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Comment by geerlingguy | Hacker News Reader

I’ve been using Linux on the server side exclusively for years and twice before tried to switch to Ubuntu and Fedora (two separate times during Apple’s butterfly-switch years).

So I do have some background but not a PhD in Linux in the Desktop.

What I’ve found is that if you’re mostly dealing with programming, dev work, and maybe some more specialized graphics work (not just twiddling with artwork and media using the computer as an artistic tool), almost any Linux desktop may be entirely adequate.

But if you do like (somewhat more) consistent UIs and a deep catalog (more than 2 in every category) of very good apps, your much better off in Mac/Windows :(

I’d like that to change but just like Fusion energy my excitement will not make it happen any sooner than 20 years from now. (I could’ve said that same thing the first time I tried Red Hat for my workstation (against Windows 3.1) in like 1996...).

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> But if you do like (somewhat more) consistent UIs and a deep catalog (more than 2 in every category) of very good apps, your much better off in Mac/Windows :(

The flip side of this is that the skills and apps you learn in the open source ecosystem have staying power.

I spent a lot of time learning to use old Photoshop versions pretty well, but these days I don't have a subscription with Adobe, so those skills have been lost to its walled garden.

However, I also spent a lot of time using GIMP during that period, and I can still leverage that knowledge 15 years later for free.

I doubt up to date GIMP has many more features than Photoshop CS2 which was a pay once license :)

I doubt it either, and I don't have CS2, unfortunately. However, GIMP gets the job done for my purposes, and I'm not limited to an old binary version that relies on components that will become increasingly deprecated with time.

edit: Ha, Adobe still has the download link for free Photoshop CS2 live. Apparently it works in Wine, too.

For anyone who is wondering, Photoshop CS2 works well on Wine stable on Linux. I'm going to be honest, CS2 and GIMP are pretty similar feature wise.

> Photoshop CS2 works well on Wine stable on Linux

But won't work on ARM, so it wouldn't work on Raspberry Pi 4. If Apple starts a wave with its much-suggested move to ARM, CS2 will not survive but GIMP likely will.

Definitely agree. It also crashes on a HiDPI screen, can't handle SVG or WebP and modern GIMP has more features.

Oh yeah, I hear you. I switched from Windows XP to OS X in the 10.4 days, and I definitely thought that if I ever left the Apple ecosystem, it would be to go to full time Linux on the desktop.

But then 12 years later, along came WSL, native ssh/scp, a getting-there package management story, and I ended up coming back to Windows 10 (power management on the XPS series seems to suck no matter what OS you run, though).

>happen any sooner than 20 years from now

Great news is that Apple is moving their laptops/desktops to to their ARM chips in the next 2 years. I expect that'll cause a surge in ARM support even in linux as a result.

You're right for GUI applications.

But if you replace "GUI application" with "programming tools", then the opposite becomes true. Linux is better in every respect for software development and deployment.

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