My Summer Holiday (Vacation)

This column is dedicated to Linux and photography. It started out as a platform to rant and rave, to show that I am both cantankerous and crotchety. Over the last twelve months photography and Linux has come on leaps and bounds, or at least it appears that way to me. I am however far from a creature of habit. I still drift my workflow according to the situation. Final edits are often done with the Gimp, but I do use other things. LightZone is my preferred tool for adjusting lighting. I use Geeqie to review a shoot. There I go again, repeating myself. What has this to do with holidays?

It is August and here in the Northern hemisphere it is the holiday season. I have just packed my bags and set off on the annual family trek to the coast of Devon in the south west of England. It is a beautiful part of the country. The coast is full of coves and inlets that were, thankfully in the distant past, home to smugglers. The point here is not to teach you how to smuggle contraband but talk about taking photographs of the coves and manipulating the resultant images. The big problem is exposure. Lots of water and sky, lots of deep shadows mixed with brilliant highlights and not much approaching a mid grey tone to take your exposure from.

When I set off on my holiday I want minimum luggage. I have a small car and it is packed with everything that makes my holiday, photography is just a means of recording the time. It is not the purpose of the week. I am going to relax. I take my DSLR but limit myself to a single lens and I take a compact point and shoot. The only other luxuries are spare batteries and my laptop. In truth the laptop is there for other things as well. I have no tripod, no fist of filters. I am just after holiday snaps, an Instamatic would probably suffice.

What is my problem? Today we have a multitude of photographic correction tools. I tell you I use LightZone, but this is a commercial product. I only have it licensed for my desktop. I can run it in trial mode on my laptop but this is a slightly crippled version. I also believe in following the terms of a license. I prefer open source licenses but if they are worth what I believe then I must comply with other licenses, if I use software issued under their regulation. In short, I do not use LightZone to correct my exposure on the laptop. The excessive choice I have for tools was now my problem. I could use the Gimp, of course. This was not my only option. In fact I decided to try Rawtherapee. I struggled with getting the exposure correction I wanted. Help!

What a disaster. Not Rawtherapee but my inability to understand what I was doing. I was getting holiday snaps. Losing sight of that almost spoilt the holiday. I did not need perfect exposure, composition was secondary to the content. The pictures were memory joggers, an aide memoir for later years. They were badly exposed, composition was none existent and yet everyone was happy with them! It just goes to show that there is something more important than getting it correct, knowing your audience. This is a valuable lesson for any shoot. All the Linux users crying for this software or that utility should take a step back and ask what they are taking their pictures for. Windows/Linux/OSX, it does not matter. What matters is the end result.

And for the record after the holiday I can report that I used the point and shoot more than the DSLR. I did not use Rawtherapee, I will now use that back at home to compare with the Gimp and LightZone. The laptop was used briefly to review using Geeqie, but only to check I had captured the moment. I enjoyed my rest and Linux ensured I concentrated on the pleasure rather than the work. I have posted a couple of snaps, you can see that the quality is poor but I did enjoy myself.

Family Ties

I do have interests outside of Linux and photography. It is amazing how often that I can work the use of these into my other interests. I have started the obsession of looking for my ancestors, pushing my way down the root system that is my family tree. There are many Free software programs available to manage the collected data. As a Gnome user I have chosen Gramps, although I believe that is is good for anyone using any desktop.

Gramps is just a purpose built database with a GUI. The GUI is naturally tailored for the job in hand, recording data about people, their relationships with others and their environment. Gramps is a very professional program. I have seen few programs that have such extensive facilities. It is a credit to the bizarre method of software development that is Free Software. It has a nice user interface, many features use its own pluggin system. Best of all it just works allowing me so many options to view my family history that I get lost at times! I have looked at commercial options and they can be good too. I have not yet seen one I like as much as Gramps, and all the ones that were worth any cash would have required me to switch to Windows, not an option in truth.

Photography does come into it. I need to record details of people. Photographs always help us remember and a family history should be just that, a history. Bearing this in mind how have I used it to date? I have a few old photographs of my great grandparents, these need retouching. I have taken a few trips to places my ancestors live. I can record at least the current aspects of these location. Some of my ancestors come from a small Nottinghamshire village of Tuxford. I have a picture of Tuxford Parish church, where some of my family marriages (see the photo attached). All this to tell you about my latest find, we are getting there.

Tuxford Parish Church is a nice old church, it dates from the 12th century. It has a large cemetery but it is difficult to get a good view of the church without a building or tree getting in the way. I was limited to my 24mm wide angle lens. My best shot of the whole church had major perspective distortion. Easy to fix in the Gimp, or so I thought. I had not used the perspective correction tool for over 12 months. I struggled and then decided to look up how to do it on the internet, rather than using the manual. I do this because some people get a good hack on how to use a tool and make my job easier. It did not work, the manual explains the tool very well. Fixing the distortion, as well as could be in my opinion, took just 5 minutes. What I did fall on was a site called Meet the Gimp. It is brilliant, an opinion I know but it is mine and you are reading my blog. What did I learn? Not to over correct, leave a little distortion in, otherwise it will not look natural. I knew this is the days when I used to prop up one side of the the enlarger table with a book. Digital does tend to make me forget the simple, Meet the Gimp gave me the nudge I needed.

Meet the Gimp is a nice series of photographic based video instructions. I learnt more in an hour watching a couple of episodes than I have watching days of material on other sites. The episodes appear to be released weekly, or even more frequently if you look at the archives. Even if you are an experienced Gimp user it is worth looking at how somebody else does things. It is not just about the Gimp, they had a review of Darktable recently. It appears to be a video blog on photography as much as anything. Try it, you will not be disappointed.

The Dark side of Light

Linux and photography are broad churches. They encompass philosophies that meet and diverge in a complicated structure meant to drive you wild. I can get a little wound up. Why do I use Linux? Because using one product for all my photographic needs would not satisfy me. Using any commercial operating system would cost me a fortune in software purchases. With Linux I can try things without any cost and I can alter and adapt, should I wish. I have stated before that I use Geeqie and the Gimp or LightZone, but I am always looking for better.

I like Geeqie for its speed and flexibility, the Gimp for its completeness of features and LightZone for the way it views exposure, using a zone based system. Each is chosen for a reason that I like. None is the perfect answer. I have tried Windows and Mac OS software, I get on better with the Linux options (although LightZone is available on all three). I do sometimes look at what is available. This month I got the urge to look for something that was better. I started to look at a few old products and one I have not tried before.

I tried Rawtherapee again, and found it was much better than I remember. The major fault as a first instance in my workflow is that it is not that quick. Otherwise I was impressed. It has got a place on all my machines as a just in case option, that I will use. I can see that Rawtherapee could be a good option, if it had a little more pace I would use it more. I also tried Rawstudio, but this was not for me and will not be put onto my default desktop build. I did not like the colours I saw on the screen but it was reasonably quick. I am very concious that colour matters and rawstudiuo does not meet my criteria. It is also a little unfair, it is a RAW developer not a photo manager/editor like the other packages I am looking at. Compared to Ufraw it does a good job, but I prefer and use Ufraw for the GIMP.

The biggest improvement that I saw was in digiKam. Being a Gnome Gnutter I find it difficult to admit that KDE has got it just about right with their offerings for photography. I will not switch to digiKam as I run on Gnome and just starting it up appears to take forever. This is not a fault of digiKam or even the KDE project, it is my insistence on running Gnome. It does appear to offer most of what I want from photographic software. I would probably need a few trips into the GIMP for those times when only a full editor is the answer but it looks like those trips would be very few now. I admit that the only problem I have with digiKam is that it looks like KDE. Me being belligerent? Yes, but I only use what I like. If you are a KDE fan or willing to put up with the cramped user interface then it is powerful and can do most things without the need for the GIMP.

I also looked at Darktable. This is a new piece of software to me and I was impressed. It was slow, even slower than rawtherapee. What it did give me was an interface that I could understand and use. One thing that was missing was a simple method of correcting red eye, or at least I did not find it. I noticed the red eye correction problem as I was looking at some party photographs that did exhibit a little red eye. This meant I had to throw things into LightZone/the Gimp for a tweak, and it did not justify the complexity of the Gimp. Another issue is that the user interface is for me a little confused. This is something I could learn to live with but it is not the best. I did work out that to go between lighttable and darkroom modes you had to click on the mode title! Not a normal interface decision and there was no indication that it was acting like a menu option. The big problem for me is the apparent lack of speed. If it were as quick as my favoured Geeqie it would be high up on the contenders list. The speed issues are not major, opening a picture in darkroom mode or importing from a file was the major one. It appears slower than rawtherapee

There are good points. The comparison feature is excellent, as good as I have seen. Getting it working is another example of poor design. It is easy to do but less than intuative. So much so that in the short time I was using the software I kept forgetting and now as I write this I foget what I needed to do. Documentation would go far to correcting this one. Another very small problem was compiling the software. There are packages for Ubuntu and Arch linux, instructions for gentoo (and funtoo) but Fedora and other rpm variants need to use the generic installation instructions. I am not technical, although am capable of typing ./configure, make, make install but this is a hassle.

The version I tested was 0.5 so missing documentation is forgiveable. Inconsistencies in the user interface can also be overlooked at this early stage while the developers push to understand the direction they are heading. Not having a package for fedora is understandable, I would only want to generate one package in the early stages. I can be convinced that the speed issues are minor at an early stage. Very much a work in progress this one. But I will keep my eye on it as I like it.

Out with the Old in with the New - Fedora 13 Beta

Linux takes the spotlight, although photography will get a mention. Best of all there is not a lot to get crotchety about. I have been playing with the beta version of Fedora 13. It appears that the Fedora project is getting better at releases. This just like the last two appears very stable for a beta release. I remember when pre-release versions of Fedora were anything but stable. This beta version does look good, in fact the looks of the desktop is (IMHO) getting to compete with any system now. Icons are cleaner, more detailed. The colours look realistic, thanks to Gnome Color Manager. Everything feels like it is at home on this desktop. I am using the Gnome version of Fedora, I have had a look at the KDE version and that too is an improvement on the old version.

I cannot say that the installation went well, but it was all down to my impatience. The first boot after installation took forever. If you are having problems then just keep waiting! It took over 30 minutes on my machine. I was expecting problems installing it on my laptop, especially with the video driver. It was as though I wanted the new version of the nouveau driver to have problems with my video card, because it always did. Wrong! It worked perfectly, although it is not supporting 3D graphics yet. Some Nvidia cards will get 3D out of this driver but not mine. For me this is not a problem. Suspend works, this is the first release I have seen that work every time without a hiccup.

My laptop is actually a tablet PC and being able to use the tablet features is nice. I can use the pen or the touch screen. The touch screen is not great but I never use it anyway. When using the pen as my pointer everything is fine. I would just like to be able to calibrate the screen, the pointer drifts in the corners. The web camera on the laptop works fine with Cheese Webcam Booth. My finger print reader worked out of the box. This is a first for a Fedora installation on the laptop, everything working very quickly.

Photography? Well all my favourites work fine. Geeqie, UFRaw and the Gimp are all fine but are the same versions in this beta release as in Fedora 12. This is not a problem as they all do what I require. I did try LightZone and it also worked fine. This is pretty much what you would expect from any Linux distribution today. Integration with Gnome Color Manager? I found no issues. I found that the version of Gnome Color Manager integrated in Fedora 13 worked better than the version from the Gnome GIT, that I compiled myself to work on Fedora 12. In what way did it work better? It picked up devices more reliably, my compiled version always failed to see my cameras. This was not a major detraction for me but it may put a few off. Once the package was an integrated system all this worked well and it must have been down to me. Any serious photographer should try Fedora 13 just to get Gnome Color Manager!

The other new features? I have tried the new version of rpm, no problems to report. In fact package management is much better. I did test the automatic printer configuration. I plugged my printer in to see what would happen and I got an icon in my Task bar, then a window opened but it was blank. The window closed and I noticed that any part of the screen that had been refreshed lacked any text! On restarting the system I tried again and got told there was no driver for the Canon ip5200 I own, pressing search launched a second search (of Gutenprint) when it found a driver. A nice touch that we can configure printers automatically.

I have not gone out to try very much. I have used my system as normal and everything is working. That is all I need to know. My conclusion is that this Beta version is the most stable Beta that I have tried and works for me. If it did not have Gnome Color Manager I doubt if I would have rushed to install Fedora 13. There is nothing too exciting in the feature list. Gnome Color Manager changed my attitude. I am glad it did, everything is working much better. The whole system is starting to have a much more professional feel. My biggest problem is that I am reduced to a user rather than a system admin looking to fix small niggles. This means I have time to catch up on all those projects. Where do I start?

Best of all the Fedora 13 Beta lifts my photographic workflow up a notch and I can look at Windows and Mac OS and wonder why?

It is spring again

Linux, photography and spring. It should be a intoxicating mix. I went out and took a few shots on Easter weekend. I even resorted to flash the family in the house. Ask them, it is rare for me to resort to flash indoors. Easter in the UK was not fantastic weather, so I was not disappointed at having to stay inside for a few hours playing with my workflow. Are you like me? Workflow is just a useful phrase to describe the time I want to play with the computer.

So is it a shoot when I am outside? It is rare. I always intend to take the camera. But the DSLR is HUGE and gets in the way. The point and click is small and gives good shots but even this is a bulk in the pockets. I always have my iPhone but have never been convinced by the camera, in fact little on that particular phone convinces me. When I play golf a camera is inappropriate. When I play rugby is is a liability! At family gatherings the camera is a conversation killer. In the streets the movement towards ensuring our freedom means that cameras carried by humans are social outcasts, yet CCTV is something we overlook.

Yes, as a photographer you are a social outcast, whatever your computer operating system. If we are not careful we restrict our shoots to recording the mundane. Certainly my shots have altered in the last few years. In the past I took town and city architecture, I loved landscapes and I certainly recorded people at events who I did not know. I find that as I get older I make more and more excuses and my photography tends towards the family bore rather than artistic trend setter.

What has this to do with Linux? I sat down and reflected on my Easter efforts, lots of shots of family, eggs and other seasonal things. All recorded well, but without heart. What my photography needed was a well defined workflow, something people tell me is not easy on Linux. I have now mulled this over and decided. It is tosh! Of course workflow on Linux is difficult, it is on Windows and Mac OS. It is not a simple story anywhere and if it is any different than our art will suffer! Yes, there are two things wrong. First I use workflow as an excuse, a flat shoot is blamed on Linux workflow. Then I compound it by using the same workflow to produce technically good pictures but with no heart!

I am guilty of blaming Linux for my lack of artistic flair. It is of course a pathetic worker who blames his tools! There is nothing wrong with my workflow on Linux. My pictures on the other hand are poor. They are poor for two reasons. First, I do not practise enough. Second, I am obsessed with Linux being just as good as any other operating systems. There is, of course, only one cure, more practise.

I am tied to my art.

Photography on Linux is supposed to make you cantankerous, at least a little crotchety. It is at its best no different to Windows or Apple systems. At its worst it is a little frustrating, even these days. I can think of nothing I need, in terms of software, for my photography. Quite the opposite! In fact the number of available applications is getting to be a problem! Still, after my last posting I thought I better report on another find. I had found out that gphoto2 allowed me to play with tethering my camera to my Fedora laptop. I suggested that it was just a toy and one that I did not, in truth, need. I still cannot let go, my camera is attached to my laptop as I write this. Of course, the snaps are rubbish, but it keeps me off the street. I have started to write a python script to help me use my tethered camera, but this is so much effort.

I have come across another piece of software, Capa. It is, as the website tells us, "built on top of libgphoto". It is just like my python script and will suffer with the same problems I am finding with gphoto2. But it is written and ready to run, as long as you understand that there has not even been a first release version, so you can expect a few teething problems. I cannot alter any of the settings on My Nikon. This is not too much of a problem as I can do this from the command line. The application does show the current state of all the settings. I am sure this will be fixed before a real release.

It does let me review all my shots and the last one taken is my viewfinder. Not brillient but then I cannot get 'gphoto2 --capture-preview' working when using my Nikon. I know it is a gphoto2 problem.

Capa will be almost what I want. Now what do I do? Nag the development team to add the features that I want? Or do I continue with development of my Python script. This is a hard one to answer at the moment. I will let you know what I choose and I will always keep an eye on Capa, once it is at a release level I will let you know what it can do.

Have I got a problem with the current state of photography on Linux? I do not think so. For me we are now where we need to be. You can do anything that Apple and Windows users can do. There may be a few bells and whistles missing, it could be 6 months before a newbie would have the same view.

As good as Windows/OSX?

Crotchety? I am fed up with Windows users telling me that Linux is OK but not good enough for photography. The same goes for Apple users. I know that they have all paid a lot more for their software. Their own personal investment is much higher than mine in financial terms. I on the other hand have invested time in helping the developers of Linux. Not a great deal but what I can afford. I do get cantankerous when people tell me it is not as good as their system.

Some myths can be blown to pieces. 16 bit colour? Of course the Gimp does not support it yet, Cinepaint and DigiKam have for some time. Just like Windows or Mac OS then? Some support it and some do not. Colour management is supposed to be none existant. I am sure that the Argyllcms project would be miffed. There are many other examples. What can Windows do that Linux cannot? I thought I could name name one, tethered shooting. But I have hit upon an old favorite, gphoto, while browsing. It does not fit into my current workflow, so I just did not bother with it. I find it can now provide remote control of cameras.

I have not looked at it in great depth but it does work. It can be used for time-lapse photography, for tweaking the settings on your macro photograhy. There are even options on my Nikon DSLR to control the flash system, giving it the potential to be used in the studio. I think it will be a toy for most of us at present, until we get a photographer friendly interface.

It can download a picture without it ever hitting the memory card! This gives me even more space for long shoots when I am tethered. For me this is no great benefit, but the ability to review a shot on a larger screen is. You can use a script to pipe the shot directly into your favorite editor or even print directly, providing a very large and expensive Polaroid PoGo camera! You may have gathered that I will not use it that much. This though is an advantage of the freedom of Linux, I am free to do what I want.

I would use it more if it were not a command line interface. I can write a few scripts if I really needed it. No GUI? There is in gtkam but this does not ship for my Fedora system (and compiling it is beyond a quick ./configure && make && make install). I have started to write a GUI based application for my Camera. I can take a snap, see it on the screen (if it is a jpeg, it does not work with RAW files). I can review lots of settings, but set none. If I get time it may work. If I can make it a little more flexible I may even release it to the world.

Does this make Linux better or worse than Windows/Mac? Both! I have to say the only solution I know of for tethering is a mere toy (multican is also available for Canon users). On the other hand I have seen several postings from Windows users asking for gphoto for Windows! Why? They are Windows users who do not want to pay for Nikon's solution, there are others who just want a command line utility. Windows users also want some freedom.

This highlights the advantages and disadvantages of Linux. You have to be willing to put the effort in. If you do not put in the effort, become part of the community then why do you expect it to give you what you want? Do I do my bit? I think I do but as with most I probably do not do enough.

Books are done for

Cantankerous? I am. Running Linux at home has given my local bookshop and Amazon a boost in sales. At work it is different. It appears the days when my employer is willing to pay for a book are over. Now I have to "download a pee dee eff". Books are a source of nourishment for me. Their demise is a sad day. Only this week I was in a bookshop and glad I did not have a spare few British pounds in my pocket. I would have bought another book I did not need or want, until I saw it in the store and the desire set in. I will get the money for this volume eventually, pay day comes along soon.

I am crotchety about the demise of books, even passionate. But they are not the books in the subject of this rant! My subject is netbooks! I believe that they are dead! When they first arrived on the scene in the UK £200 appeared to be the price target. This appears to be moving upward and ever closer to the falling price of the laptop. Be honest, what would you prefer the 15 inch screen and dual core processor of the £500 laptop or make do with a 10 inch screen and a single core atom for £300.

What accounts for the price increase of the netbook? The Atom processor is new but should be a similar price to the older processors, especially in these hard times. The biggest change is the move to Windows! As soon as Linux was replaced these units became small laptops. Many linux distributions have been written for these devices, a special user interface developed. I saw a windows machine in a large electrical retailer's store this week. You guessed it. It looked just like Windows. No special account of the small 10 inch screen, it is a small underpowered laptop. I have now seen a 14 inch, Windows powered netbook advertised, at a higher price still! Why is this a netbook? Presumably the atom processor.

The move to Windows has been welcomed by some. Linux fanatics may be annoyed that open source is again loosing ground to commercial reality. I am saddened to see the demise of a machine type. What is frightening is that this battle has killed the very machine form it was all over.

Neither Windows or Linux has won with the merge of the netbook and laptop into a single form. The looser is the user. He has less choice. This for me is what Linux is about, choice. I do not want Windows to fail, I want the choice. I choose to be crotchety. What my operating or machine form is is I don't care. I just want that choice.

Matching Colours.

Photography on Linux is not the smoothest of rides. Good software is available to do most things. There are problems. The Gimp is a good example. Photographers want 16 bit colour, the project does not want to deliver it just yet. It should not be too difficult, Cinepaint has already proven that. What is the problem? The project's priority. We should try not to get crotchety about this. Projects have to set out their stall, let the community know what they are working on. In the case of larger projects like the Gimp these paths have to be agreed. What photographers need to do is get more involved in the communities so that their voice is heard when project plans are considered.

16 bit colour has not been a problem for me. What has been a problem is colour matching. You know, the profile for you camera, printer and screen are all loaded and then colours look the same on all the devices you use. Apple users have had it for ages, Windows has had colour profiling for quiet a long time. It has even been available on Linux for some time, but it was not integrated well between applications. My friends include a couple of KDE users, who tell me that colour management is now available on KDE and has been for a short time. Now Richard Hughes has given Gnome a package, available in the GIT. It is not perfect yet, far from it. My workflow is not yet all covered but it is getting better.

Has it made a difference? It has. Suddenly my prints have at least the colour cast I expect. It has made a much bigger difference than 16 bit colour ever has for me. And I said that the Gnome package was far from perfect, but is being actively worked on. Even with this development package colour profiles have made such a difference to the enjoyment I get from photography. So much so, I am looking at hardware calibration possibilities! This could cost a lot of money but it looks like it will be worth it.

A Huey is reasonable value and will allow my screens to be calibrated. A ColorMunki is more expensive but allows the printer to be calibrated. If anyone can give me advice I would welcome it.

Cantankerous? Not at the moment. I am excited at the prospect of having real colour profiles and ending the problems I have suffered since I purchased my DSLR.

Change, change, change. Some things never change. Using Fedora 12 in earnest.

I got Fedora 12 on its release date (17th November) and now all my systems have been running Fedora 12 for almost a month. Is it good? I think so. But what about the accolades that Fedora 11 got? I thought they were over the top. It was not the great step forward that everyone else shouted about. For me Fedora 10 was the big step. And Fedora 12 is a much better release than 11, in my opinion. Other than self-inflicted problems, it all went well.

Before I rant let me mention the good things. First unlike Fedora 11's boot time boost 12 gets a real boost on my systems! I am now up and running so fast that I have not yet seen the new graphical boot screen (I am also prone to slight exaggerations)! It looks good. This is the first time I can say that one of my Fedora Desktops looks and feels as slick as I can get with Windows. On my laptop the touch screen works out of the box, or at least it is usable out of the box. In general the hardware support looks much better.

The KVM/qemu virtulisation package ran like a dream rather than my usual Virtualbox. I have not managed to get USB working yet, something I do use so until that is fixed Virtualbox will be my virtual environment. What I can say is that KVM appears to run a little quicker than Virtualbox and gives no errors on the systems tested (including Windows 7). I am hopeful on this one.

Photographic software has all just worked. There is no great leap forward in facilities. I am still awaiting the real Linux break through on workflow but I continue to use Geeqie, LightZone and the Gimp.

I use TurboPrint, a commercial print driver, for my Canon printer. This worked fine with Fedora 12, in fact it integrates even better than before. TurboPrint is a great piece of software and I do not object to paying the developer for this one. If only he made a driver for my Canon Lide 500 scanner. This one piece of equipment is what I need a copy of Windows for. I would probably still have a copy of Windows just out of interest so it is no real extra cost. My advise to anyone who uses Linux is to avoid Canon if you can, their support is patchy at best.

What is wrong? First, my finger print reader still does not work. Support for this stopped with Fedora 11, when they introduced better support for finger print readers. This was the one exotic device that I did use and I miss it. For some reason the developers are not going to bring back this 'legacy' device into the development cycle.

My Nvidia graphics card in my laptop (a Geforce 6150 Go) does not work correctly in 64-bit Fedora with the Nouveau driver. It works fine with the 32-bit release but I use 64 bit Fedora for a reason, I am a masochist. I have spent most of the weeks since the release attempting to get this working. This is a new driver and it is working much better than previous releases. At least I can use my laptop. There are just two features I know of that I cannot get working. First the suspend function does not work, a big disadvantage with a laptop. If this worked I would consider the Nouveau driver a success. The other thing not working is 3-D support. This is something that I can live without. My desktop being dragged across the surface of some virtual cube is not a requirement for business, just yet.

Fedora 12 problems for me all hang around hardware drivers. This is not dissimilar to the Windows 7 situation. I can say that Linux is getting very close to Windows on hardware support but it is not quite there. If you run the 64 bit versions you are more likely to encounter problems, but this is true on Windows as well.

Back to Fedora 12. Is it worth the trouble? It is. Does it compete with other Linux distributions? As always Fedora is pretty cutting edge, not always the safest option. It is full of the latest software Gnome 2.28, OpenOffice 3.1.1, AbiWord 2.28.1 and so on. This list is no different to the other distributions, although Fedora usually manage the latest versions of the big guns before the others. While the cutting edge stuff should make it less stable it is normal for Fedora to have some of the old Red Hat reliability. Fedora 12 is certainly a stable release. A small number of problems effects any new release of an operating system, Fedora 12 was no different. Other than my Nouveau driver problem nothing affected me.

After a month of 'live' running can I recommend it? Of course, it is a pleasure to work with and does what I want.

Windows or nothing - I'll take nothing

In a previous post I ranted on about the supply of software for Linux systems. I decided that it is time to moan in style on these pages. I am moaning about companies who are inflexible in their support of Linux, and many companies take a similar attitude towards Apple's Mac OS X. Note this rant and rave is not about support for Linux but the inflexible attitude of some companies towards a different operating system. I have suffered this for years having always run what is a minority operating system because I prefer that OS at the time.

The background, why I run Linux: I used Acorn's RISC OS. I needed some extra disc space and a few more peripherals. RISC OS was expensive to add the latest peripherals to. The best way of getting them was to put in a server and supply them from that. I looked at Windows and Red Hat Linux. Red hat was the cheaper solution, even though I then paid the full Red Hat license. The big plus for Red Hat was the inclusion and support of the various servers I needed. Once I made this move to Red Hat Linux 5.1. Slowly I used it more and more until it replaced RISC OS. Please note that I have nothing against Windows and I do use it on Virtual machine at times, I just prefer Linux.

So what is my problem? I have just changed the ISP supplying my broadband. The new ISP set-up could be done from Windows or Mac OS. In fact it could be done from Linux or any other operating system if only they would tell you how! That is my problem. They do have a small section on how to setup routers other than the one they supply on their web pages, from that you can set up your own router on your Linux system. How do I access this before I get on to broadband? Could they also not include similar instructions on how to set-up the router they provide? Could they not even put these in the box, just in case you are on Linux or some other operating system.

They also warn you that there could be problems if you cannot run their test program if you have problems. They of course only supply this for Windows and Mac OS X. Everyone else takes pot luck. This is the norm in the ISP market. Don't tell me about the Linux friendly ISPs, I am not in their price bracket at present. I have only moved to save money. Besides many ISPs are the same even though they support Linux, they will not help a React OS chap for example.

What I find appalling is that I sit at my bash prompt typing away attempting to configure the router via telnet or ssh. I then look at this router and realise that this CLI stuff is familiar. Is this Linux in another guise, probably. All the Windows fans who would not give Linux a home should throw out their routers. My ISP is willing to send you a Linux box but not support one, strange but true.

Is this a major problem? No. I have yet to be refused support by any ISP just because I run Linux. I have yet to fail to get a router working just because I run Linux. Most ISPs are accommodating. They want your custom. In fact I am very happy with my ISP for giving me what I want at a price I can almost afford. What they don't want to do is just give that little extra help that they could. And it is something I can use to step onto this, my favourite soap box.

What they need to do is give a simple list of technical information. An A5 sheet in the box explaining the required settings would help. They can put a little warning on it that this is only for users of minority systems and not for those willing to let their scripts configure things for them. Most have the information hidden away on their web pages, but you can see the problem with this. I am sat at home with my new ADSL connection, a new router and no instructions to help me. I am sure that the information would also be useful to those Windows and Mac OS users who prefer to do things themselves. We live in the information age, all I want is one small piece of paper.

Geeqie Whiz!

I have said that I have an interest in photography and I use Linux. Naturally my photographs are processed on Linux. In fact last week I ranted on about the supply of software for Linux systems. I had used the services of fotoinsight to produce a photo booklet. This was such a success I tried two more! So thanks to the chaps at fotoinsight they have made my family happy and supported Linux. Now my family can see my photographs so I need to improve.

There are lots of columns and articles describing photographic software available for Linux. I have tired most of it but do keep looking. In fact I have just lashed out on a commercial product, LightZone, but I am not going to tip you off about the advantages I think it presents. I do still look around for the perfect Free solution. I have not found it but I have found a gem that almost does what I want. I want something to organise my workflow. Geeqie is a fork of the GQview project. I like it. It is quick and simple. I found it very quick to review a shooting session. Problems? Of course it does not do all I want.

There is little to complain about in Geeqie other than its simplicity. This is also its strength. The authors appear to have written a specification and stuck to it. Admirable. I can see how the software could be improved. That is not too difficult as it lacks a lot of features that I would want. Most of these are available if I use the link that allows me to use the GIMP (or any other image editor) to edit my photographs. The problems are not with Geeqie but with my demands.

What are my problems with the software? I want to change a whole batch of RAW files to JPEG. This is a normal thing for those of us that shoot RAW, our friends often cannot see the photographs if we send them a RAW file (as well as saving lot of bandwidth). I have not yet found a method of converting the RAW files to JPEG in this software. On the other hand the software is the fastest way to review a shoot I have! That is praise I cannot express too loudly.

My second complaint is on Printing to a boarderless 6x4 (snap size) results in a small white margin at the bottom, left and right of the picture even though I have reduced the margins to 0. This is a common problem for me with Linux and printing boarderless prints so possibly not down to Geeqie. You have to get the frame size ratio to match the paper size ration, much easier for the program to allow a little bleed. When all boarders are zero then it is probably best just size the image so that the image covers the whole area and bleed off a couple of pixels on one edge. The biggest problem is that resizing the image is not possible, so boarderless printing is a no go area. I also got a black and white copy rather than colour but I was confused by the printer selections so it could be me. I would not use it to print photographs as it was too much hassle. This is probably the biggest flaw.

The last complaint is just about lack of editing features. I am sure more simple additional 'edits' will come in later versions. I would need just 2 basic 'edits'. The most important would be format conversion, RAW to JPEG is important for me. Cropping would be useful, if only to get around the boarderless print problem. Others would be nice. If like me you use the on camera flash because it is too much trouble to get out that expensive plastic brick that weighs down the backpack then red-eye removal help is a must. Sharpening is a boost for most shots. Exposure and colour adjustments are often wanted so a simple first hit method would be nice. OK I can do all this in the GIMP but when a quick fix is required it is very slow to use from Geeqie.

With all these problems what does it do? Well first it does not require pictures to be imported into a database. It uses directories and files or this is the default mode. That is my own preferred method of filing my photographs so it suits me. You can choose to use collections. The tools are all there for the user to make their own choice. (Did I say this was simple software?)

The view pane can be structured to almost whatever you want. There are three basic panes. The image, the tools (and directory selection) and the files (image selector). You can see your photographs and decide if they are up to scratch and viewing them is fast. Since installing the software I have started to use this a quick method of reviewing a shooting session. I keep all my shots in directories based on the shooting session. Working like this makes Geeqie in folder mode work for me. Once in a shoot the thumb nails and first image are available in a flash. Even on my modest laptop it displays a session with a pace that I could only hope for.

You can get at the information your camera stored with the picture, the date and time and exposure information should all be available via the EXIF window. You can also overlay the image with a subset of the information and add a histogram of the exposure if you want. You can even show the RGB values of any pixel that the cursor happens to be on.

You can tag the photograph with a numeric mark from 1 to 6 and display the tags in the file list. You can add titles and keywords to each photograph. All this will make searches easier when you need to find a shot that you need. I admit this is where I am less than rigorous and will never keep up this matching of a shot to a keyword but the facility is there if I should choose to use it.

It is simple software! Simple in that it only does what it sets out to. Simple in that it is structured in its efforts. It is this simplicity that most of today's offerings should attempt to emulate. I can only recommend that you look at Geeqie if you use a Unix like operating system.The version I am looking at is Geeqie 1.0 beta 1. If like me you use RAW then the speed is as good as I have seen, Bibble and LightZone included. I can say that if I had seen this before I purchased LightZone it may have saved me money (but I do like LightZone, for exposure correction there is nothing better IMHO)! I expect that by version 2 Geeqie will be my preferred tool! I am already using it for the 1st review of a shoot. If they add a few basic edits and fix the printing then it will become more than a review tool. This tool has the chance of becoming the best Linux workflow tool about. Personally I think it is now, even with the limited features.

Support Linux?

Sorry for going quiet. I am attempting to satisfy all the family and their demands for my services. I like them but they are an unreasonable bunch. They just expect too much of me. I am a keen photographer and the dawn of the digital era was a gift to me. I can take photographs and only show those I want to. No longer do I need to dash from the darkroom clutching my most recent prints to a quiet spot, avoiding all human contact on the way. I do not like people to see the shots I am not happy with, most of them. Having been on the annual family jaunt to the coast I had taken a few (hundred) photographs. Now they wanted me to print them. Seeing them on my laptop is not a substitute for getting hold of paper copies I am told.

Why have I not printed them? Well not only do I moan but I am a miser. The cost of printing these photographs is getting astronomical. What can I do? Somebody suggested I get a book printed. There are lots of companies who allow you to print your own 'photobooks'. Yes, you can produce your own books for the coffee table. It all looks interesting. It costs about the same as printing the photographs but this is a new way. A new challenge.

Off I went on my search to find a suitable company. Many companies allowed you to compose your books on the internet. A good idea as you have to send the photographs to them. For me these remotely hosted applications are awkward so I avoid them. I made notes of those I liked but carried on the search for some software I could run on my desktop and demonstrate to the rest of the clan on my laptop.

My search uncovered many who offered software for Windows. Most even offered Mac OS software. I found only one offering that allowed me to use Linux, a requirement for me. I have therefore used fotoinsight to print my book. As a Linux enthusiast I have to show support for any company that supports my platform. In fact there are at least a couple of options, the software is written by cewe and their offering also uses the software.

I am not complaining about the minimal support for Linux. This is what is expected for a system used on so few computers. Most enthusiasts have access to Windows should everything else fail, this limits the minimal damage for companies. Why do I mention it? First I want those who do support Linux to know that I appreciate their efforts. Then I want to let others know that I do use commercial software when required on my Linux system. I have about 4 paid for applications on my Linux systems, that is more than my Windows using friends own on average! Linux users are not the people who make illegal copies of software, after all that is one of the points of the GNU license.

Those who follow free software do so because they care about copyright, supporting them could be worthwhile. I think you will get a better percentage of legal software take-up than on other platforms. What you will have to do is take a bit of verbal knocking from those who think that all software should be free (as in speech). If you cannot handle that then do avoid the Free Software world. If you can then we all attempt to do the right thing. But there is another option! Why create your own software? Why not put out a request to the Free Software world. Give them a specification and see if there are any takers, you may be surprised. Will this be Free (as in beer)? It should not be. The idea of Free (as in speech) is that we should all support via our support for the community. What the community will do is surprise you in the quality of their efforts.

Linux is hopeless?

The title was just to stir everyone up. Linux is of course a good operating system. There is also nothing wrong with Windows. The main difference is, as the Free Software Foundation would have us believe, all about freedom. With Linux I am free to do as I please. But this time I cry, cry for help.

With Windows I expect to have to hunt for bug fixes. The difficulty is not with Microsoft but the model which drives all the software creators. I expect one product to interact with another and everyone deny responsibility. I do not expect the same with Linux. It is after all a community thing. Everyone working for the good of the community. I have heard such claims before! Politicians all clamour to tell me how they work for the community. Enough said I think.

So, Linux is all about politics? Perhaps I exaggerate. Linux is diverse, especially in its development stage and this in itself can cause problems. It is supposed to be about freedom. This is what all new converts are told. Linux does depend on the distribution but take it from someone who has been running Linux as a user since the mid-1990's that this dependency is minor. If your distribution does it now then they all will within a year.

I run Fedora at home. I keep it pretty up to date. It is seen as a cutting edge distribution by some. I chose it for stability! I have been running Red Hat in various versions from Red Hat 5 and Fedora gave me continuity and methods I knew and understood. I accept that it does choose the latest release for most of the provided software, or the latest it can. I currently run Fedora 11 and will download Fedora 12 at some point soon to test it before mid-November (the planned release date). I will probably be running it live before December. I am that much of a fan of Fedora and Linux in general.

My problem? Things keep breaking! As I install each release things change. Suddenly something that would not work just jumps into life. Unfortunately things also stop working. The parts that suddenly work are fine, they are all documented. Just as with commercial software nobody admits "this fix will stop devices x, y and z from working with this software".

I have not always been careful when buying hardware. My scanner does not work with Linux and my printer is not that well liked. Still that was my own fault. What I was careful with when buying was my laptop, or at least parts of it. One part I wanted to work was the fingerprint reader. It did, without a problem. I have been using it since Fedora 9.

Now, as part of the Fedora 11 upgrade from 10, I am given a better fingerprint reader software and the ability to use a greater variety of fingerprint readers. "Extensive work has been done to make fingerprint readers easy to use as an authentication mechanism" I am told. I cannot tell you because the fingerprint reader does not work any more!

Why not? Because nobody wants to develop the hardware I have, developers cannot get hold of it and other niggles. This is a problem for me. I am told to check up if hardware works and it did. Now it does not.

I used to recommend that companies give up commercial software and go open source. Can I now? I recommend options to companies running 1000's of systems. These systems have to work for years, many are still running Windows NT. That is not a typo XP was not an option as the upgrade is too expensive and will not run on the computers! Enter Linux perhaps? It is difficult to get them to try. My clients are conservative in their purchases. These problems stop them trying it.

My only hope is that when other Linux distributions pick up the new fingerprint software from Fedora, and they will, then they will re-introduce support for the hardware I have. This is not a major problem for me, I will stick with Linux but it could upset quit a few people. Fancy having that very piece of hardware you needed suddenly stop working.

Is Linux ready for the desktop? Of course it is. Where it fails is in the development model which Linux followers like myself think is so good. There are times when the developers cannot not help. These are also the times when a user with more pressing needs will turn around and say that Linux is not ready for his desktop. Over to the Linux community (I think I just passed the book to myself!).

Shoot the messenger?

In my spare time I take snaps, photos. I have an interest in photography that goes back to my early days when my father taught me how to develop black and white films myself. It was also Dad who gave me an interest in technology for its own sake. He is probably the reason I ended up working with computers, rather than people.

My interest in photography is not for the photograph but the technology that surrounds it. Silver Halide was a difficult medium, you worked blind. You needed hope and skill just mixed with a small hint of inspiration. Each frame you shot was at a cost. It needed to be correct. I have spent hours waiting for the correct light, taken much of the time just to measure the exposure. I waited and hoped, as each exposure cost me money.

I now have a digital SLR and all the modern wonders that an amateur photographer needs. I am not restricted by the 36 frames of a 35mm film but the 500+ shots I get on my 16Gb memory card. OK, I can do several thousand, if only I would shoot jpeg. Do I shoot more frames? No. In a way that only the cantankerous and crotchety can, I will not submit to the enhanced abilities of the new technology! But is it cheaper? No, see what About.com has to say on the subject! OK, the article is a little out of date but it takes about 3 years for digital to beat film on cost! I guess that I need to take similar care with each frame.

Do I show off my work? No. I keep it hidden on my hard disc, only for my eyes. I am perhaps over critical of my work. I think that it is not good enough to show, yet when somebody bursts in and sees the pictures on the screen they usually want to see more. I have posted a shot for you to see. Now everyone is laughing at my abilities.

Why are my pictures just not good enough? I may not take thousands of photographs like some but I am just as careless! The framing is wrong, the exposure is out. It is just not what I wanted to produce. As much as I edit them in the Gimp I cannot get them to my look as I want. This does have the advantage of reducing my costs, I don't print them saving me a lot of cash and time.

What to do? I guess I go with the flow and get some decent workflow software for Linux. This is bound to help. New technology always makes me feel better. The photographs? They will remain private, adoring only my desktop as that is all they are worth. This allows me to kid myself that my very expensive DSLR pays for itself when compared to my old film camera!