{"id":4984,"date":"2015-02-20T09:12:38","date_gmt":"2015-02-20T09:12:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=4984"},"modified":"2015-02-19T13:12:55","modified_gmt":"2015-02-19T13:12:55","slug":"hope-for-linux-users","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=4984","title":{"rendered":"Hope for Linux Users"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve always wanted to stop using Windows. Well at least since I first installed it many years ago. At the time, back in the 1980s, Gem seemed to be a rather better system. But by the time Windows 3 came along, around 1990, Windows seemed more or less the only game except for the uber-rich fuelled by advertising who could afford to go the Mac route.<\/p>\n

For those with computer science degrees there was of course UNIX, which became affordable in the form of Linux. Over the years I’ve installed Suse and Red Hat on quite a few computers, and my wife’s computer is now running happily on Ubuntu. Or mainly happily, but after it crashed while running an update I had to do a complete reinstall. Which worked fine, but had problems finding the parallel port printer. Not that it couldn’t find it at all, just that it seemed to insist on sending data a bit or two at a time, so it might take half an hour before a page would emerge.<\/p>\n

There was a lot of advice on the various support forums, and I tried it, but nothing worked. Clearly too, a lot of other people were having similar problems from all the messages that were posted – and a few did find that the solutions posted worked. Most I think finally gave up and brought a USB printer instead.<\/p>\n

Fortunately both my sons are computer science graduates, and when the elder came home he soon solved the problem, editing a few files here and there on the system – and posted his fix on a support forum too, so others may benefit. But if you don’t have a first in Comp Sci, and don’t want to devote most of your life to learning Linux there are still rather a lot of possible hurdles.\u00a0 We’ll probably have to call Sam in again after the next OS upgrade too.<\/p>\n

But if you are running some flavour of Linux, you might be able to install Darktable<\/a>.\u00a0 If you are running a Mac, it’s also possible, though looking at the instructions not entirely straightforward. If you are using Windows, you could run it in a virtual machine (likely to be slow)\u00a0 or should you be a true geek you might just be able to get it to run natively if you have most of your life to spare.<\/p>\n

Why should you want to? Well it does seem as if it is almost a alternative to Lightroom for the Linux user.\u00a0 Here is the start of the description from the web site<\/a>:<\/p>\n

darktable is an open source photography workflow application and RAW developer. A virtual lighttable and darkroom for photographers. It manages your digital negatives in a database, lets you view them through a zoomable lighttable and enables you to develop raw images and enhance them.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And here is most of what the FAQ says about a Windows version:<\/p>\n