Easy for you to say if you can afford an Apple … and an Epson V700. South African Rands don’t easily stretch that far.
1 Like
When I bought my first MacBook Pro, it cost the same as an equivalent spec Windows laptop.
And I have been doing photography for over sixty years. When you want to print 4" x 5" film, it’s a choice between paying a lab or buying a scanner. It doesn’t take long to justify the cost of a scanner when you offset it against lab charges.
I just took this photo of the left side of my editing bay. I bought the V700 over 10 years ago and have since scanned thousands of photos and other media. I believe I would have paid $$$ in scanning fees without my V700.
On the right side of my editing bay is a plustek OpticFilm 35mm scanner. I am currently scanning a lifetime (I’m 70) of black and white negatives and color slides, and an ever increasing flood of old media from my extended family (they’ve discovered my restoration skills). I could not afford a service to scan all that stuff.
VueScan is my scanning software of choice.
Tools well used=money well spent IMHO
The same goes for my Mac.
1 Like
I’m jealous! After my old Acer died I bought a used Epson V550 on eBay. (Can’t get a new V600 in South Africa). It was a lemon and I couldn’t return it. I looked into the V800 here and it’s about 2 month’s income for me and no-one stocks it anyway.
If you don’t need to scan LF film, you can setup a copy stand over a light box and use your camera with a macro lens
As for quitting DxO, just because they are not prepared to accommodate an OS that only really lends itself to servers and nerds, no thanks, I have serious photography to do.
Joanna, really you should get off the Linux thread if you can’t stop fawning over Apple.
After Trump came to power a second time, Tim Cook has been busy currying favour with Donald Trump, the same way he was running around like a campaign organisor for Biden as long as he thought the Democrat party would be in power. There is no Apple there any more.
And now you are a faerie queen complaining about the people doing the real work in the only OS which will provide even a modicum of privacy as of now in 2026. The situation with commercial OS is getting worse every year.
Apple is not the company now that it was while Steve Jobs lived. In 2012, Apple joined all the NSA programs which Jobs had refused to let in the door. From what I can see Jobs dealt with the NSA simply by refusing to talk to them or with a single word, No.
The world has changed, and that includes computing. Stop living in 2005 please.
3 Likes
This time Joanna is right. If you have a 26MP or higher full-frame camera, photographs of slides or negatives just against daylight (no special light needed) will turn out better than all but the finest scanners.
I’m a Nikon user and just using the Nikon ES-2 Film Digitizing Adapter Set ($158 today) with a D850 (or a Z6) creates incredible slide scans in RAW format. I’ve read many reports from Sony and Canon users that ES-2 will work with most macro lens setups on those cameras (sometimes with inexpensive extender rings).
Converting negatives is trickier. There’s a long conversation about it here. The best bet from what I already own is CaptureOne 12 which does quite a good job. The new negative converter in FilmPack 8 is a dud unfortunately (I had high hopes and eventually it may get there).
To come back to Linux, negative conversion with RAWtherapee is very good. One can do these tasks (scan slides and negatives very well) with Linux these days.
All the stupidity about how Linux users won’t pay for software is hopelessly out-of-date. There are many Linux users on this thread who do pay for software. The cool kids from the Apple world are already fleeing macOS, as we value our privacy. iPhones are already gone, PhotoLab one of two programs which keeps me still on macOS but I’m getting closer to just giving up on DxO and moving to RAWtherapee.
2 Likes
Here you have an application to play with.
It doesn´t really confirm what you state and it might be that you live in some sort of a filter bubble. The diagram displays the relative market shares the last 10 years when it comes to OS´s on PCs
Linux still there in the bottom on 4%, well 4.02 but that isn´t all that much on the margin.
Desktop Operating System Market Share Worldwide | Statcounter Global Stats
So what is the “unknown OS” ??
It will be interesting to see the impact of the chineese “Harmony OS” and when Google get their Desktop OS act together. The talk of a strong migration to Linux seems very exaggerated. It is even hard to see an upward trend on that totally horisontal Lionux curve
This is stats and not a filter bubble.
Sorry if that dream got an abrupt puncture.
The last year 2025 Linux was exactly at the same level in the end of the summer as in December = there is not even a raising trend at micro level.
What is interesting here is the “Unknown” OS. If a lot of the say 1.4 billion Chineese and especially the Windowsa Users in the prevailing anti-US winds should migrate to Huawei Harmony OS instead of Windows it woukld show. It is not Linux or Mac OS gaining market shares when Windows drops. It is the rise of the “Unknown” that mirrors The slight drop of Windows shares and nothing else. Mac OS and OS X are dropping too especially OS X.
Summary: No raisng Linux-trend according to ststcounter.
Even Mac is dropping and the relative shares to Windows is close to unchanged compared to both Mac and Linux.
It is far too early to talk about any dramatic shifts on the OS-market despiote the development of the shares for the “Unknown” OS.
I came to this forum for information, both to learn and to share.
People can have different preferences and opinions about which operating system to use. If some of the folks here prefer to use a Mac, that’s fine, just please do not disparage them by saying they are “fawning” over Apple or they’re “captive in a walled garden” (you didn’t use that one) or some other trash talk.
Even worse is turning to personal denigration by calling someone “elderly”, or a “woman”, or maybe because they’re retired they’re “complaining about the people doing the real work”. Maybe I’m infected with DEI but that just seems wrong.
Please continue on but be nice, like your momma taught you. If she’s not dead yet give her a hug.
What in the doohickey happened to civil discourse?
1 Like
Most of the people on this forum are older, including me (elderly would be an exaggeration but not far off). I’m not sure if Joanna is ten years behind me or ten years ahead of me down the path to eternity. Peu importe.
DxO is playing for a shrinking world of most hobbyist or at best semi-pro photographers. DxO got themselves into this quandery by not co-operating well with other independent photography software (FastRawViewer, PhotoMechanic, PhotoSupreme, iMatch in one category; Affinity Photo in another category) and trying to compete directly against Adobe Lightroom. The best idea DxO has had in the last ten years was PureRAW which at least let users of other photo editing software introduce the great de-bayering and noise reduction of PhotoLab into their workflow.
To gain some ground, DxO has to be first somewhere. Linux is their chance to enjoy a lot of free publicity and attention. Instead DxO prefer to spend a fortune on advertising, while mining their existing users for every last cent. Narrow thinkers.
I didn’t realise that woman was a term of denigration, perhaps for you, certainly not for me.
And Joanna does gush endlessly over Apple. If Joanna wishes to live in her world of candy canes and snowflakes, she should do it somewhere else than on the Linux thread, particularly in the condescending and totally out-of-touch tones she used.
Brave knight, seek harder to find a real damsel-in-distress. Joanna can take care of herself.
2 Likes
While Windows and macOS market share is shrinking, desktop Linux slowly grows. A lot of Linux desktop use is invisible on the web anyway, as 1. Linux users are most likely to be running adblockers 2. Linux often falls into other.
You’re stacking the deck, old chap.
1 Like
How many Windows-users are using Ad-Blocker??
As I said, there is only one curve in those diagrams that really stands out and that is nether Windows, Mac OCs or Linux - it is the “Unknown” OSs. I think that is where the analyze has to begin.
I mean even if Microsoft might have had good intentions with TPM-chips, forcing Secure Boot on us or whatever they call it and enforcing encryption mandatory even on people using Local Microsofr Accounts that prefer to use unencrypted discs of different reasons (makes older machines faster) it is up to us to decide is we want to use it or not.
Personally I can say that unencrypted harddrives has saved me a couple of times so I don´t want enforced encryption and luckily that is one of the features RUFUS is offering.for those who manages it to work as intended.
Just this headline is a little sad really because if an OS like Linux hasn´t been able to get better software support in 40 years I just doesn´t give it much hope in the future either because the development on a desptop OS-market where giants like Huawei and Google seems to develop new OSs with AI from the bottom and up they are just about to release, I see very little space for something as antiquated as Linux. I guees it will still be embraced by the most stubborn zealots like the Leica zealots on the camera market - both heavily marginalized. Linux might survive for a while even on the desktops but its influence will be increasingly irrelevant in an AI-cengtered OS-world.
Maybe the reality is catching up with Apple too. A high -price brand also has to adapt to skyrocketing RAM and GPU-costs on top of already high prices and how to do that without passing them on to the customers?
1 Like
OS X is the legacy version of macOS from before 2016. They should drop as they haven’t been supported for many years
But something is very strange with the chart or how they sample usage, as macOS began last years first two months with pretty much 0% market share.
1 Like
It’s common knowledge that “unknown OS” in web traffic and security reporting is mostly Linux. That spike you see from last year - the one that coincides with the dip in Windows is mostly Linux. It correlates with Linux downloads. Many Linux distros and and niche OS come with with strict privacy settings by default. They prevent browser identification and cause analytics tools like Statcounter to categorize them as unknown.
Maybe save your patronising tone and half-baked info for someone with another horse in your race? I’m exploring my options and won’t wear your blinkers.
1 Like
Those are some pretty salient and pointy points! 
Needless to say that cool, old, literary, and quite prophetic “faerie queen” reference goes over most heads as a mere misogynistic insult. Plebs. Be careful, though. It dates you way worse than my use of “cool” … and I’m 61!
I look forward to the day that towre of glass and corruption falls. Bring on the OS democratic revolution.
I have seen different versions of this Linus Thorvalds quote on Youtube.
I wonder one thing when it comes to for example the Linux-relation to AI and Nvidia. No wonder Linux has had problems and I bet they might have been neglected too - both because they make up such tiny fraction of the destop-OS-market and on top of that might just have neglected Thorvalds after his braggingly hostile speaches towards Nvidia.
If you are downstream of a hardware-dependencie as an OS-developer I guess it is a far better strategy at least trying to maintain a working relation with your hardware partners than expressing open hostility and humiliations.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4lMhrCxgXK0?feature=share
Thorwald’s Nvidia criticism is like an unmade bed. No wonder it doesn’t feel particularly comfortable. There’s only one excuse for it, and at best it can be blamed on the fact that Finns can sometimes be perceived as very direct and “outspoken” by people who aren’t used to this.
Don’t get me wrong: Personally I generally prefer that approach before the Swedish way where the general idea is more like not saying anything because we presume everybody knows anyway or for that matter the American way of talk talk talk until you drop dead, but in this particular Linus/Linux-case Linus stance might have back-fired severely here.
Dealing with stats is a bit like handling a DSLR. I’m no statistician but I at least know which way to point the thing. To start with, that unremarkable-looking decline in Windows market share represents a lot more users relative to the OSes running along the bottom of the graph. And as always, what’s not shown is easily the salient fact. What that graph doesn’t show is the dramatic uptick in downloads, a large percentage of which are for people exploring a dual boot setup. This would explain why the Linux and “Unknown” uptick does not show more strongly.
Meanwhile, the Windows exit has added momentum to the work being done both on Linux distros like Zorin and apps like Wine and Winboat which try to ease the transition.
I’m old enough to have seen dominant players fall to upstarts so my mind is open.
2 Likes