5 ms·

I find these two sentiments very strange in conjunction (complete abstinence from Windows, and the call to get away from your computer.) Did you mean for the se

I find these two sentiments very strange in conjunction (complete abstinence from Windows, and the call to get away from your computer.) Did you mean for the second to be the opposite of the first?

linuxftw 8y ago
I don't use Windows; if something can only be done on a Windows PC, I simply don't do it. I find literally anything else to do with my time. Everyone would love to switch to linux, except "I can't do X on linux, and I must have X". People are literally addicted to PCs, I think it's unhealthy.
- nickjj 8y ago
  > Everyone would love to switch to linux, except "I can't do X on linux, and I must have X". People are literally addicted to PCs, I think it's unhealthy. It's not just about spending all your time using computers or addiction. I would like to switch to Linux but there's no screencast video editing tools that are comparable to Camtasia that run on Linux. I wouldn't call that an unhealthy addiction for sticking with Windows. It's a necessity for my line of business.
  - linuxftw 8y ago
    There are screencast and video editing tools available for linux and they cost $0.
    - nickjj 8y ago
      Yes but none of them are close to being comparable to Camtasia. Check my other reply at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19282459 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19282459.
    - eropple 8y ago
      "Existing" and "being worth the aggravation to use" are significantly different things. 'nickjj has eloquently described the problems with pretty much everything available on Linux and I agree with him. I use Resolve, which does run on Linux, for video editing--but that's not the same thing he's talking about and I too use Camtasia on that dreaded, dreaded Windows for recording and editing down those sorts of presentations. Because to not do that would probably take half again as long, make for a worse end result, and have a direct impact on the likelihood of those clients buying from me or hiring me again. Sneering zealots are weird, man. Don't be That Guy.
  - sdfgsd3fgsdfg 8y ago
    Did you try OBS Studio? https://obsproject.com/ https://obsproject.com/
  - tombert 8y ago
    I'm not sure what you're trying to do, but OBS is pretty OK, while it takes a bit of a learning curve, Lightworks is pretty rad for video editing. If you haven't played with them, they're worth checking out.
    - nickjj 8y ago
      OBS is amazing for streaming and recording but it's not equipped for editing previously recorded content. I have hundreds of screencasts I recorded where I record my desktop and sometimes a webcam in the corner. These screencasts are put together to create a video course, so they need to be super polished. With Camtasia it takes seconds to add really really nice looking tooltip pop ups, various text styles and arrows, smooth zoom / pans and even really neat animations that can be applied to anything. For example check out the intro video on https://diveintodocker.com/ https://diveintodocker.com/. That entire animation (and video) was made in Camtasia in a few minutes without needing to do anything other than drag a few sliders around until the speed was right and it looked reasonable. Camtasia is an all purpose screencast editing tool but they have no Linux port. I tried everything. Kdenlive, Lightworks, Shotcut, Open Shot, DaVinci Resolve and even Blender. They are all much much worse than Camtasia for editing screencast style videos (which are mostly around adding context related popups, dimming areas of the screen, adding text overlays, zooms, etc.). Worse as in, after 8 hours of trying to reproduce that Docker intro in Kdenlive I still didn't have anything that looked good with nothing in sight that would hint that I could do the things I could do in Camtasia. That was as of 2 months ago too.
      - linuxftw 8y ago
        That's a really nice video and your quippy narration is quite pleasant. I'll admit, my experience with video editing is quite minimal. I understand your reasoning for choosing the software you choose. My position is still don't use Windows.
- squarefoot 8y ago
  "I don't use Windows; if something can only be done on a Windows PC, I simply don't do it." As a 99% Linux user (do very rarely used Wine and some VMs count as Windows installs?) I find this wrong when applied to real life scenarios. "Normal" users, the ones who would neither dare nor enjoy recompiling their kernel to squeeze out a few megabytes of free RAM, treat a PC just like a tool to get some work done (think a pair of scissors or a screwdriver, could anyone imagine someone wearing a black t-shirt showing their favorite screwdriver brand?). Those people are forced to use a PC because not doing so would mean being slower than other people, which in this society equals to lose a job or not meeting the requisites to get one. I'm pretty sure very few of them would waste their time at the PC if they could get the same results by themselves. The right approach to help people abandon the Windows world is making their Linux experience as much painless as possible, which requires compromises on our part. I've converted some people in recent years (thanks also to the UI nightmare MS themselves created from Windows 8 and beyond) And never ever abandon them when they're initially lost because they're used to do something "the windows way": all my Linux installs for previous Windows users have a Windows (XP/7) like UI [1] and all Libreoffice installs save documents in Office 97-2003 format by default. I always offer them to evaluate Linux for a while, then if they find it unsuitable I'll install Windows back for free, no questions asked. So far I had only one person asking to go back to Windows, but he needed to use a proprietary software that didn't even work under Wine (more likely it was its copy protection). We need to adapt our approach to them, and not the way around, for we know both worlds while they have been exposed to a digital monoculturalism during their entire professional life. [1] please, XFCE developers, consider changing the horrendous default look: it makes no sense having two panels eating space on a light DM that often is being chosen for laptops with limited vertical pixels. I know it takes a minute to correct that, but we want to help new users. Willing to help on that if anyone tells me how to turn a customized setup into a .deb package that might also pull a few dependencies (mostly themes). Having a nicer look as a third option when starting it for the 1st time would be even greater IMO.
  - linuxftw 8y ago
    "Normal" users aren't what you think they are. They basically just use facebook at this point. You can give the bulk of society a modern linux distro with Chrome installed and they would never know the difference. I no longer install or support Windows in any way for friends and family. If all the 'computer people' in everyone's lives quit helping them, Windows would finally die off because it's a crap product.

I find these two sentiments very strange in conjunction (complete abstinence from Windows, and the call to get away from your computer.) Did you mean for the second to be the opposite of the first?

linuxftw 8y ago

I don't use Windows; if something can only be done on a Windows PC, I simply don't do it. I find literally anything else to do with my time. Everyone would love to switch to linux, except "I can't do X on linux, and I must have X". People are literally addicted to PCs, I think it's unhealthy.

nickjj 8y ago
> Everyone would love to switch to linux, except "I can't do X on linux, and I must have X". People are literally addicted to PCs, I think it's unhealthy. It's not just about spending all your time using computers or addiction. I would like to switch to Linux but there's no screencast video editing tools that are comparable to Camtasia that run on Linux. I wouldn't call that an unhealthy addiction for sticking with Windows. It's a necessity for my line of business.
- linuxftw 8y ago
  There are screencast and video editing tools available for linux and they cost $0.
  - nickjj 8y ago
    Yes but none of them are close to being comparable to Camtasia. Check my other reply at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19282459 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19282459.
  - eropple 8y ago
    "Existing" and "being worth the aggravation to use" are significantly different things. 'nickjj has eloquently described the problems with pretty much everything available on Linux and I agree with him. I use Resolve, which does run on Linux, for video editing--but that's not the same thing he's talking about and I too use Camtasia on that dreaded, dreaded Windows for recording and editing down those sorts of presentations. Because to not do that would probably take half again as long, make for a worse end result, and have a direct impact on the likelihood of those clients buying from me or hiring me again. Sneering zealots are weird, man. Don't be That Guy.
- sdfgsd3fgsdfg 8y ago
  Did you try OBS Studio? https://obsproject.com/ https://obsproject.com/
- tombert 8y ago
  I'm not sure what you're trying to do, but OBS is pretty OK, while it takes a bit of a learning curve, Lightworks is pretty rad for video editing. If you haven't played with them, they're worth checking out.
  - nickjj 8y ago
    OBS is amazing for streaming and recording but it's not equipped for editing previously recorded content. I have hundreds of screencasts I recorded where I record my desktop and sometimes a webcam in the corner. These screencasts are put together to create a video course, so they need to be super polished. With Camtasia it takes seconds to add really really nice looking tooltip pop ups, various text styles and arrows, smooth zoom / pans and even really neat animations that can be applied to anything. For example check out the intro video on https://diveintodocker.com/ https://diveintodocker.com/. That entire animation (and video) was made in Camtasia in a few minutes without needing to do anything other than drag a few sliders around until the speed was right and it looked reasonable. Camtasia is an all purpose screencast editing tool but they have no Linux port. I tried everything. Kdenlive, Lightworks, Shotcut, Open Shot, DaVinci Resolve and even Blender. They are all much much worse than Camtasia for editing screencast style videos (which are mostly around adding context related popups, dimming areas of the screen, adding text overlays, zooms, etc.). Worse as in, after 8 hours of trying to reproduce that Docker intro in Kdenlive I still didn't have anything that looked good with nothing in sight that would hint that I could do the things I could do in Camtasia. That was as of 2 months ago too.
    - linuxftw 8y ago
      That's a really nice video and your quippy narration is quite pleasant. I'll admit, my experience with video editing is quite minimal. I understand your reasoning for choosing the software you choose. My position is still don't use Windows.
squarefoot 8y ago
"I don't use Windows; if something can only be done on a Windows PC, I simply don't do it." As a 99% Linux user (do very rarely used Wine and some VMs count as Windows installs?) I find this wrong when applied to real life scenarios. "Normal" users, the ones who would neither dare nor enjoy recompiling their kernel to squeeze out a few megabytes of free RAM, treat a PC just like a tool to get some work done (think a pair of scissors or a screwdriver, could anyone imagine someone wearing a black t-shirt showing their favorite screwdriver brand?). Those people are forced to use a PC because not doing so would mean being slower than other people, which in this society equals to lose a job or not meeting the requisites to get one. I'm pretty sure very few of them would waste their time at the PC if they could get the same results by themselves. The right approach to help people abandon the Windows world is making their Linux experience as much painless as possible, which requires compromises on our part. I've converted some people in recent years (thanks also to the UI nightmare MS themselves created from Windows 8 and beyond) And never ever abandon them when they're initially lost because they're used to do something "the windows way": all my Linux installs for previous Windows users have a Windows (XP/7) like UI [1] and all Libreoffice installs save documents in Office 97-2003 format by default. I always offer them to evaluate Linux for a while, then if they find it unsuitable I'll install Windows back for free, no questions asked. So far I had only one person asking to go back to Windows, but he needed to use a proprietary software that didn't even work under Wine (more likely it was its copy protection). We need to adapt our approach to them, and not the way around, for we know both worlds while they have been exposed to a digital monoculturalism during their entire professional life. [1] please, XFCE developers, consider changing the horrendous default look: it makes no sense having two panels eating space on a light DM that often is being chosen for laptops with limited vertical pixels. I know it takes a minute to correct that, but we want to help new users. Willing to help on that if anyone tells me how to turn a customized setup into a .deb package that might also pull a few dependencies (mostly themes). Having a nicer look as a third option when starting it for the 1st time would be even greater IMO.
- linuxftw 8y ago
  "Normal" users aren't what you think they are. They basically just use facebook at this point. You can give the bulk of society a modern linux distro with Chrome installed and they would never know the difference. I no longer install or support Windows in any way for friends and family. If all the 'computer people' in everyone's lives quit helping them, Windows would finally die off because it's a crap product.