I am not the biggest Richard Stallman fan, and this was also my first thought. But in the interest of truth, it is very unfair to portray him this way.
What Stallman argued for was correctness. He is guilty of pedantry, not pedophilia. Did he do it badly. Yes. Was it a socially risky position to take? For sure. Is he a child predator? Not based on any evidence I have seen.
There are actual child predators out there. Let’s focus on them.
X11 desktops work fine and will continue to work fine. But very few people will be using them in 5 years.
Why don’t you just stick to X if you think it is better?
Of course, the rest of us have moved on to Wayland because we disagree with you.
No need to fight though. Have fun.
It is a different ecosystem. It requires time to mature and yes, you have to migrate to it in order to use it.
Moving to Wayland was a bit like moving to a different operating system from an application point of view. The toolkits made that reasonably easy for most apps but they really do not help much if you are the window manager.
So yes, compositors had to be built. This was easy enough for the big projects like GNOME and KDE but a bigger ask for smaller players. But there are lots now: GNOME, Plasma, Hyprland, MangoWC, Niri, COSMIC, Budgie, LxQT, LabWC, Wayfire, Sway, DWL, River, Wayland Maker, etc. I am sure there are many more I don’t know or forgot. There will be lots more.
And yes, a Wayland compositor is a bit like the X server and window manager combined. So, they are harder to build. Except libraries have appeared to do that. There are wlroots, Smithay, aquamarine, Louvre, and SWC. There will be more. So, a Wayland compositor is not really that much harder anymore. And it will get easier.
The XFCE project is just starting a Wayland compositor project now. It will be built mostly by a single developer. They think they will have a dev release in a few months. They are using Smithay.
Building the Wayland ecosystem took time. But we are basically there. And it is only going to get bigger and better.
CodeWeavers, also a for profit company, has indeed been at it for decades. I used to pay them to run Outlook something like 20 years ago.
If you want to imply that Valve is not contributing, your own statement works against you. Wine is not new. CodeWeavers is not new. Yet gaming on Linux only really became a thing once Valve got involved.
Most people still cannot install or configure Wine. But they can use Proton in Steam. People gaming everyday still cannot get Office or Photoshop to work. They can play Steam games but would struggle to make StarCraft run (not in Steam).
Valve is organizing all the bits to make an actual ecosystem work. It is why they created Proton vs just sending patches to Wine. It is why they have gamescope. It is why they fund FEX. If is why they created the Steamdeck and Steam Machine.
I have loved CodeWeavers literally for decades. But minimizing the impact that Valve has had on Linux gaming makes no sense.
This has been so much of the problem. The only light at the end of the tunnel is that it is literally just a matter of time until these users catch up and stop complaining.
This is SVT-AV1 and not AVT-AV1.
I am a heavy user of this software and this looks like another great release. It is amazing how much they have improved performance over the years.
I was excited thinking this was 3.2 and then let down to see that it is just another 3.0 update.
3.2 may not “punch Adobe in the face” but it is going to be a solid release. Most importantly, it will show that GIMP releases do not have to take years. If the time between releases drops, I am hoping that will attract more developer interest.
A better “punch Adobe in the face” candidate may be the 3.4 release. It is possible that it will finally include full support for CMYK.
Anyway, good to see a GIMP release of any kind, even if it is not 3.2 just yet.
If you like Paint.net, try Pinta.
Sure.
But “missing significant foundational and complex functionality is not really a bug”, it is a feature. I mean, I guess I could file a bug that says “won’t run ALL Windows software” and talk about how long it stays open.
As each of these dominos falls, it gets easier to add more functionality on top. I feel like they have made more progress in the past two years than they have in the 10 before that.
Given how slowly they move, the obvious choice is to bet against them.
That said…
It already works for some stuff. There are already people that have been able to use ReactOS to run legacy but vital applications. I cannot remember any details but I have heard of a few instances where businesses saved rather substantial amounts of money with ReactOS.
Similarly, there are certainly people that find it runs the particular applications they want and runs on the hardware they have. Some legacy gamers use it. But perhaps you have hardware that is only supported under Windows XP.
And, if people keep using Windows, it will eventually become usable enough to be a viable alternative. If it had Windows 7 level features today and ran modern apps, a lot of people would find it good enough to switch. It does not have to be better than Windows or support every Windows feature.
As slow as they are, they have gotten further than most people would have expected.
Ya. I feel like professional VFX has largely migrated off Windows already.
Photoshop is perhaps the canonical example of software that does not run on Linux and is actually needed by “professionals”.
Photoshop does not run well enough on Wine that I would expect a pro to run it this way. And, if you are a print professional, there really are no Open Source tools that do what you need yet.
But outside of print, I think it is more about familiarity than capability even with regards to Adobe alternatives. And there are alternatives UI options for things like GIMP if the Adobe metaphor works better for you.
Inkscape seems to be attracting some actual professional use. Scribus seems close to getting there too. The furthest behind is GiMP.
That said, I am impressed with the development pace of GIMP now that version 3 has finally shipped. And it seems that proper CMYK support is on their near-term roadmap. I could see them shipping something functional next year. I would say similar things about non-destructive editing.
It will be interesting to see if attitudes change towards GIMP after these issues are addressed. The UI also takes a lot of heat. Now that there is a consistent cadence of releases (it seems), perhaps that will see steady evolution as well.
This is a funny take given that for most of Linux history, the majority of Linux desktop user have been “working professionals”, largely IT workers and developers to be fair.
At this point, you cannot really make a blanket statement about who Linux is appropriate for. It is down to individual use cases and preferences.
I have been using Linux for decades and, while I have also used Windows and macOS, other operating systems are frustrating to use due to the many limitations. And I have been several kinds of “working professional” over that time at many different levels of seniority. But I recognize that this is because all my workflows and expectations evolved on Linux.
The “working professionals” you imagine likely have the same issue. It is not that Linux could not work, or even that it is not a better place to start. It is document compatibility and familiarity.
At this point, Linux “being ready” comes down almost completely to a tolerance for learning and change. Nobody says you have to change of course. But working differently does not mean that something else does not work.
There are of course still some software gaps. CAD is not great on Linux (getting there). Print graphics professionals (people with CMYK workflows) will hit real roadblocks. Some debugging tools available on Windows are worth the productivity for certain workflows. Pro audio too I guess though this not my area. And “office document” users may encounter display inconsistencies when sharing documents depending on which features they rely on. Perhaps the latter is what you mean.
As for gaming, it depends on what titles you favour. Some Windows games play better on Linux. Some worse. And of course some not at all.
When choosing software for a company, I consider something that cannot work on the Linux desktop or through the cloud disqualifying. I can think of few cases where that has been the wrong decision.
So when I install EOS for the first time, I should use the ISO from when the project was founded?
This comment is silly. The fact that every rolling release I can think of tracks against releases in exactly this way is not.
Of course they do. It is a silly comment.
Now that GIMP has finally released version 3, they seem to be moving faster. I hope they are able to get more positive mind-share.
For example, they are close to releasing 3.2 that already has lots of great stuff in it. It looks like 3.4 could address some really long running deficiencies like native CMYK.
If stuff actually gets released, they may not only attract users but developers which is what they really need.
Lots of nice changes in this release. I see lots of the things people complain about.
I am not a GNOME user myself but since Niri uses XDG-desktop-portal-GNOME, this looks like a release to look forward to.
I have mixed feelings about Zorin.
They are doing a great job of promoting themselves and in attracting converts from Windows. It seems like a nice enough distro as well that users are likely to have a decent experience with.
On the other hand, they are charging money for a “pro” version that mostly just bundles software that users could get for free. My first reaction to this is that it is exploitive, both of uses and software devs.
But then I remember that they also offer support and I think that introducing people to software they did not know about is also a service.
And if they use the money to do all of the above, the Linux ecosystem benefits. So, perhaps they are not that bad.
Perhaps the best thing about them is they make it harder for truly scammy “windows” distros like Wububtu to take hold.
If they start to make “real” money, I do hope they share some of it back with the projects they leverage.
What did you replace Xorg with 10 years ago?