PhotoLab on Linux?

DxO PhotoLab Windows topics
1

Has anyone here gotten PL up and running on Linux? If you used Wine (or Wine with the Bottles ‘environment’) I’d love to hear about it.

What distro did you use? Issues running PL in Wine? Yes, I know I can run a virtual machine, run Windows in that, then PL, but I’d like to get as close as I can to it being a native application. PL’s about the only app I use that I can’t get a Linux-native equivalent for (many of them have a Linux version).

I’m a (now retired) long time Windows developer, but I started out as a Unix developer, so a technical answer is fine and I’m comfortable using any of a number of shells.

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Search the forum. There are lots of topics about PL for Linux.

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There was one about running it in a VM, but yeah, I’ll search again.

4

Actually, my issue around windows had to do with the internals and some of the things Msoft was doing with CoPilot in W11. There’s a tiny-ifier app that can chop a lot of that out How to download Tiny11 ISO for Windows 11 25H2 - Pureinfotech.

As an ex-Unix guy, I was also looking at Mac (which is built on BSD) but apparently they’ve made that layer hard to access and impossible to modify in recent releases - so I started wondering about Linux. I’ve used some other (admittedly not GPU intensive) Win apps on CentOS using a windows emulation layer (Wine) but I’m starting to think that that’s going to be crazy-making for me (lots of effort leading to nothing usable). Sigh.

5

PL9, at the moment, is not terribly performant when using the masking features. The last thing you need in that case is a translation layer.

I’m curious why you need to “modify” BSD. I’m not an “ex-Unix” guy, but I do use Windows, Mac, Linux, and IBM i OS daily and I don’t see a general need to be modifying an OS at such a low level just to be running applications?

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6

Yes, I was wondering this. macOS contains a full UNIX command line from what I can see.

Mostly, my experience of macOS has always been, as the advertising says, 'it just works".

7

Just as an aside, and not to pick a fight or anything, but I would say the same thing of Windows 10 and 11, having started using them 5-ish years ago largely because of limited choices for Apple hardware and the rate at which DxO drops support for macOS versions. I used Macs for a long time before that (and NeXT before that even), but I’ve found Windows to be no more trouble than Mac, and certainly not the nightmare I remember Windows 95 being on a work computer long ago.

Windows is less in my face than macOS even (the way I’ve installed it at least, from an iso and with only a local user account), with the latter’s constant nagging about logging in to iCloud and other services I neither use nor need/want to be permanently tethered to. Without a Microsoft account, Windows just leaves me alone.

We do have a command line environment on macOS (I still use a couple of Mac Minis), but with old/ancient versions of many utilities, which is why there are package managers like Homebrew and pkgsrc to pick up the slack. X11 support was farmed off to the open source XQuartz project long ago, but it seems fairly abandoned: a focus bug I ran into for years still seems to be around last I checked.

On the other hand, Windows has Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), which ironically gives it a more modern Unix/X environment than macOS, with its FreeBSD heritage. Not for interacting with Windows itself, but for everything else. (There are a lot of useful Apple utilities that I used to use for disk imaging and more on macOS; haven’t bothered since they turned everything upside down with APFS.)

It’s fairly convenient to have both platforms when DxO messes something up, since the two implementations of PL seem to live completely independent lives, bugs and all. DxO doesn’t put much effort into Mac/Win compatibility though (I mean of dop files, not UI) and they now even document dop as not being compatible between the two platforms, so I might eventually have to pick a side, for PL at least. :slightly_smiling_face:

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8

I’ve come across this:

If it lives up to the claims, it might be what everyone who wants PL on Linux is looking for.

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9

My guess is, that the incompatibilities are due to an increasing need to include paths for items like LUT and DCP files.

All these items could be placed in predefined logical locations that could be handled by the app, no matter the platform. I don’t know why DxO neglects such topics as it currently does. Lack of resources? Lack of vision? We’re the best-syndrome? Dunno.

Other than that: There is no revenue in Linux. No market either. No people who’ll pay for an app in an environment where things are supposed to be free…

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10

This is the main source of the incompatibilities that I know of. I run into other issues from time to time - one recently in which a perspective correction done on Windows is mangled on Mac - but these have usually been fixed as bugs.

In the case of the absolute paths in dop, I’ve been bringing this up with support since PL4 at least. All they have to do to make it possible to move edits between computers without having to hack dop is put a known directory in a search path on each platform and write filenames instead of absolute paths to files in these directories. Just like they already do for presets and more.

Yes, they can add more window dressing if they want, error handling that they don’t have today, relative path support maybe, general ease of use, and documentation even, but it’s not necessary to solve the problem. Instead they’ve chosen to document cross-platform incompatibility, but even that’s inaccurate since it’s not only across platforms that there’s a problem, it’s across computers as soon as the offending files have different absolute paths. (Which just happens to always be the case across platforms.)

But I’ve said all of this before … :roll_eyes:

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11

It has gone quite a few decades now since the nineties when Windows still hadn’t got a proper memory management and a working hardware plug and play and we at least in my localized version of Windows had to read “Oåterkalleligt applikationsfel!” which means “Fatal application error” at least 10 times a day.

Today my Windows 11 is absolutely rock solid and never crashes. A single application crash never interferes with the kernel core today but Microsoft is till paying the badwill costs from the days of the infamous Windows 2.21 and the other versions from the nineties like Windows 95.

I also prefer just to use a local user account in order not being exposed to the full influence of Microsofts environment. I don´t need any One Drive-storage either how “free” it still might be to use.

12

This is apparently becoming more and more difficult (if not impossible) now to set up Win11 without an MS account: https://www.pcmag.com/news/microsoft-makes-it-harder-to-set-up-windows-11-without-an-account

I wonder if it’s possible to create a local account after setup and then somehow remove the internet account and only use the local?

13

I’ve used Rufus when burning an installation iso to restore the ability to create a local account. There’s more information in the FAQ, here.

What can be done after setup, I don’t know.

Edit: I haven’t burned an iso since that article was written, but a comment to it suggests it still works, and also that one can use an older iso.

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14

I don´t even login and use a password anymore. So tired of logging in and logging in and logging in when just at home. Yes that is still possible! Now I just turn it on and go!

I´m talking stationary computers here only used at home behind a safety door.

Never fully understood why Windows 11 by standard I guess uses this new chip to encrypt our harddiscs. I have several times managed to save my data on crashed Windows-machines by just dock the harddisk to an USB-dock. (the last three years ago) when our movers destroyed my PC when they moverd our furniture. That gets more difficult now without a backup program that allows transparent read of the backup files.

Especially with machines containing old pictures I hate the thought of ebcrypted harddisks. There will be a lot of “locked in” cultural heritage that will just get trown away in the future when someone dies.

My computer will be fully open for my relatives if they are interested.

Sometimes we have to ask ourselves who we are locking our computers and even other of our things for.

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15

My Mac has a fingerprint ID button. One touch unlocks it. Simples.

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And if touch ID is not available because my MBP is plugged into a monitor and closed, my Apple Watch unlocks it. Extra simples :smiley:

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17

I have just installed Win 11 without a MS a account. I found a YT video that shows you how to create your local account via command line at the point it asks you to login or create a MS account. You then reboot and finish the setup with your new local account. Works perfectly.

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18

Its an option in Windows too but a thing I never would use since I several times has sanded my fingerprints away - not delibretly but anyway workingh with boats and wood.

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I used Chat GPT this time just to save time. It is a little hidden feature but it is still there. It is there in the menues too so a command line approach isn´t necessary but probably the fastest and easiest.

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At a technical level, perhaps. As I said, I use both all the time. Yes, Win11 rarely gets in my way, technically. It is just a terrible experience all around. The one word description I had for Win10, which Win11 has inherited, is “sloppy”.

Honestly, I do think Linux is probably the most consistent of the three OSes… if you can choose (and stick to) one, and you can get everything working in the first place.

Personally, I choose Mac because you get it out of the box, turn it on, and go. That’s it.

EDIT: Oh… and… no @#$%ing with device drivers. See all the threads (including the official one) about GPU drivers. Not that Apple can’t break things, but every Mac comes out of the box with everything working.

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