6 ms·

That's a little tricky because, from the point of view of an average consumer, Windows is free as well. The other big ones, like Office and Photoshop just don't

by tikhonj 13y ago

That's a little tricky because, from the point of view of an average consumer, Windows is free as well. The other big ones, like Office and Photoshop just don't quite have an equivalent free alternative, for better or worse.

soperj 13y ago
LibreOffice and Gimp? They are great. *edit to reply to further down: GIMP opens psd files and LibreOffice opens doc files, you can definitely work with people using Office or Photoshop.
- Karunamon 13y ago
  Unless you intend to work with people using MS Office or Photoshop, that is.
  - bnegreve 13y ago
    Well, that actually a very important point. Clearly adoption of free software is much lower than one could expect. What I mean is: you can argue that Gimp is not as good as PhotoShop, LibreOffice not as good as Office, or that Linux is not as good as Windows (which is clearly debatable) but they are good enough and they are all infinitely cheaper (literally) than their paying alternative. So that should be default choice for 99% of people. But it isn't. So my point is: The same goes for cars vs. bikes. Most people wouldn't mind using a bike to go to work, but it feels weird to pay only a couple of bucks for a bike, when you've learn that the price to go to work is the price for a car.
    - Karunamon 13y ago
      I was more referring to compatibility, here. LibreOffice is infamous (at least around here) for mangling table formatting used in Word docs. Gimp is hardly feature complete compared to photoshop. The reasons for this could probably be rightly chalked up to obfuscation and other below-board shenanigans on the part of certain companies, but the end result is still that you don't use the FOSS version if you're serious.
    - bnegreve 13y ago
      @Karunamon: >I was more referring to compatibility, here.I was more referring to compatibility, here. Yeah I know, but I got carried away :)
- ionforce 13y ago
  They're great if you don't care about your user experience.
  - icambron 13y ago
    Getting OT here, but the thing that kills me about Gimp is how badly it doesn't want to save the file in its original format. You have to export it (totally different menu option) and then it will whine when you close the file because it thinks you haven't saved it. The thing almost every user expects it that saving the file just saves over the old file in the format it was originally in. IIRC, it used to work that way, and then one day it changed for the worse.
    - soperj 13y ago
      Photoshop does that as well, Illustrator is especially bad for it. There are specific reasons for it, that you don't want to save a file and realise you've lost all your layers because it was saved as a jpg.
    - graue 13y ago
      That's a recent change, and yeah, one of the worst examples lately of open source developers' contempt for their users. Apparently, those of us who've used Gimp for over a decade to edit .jpg and .png files and save them back to .jpg or .png, were Doing It Wrong, and the devs wanted us to know. :( Mind you, I've never contributed the tiniest bit of code or funding to Gimp, so I can't really complain.
      - vinceguidry 13y ago
        > one of the worst examples lately of open source developers' contempt for their users. That's utterly silly. If you take yourself seriously as a graphics editing program, then inevitably you have to move to one format that you can then convert into others. Otherwise you have to implement every single operation on every single file format you support. With the One True Format, (.otf) you can convert your .jpgs to the .otf and then do the operation there. This then presents a problem. Tech-savvy users know that there will be a loss of data when you save to a consumption format. But the rest of us don't. If you allowed open and save in the same format, people will make the intuitive leap, that they're actually editing the files in that format, when they're not. They'll think all the layers they made will carry over into the PNG and that they'll be there when they re-open the file, when in fact they won't. It would be a nightmare, because nobody will know what will save and what won't. You'd have to then educate users that to get everything to save properly, you have to save to .otf. Or you could just bake that logic directly into the app.
- sejje 13y ago
  I have the gimp, and I find a lot of very important details are missing from files I receive that were made in photoshop. It's virtually every time; I just request JPG exports to go along with the PSD, because otherwise I won't know it's missing.
  - gggmaster 13y ago
    You can ask adobe to lift their user lockin policy
- CalRobert 13y ago
  If you're a casual user, sure. If you're serious, the lack of adjustment layers alone will cause you to rip your hair out. Gimp is fine for Joe Bloggs making a banner for their site; but honestly it's pretty mediocre, with a horrid interface and missing functionality. (To be fair, some of that last bit is due to Adobe patents)
- n0mad01 13y ago
  yeah, sure! just take a 154 layer gold broker layout psd and try to open it with GIMP. i mean, really, i love GIMP, but, it'll take some time ...
- EpicEng 13y ago
  These two programs are simply awful compared to their counterparts in the closed source world. I happily pay not to use them.

by tikhonj 13y ago

soperj 13y ago

LibreOffice and Gimp? They are great. *edit to reply to further down: GIMP opens psd files and LibreOffice opens doc files, you can definitely work with people using Office or Photoshop.

Karunamon 13y ago
Unless you intend to work with people using MS Office or Photoshop, that is.
- bnegreve 13y ago
  Well, that actually a very important point. Clearly adoption of free software is much lower than one could expect. What I mean is: you can argue that Gimp is not as good as PhotoShop, LibreOffice not as good as Office, or that Linux is not as good as Windows (which is clearly debatable) but they are good enough and they are all infinitely cheaper (literally) than their paying alternative. So that should be default choice for 99% of people. But it isn't. So my point is: The same goes for cars vs. bikes. Most people wouldn't mind using a bike to go to work, but it feels weird to pay only a couple of bucks for a bike, when you've learn that the price to go to work is the price for a car.
  - Karunamon 13y ago
    I was more referring to compatibility, here. LibreOffice is infamous (at least around here) for mangling table formatting used in Word docs. Gimp is hardly feature complete compared to photoshop. The reasons for this could probably be rightly chalked up to obfuscation and other below-board shenanigans on the part of certain companies, but the end result is still that you don't use the FOSS version if you're serious.
  - bnegreve 13y ago
    @Karunamon: >I was more referring to compatibility, here.I was more referring to compatibility, here. Yeah I know, but I got carried away :)
ionforce 13y ago
They're great if you don't care about your user experience.
- icambron 13y ago
  Getting OT here, but the thing that kills me about Gimp is how badly it doesn't want to save the file in its original format. You have to export it (totally different menu option) and then it will whine when you close the file because it thinks you haven't saved it. The thing almost every user expects it that saving the file just saves over the old file in the format it was originally in. IIRC, it used to work that way, and then one day it changed for the worse.
  - soperj 13y ago
    Photoshop does that as well, Illustrator is especially bad for it. There are specific reasons for it, that you don't want to save a file and realise you've lost all your layers because it was saved as a jpg.
  - graue 13y ago
    That's a recent change, and yeah, one of the worst examples lately of open source developers' contempt for their users. Apparently, those of us who've used Gimp for over a decade to edit .jpg and .png files and save them back to .jpg or .png, were Doing It Wrong, and the devs wanted us to know. :( Mind you, I've never contributed the tiniest bit of code or funding to Gimp, so I can't really complain.
    - vinceguidry 13y ago
      > one of the worst examples lately of open source developers' contempt for their users. That's utterly silly. If you take yourself seriously as a graphics editing program, then inevitably you have to move to one format that you can then convert into others. Otherwise you have to implement every single operation on every single file format you support. With the One True Format, (.otf) you can convert your .jpgs to the .otf and then do the operation there. This then presents a problem. Tech-savvy users know that there will be a loss of data when you save to a consumption format. But the rest of us don't. If you allowed open and save in the same format, people will make the intuitive leap, that they're actually editing the files in that format, when they're not. They'll think all the layers they made will carry over into the PNG and that they'll be there when they re-open the file, when in fact they won't. It would be a nightmare, because nobody will know what will save and what won't. You'd have to then educate users that to get everything to save properly, you have to save to .otf. Or you could just bake that logic directly into the app.
sejje 13y ago
I have the gimp, and I find a lot of very important details are missing from files I receive that were made in photoshop. It's virtually every time; I just request JPG exports to go along with the PSD, because otherwise I won't know it's missing.
- gggmaster 13y ago
  You can ask adobe to lift their user lockin policy
CalRobert 13y ago
If you're a casual user, sure. If you're serious, the lack of adjustment layers alone will cause you to rip your hair out. Gimp is fine for Joe Bloggs making a banner for their site; but honestly it's pretty mediocre, with a horrid interface and missing functionality. (To be fair, some of that last bit is due to Adobe patents)
n0mad01 13y ago
yeah, sure! just take a 154 layer gold broker layout psd and try to open it with GIMP. i mean, really, i love GIMP, but, it'll take some time ...
EpicEng 13y ago
These two programs are simply awful compared to their counterparts in the closed source world. I happily pay not to use them.