Re: [Fsuk-manchester] Constructivne Comment request

[Matt Haworth]

As a web designer myself (mainly for charities and public sector, incidentally), I used to agree with this, but quite recently I've switched to Ubuntu and I'm pretty happy with it.

I'm not totally "free", as I'm still virtualising Windows XP to test IE6/IE7 and I have a mac mini for mac testing reasons. I've switched from photoshop to gimpshop, and it does all the things a web designer needs to do (scale, crop, gradients, shadows, text, etc) and much more.

Text looks great on ubuntu (after a few settings tweaks).

I think the reason mac has such a foothold in design is mostly because it used to have the best software, way back when, and Apple are trying to maintain the idea that "real designers use a mac" through offering strategic large discounts to musicians, artists, etc. It's also a stable, mature platform, but then again it's not the only one.

GNU/Linux and Mac are still a world apart in ease of use, and the interface for Ubuntu (at the application level) looks poor in comparison, but it's not comparing like for like. Mac OS runs on specific Mac hardware where as GNU/Linux has to (try) to run on virtually any hardware.

If you want an easy life, windows and mac are still the best choices I'd say. As much as I'm loving ubuntu, there's still times I have to drop into the terminal, and setting up a virtualised guest for XP to test in multiple browsers and work with Photoshop/Illustrator files from other designers isn't something I can imagine my Grandmother being able to do. That said, I can get all my work done in it, excluding testing, on free (as in beer and freedom) software platform... that isn't bad at all.

I can imagine that with a bit of IT support, particularly during set up, most of the charities I've worked with on web design projects could go GNU/Linux quite painlessly - particularly (but not limited to) those staff who only use an office suite, internet and e-mail.

-- Matt

On Wed, 2008-06-25 at 11:52 +0100, Stephen Mount wrote:
> I wouldn't recommend linux desktops in a corporate environment, maybe  
> in a small business, but I would definitely recommend linux servers.
>
> I'm a web designer and I use Mac because Linux doesn't have the  
> correct software and Windows is not stable enough to do what I want to  
> do, as well as Mac seems to have the best text anti-aliasing, doesn't  
> surprise me all the magazine companies designers use Mac, and the  
> results are excellent usually.
>
> On 25 Jun 2008, at 11:34, Matthew Edmondson wrote:
>
> > Michelle is telling charity organisations that Linux is too hard/not
> > ready (on the desktop).
> >
> > She makes some good points, but perhaps you guys can make some useful
> > counter points.
> >
> > Sigh.
> >
> > http://www.zenofnptech.org/2008/06/linux-desktops.html
> >
> >
> > Michelle is a typical tech and well listened to in both USA and UK.
> >
> > Constructive flames please
> >
> >
> > : )
> >
> > -- 
> > Matthew Edmondson               address@hidden
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> Kind Regards,
>
> Stephen Mount
> Dream Creators Web Hosting
> http://dreamcreators.co.uk
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