request as long as it doesn’t spread DxO’s staff so thin that it hampers their ability to maintain the current versions

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300 posts in this threat. Linux must be important. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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