Linux for the Designer
In part one of this series I talked about why I’m going to be switching over to Linux. In this part I’m going to talk more about the actual additional software and what my options as a designer and illustrator actually are. There are only a handful of reasons why I would stick with Microsoft and windows. What’s really funny is that neither actually come from Microsoft itself. The first and major reason for me would be Adobe’s Photoshop and the now defunct (and one of my favourite applications) Macromedia’s (once again it will always be Macromedia for me) Freehand. There are other programmes of course that would make me flinch, such as Indesign and believe it or not my favourite text-editor, PHP Designer.
So before I made the leap, I started thinking about this whole thing a little more. Would it be a viable jump or could someone who considers themselves a designer/illustrator to make the jump into the Linux environment? Is it too harsh a landscape that I should just bite the bullet and stay put?
You’d be surprised how much stuff is available to the Linux user, either for a very small fee or completely free, so lets have a look at these options shall we.Freehand Replacement
The biggest news for me to be honest was that Xara Xtreme was completely open-sourced for Linux users. That’s absolutely fantastic news. That alone makes me calm about the loss of Freehand. One of the great things about Xara is the fact that the peeps behind this application seem to know what’s important. Don’t force additional features on the programme. Just make it really good at what it does. Make it fast (easily on of the fastest vector programme on the PC at least). Where Illustrator is the heaviest programme in the world Xara Xtreme flies. This is a huge boon to the open source community and people should really be jumping on this bandwagon as soon as possible. Version 0.5 was released a month ago and they’re looking for more people to help out. I guess the main reason why people haven’t jumped is probably because they’ve not heard about it. I just finished reading this review over at Linux.com and it sees things in a very similar way. If Xara do actually implement things properly it really could be one of the greatest gifts since Blender and Open Office.
While Inkscape is a good little programme and I would never dream of bad mouthing the valiant efforts of the open source community, it feels clunky to me. There are certain aspects of the programme that could use with a lot of polish and I’m sure it will eventually get there in due time. After all we’re still on version 0.42 of the programme, not exactly the most mature offering. Xara offers some level of maturity RIGHT NOW. It’s got around 10 years of experience behind it
Photoshop Replacement
See this one is far trickier to be honest. There is the obvious contender for that role, mainly the defacto photo-editor of choice on Linux, being The Gimp. I’ve talked about this programme in the past, however there is an alternative. And I’ve got to say that it’s a superb replacement, Enter Pixel.
Pixel seems like it’s going to be a kick ass application. It’s still in the Beta stage, but even at this stage it seems to be pretty mighty. I’ve downloaded the preview version and I’ve got to say that it’s incredibly nippy. It’s obviously not as polished as Photoshop, but I mean c’mon we’re on version 9 of that programme and it’s backed by a huge amount of developers. Just looking at what Pavel has done here, it does look as though he’s emulated the photoshop scope completely (which I dunno Adobe might have issues with this at some point) but he does add some seriously cool little features that PS doesn’t have which make perfect sense. Like an additional tab that has different configurations of the work space for any one document which enables you to flip and highlight different functions etc. It’s subtle stuff but it’s a got legs.
Indesign Replacement
Thankfully this has been taken care of as well. I’ve got a good solution in Scribus. As I’ve not really played around with this application I can’t really comment on how good it actually is to dealing with my desktop publishing needs, however it looks to be a pretty mature and something that will achieve what I need (such as exporting as a pdf, etc). Hopefully it’s slightly faster at loading than Indesign because that is another terribly heavy programme.Flash Replacement
There is none. I know it’s a massive shame that SVG didn’t take off for Adobe, because then it wouldn’t have had to pay MILLIONS to by Flash..erm sorry Macromedia. The real problem is that of course it took the ‘easy’ route out and left a lot of the open source community looking for something that could potentially do everything that Flash can. To be honest with you I gave up on Flash over a year ago now. The last time I really hammered this programme was for the ill fated Emmortel. I’ve moved on and now I’m going to concentrate on Javascript to provide me with animations. I hope that I have some animation project in my future, however it won’t be with Flash and hopefully by that stage something similar on Linux will have emerged.Xnview Replacement
One of the programmes that is invaluable to me for blogging is Xnview. The reason is due to it’s size and lightness, I’m able to do whatever I want to an image, which is usually slice it, resize it etc on the quick and dirty. Thankfully the people behind Xnview share the same view as many other software houses and provide this programme for Linux as well, so I’m not really giving this up either and trying to find a viable alternative, although I’m pretty sure there is one.One thing as Marco rightly pointed out in the comments of the previous post is that it’s really important to have applications. While Linux isn’t over flowing with proprietary products to use within, that seems to be a trend that is changing. Hopefully people will start doing what This move also gives hope to the future of other software manufacturers out there and a nice trend of them trying to cater to the Linux market. They don’t have to be as fantastically cool as Xara and open source it but at least they can make it available to the Linux market.
One of the things that magazines and tutorials and graphic designers and illustrators all over the world try and hammer across, is that the programme that you use shouldn’t really matter to the final work that you produce. To a certain degree I agree. It shouldn’t matter, except when you end up fighting with the actual software to achieve your vision. That’s when it become counter productive. Currently my thinking is that maybe, just maybe the tools on Linux will enable me to achieve my vision. It’s an experiment and I’m always up for experimentation. If I don’t succeed then at least I’ll have given it my best shot. If I do succeed, then I’ll have broken away from the shackles of being bound.
Ah, Pixel. It was the first thing that i thought about when you said there were (BETTER) alternatives to Gimp in the other article comments. I haven’t followed much of the development of Pixel but it seems to have become very good. I don’t remember the exact reason i never tried but it might have been the price or the fact that there wasnt a preview version avaiable at the time(this was a long time ago).
Hmm .. i’m going to give that preview a try and banish Gimp from this PC for ever :D
About the php editor, hmm, i’m using the PHPEclipse plugin for ..err..Eclipse :) and i think it’s very good. Altough having Eclipse just for PHP might be overkill, don’t know. When i needed an IDE for PHP i was already using Eclipse for Java and C/C++ so it seemed the logical step for me.
↓ Quote | 22/6/2006
Very nice article. I’ve tried some previous Suse distros and graphic programs such as Gimp before but never made the full switch from XP to any open source OS. I’m going to definitely be following your progress with your switch. Good luck and have fun.
↓ Quote | 22/6/2006
Thanks for the interesting article(s). I have been thinking about installing Linux some time, so this is very useful information. Bryan Veloso (avolonstar.com) also has some posts about experimenting with Linux.
↓ Quote | 22/6/2006
Thanks for the article. I must say, these last couple of months I’ve been focusing on switching over to Linux for good and leaving Windows behind, but I just can’t - not yet! I tried dealing with the GIMP for weeks!! I gave up, it’s awful. I even did some graphics with Inkscape, but I started reading about Illustrator (I haven’t tried it yet, though) and realised Inkscape was poor by comparison. (It actually crashes too, AND gets really slow!)
I also tried Nvu and thought it was even worse than Microsoft Publisher. It’s Dreamweaver for me, period! Though I’m still waiting for a good CSS/HTML WYSIWYG open source freeware cookie. I’m sure it’s in the works - or at least I HOPE so…
Open Office is beautiful, but I translate for a living and need to work with Trados. Open Office support on Trados is just not there yet. I’m stuck with Word.
I’ve just checked Xara and it seems really fast, but it lacks some of the THICK feel of Inkscape. It does seem to be a bit more user friendly, though it lacks some features. One of them is a calligraphy brush. I’ve done some wonderful stuff with that one (including a logo) and I would love to have something similar in Xara. But I love Xara’s colour palette and the regulated anti-aliasing for lines. I still have to get used to the THIN feel of it: Inkscape felt thicker…
Pixel I still have to master, but I would not consider it freeware. It’s an affordable alternative to Photoshop Elements, not Photoshop itself. Since the next version will be priced 100 dollars, I would not consider it an alternative to GIMP.
I’ll try to keep up with the upgrades and updates, but I will not switch to Linux. Yet…
↓ Quote | 22/6/2006
Oh, I forgot to say. Scribus SUX bigtime! Don’t expect anything from it!
↓ Quote | 22/6/2006
Nosferatu: I think you’re missing the picture. Like Khaled said on his article, you can’t compare head on an opensource/freeware/shareware alternative with something like Photoshop, Dreamweaver or Illustrator/Freehand(Altough i haven’t tried Xara so i don’t really know how well it compares to those).
Photoshop & friends are developed by a team of programmers, designers, project managers, etc. and backed by ALOT of money while the linux/Open source alternatives are usually the labor of one or two people at most doing work from their basement :)
However, being an opensource alternative doesnt mean it should suck or having the developers not caring about what the community say against it(Gimp, i’m looking at you
↓ Quote | 22/6/2006
SVG has taken off and is only growing:
latest news: http://svg.org
Linux graphics: http://create.freedesktop.org
broad range of SVG links: http://svg.startpagina.nl
SVG is an open standard, not something owned by Adobe
↓ Quote | 22/6/2006
Stelt, I know that, it’s just that Adobe was ‘leading’ the push or at least helping to lead that push in making it usable and taking over from Flash. Alas, they don’t need to help that monkey anymore now do they?
↓ Quote | 22/6/2006
nosferatu said:
Hmm lots to tackle. First off I never said that Pixel was freeware, or open source, because it’s not. And as far as I’m concerned that’s fine. It is as powerful as PS? No not yet, however I’m inclined to point out that you probably don’t even know what 80% of the commands in PS actually are. PS is based on the model of features, whether you need them or not, they’re added in every release to make you want to actually buy the latest release. Pixel handles CMYK which PS Elements doesn’t and a slew of other things. Remember it’s still not even version 1.0, so that’s early days to put it down.
As for Scribus, many people claim it’s good for various reasons. Once again thing improve gradually in open source. You’ve just got to be patient.
If you’re still using Dreamweaver to code, then you’re using a crutch. I don’t like that programme because it’s FAAARRRR too heavy.
Illustrator is another heavy programme. I use Freehand, but Xara has got the chops to take it on. Hell I was actually looking to buy it for windows as a replacement to Freehand because at least Xara gets developed further and now that it’s open sourced will get a great deal more development going into it.
See you’re living at a time of transition. Online open source is accepted as a matter of course, it’s time the desktop was handled accordingly as well.
↓ Quote | 22/6/2006
Inkscape 0.44 is much snappier than before. And has the color palette. And tons of other stuff, some of which Xara does not have (such as node sculpting). So, while Xara certainly has some nice stuff still missing in Inkscape, Inkscape progresses faster than Xara, currently.
↓ Quote | 22/6/2006
Khaled,
I know you said that you weren’t really interested in a Flash IDE replacement for Linux, but I thought that you might want to check out openLaszlo should you ever have a client that wants you to put together an RIA for them.
↓ Quote | 22/6/2006
I’ve had good luck with WINE as I’ve transitioned from Windows to Linux. I found that Adobe Photoshop 7 runs well (only a couple of crash-bugs, easily avoidable), as well as all my favorite little shareware Windows-only utilities.
I’ll check out Pixel — looks like a good ‘un.
↓ Quote | 25/6/2006
Very nice article. I use Ubuntu as my primary environment on my home desktop. I still have Windows 2000 on another drive just so I can run some games that I can’t get working in Cedega/WineX. Plus I use the Windows partition for web page testing.
I’ll be sure to check out those above. I’ve been plodding through with gedit and Gimp. Time to expand a bit and see what else is out there!
↓ Quote | 28/6/2006
I’ve been warming up to Linux lately, but I can’t live without those pesky Adobe apps, Flash and Dreamweaver in particular.
So, despite all the good alternatives you present here, I’d be forced to emulate these.
Have you tried Wine? Do you know of any other alternatives?
↓ Quote | 29/6/2006
Joen, I’m going to write about where I’m hoping to go with all of this, but like you said it was the Adobe stuff that was keeping me back. Not being able to play around with Flash was a major thing that I’m still struggling with, however I’m seriously behind in how that paticular programme has developed that anything I create with it will be pretty poor, I still think it’s one of the best applications ever made.
↓ Quote | 2/7/2006
Thanks, thanks a lot. I am about to make big sterp in my carrier, and I wanted to buy Adobe Photoshop. In last time I’ve been playing with Gimp, but it dont impress me much. You can do amazing things with that tool, but it is too crapy to control.
After you showed me the Pixel, after a short period I started to love it. Adobe just loose one customer ;)
Thanks again a lot
↓ Quote | 12/7/2006
As photoshop alternatives go there’s also Krita (http://koffice.org/krita/). At least it supports 16bit images and CMYK colour space unlike gimp.
↓ Quote | 2/11/2006
I am a designer and planing to switch to Linux. I like the suggestions and seems fine to run those applications in order to design and have all you want. My question is form which version of Linux i start or what is best for graphics. Also another concern is that if i use wine and install a windows application wich i am atached to will it have problems after install, do they crash or are they acting fair enough fast??. any answer on this to issues will help me start switching to Linux.
Best Denis
↓ Quote | 9/12/2006