Good article I like it. So many people dismissing PewdiePie, but he is a very good story teller, has always been. And now that he is retired he has the time to play with those things which seem important to him like learning to draw, learning to surf, checking out Linux, and moving away from big tech. He still has a huge audience and the skill of telling a good story which captivates a lot of people.
Agreed. I’ve been liking his new videos lately. And most of it is the story telling aspect.
Instead of asking people to install a GNU / Linux-Libre operating system immediately, they now ask people to install Libre-Office, or something
This is a great idea, but I think I would really emphasize the “or something” part of this, not the “Libre-Office” part. It needs to be something that’s an upgrade or at least on par with what they were doing before experience wise (GIMP instead of Photoshop). I actively recommend against people I know taking on free software stuff that I use, if I know that it’s a pain in the ass to get going with just to avoid a bad experience that turns them off to the idea.
GIMP is hot garbage compared to classic Photoshop (I haven’t used the rent-seeking versions so I wouldn’t know about those). The UX has been utter shite and will remain utter shite because they like it that way. PhotoGIMP has been a godsend.
What did you try to do that you found confusing or difficult? I’m genuinely just curious.
Exhibit A: the text tool.
In general though, I find the UX to just be worse across the board. Too many steps. Non-intuitive defaults. Bad keyboard shortcuts. and so on.
To be honest, I have successfully avoided using bare GIMP for enough years now (not sure how old PhotoGIMP is, but I think it’s been around at least 5 years) that the specific bad memories are fading.
I do think GIMP has objectively bad UX in the sense that it’s definitely not just “I was used to Photoshop first so I automatically think everything else sucks.” Probably the last ~20 years of flamewars started by people pissing off the devs by saying the exact same thing is some evidence of that. But I’m not a UX expert and haven’t sat down to do a side-by-side comparison… honestly, that’s something I’d really enjoy reading/watching if somebody did do it.
If such a thing existed, it’d be coolest if they did it with one of the “good” versions of classic Photoshop, like version 7 or whatever was made by pirates into a portable app in the 2000s. I have no idea how far the UX has evolved in Adobe’s rent-seeking era because I stopped using even portable Photoshop when I switched to Linux as my daily driver for good in 2015 or so. Then suffered with GIMP for a few years, hating every nanosecond of it, til PhotoGIMP came along.
I don’t think Gimp is the upgrade you think it is. And I say this having used basically nothing else, but the interface is arcane. Unless you use it every day, you sort of have to have a browser open all the time to search for how to do things.
But I agree that the best path to migration is to do apps first, one at a time, then do a system migration. Minimizes friction and pain.
I really like Krita and Inkscape
I’ve tried to follow a tutorial for Inkscape, but I just couldn’t adapt to the workflow.
Idk, I guess it is personal taste but I like GIMP substantially better. The whole “separate windows is the default” thing is a baffling and wrong decision, but once you get over that small hurdle, it just seems like everything is more straightforward. Every time I have to rotate an image or something in Photoshop it’s just weird and off putting.
Maybe it’s just what I’m used to. And, some fancy things like layer effects or AI image stuff are straightforward in Photoshop whereas in GIMP you have to go into the awful scripting if you can do it at all. But to me for most things GIMP is easier and better.
I appreciate you pointing this out. As someone who used actual photoshop for decades, GIMP simply doesn’t cut it.
There was Gimpshop, but the project got abandoned years ago. These days I use darktable for photo adjustments and don’t do much creative editing. I’ve heard good things about Krita.
Look into PhotoGIMP.
Interesting, thanks!
There’s even an unofficial AppImage of it now, which is nice because the one that deals with the Flatpak seems to break every time the Flatpak gets updated.
Sweet!
