I’m a hobby photographer. I have to keep a windows machine in my house just so I can run some of the software I need for my photography.
I’ve transitioned what I can to linux equivalents, and digiKam and Darktable are my daily drivers now, but Darktable is a HUGE learning curve for someone who hasn’t used it before. You are literally starting again with learning how to edit your images. It’s not simply a case of learning “how to do the same things in a new environment” but “learning a new paradigm, almost from the ground up”. I love Darktable, but it took a dedicated desire not to run windows software and then months of practice before I could start to reproduce things that I could do in Lightroom in minutes with little experience.
And on top of that, dedicated noise reduction software (which requires a good GPU) basically doesn’t exist on linux, and is next to impossible to run with wine or even VMs, because of the reliance on a GPU. And that means I have to keep a windows machine around to run my noise reduction. Dual booting doesn’t even work, because that means my photo workflow suddenly needs a reboot. So, a second machine, which is not ideal…
Which is a lot of words to say that it’s not always about being resistant to change or accepting alternatives. Sometimes there are no alternatives, and sometimes the “change” is a HUGE change. Unless a photographer is driven by ideological reasons to move off Windows like I was, it’s not going to be worth the hit for most people. And even then, I still have to run a windows box too…
I’m a hobby photographer. I have to keep a windows machine in my house just so I can run some of the software I need for my photography.
I’ve transitioned what I can to linux equivalents, and digiKam and Darktable are my daily drivers now, but Darktable is a HUGE learning curve for someone who hasn’t used it before. You are literally starting again with learning how to edit your images. It’s not simply a case of learning “how to do the same things in a new environment” but “learning a new paradigm, almost from the ground up”. I love Darktable, but it took a dedicated desire not to run windows software and then months of practice before I could start to reproduce things that I could do in Lightroom in minutes with little experience.
And on top of that, dedicated noise reduction software (which requires a good GPU) basically doesn’t exist on linux, and is next to impossible to run with wine or even VMs, because of the reliance on a GPU. And that means I have to keep a windows machine around to run my noise reduction. Dual booting doesn’t even work, because that means my photo workflow suddenly needs a reboot. So, a second machine, which is not ideal…
Which is a lot of words to say that it’s not always about being resistant to change or accepting alternatives. Sometimes there are no alternatives, and sometimes the “change” is a HUGE change. Unless a photographer is driven by ideological reasons to move off Windows like I was, it’s not going to be worth the hit for most people. And even then, I still have to run a windows box too…