[ale] A use for Windows . . .

[Sean Kilpatrick]

On Thursday 31 October 2002 11:40 am, Robert L. Harris wrote:
> Also, look at "gphoto" for connecting to your camera, connects to my Odd
> Olympus just great.

Tried that; got a headache. Spent more than 4 hours wrestling with
gphoto and various downloads and never could get it to work correctly.
Gphoto is simply _not_ ready for prime time.  Sorry.
<begin rant mode>
Let me be clear here.  I'm a photographer.  I last wrote machine
language code nearly 35 years ago.  I am _not_ a computer geek; I
am _not_ a programmer.  For me a computer is a tool.  I do not want to
take the time and effort to custom make every tool I need to use.
Asking me to recompile kernel code to get the OS to do something I think
should be trivial is like asking me to build the shutter mechanism for
a camera and then put the entire camera together.
I use photoshop not because it is easy to use but because the documentation
is complete and there are numerous books available to help me learn the
program. Documentation for The Gimp is a joke. Last time I tried to use
The Gimp I needed to take a 14mgb TIF file and save it as a JPG file at
200 dpi sized to fit on an 8X10 sheet of paper. That's a trivial task
in Photoshop; I couldn't figure out how to do it with The Gimp. If it can
be done, it sur'n-hell isn't trivial.
<end rant mode>

I use Linux because I mightily distrust M$. But I will be forced to keep
Win2k on my machine until WINE and/or CodeWeavers can make Photoshop
and ThumbsPlus run on Linux AND UNTIL manufacturers of computer accessories
(especially scanners) start producing Linux drivers as a matter of course.

I'm not happy about this, but it is reality.
After all, I'm here after IBM finally gave up on OS/2, which I started
using instead of Win95. I've been trying to stay away from M$ products
for years now.

Sean




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