Why Free Open Source Software Is Cheaper Than You Think
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@stacksofplates last time I tried to ditch PS for Gimp I felt like I couldn't do anything I needed but maybe it was just a learning curve.
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@bigbear There definitely is a learning curve but it was also capable of less as well. This is going back years though.
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@bigbear said in Why Free Open Source Software Is Cheaper Than You Think:
@stacksofplates last time I tried to ditch PS for Gimp I felt like I couldn't do anything I needed but maybe it was just a learning curve.
It is different. It also doesn't hold your hand with anything. You need to leverage layers a lot more.
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@stacksofplates There are other costs to GIMP (I've used it, honestly prefer Paint.NET).
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Training. There are a bazillion classes, youtube videos, books, and even college courses that include photoshop. GIMP has significantly less available in this realm and while it has some free content it's less than 1% of what is out there for PS.
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Sunk Cost software - Photoshop for many is a sunk cost (They own it, have an Adobe subscription for Illustrator or other things you use, their company has paid for it). This also extends into arguments for why you should leave other commercial products when you already have an ELA etc for given software.
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Sunk Cost Training - If my staff knows how to use PS or other software, and has 5000 hours of experience with it, it's going to take a while for them to switch to GIMP. Even at 200 hours of lost productivity or slow work to get back up to speed on GIMP, if my labor is at $150 an hour (what I got quoted for a conversion job recently) It's going to cost me 30K to switch to GIMP.
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@john-nicholson said in Why Free Open Source Software Is Cheaper Than You Think:
@stacksofplates There are other costs to GIMP (I've used it, honestly prefer Paint.NET).
- Training. There are a bazillion classes, youtube videos, books, and even college courses that include photoshop. GIMP has significantly less available in this realm and while it has some free content it's less than 1% of what is out there for PS.
All that matters is that there is one good one, not that there is lots of random stuff. Maybe the stuff out there isn't good, I don't know. But like support or jobs, you only care that there is one for you, not lots that you don't use.
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This thread seems to have derailed into a full blown PS/GIMP thread... but anyway, I know PS used to be drastically more expensive, but it is now ~$115 a year for the subscription. The vast online resources are well worth that cost alone. I can google anything in PS and have about a million different solutions presented almost immediately. This isn't a case where having a massive community of non-professionals is detrimental and can seriously break important things. It's image editing... if you get bad advice you hit undo and try the next guide. I use it about twice a month and it's well worth the $115/year.
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@john-nicholson said in Why Free Open Source Software Is Cheaper Than You Think:
The only issue I have is Outlook crashes one a day, Skype 4 Buisness is unusable (but that's true on Windows) and Onedrive is a giant turd.
Now there are three reasons to install Nextcloud
Our Outlook add-in can help Outlook crash more, you can dump Skype and OneDrive and use the Nextcloud Video Calls and file handling. Kidding about the first one
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I'm a long time Linux advocate - heck, I volunteered in the KDE desktop community for over a decade and was community manager for openSUSE so you can't claim I have no horse in the game
But, honestly. Linux desktops are great for sysadmins and ppl who, like me, live in the browser and their mail client. Marketing folks, thus
But a designer or people who MUST use Microsoft office - I concede they're more productive with a WIndows or Mac, provided some expert (who probably runs Linux themselves) maintain and secure it and clean up the shit when it inevitably goes wrong...
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@john-nicholson said in Why Free Open Source Software Is Cheaper Than You Think:
@stacksofplates There are other costs to GIMP (I've used it, honestly prefer Paint.NET).
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Training. There are a bazillion classes, youtube videos, books, and even college courses that include photoshop. GIMP has significantly less available in this realm and while it has some free content it's less than 1% of what is out there for PS.
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Sunk Cost software - Photoshop for many is a sunk cost (They own it, have an Adobe subscription for Illustrator or other things you use, their company has paid for it). This also extends into arguments for why you should leave other commercial products when you already have an ELA etc for given software.
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Sunk Cost Training - If my staff knows how to use PS or other software, and has 5000 hours of experience with it, it's going to take a while for them to switch to GIMP. Even at 200 hours of lost productivity or slow work to get back up to speed on GIMP, if my labor is at $150 an hour (what I got quoted for a conversion job recently) It's going to cost me 30K to switch to GIMP.
Im not arguing with any of that. What I'm saying is 99.9% of the times I've seen someone say they can't use Linux because they can't use Photoshop they didn't need it. They aren't graphics professionals and rely on stolen/hacked versions of PS to do their work.
If you really need it you really need it, no argument there. But some hipster who "needs" it so he can make a new age poster for his craft beer room doesn't really "need" it.
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@stacksofplates said
If you really need it you really need it, no argument there. But some hipster who "needs" it so he can make a new age poster for his craft beer room doesn't really "need" it.
Are you talking about me?
Nah, I'm nowhere near a hipster.
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@john-nicholson said in Why Free Open Source Software Is Cheaper Than You Think:
Sunk Cost software - Photoshop for many is a sunk cost (They own it, have an Adobe subscription for Illustrator or other things you use, their company has paid for it). This also extends into arguments for why you should leave other commercial products when you already have an ELA etc for given software.
I'm in the same boat when I have to use a Windows machine. If I'm on Windows, I'm the least productive person. Git on Windows sucks. I don't have a lot of the daily tools I need to perform or have to make workarounds. So again I'm not disagreeing.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why Free Open Source Software Is Cheaper Than You Think:
@john-nicholson said in Why Free Open Source Software Is Cheaper Than You Think:
@stacksofplates There are other costs to GIMP (I've used it, honestly prefer Paint.NET).
- Training. There are a bazillion classes, youtube videos, books, and even college courses that include photoshop. GIMP has significantly less available in this realm and while it has some free content it's less than 1% of what is out there for PS.
All that matters is that there is one good one, not that there is lots of random stuff. Maybe the stuff out there isn't good, I don't know. But like support or jobs, you only care that there is one for you, not lots that you don't use.
Given the nature of graphics (There are endless amounts of techniques, plugins, designs, workflows) I'm going to disagree with you. This isn't training someone how to change a car filter, this is an art, not a science so while quality does matter, the breath of training is huge.
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@stacksofplates said in Why Free Open Source Software Is Cheaper Than You Think:
@john-nicholson said in Why Free Open Source Software Is Cheaper Than You Think:
@stacksofplates There are other costs to GIMP (I've used it, honestly prefer Paint.NET).
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Training. There are a bazillion classes, youtube videos, books, and even college courses that include photoshop. GIMP has significantly less available in this realm and while it has some free content it's less than 1% of what is out there for PS.
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Sunk Cost software - Photoshop for many is a sunk cost (They own it, have an Adobe subscription for Illustrator or other things you use, their company has paid for it). This also extends into arguments for why you should leave other commercial products when you already have an ELA etc for given software.
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Sunk Cost Training - If my staff knows how to use PS or other software, and has 5000 hours of experience with it, it's going to take a while for them to switch to GIMP. Even at 200 hours of lost productivity or slow work to get back up to speed on GIMP, if my labor is at $150 an hour (what I got quoted for a conversion job recently) It's going to cost me 30K to switch to GIMP.
Im not arguing with any of that. What I'm saying is 99.9% of the times I've seen someone say they can't use Linux because they can't use Photoshop they didn't need it. They aren't graphics professionals and rely on stolen/hacked versions of PS to do their work.
If you really need it you really need it, no argument there. But some hipster who "needs" it so he can make a new age poster for his craft beer room doesn't really "need" it.
When I was a storage admin it was pretty much impossible to do your job with Linux. Way too many windows specific dependencies. Even when I carried a MAC I ran Fusion to keep a windows VM for stuff.
Now that I'm at VMware 99% of our stuff is web based internally and we have a SSO portal (Workspace one) that I can sign into once a day and get into anything (even my 401K and external stuff).
Still, I do feel the need for a Full version of outlook (The web version has some issues and workflows are weird for some stuff), OneDrive and other tools to work with my team.
My podcasting and video production stuff (Camtasia, Audio Hijack) lacks anything of reasonable quality on Linux. Also, I collaborate with team members and we use proprietary project file formats for the editing and exporting to MP4 would lose the layering stuff.
I have to use Lync/S4B plugins to get on conference calls with some companies (The web version of this suck horribly).
I used to do a TON of EUC stuff (VDI Architect) and the reality is that on any OS or end user computer project all it takes is a SINGLE application not working for a project to fail.
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@john-nicholson said in Why Free Open Source Software Is Cheaper Than You Think:
@stacksofplates said in Why Free Open Source Software Is Cheaper Than You Think:
@john-nicholson said in Why Free Open Source Software Is Cheaper Than You Think:
@stacksofplates There are other costs to GIMP (I've used it, honestly prefer Paint.NET).
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Training. There are a bazillion classes, youtube videos, books, and even college courses that include photoshop. GIMP has significantly less available in this realm and while it has some free content it's less than 1% of what is out there for PS.
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Sunk Cost software - Photoshop for many is a sunk cost (They own it, have an Adobe subscription for Illustrator or other things you use, their company has paid for it). This also extends into arguments for why you should leave other commercial products when you already have an ELA etc for given software.
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Sunk Cost Training - If my staff knows how to use PS or other software, and has 5000 hours of experience with it, it's going to take a while for them to switch to GIMP. Even at 200 hours of lost productivity or slow work to get back up to speed on GIMP, if my labor is at $150 an hour (what I got quoted for a conversion job recently) It's going to cost me 30K to switch to GIMP.
Im not arguing with any of that. What I'm saying is 99.9% of the times I've seen someone say they can't use Linux because they can't use Photoshop they didn't need it. They aren't graphics professionals and rely on stolen/hacked versions of PS to do their work.
If you really need it you really need it, no argument there. But some hipster who "needs" it so he can make a new age poster for his craft beer room doesn't really "need" it.
When I was a storage admin it was pretty much impossible to do your job with Linux. Way too many windows specific dependencies. Even when I carried a MAC I ran Fusion to keep a windows VM for stuff.
Now that I'm at VMware 99% of our stuff is web based internally and we have a SSO portal (Workspace one) that I can sign into once a day and get into anything (even my 401K and external stuff).
Still, I do feel the need for a Full version of outlook (The web version has some issues and workflows are weird for some stuff), OneDrive and other tools to work with my team.
My podcasting and video production stuff (Camtasia, Audio Hijack) lacks anything of reasonable quality on Linux. Also, I collaborate with team members and we use proprietary project file formats for the editing and exporting to MP4 would lose the layering stuff.
I have to use Lync/S4B plugins to get on conference calls with some companies (The web version of this suck horribly).
I used to do a TON of EUC stuff (VDI Architect) and the reality is that on any OS or end user computer project all it takes is a SINGLE application not working for a project to fail.
And those are scenarios where you need something else. We have scenarios where it's easier for users to use ANSYS on a RHEL workstation because they can input directly into ANSYS GUI with commands rather than click through the GUI tree on the left to get a material and modify it like in the Windows version. They also do pretty heavy scripting of ANSYS and internal codes to manipulate answers that you can't do with Windows.
I think the storage stuff is starting to die off. We pretty much manage our Isilon exclusively from Linux (web/shell) and I know corporate could manage their NetApp (blah) with anything that has a web browser.
So again, not disagreeing with you, use what you need to.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why Free Open Source Software Is Cheaper Than You Think:
@john-nicholson said in Why Free Open Source Software Is Cheaper Than You Think:
@stacksofplates There are other costs to GIMP (I've used it, honestly prefer Paint.NET).
- Training. There are a bazillion classes, youtube videos, books, and even college courses that include photoshop. GIMP has significantly less available in this realm and while it has some free content it's less than 1% of what is out there for PS.
All that matters is that there is one good one, not that there is lots of random stuff. Maybe the stuff out there isn't good, I don't know. But like support or jobs, you only care that there is one for you, not lots that you don't use.
This is true, but as @stacksofplates mentioned only one really well known, well used solution - PhotoShop.
I agree with also, after using PhotoShop, GIMP is awful, down right painful to use.
Paint.NET is OK, still not as good as Corel Photo in my opinion.The point I'm driving at is there isn't really a good option there to most of use.
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@dashrender said in Why Free Open Source Software Is Cheaper Than You Think:
@scottalanmiller said in Why Free Open Source Software Is Cheaper Than You Think:
@john-nicholson said in Why Free Open Source Software Is Cheaper Than You Think:
@stacksofplates There are other costs to GIMP (I've used it, honestly prefer Paint.NET).
- Training. There are a bazillion classes, youtube videos, books, and even college courses that include photoshop. GIMP has significantly less available in this realm and while it has some free content it's less than 1% of what is out there for PS.
All that matters is that there is one good one, not that there is lots of random stuff. Maybe the stuff out there isn't good, I don't know. But like support or jobs, you only care that there is one for you, not lots that you don't use.
This is true, but as @stacksofplates mentioned only one really well known, well used solution - PhotoShop.
I agree with also, after using PhotoShop, GIMP is awful, down right painful to use.
Paint.NET is OK, still not as good as Corel Photo in my opinion.The point I'm driving at is there isn't really a good option there to most of use.
Not a good option for most? Most people don't even need a tool like this. Unless you are a serious pro, there are loads of basic image manipulation tools on Linux. Which ones have you tried? What job roles need or use tools like this? This seems to come up constantly as the main reason to not use Linux, yet I've never once worked a job and know very few people who use these tools. A basic image editor, sure, but Linux is loaded with good ones. Pro level stuff, sure GIMP isn't so easy to use if you already learned another tool but this might be nothing more than the "I don't want to change" argument where people try to say that Windows is easier than Linux but it turns out that, quite obviously, they learned one thing and just fear change. No doubt Photoshop is better than GIMP, but until you are into an edge case where you need special features, even GIMP is not something you'd install on a regular basis. I even support people who do graphics and this never comes up because they don't need that type of tool even then. It's a popular tool, but for actual business use, I cannot believe it is so common that every IT pro is hampered by it.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why Free Open Source Software Is Cheaper Than You Think:
@john-nicholson said in Why Free Open Source Software Is Cheaper Than You Think:
@scottalanmiller It's OK I got this!
Gentoo - The distro for people who like to beef up 15 year old Honda Civics with fancy lights because blue makes them go faster.
Ubuntu - The distro for people who like artisanal hand crafted coffee and cool backgrounds with each release.
Redhat/CentOS - For Grown ups who just want shit to work.
SuSE - Same as Redhat but for German's and Austrians for some reason.FreeBSD - For the paranoid
NetBSD - For your weird tin foil hat neighbor who wants to run something on his toaster.Windows 2000-2008R2 - For someone who likes to click next a lot
Windows 2012R2-2016 - For the people who like writing the longest possible CLI commands (Seriously Powershell!)MacOSX 1985 - 2009 - HIppies. Damn Dirty Hippies.
Mac OS X 2010 - current - Network and Unix administrators who hated putty, and wanted something as stable as their server to run as their desktop OS.
Linux on Desktop - For masochists who somehow lack my burning hatred for SystemD.
Where is OpenBSD?
It is relocating its address at every boot so no one knows where it is
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Well I have downloaded Inkscape but haven't had occasion to use it much.
If you have other graphics programs to recommend I'm all ears.
Personally I really like the Corel products, they seem much more straight forward to use than PS. So I'm definitely not stuck on the PS side of things.
I'm definitely a causal user -
@dashrender said in Why Free Open Source Software Is Cheaper Than You Think:
Well I have downloaded Inkscape but haven't had occasion to use it much.
If you have other graphics programs to recommend I'm all ears.
Personally I really like the Corel products, they seem much more straight forward to use than PS. So I'm definitely not stuck on the PS side of things.
I'm definitely a causal userI prefer Inkscape if I can do it. Vector is so much easier to work with than raster.
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@stacksofplates said in Why Free Open Source Software Is Cheaper Than You Think:
@dashrender said in Why Free Open Source Software Is Cheaper Than You Think:
Well I have downloaded Inkscape but haven't had occasion to use it much.
If you have other graphics programs to recommend I'm all ears.
Personally I really like the Corel products, they seem much more straight forward to use than PS. So I'm definitely not stuck on the PS side of things.
I'm definitely a causal userI prefer Inkscape if I can do it. Vector is so much easier to work with than raster.
Aww thanks - I don't deal with many vector images... so it's less useful for me.. again,, my noob is showing because I didn't recall that.
