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

DxO PhotoLab Feature requests
322

OK. At the last minute I changed my mind. Someone told me to do the dual boot and not worry about some old issues that used to come up.

He was right. So I backed everything up. Followed the instruction video and……… wow.

There’s a few things I am getting my head around but so far, so good. There’s an office application called OpenOffice - it reminds me of MS Office that used to be really easy to use and it looks just like it. It’s free.

I can run Firefox off Linux, so I just logged into my Firefox and it’s all laid out like I had it. Codexes are all downloaded with the OS. It’s all very smooth and fast, so fast.

Next, I’ll boot into Win 10 and take it offline - permanently. No updates but who needs up dates if you aren’t online and no security risk. Win 10 will run for as long as I want it. I can run my genealogy and Photolab 7 offline, everything else is going to be on Linux.

1 Like
323

Don’t bother with open office. Libre office is installed by mint, along with a lot of other good stuff. If you can, use software manager to install other apps as they should be safe and stable, though may not be the latest version.

Depending on the size of your ssd you may want to stick to “system apps” in software manager. Flatpaks are a good alternative but use a ridiculous amount of space.

2 Likes
324

TCM is not the main reason why Windows might perform poorly after some time. It is an uncontrolled and hard to maintain “Services Management” with just too many often unessessary services running in the background.

image
image1519×2086 290 KB

That list is never ending!

1 Like
325

Whilst this debate on Linux will go nowhere so far as PL is concerned, it has taken me back to the days I started playing with the OS. First attempts were back in the dark ages where it was all command line and trying to get something like an external drive to work was something of a black art. Fast forward and we get to the likes of Ubuntu (and derivatives) , SuSe, Red Hat and others where the install is a breeze and hardware recognition much improved (so long as the hardware is not too cutting edge). At this stage I found the OS a joy to use - it was fast, even on technology that was past its prime, and ran reliably. With Open Office, a decent browser and mail client it was perfect for every day use. I actually loved it but…..it lacked what I needed for my photography. There was Gimp which I hated because of its interface and the oh so slow pace of development. There were others in the background but development there was hardly inspiring either; even something that could pass as a half decent dam was lacking. Enter Corel with their lacklustre attempt and I gave up. I needed something like Lr and Ps (even Ps Elements) but it just never materialised. I went across to Apple and am happy as it provides what I need.

Would I use Linux again - yes absolutely if it had the software I needed but I do not see the happening any time soon. My take is that as an OS Linux has come of age but it still lacks aggressive software development. Dual booting is an option of course…but why would I want two OS’ when one will do it all.

1 Like
326

Hey!

Greetings from the darkside.

Well after a lots of time faffing around I have uninstalled Linux Mint - I just could not get it to see my “Work” SSD for some reason. Some nice guys on a forum tried to help out but………………..

So I installed Linux Zorin, which I can recommend. The install was much smoother, so now I have Win 10 running PL7, offline. And everything else running off Linux.

MS365 subs are cancelled and everything runs pretty quickly. If I want to do some photo editing, I just restart the PC and select Win 10. Everything else, select Linux.

I’ll keep an eye on RapidRaw to see how that comes along but in the meantime PL7 is fine. If PL9 ever gets up and running well, I’ll use that.

Thanks for the Linux hints, some great points there.

1 Like
327

TCM isn’t about Windows performing poorly. TCM is a commercial spy dressed up as a security guard. A backdoor into your PC that MS have the key for and can lease that key to third parties.

Win 11 will only work with the TCM activated, I wonder why?

328

The answer for me was simple and brought about by the problems with PL9 and the controversy of Win 11.

I really don’t care if DxO are going to ignore Linux, that’s up to them. Linus might be the fastest growing platform but it’s still pretty small numbers in comparison. I guess, you can be ahead of the curve or behind it.

I will use PL7 on Win 10 but offline. Because it is offline it can’t be crippled by a MS update or infected when security updates stop. I won’t be changing any camera equipment for quite a while so no need to update anything.

In the meantime, RapidRAW is coming over the horizon. Hopefully in a year or two that will take over on Linux.

The open source products these days are a totally different kettle of fish. Everyone is aware of IrfanView and VLC. LibreOffice is truly amazing. Write looks like Word, Calc looks like Excel etc etc. I am sure that they are not as “fully featured” (bloated out of size with bells and whistles that virtually no-one ever uses) but they are really good. You can save the files as anything doc, docx, pdf etc etc.

Everything else is browser based, speaking of which - Firefox.

The only issue is that yopu need to invest a little time at the front end. Best to install on a separate drive to the Windows drive (you don’t have to, but best), and I couldn’t get Mint to see my “Work” drive at all but Zorin is very good and no issues at all.

If anyone wants to try it out, get your old latop out of the cupboard, dust it down and install Zorin apparently it will run on Pentium 64 CPUs, although not very fast. Try it out, imagine free updates, free software……………………… brave new world.

2 Likes
329

Sorry Mint didn’t work for you, but Zorin is good. I’ve been thinking about switching to Zorin the next time Mint comes up for a major update. Zorin and Mint are both based on Ubuntu so the pointers in the “Easy linux tips” link should work OK.

Happy to help.

330

I won’t dual boot as I see no need for two operating systems as I said. I do not want to wait a couple of years to see if something comes up to scratch or not. Libre Office/Open Office are probably the most successful pieces of development and it’s cross platform. Gimp is perhaps the biggest illustration of a slow and lacklustre development (it is quite powerful though).Those office suites have been around for years now. As has VLC and InfranView but they alone do not make an OS attractive to me. I understand what you mean by those awful Windows updates, which is why I ditched Microsoft years ago. In fact it was because of that that I tried to use Ubuntu in a live environment. I came to the conclusion that I ws losing out far too much on the decent software front, I was sort of inflicting self harm. Back then, at the dawn of Ubuntu and the stable versions, they were saying Linux would claim the desktop but it has not happened. I won’t hold my breath.

All that said, it is a free world and we can all do what pleases us, within reason. Enjoy your set up.

1 Like
331

Have a little look at RapidRAW, some Swiss kid developed it in his spare time. It’s an interesting project and just shows what can be done in little time at all, with little or no resources.

332

I will but it is phrases like “some Swiss kid developed it in his spare time” that rather makes me walk the other way :slight_smile:

1 Like
333

Though if I had said that he made his first million by the time he was 14, you’d be chasing after him with your tongue hanging out. Never judge a book by the cover.

1 Like
334

I find that comment a bit strange. Such a situation would make absolutely no difference to my thinking - in fact it might just make me feel even more insecure. I do not measure things by monetary value/peoples wealth alone. There are far more important attributes required when building and maintaining products that people rely on. That is me done with this thread - this is after all a DxO forum.

335

So is it that he is Swiss or the fact he achieved what some companies have taken years to achieve in a very short space of time. I thought your comment was very strange. Sounds like your one of the guys who told Tim Berners-Lee “Nah, that won’t won’t work” and walked the other way.

1 Like
336

I will leave you alone with your romance and, imo, very flawed logic. Then maybe not so flawed if you want free software that takes an age to develop and maybe does not get there anyway. The issue is - he develops in his spare time you said, so no spare time no development. There are no guarantees this software will make it - I know of several start ups like that that end up going nowhere (not just on Linux) due to “life” getting in the way. That is the downside of Linux and always has been imo. It is a shame I agree but it needs a distro that encourages commercial development and therefore becomes a challenger to MacOs and Windows. As it stands I have no use for Linux and see no point is dual booting as even if I want Open Office, Vlc etc they (amongst others) are available to me on the other platforms.

2 Likes
337

Romance? This is the sort of guy who is the future, potentially. Have you even looked at the software? Of course you haven’t.

As for guarantees. How long have DxO been around? And yet they launch PL9 and it’s a train-wreck, with all their experience and knowledge built up over all these years. And yet a guy comes a long and creates a pretty good first go whilst he’s doing his degree. In case you hadn’t noticed, there are no guarantees. Certainly not with PL9.

As far as Linux is concerned, I think you are speaking from a position of ignorance. 25,000 software engineers work on the Linux kernel.

The simple truth is that Microsoft and others have been telling their customers what they should have. But most customers want something that works for them. They don’t need the bells and whistles, the “improvements”, the “AI” - that barely works and isn’t really AI anyway. Commercial software companies have been taking the Michael for far too long and Linux is starting to make inroads because people are waking up. Whilst Win11 was tanking, Zorin reported 1m downloads in one month, mainly from Windows users.

I recall only too well all those Blackberry users telling me that Android was a flash in the pan - that flash in the pan is 80% of the market and is based on Linux.

2 Likes
338

I avoided adding another message because this sub-forum is about DXO PhotoLab, and this thread about PhotoLab in Linux, so it didn’t feel right to fuel an off-topic discussion, and unless new false information is posted I don’t have anything to add.

That being said about RapidRAW and other open-source competitors: one of the competitive advantages of DXO is their insane historical data, through the measures they take on sensors and lenses to get an accurate profile of each combination.
Other software will rely on open-source databases and/or compensation data that the camera will embed into the RAW file, and for most cases it’s good enough, but nothing beats real-world measurements when you really want absolute precision: as gifted as the Swiss dude may be, he will not have a lab to painstakingly redo all those measurements in a scientific way with all past and current devices and lenses, and even an army of volunteers will not be able to reproduce that.
Maybe he’ll find a way around it to get a good enough result, who knows, and I have high hopes that his software becomes a serious alternative in a few years, but right now his application is more at the stage of “proof of concept” and, as many know, “80% of the features take 20% of the time”: he seems to first be rushing the 80% of the 80% of features that will take 20% of the 20% of the time (which is a correct approach for a MVP, aka Minimum Viable Product), so as with every software like this “past progress is not a reliable indicator of future progress” (especially as unplanned software architecture issues arise when dealing with edge cases, often leading to many lengthy refactorings).

Back to DXO’s competitive advantage, to take an analogue situation in the 3D printing world one dude asks people to send him filaments so that he can build a library of colors: if everyone did measurements on their own with their own devices without a properly calibrated chain then the whole project would fall apart, and it’s the same here.

While I kinda miss PhotoLab’s “science”, and would pay for it again if it meant I could use it again, I’m just a hobbyist so what I’m losing by using what is compatible with my OS right now isn’t that important and I can manage to do most of what I want anyway.

As for GIMP as a side-note because this is not really a competing project despite having been mentioned here a few times, the project has had a new boost these past few years with no signs of slowing down: the long-awaited v3.0 finally got released earlier this year and the roadmap is full of promising features, so those who didn’t like versions from 10 years ago may have a change of mind.

2 Likes
339

Just a heads up. DxO are two companies.

DxO and DxO Mark. The latter owns the technical data on lens corrections, I believe. I suspect that there was a restructuring at some point when DxO had some financial issues. So I suspect that the software company DxO pay to licence the data from DxO Mark. Something like that anyway. So this data, potentially, is for licence.

There is also an issue where you cannot get lens correction for Canon EF100-400 MK2 if you use it on a Fuji X-H2S, because DxO’s setup combines cameras and lenses. After using ON1, and Luminar Neo (who do provide lens adjustment) - I find it very difficult to see any adjustment of this lens on the Fuji camera at all. But for other people………………. their mileage might vary.

I have used GIMP but struggled with the GUI, RawTherapee and Darktable are the same. RapidRAW is a little different. Young eyes and minds look at things differently. We can see that with the recent development with Linus distros. It’s like we have left the Old Grey Whistle Test and arrived at Top of the Pops.

RapidRAW has a long way to go but…………. I wish I could do something like that whilst doing an apprenticeship. I haven’t contributed to a project in a long time but I think I will donate a bit.

I think the issues with PL9 mean that I am somewhat disillusioned and I don’t think DxO is the company it used to be. The pre-emptive launch has been a mistake and I suspect even the massive Youtube advertising will not create the sales that the venture capitalists will want to see. Combined with the Win11 debacle - Zorin distro had over 1m downloads in November, jeez.

340

Not forgetting that, if the “developer” can turn out code as fast as is being claimed, there is a simple explanation. They are possibly using AI to write the code.

When I say code, upon inspection of the codebase, it appears to be a React app, written in TypeScript, which is a language, in thirty four years of programming, I have never come across before. So, it is going to require any “contributor” to be conversant in that language and realise that all UI components are not visually designed, but have to be hand-coded.

Also, the UI designer requires you to create components in code, which are then parsed by a layout engine.

So, there’s no way you’re going to get me to participate in such a cockskew way of generating an app.

I’ve looked inside the cover and what I found was enough to put me off.

AI can do wonderful things but, would I rely on it for a commercial purpose? Definitely not.

You simply cannot say that. There may be 25,000 people downloading the source, but that doesn’t mean they are all active, skilled, developers.

At least for the Mac version, the UI is script generated with an autolayout engine. Looking at screenshots of an example React app on macOS, it is just plain ugly.

Noooo!!! You mean we have to go back to artists miming?

I have developed my own basic DAM software for macOS. It took me between two and three years of 14 hour days, 7 days per week. Finally, when it got to a usable state, I asked for beta testers. What I got was folks interested in trying out free software but, the majority of whom, contributed nothing. Of the few that did, I got all sorts of “how about adding this feature” messages, that ignored the fact that I was asking for feedback on the quality of existing features.

I have been fortunate enough to participate in Beta tests for previous versions of PhotoLab and I noticed that way less than 10% of participants actually contributed any feedback or found any problems. If you want to look for a reason for poor quality, might I suggest casting a glance in the direction of all those beta testers instead of DxO themselves.

No matter how many developers you throw at a project, if you don’t have sufficient high quality testers, you are never going to get rid of all the bugs. Then you also need to read up on “The Mythical Man Month”, which basically says “if it takes one developer one month, to write some code, it should only take a week for four developers”. Something it has been proven never to happen as it also takes integration developers to pull all that work together. Throw in the need for testers for three platforms and you will never publish it.

2 Likes
341

“I’ve looked inside the cover and what I found was enough to put me off.” Tell us more……

“So, there’s no way you’re going to get me to participate in such a cockskew way of generating an app.” Because you don’t understand the language? Interesting argument.

“AI can do wonderful things but, would I rely on it for a commercial purpose? Definitely not.” - Some say it’s AI, some say hard work and graft. The fact is that like many programs that exist in the open-source world, it is likely that he has built on the shoulders of giants.

“You simply cannot say that. There may be 25,000 people downloading the source, but that doesn’t mean they are all active, skilled, developers.” I can. I am just quoting, if you take a look in duckduckgo you’ll find the source.

“Noooo!!! You mean we have to go back to artists miming?” It’s called lip-syncing and at least they weren’t all older than my Grandad. Actually, I like some of the OGWT but there was a lot of dross. When it started it was new and “of the moment”. It very quickly aged and never moved with the times. And like a shark, you have to move forward.

Finally, when it got to a usable state, I asked for beta testers. What I got was folks interested in trying out free software but, the majority of whom, contributed nothing. Of the few that did, I got all sorts of “how about adding this feature” messages, that ignored the fact that I was asking for feedback on the quality of existing features. - To be fair, Apple users are not (by and large) the type of community that get involved in beta testing. They want it to work perfectly out of the box and have to do nothing to get there. As Apple said “It just works”.

I think the beta testing argument is very valid, after all look at Photolab 9. Imagine how good that could be with some beta testers?