Linux users?

[Markuswelder]

Well, Linux Mint seems to have taken on a life of its own on my computer now, using it pretty much for everything. It's a great OS. Really really enjoying it. Haven't booted up my Windows computer for ages now, I think I'm really starting to get the hang of darktable for my photo editing. It's actually pretty refreshing not being pestered to use cloud storage options for my own data storage, or update my OS, or computer, or anything. Even considering pulling the SSD out of my main mini PC, and slotting in another dedicated to a straight Linux OS install. We shall see

 

[cascadian]

I moved my cranky old core i5 to Linux mint, it's run like a champ with minimal drops off our 5g network. Gimp and dark table installed. A Linux option would be nice!

Apparently scarab darkroom or a variant can be run in Linux. Here's a reddit comment:

 

[Markuswelder]

I've actually really taken to darktable the last few weeks. Manually installed 5. something, one of the latest versions anyway, as Mint comes with 3. something from the Software manager. Had a couple of little freezes early on, but they've sorted themselves out now, and the whole shebang is cruising along pretty damn smoothly now.
Haven't booted into windows for ages now.
It's mostly just finding modules that work for you. I really like filmic, tone equaliser, colour balance rgb (I think) colour zones, colour correction (easiest way to correct odd WB or colour shifts I've found) contrast equaliser, little bit of sharpening and lens deblur. Used in about that order. Quite quick and easy to get pleasing (to my eye) results. Came across Rapid photo downloader, that's the best, quickest little program I've found to organise, rename and sort images on import.
Also found another little program that makes it easy to automatically mount folders/directories on my NAS, still not really found any major stumbling blocks that I "need" Windows for.
I think Microsoft may have shot themselves in the foot a bit here with ending support for Windows 10, there's lots and lots of people now actively looking for alternatives, and tonnes of YouTube videos springing up on how to switch OS's. I'm having lots of fun tinkering anyway.
Played around with the SD card association Linux control line SD card formatting version the other day, a little bit of a learning curve as the instructions aren't totally precise on how or where to run the program from, but figured it out without too much difficulty, formatted a couple of cards using the quick, and deep formatting options, gave them a spin in the camera, all good.

 

[Markuswelder]

Well my Linux journey continues. I've installed Mint on my "good" computer now. Dual boot again. Took a little bit of fiddling around in the BIOS to stop the computer booting directly into Windows and bypassing the GRUB menu, but that was more a case of understanding the wording in the BIOS boot sequence menu rather than any great technical difficulties. All sorted, can now happily boot into either OS no problems. Still haven't intentionally booted into Windows to actually do anything for ages now. Really quite enjoying darktable. Slowly finessing which modules work well for me to give the "look" I'm after. And like. Setting up a few presets in individual modules now, rather than a global preset. So I can quickly apply only the corrections required for a particular image. It's very very configurable, if you spend the time to read up on the particular areas that interest you. Also figured out how to automatically add the date derived from the EXIF data into the file name when exporting. So pleased with that. Holy smokes does it absolutely rip when running on a bit more modern multi core multi thread system. I'll have to set up the system resource monitor or whatever it's called, and have a look at how much of the CPU capability it's actually using.
Anyway, still having fun, next I'll set up some folders to auto-sync with my NAS, spring is here now, and I'll be out of the house and wandering around a bit more so I'd like to get it all running smoothly and seamlessly before too much longer. Can't see any issues, just a little bit of time required

 

[Markuswelder]

So, because Panasonic 36x24 is not as popular as some other brands, there's a few things in darktable that are not optimised, and need a bit more work to achieve nice results. I actually noticed it when playing around with some older m4/3 files on my system. Starting colour was better, and pretty much all the lens correction profiles were there. Silkypix is one of my favourite raw converters. I did have a crack a while back, do try and get it to run under WINE in Linux. No luck. But a year or two back, I actually bought a standalone Silkypix raw converter. It just converts rw2 files to dng, or tiff. Out of curiosity, I booted into windows, and ran a couple of files through it. Saved them as dng, opened them in darktable, and bingo, lens corrections and base colour settings are now baked in. Fabulous.
Cranked up the terminal in Mint, installed WINE, installed Silkypix raw converter, and success. It works. Fast and snappy. Ran a couple more rw2's through it, saved as dng, darktable is happy to work with them. Base colour and lens corrections are baked in. Happy days. Yeah, it's one more step, but I'm not a Pro shooting thousands of images a day, so no real drama.
I'm actually at the point now, where I prefer using darktable a lot of the time, over Silkypix. Heresy I know.

 

[cascadian]

Good to hear, thanks for working out the improvement!

 

[Markuswelder]

So, because Panasonic 36x24 is not as popular as some other brands, there's a few things in darktable that are not optimised, and need a bit more work to achieve nice results. I actually noticed it when playing around with some older m4/3 files on my system. Starting colour was better, and pretty much all the lens correction profiles were there. Silkypix is one of my favourite raw converters. I did have a crack a while back, do try and get it to run under WINE in Linux. No luck. But a year or two back, I actually bought a standalone Silkypix raw converter. It just converts rw2 files to dng, or tiff. And utilises Silkypix demosaicing algorithms. Which I think are really quite good. Out of curiosity, I booted into windows, and ran a couple of files through it. Saved them as dng, opened them in darktable, and bingo, lens corrections and base colour settings are now baked in. Fabulous.
Cranked up the terminal in Mint, installed WINE, installed Silkypix raw converter, and success. It works. Fast and snappy. Ran a couple more rw2's through it, saved as dng, darktable is happy to work with them. Base colour and lens corrections are baked in. Happy days. Yeah, it's one more step, but I'm not a Pro shooting thousands of images a day, so no real drama.
I'm actually at the point now, where I prefer using darktable a lot of the time, over Silkypix. Heresy I know.

F#(k this f#(king site and its ridiculous editing time limit. What a giant PITA. Quoted and then edited because we're apparently a bunch of children who can't be trusted to edit our own posts. I noticed it's now accelerating towards becoming another zombie forum.

 

[Markuswelder]

My NUC couch computer is still motoring along on Linux & darktable. Figured out darktable a bit better, no longer converting files to dng. Bought a new 24" monitor for the Coffee table a month or so back, what a bargain. $99 I think from memory. BenQ something or other, 2490 I think, 100Hz, quite accurate colour display, built in speakers, really happy with it.
My daughter is trying to convince me to update to a Mac M4 mini, not the Pro, but the one with a 10 core CPU, 24 GB of RAM & 512 GB SSD. Thought about it for a bit, I was thinking about building a mini ITX Ryzen 7 8700G small form factor PC, but as RAM has gone stupid -32 GB of DDR5 has more than doubled -over $700 now, & I can buy the Mac mini for about $1400 with her student discount Trouble is, I'm really enjoying Linux Mint. Really enjoying it.
Current setup, I'm gracefully and comfortably reclining on the corner Chaise right now as I type this

 

[Pete_W]

My daughter is trying to convince me to update to a Mac M4 mini, not the Pro, but the one with a 10 core CPU, 24 GB of RAM & 512 GB SSD.

I recently switched from Windows to Mac.

I have been using DxO PhotoLab for years but the latest version 9 with AI masking (which I wanted to use) needed a lot more processing power than my 2-year-old Windows Surface Laptop had. So I just continued on with version 8 but then the Windows laptop was bricked after an OS update. That was the second Surface laptop that's broken just after 2 years when the warranty had expired.

So I bought a MacBook Pro M5, 10-Core CPU and 10-Core GPU, 24GB RAM and 1TB SSD. It's blazing fast and DxO v9 runs like a champ.

 

[pdk42]

Microsoft's software distribution and update framework is really fragile. I'm amazed that more people don't get bricked computers.

 

[William Turner]

LUMIX user who works with Linux but not for any of my video or photography projects. macOS (M1 Max with 64GB, yeah 4 years old and still solid performance) because it just works. I have a PC as well (13th gen i7) with 64GB, latest nVIDIA RTX studio drivers, etc, and it is a freaking mess every 60 days.
Now I just use it as a spare office computer, what a shame.
DaVinci Resolve Studio
DXOPhoto Lab
Logic Pro
Blender 3D

It all just works.

 

[William Turner]

Microsoft's software distribution and update framework is really fragile. I'm amazed that more people don't get bricked computers.

I’m surprised how often my employer has to reimage PCs at work, but the macOS setups are pretty much always good. However the thought is that only the creatives need Macs. And the PCs are using cloud SaaS solutions that are pretty much OS agnostic. The accounting team and others really don’t need a PC, but change is a slow process even with the fast pace of cloud computing.

 

[pdk42]

I have a PC as well (13th gen i7) with 64GB, latest nVIDIA RTX studio drivers, etc, and it is a freaking mess every 60 days.

This is a pretty common story in my experience. A friend runs Windows as a VM under Parallels on her Mac and wanted to do 5 mins of work on an app that's bound to Windows so she ran up her VM. 5 hours later it was still spinning the wheels installing updates!

 

[Pete_W]

Microsoft's software distribution and update framework is really fragile. I'm amazed that more people don't get bricked computers.

Yep, too many individual components and conflicts with drivers.

I’m surprised how often my employer has to reimage PCs at work, but the macOS setups are pretty much always good. However the thought is that only the creatives need Macs. And the PCs are using cloud SaaS solutions that are pretty much OS agnostic. The accounting team and others really don’t need a PC, but change is a slow process even with the fast pace of cloud computing.

I run the finance team at my workplace and we have traditionally had PCs because we were running server-based finance applications. I tried running these applications over remote desktop from a Mac but it wasn't easy - printing, saving files to the desktop, pushing data into Excel and even just keyboard shortcuts. It was doable but never straighforward. And battery life really drops off a cliff by the third year with Windows laptops.

This past year (2025) we have migrated to new finance applications that are SaaS systems and I'm due for a new laptop, so I've asked the IT team to issue me with a Mac!

 

[Markuswelder]

This is a pretty common story in my experience. A friend runs Windows as a VM under Parallels on her Mac and wanted to do 5 mins of work on an app that's bound to Windows so she ran up her VM. 5 hours later it was still spinning the wheels installing updates!

Not my experience at all. My Couch computer NUC is now 9 years old. Never missed a beat on the original Windows install, never reinstalled, it just keeps motoring on. Only reason I went Linux is because they discontinued support for W10 and I can't update to a secure W11 version. Windows has been brilliant for me since W7. Everything just works.
Linux is still Linux. The other week my Logitech K400+ keyboard trackpad just randomly decided to stop working. I use Solaar to interface with my Logitech unifying receiver, uninstalled, reinstalled, no dice. Day it aside for a week, used another Logitech mouse, a week later the trackpad started working perfectly again. Linux for you. Occasionally I have to restart the network manager, just little stuff.

 

[Markuswelder]

LUMIX user who works with Linux but not for any of my video or photography projects. macOS (M1 Max with 64GB, yeah 4 years old and still solid performance) because it just works. I have a PC as well (13th gen i7) with 64GB, latest nVIDIA RTX studio drivers, etc, and it is a freaking mess every 60 days.
Now I just use it as a spare office computer, what a shame.
DaVinci Resolve Studio
DXOPhoto Lab
Logic Pro
Blender 3D

It all just works.

Like I wrote,, my Intel NUC is 9 years old. And was still on the original W10 install up until very late last year when I started playing around again dual booting Windows and Linux Mint. No issues at all. Not the fastest thing around with 16 GB of 2133 MHz DDR4 RAM, and an i7 6770 quad core CPU. Mint has just given it a new lease of life. And it's snappy.
Sure, my Ryzen 7 7735HS mini PC with 32 GB of DDR 5 RAM is faster for sure, but it's 8? years newer, so you'd expect it to be.
What I have been doing of late, is storing all my current photos on a 1TB SSD that I raided out of an older laptop I retired recently. Popped in in an external enclosure, and can take the photos and edits between computers running darktable. They've both got 10 Gbit USB C ports, so it's as fast as a native internal drive. I've got to check out whether the Apple version of darktable will play nicely with the external drive and edits, before I go any further.
I kind of need this to work, as I can't sit at the computer desk too long, a DVT/Blood clot has returned in my leg, so I have to retire to the Sofa for any length of time spent photo editing. Hence the requirement for something small and compact.
Just not sure which direction I'll go yet, there's some ripping good mini PC's that are hitting the market for really good prices.
I probably could live happily with 16 GB of RAM in Linux, it's not a real memory hog. We shall see

 

[PJD]

Not my experience at all. My Couch computer NUC is now 9 years old. Never missed a beat on the original Windows install, never reinstalled, it just keeps motoring on. Only reason I went Linux is because they discontinued support for W10 and I can't update to a secure W11 version. Windows has been brilliant for me since W7. Everything just works.
Linux is still Linux. The other week my Logitech K400+ keyboard trackpad just randomly decided to stop working. I use Solaar to interface with my Logitech unifying receiver, uninstalled, reinstalled, no dice. Day it aside for a week, used another Logitech mouse, a week later the trackpad started working perfectly again. Linux for you. Occasionally I have to restart the network manager, just little stuff.

As I've mentioned before, I've been a Mac user since before the beginning (late 1983). My M1 MacBook Pro is my main computer. I _was_ also a very long-time Windows user ... and never had any serious issues running Win10 ... until found out my old PC wasn't updatable to Win 11. So, I wiped the PC's drives and installed Linux. After a few weeks realized it was slower than and redundant to my Mac. I recycled the PC (but kept all the drives) and now only use my Mac. At some point I may get a newer Mac, but I'm set for now. Whatever folks use is OK with me; whatever works. Cheers!

 

[RuleOfThirds]

I use Linux for my homelab/nas (Proxmox with containers and VMs), macOS for personal (old but still very good and fast enough iMac 27” 5K, MacBook Pro M1), and Windows (and Linux) for work.

The way Microsoft is now forcing to use a Microsoft account when installing a new W11, and how they use AI to monitor what you do on your desktop “to help you”, there is little to no chance I will use it personally again. No way because there are numerous stories on the internet that Microsoft algorithm locked people out of their account and purchases for violating there non-public rules and false positives, without notice, and an almost no possibility to appeal, as the appeal also goes through AI. I think it is scary if that would happen, no access to your pc, OneDrive, Outlook etc. for an unknown/undisclosed reason without appeal possibility. The EU is now forbidding, or trying to, this kind of account closing, and demand a person to person communication possibility.

Sorry for the rant, but this kind of behavior is not giving me an incentive to buy a new windows machine any time soon. I fear the day Apple is going to do the same.