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.