I can't help feeling that this is just the same story as always.
Take the GIMP. It still isn't really compatible enough to be a drop-in replacement for Photoshop. It still has limitations on basic stuff like colour handling and typography. It still has a name that sounds like a sophomore's dirty joke. If all you need is a basic image retouching application for photos on your web site, it's fine. For full professional use, it's not even close.
The same arguments applies to almost all of the "big name" FOSS competitors to dominant proprietary applications from the likes of Microsoft and Adobe: data portability isn't quite good enough, features are missing or underpowered, and usability is often inferior. They're fine as free substitutes and good enough for basics (which for many people is sufficient) but the "high" prices of the professional applications are justified in a heartbeat if you have real work to do as a power user.
What I don't understand is why FOSS continues to be dominated by cheap knock-offs in these fields. One man wrote TeX, albeit one exceptionally talented and driven man, and to this day a whole industry uses it in preference to anything else because it does what it does differently and much better than the mainstream products. There's still plenty its users would like to improve, but then that's true of Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite too, and they have barely changed in years despite the vast resources available to their development teams.
In short, if the FOSS world wants to compete in the market for mainstream creative applications, it needs to start innovating and change the rules so the presumption isn't that the FOSS has to (try to) match incumbent proprietary products on their own terms. The question shouldn't be whether you can cycle between .docx and .odt without messing up your formatting or whether you can translate an AI file to an Inkscape-friendly SVG and back without losing details. The question should be why you'd want to in the first place.
You could also say that new commercial applications are cheap knockoffs of older versions. Win8 is joke compared to Win7, Office 2003 is better than 20something. New Photoshop brings zero improvement except some crazy DRM.
Open-source programs are at least stable. It is less likely some commercial company will flush my investment into toilet.
And Photoshop is probably better than Gimp, but in other areas the winner is not that clear. For example OpenOffice versus MS Office. Or my favorite example KWin versus.... nothing.
You could also say that new commercial applications are cheap knockoffs of older versions.
We certainly don't bother with the upgrade treadmill here. We'll spend a small fortune on serious software if it has demonstrable value to us. But upgrade to a recent version of MS Office on the desktop? I suppose that's marginally more likely than us signing up to a recurring subscription for something we already bought once, where the "enhancements" mostly involve added DRM, randomly changing user interfaces, paying several times as much in practice for useful software, and cloud serv^W^Wsecurity, reliability, sustainability and privacy risks that we would never seriously consider taking.
Open-source programs are at least stable. It is less likely some commercial company will flush my investment into toilet.
I so wish that were true. In reality, I don't find most FOSS native applications significantly better or worse in this respect than proprietary/commercial ones.
Still, both are dramatically better than most SaaS applications or magically changing software like Firefox and Chrome.
Seconded. Until recently I've kept a copy of oprn office/libre office around for longer documents. Until office 2010 I used to joke about word only being able to deal with up to 25 pages and less than two authors (i.e. one)
Of course seasoned professionals can use Word but for general office... no. Most people didn't understand styles in Word
>>One man wrote TeX, albeit one exceptionally talented and driven man, and to this day a whole industry uses it in preference to anything else because it does what it differently and much better than the mainstream product.
I'm assuming that industry is academia? LaTeX was almost all I saw in university but that definitely changed once I entered industry. I don't know any professional technical writers that use it. I'm not dogging it and think its great (my resume is in LaTeX) I don't know if its comparable of the other programs (Office and CS) that you mentioned that aim for a much broader appeal. It has a market but it is a small niche one.
I'm not dogging it and think its great (my resume is in LaTeX) I don't know if its comparable of the other programs (Office and CS) that you mentioned that aim for a much broader appeal. It has a market but it is a small niche one.
That's true, and in a way it's part of my point. Trying to take on one-size-fits-all giants is probably not a good long-term strategy for FOSS, because the barrier to entry is prohibitively high and you drain a lot of resources (primarily enthusiastic volunteers) away from other projects they could potentially have supported instead. But pick a niche, or get a larger team together to build something more general but with a different perspective than the likes of Office and CS, and as the likes of TeX (or Sublime Text, as a more contemporary example) show, not many people can get remarkable things built.
It's quite widely used for technical publishing in general, not necessarily in academia. Typeset equations in many high-profile publishing packages are still somewhere between abysmal and horrible, so there's still some incentive to its use.
Outside that? Probably not, but there's a lot of polarization in modern typography. Much of it is either of exceptional quality that goes beyond "just" advanced typesetting, or of such a poor taste that Word suffices.
I've always held the opinion that it is a miracle Microsoft Word even works at all. It's a gigantic one tool fits all writing application that's implemented on a feature by feature basis into a mega program with thousands of clashes and interactions... and it works.
It's insane, and then programmers come along and try to emulate such insanity in an open source program. It doesn't work.
All that said. I feel Blender is becoming another miracle. The platform they have made is very flexible. It's compositing system has insane potential. The workflow is great and getting better, support is great and getting better.
I don't know why blender isn't seeing more popularity, Maya must be F#$ing nirvana.
I don't know why blender isn't seeing more popularity, Maya must be F#$ing nirvana.
I can think of at least one obvious (if you work in the industry) reason for that one: Autodesk software uses FBX, and so does the workflow for many professionals, but Blender doesn't support FBX comprehensively and only added FBX import within the past year.
However, if this new addition is a permanent development and free of serious legal wrangles, it could be a game-changer. I know plenty of people in the 3D modelling industry who already prefer Blender in general, but for compatibility and workflow reasons have been stuck in Autodesk world. Given the obvious cost implications but also the hassles with buying Autodesk software even if you're willing to pay, and then the treadmill of commercial training and documentation to make up for the weaknesses in the official documentation and not always great usability of the product itself, there is more incentive to jump ship in this case than for almost any other kind of software I'm familiar with.
Ugh, GIMPShop. The websites that Google gives you links you to the "source" for the latest version for Linux. That would be fine, I'm not adverse to compiling user space apps, but it actually just links you to GIMPs source!
Apart from that, I've been trying to replace the Adobe suite with FOSS tools for web design. Where I struggle, is I have been trying to learn it I'm the same way I learnt photoshop: specific tutorials to what I'm trying to so. Unfortunately, GIMP and Inkscape sort of lack those :(
However, I am learning regardless, and I think soon I'll be ready to switch entirely, so there's that! Only issue I have is working with other designers (I'm a developer mostly) -- I get a complex pdf, and can't open it without CS. Any ideas how to get around that?
As an aside, I would pay good money (literally) for a FOSS (you read that right) cross platform Fireworks replacement. Still my favourite web design app by far!
IMHO, why don't you use Inkscape for web design prototypes, since it interface and behaviors are more suited to it? I don't understand the need to use a Photo manipulation tool for that.
You know I have had this discussion with with many engineers across not just design tools, but the entire software ecosystem. If its not design its IDE's or CAD/CAM or its Math and Engineering. The honest truth is I could be a professional graphics designer using GIMP. No its not Photoshop, but you don't need Photoshop to be a professional designer. I know a few designers and even a few photographers that use nothing but GIMP and Inkscape to make their money.
Graphics design is not my area of expertise, but I get the same argument in software development. People tell me all the time that you can't do "real programming" in anything but Visual Studios. I chuckle a little since I have no been professionally doing software development for over a decade using nothing but F/OSS tools. Really all those individuals are telling me is that they are not skilled in the field, but rather they are skilled with one tool. There is nothing wrong with that as you need to have skill with your tool, but if you understand the fundamentals of the discipline then you can work with most functional tools. Often I see people blaming their tools to cover up for their own lack of understanding.
It's not really about what software X or Y can do on Linux compared to Adobe softs but wether it can open this or that Adobe format with 0 issues.
The graphic industry is all about formats.
Adobe dominates the publishing and graphic design world(ironicaly because of piracy which didnt destroy Adobe but all the small vendors). So a tool that cant open or edit properly the last psd,ai format version... is almost worthless in a professional environment,
Microsoft sticks with their file formats for backwards compatibility, I'm sure they'd love to start fresh but it's not for the reason of stifling competition.
Microsoft doesn't release documentation on their specifications and constantly adds new ones, which are even harder to understand.
Format specifications are the reason microsoft is where it is today. It is the single business asset that gave them much needed leverage during the 90ties and earlier 2000s to dominate the enterprise market.
Microsoft defended and developed that asset extremely aggressively throughout the years and this policy lead to perceiving MS/Bill Gates as cut-throat businessman.
i tried using gimp. hell i spent more than a decade using linux as my main os. but why does noone ever mention the lack of non destructive layer effects in gimp? it's probably the biggest showstopper i can think of.
yes you can simulate them with script use[1]. these scripts however are destructive. meaning you can't on the fly adjust or change your effects at a later point.
pick up a random ios or web design tutorial, and chances are a decent amount of the tutorial is all about setting and tuning layer effects. yes, maybe this is not what professional graphics artists do, but if we're talking consumer facing products pixelmators last major release 3.0 was all about layer effects.
and yes, I could build it myself, like i built other things i wanted to work in linux like webcam drivers, various things in mplayer, but something i might use every now and then? i got an old cs4 license lying around and am very happy with it tyvm. works in wine too, not as smooth as gimp, but at least i got the basic stuff that's needed hammered down.
to be fair i think for a long time gimp was almost a one man show, and i applaud them for it, but i fear gimp never got the traction it needed.
I think a totally biased summary can sometimes help more than a slow "pluses and minuses" article.
Here are my biases (as an amateur who still does some reasonably large publishing and graphics projects in Linux):
Inkscape - Actually good program. It's not an illustrator clone but a reworking of CorelDraw but it's very logical on it's own terms, it's a program you can enjoy using once you get used to it.
Gimp - annoying, kind of awful interface but you use to get things done once you learn. It's a program only a mother could but which might have eventual tolerance of.
Scribus - craptastically broken. It will destroy your work and delay your project even after you've learned all it's pathological foibles. It's one program where I actually feel constant hostility towards the author while I'm using it.
Personally, I think Scribus is more ready for professional use than Gimp. It's just that its workflow is very very different from InDesign, and it's a little less suited to artistic layouts. I can't imagine anyone who'd really want to use MS Publisher instead, though, even if ID is arguably better. Maybe Publisher has improved a lot since I last used it, though.
Also, I keep getting more and more impressed with Darktable.
I've used Scribus 1.3 fairly extensively and it was one of the worst program I've ever had the displeasure of wrangling with. I see they're only up to 1.4.1 and I'm doubtful that much change could have made. For example, have they reworked the bizarro auto-page-number editting system? Does undo work (it failed 80% of the time when I've used it).
Well, I'm on 1.4.x, but I've used versions of it for a while. I don't think page numbers are hard. You just insert a page number on a master page and it they number correctly on all the rest of your pages.
I've never had a problem, even if it's frequently easier to use the keyboard than the mouse for things.
Undo works, but you might want to up the number of steps it saves as undo-able. The default is 20, and you can waste a lot of buffer with minor tweaks.
For me, Gimp, Scribus and InkScape cover just about anything I would want to do but, then again, I'm not a professional designer. They take a bit of learning that's all. Scribus reminds me of QuarkXPress which I always preferred to InDesign. As an aside, I have just discovered Gimp's "Single-Window Mode". It's a godsend for anyone who uses a tiling window manager.
Darktable, which is mentioned in passing in the article, is really a great application already. For those who haven't yet seen it, I would highly recommend checking it out. IMHO its development community could benefit from some more voices, and there are definitely some annoying 'features', but it's truly an excellent tool for producing finished images from digital photography. http://www.darktable.org/
Whenever you need an SVG, just build a one-off program to output the SVG. For Java [1] applications, there's an excellent open-source tool for this already [2].
Take the GIMP. It still isn't really compatible enough to be a drop-in replacement for Photoshop. It still has limitations on basic stuff like colour handling and typography. It still has a name that sounds like a sophomore's dirty joke. If all you need is a basic image retouching application for photos on your web site, it's fine. For full professional use, it's not even close.
The same arguments applies to almost all of the "big name" FOSS competitors to dominant proprietary applications from the likes of Microsoft and Adobe: data portability isn't quite good enough, features are missing or underpowered, and usability is often inferior. They're fine as free substitutes and good enough for basics (which for many people is sufficient) but the "high" prices of the professional applications are justified in a heartbeat if you have real work to do as a power user.
What I don't understand is why FOSS continues to be dominated by cheap knock-offs in these fields. One man wrote TeX, albeit one exceptionally talented and driven man, and to this day a whole industry uses it in preference to anything else because it does what it does differently and much better than the mainstream products. There's still plenty its users would like to improve, but then that's true of Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite too, and they have barely changed in years despite the vast resources available to their development teams.
In short, if the FOSS world wants to compete in the market for mainstream creative applications, it needs to start innovating and change the rules so the presumption isn't that the FOSS has to (try to) match incumbent proprietary products on their own terms. The question shouldn't be whether you can cycle between .docx and .odt without messing up your formatting or whether you can translate an AI file to an Inkscape-friendly SVG and back without losing details. The question should be why you'd want to in the first place.