[FrankBlack]

Perhaps I am just dense, but the article references, specifically, the "Pro" market. For most pros that I know (and I am among them), our OS choice is often based on our tools, not the other way around. If I need Photoshop, Lightroom, Logic Pro, Visual Studio, etc., switching will be quite a chore. For the average user, this is probably a much more appealing argument.

[criddell]

I think over the past 15 years, lots of Linux users migrated to macOS because it was a pretty, usable Unix. Those users might not be terribly loyal to Apple and will move to back to Linux if it's better for them.

If you use macOS because you need to run Mac software, then you probably aren't going anywhere.

[nicolas_t]

That's exactly my case, I went from Gentoo to Mac about 10 years ago. I loved Gentoo when I was a student but getting it to work perfectly on a laptop was a hassle and while I loved customizing fvwm, macOS had great UI right out of the box.

[Brakenshire]

I think this is the sort of person that elementary are trying to capture. i.e. those who don't want the hassle of customizing the UI, who want a well thought out UI out of the box. And combine that with the underlying flexibility of Linux. They're not quite there yet, but the vision is right.

[fernandotakai]

that's basically me. i went from linux to osx ~9 years ago because it was pretty, worked out of the box and it was a *nix.

now i'm back to linux because i can't stand the decisions apple took. plus, it feels like osx (now macOS) is less and less table on every iteration. i had a BSOD while trying to plug my external monitor ffs.

[matzipan]

Unfortunately, Linux lacks in the creative market. There's no way this can change soon without support from big players, like, for example, Adobe.

[wingless]

From what I've seen it's been getting much better. Linux has very powerful tools for media creation/editing now: Blender, Krita, Darktable, Natron are some quality apps that I'm aware of.

[erikbye]

The problem is that they still pale compared to the Windows/Mac applications.

[dharma1]

I'm not sure what toolkit Adobe use but I have a feeling it's not easily portable to Linux.

Inkscape and Gimp are the stalwarts, but for someone coming from Sketch or Photoshop they feel quite ancient and somewhat messy.

https://www.figma.com is cross-platform (web based), and a pretty good Sketch competitor

For a Lightroom replacement, Darktable is actually quite good (though I really miss the high quality shadows/highlights algorithm from ACR)

[wlesieutre]

Check out Krita sometime as a Gimp alternative. It's geared toward digital painting a bit more, but it works for general image editing too.

[dharma1]

I've played around with it a bit - someone packaged Krita as a snap for Ubuntu and I wanted to test installing it. Looked good, more for painting like you say but looked powerful enough for basic image editing. I've seen people produce beautiful digital art with it

[7Z7]

That depends on what kind of creative pro you are. In general I'd completely agree with you, but the major VFX vendors all run on Linux - with Nuke, Maya, Houdini, Modo, Clarisse, Mari, etc.

[natch]

If you get lucky with your particular combination of hardware and drivers, yes this can be true for some people.

[gotofritz]

I think you can forget Adobe porting all their stuff to Linux. They have a ton of different projects and teams going on at the same time, they certainly are not going to bother increasing that by 50% to support an open source platform with 1.x% market penetration.

[wlesieutre]

Depends on what work you're doing. My (slowly improving) programmer art workflow is based on Blender, Substance Designer, and Substance Painter, all of which are available on Linux as of a few months ago.

Since the Linux release of SD I've been dual booting elementary on my desktop and have had a pretty solid experience. For me it's games that make me keep a Windows installation around.

[fizzbatter]

One nice thing though is that the "Pro" market for developers is mainly centered around Unix, not OSX. Sure, some devs might like OSX specific tools like a GUI for Git or some such.. but at its heart, most tools are Unix oriented, with plenty of crossover between OSX and Linux.

[eloisant]

Yes, even for a developer looking to switch from OSX to Linux, it's much more relevant to discuss how he will be working with his usual tools (git, IDE/editor, installing with apt-get, docker, etc) than whether the dock or the notification bar will behave the same as on OSX.

[cpursley]

https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2016/10/29/2240

[hugs]

There are also pros who primarily do web development. They need a terminal window, a text editor, and a web browser -- making switching to a different platform not as painful.

[soneil]

Yes, exactly. I've read that people are expecting photographers to move to Linux because the new MBP doesn't include an SD slot.

They're actually claiming I'm going to give up Photoshop, Pixelmator, Lightroom, CaptureOne rather than buying an external card-reader. And that's ignoring that most of us already prefer 3rd-party external card readers for speed alone ..

[gotofritz]

If you need Adobe stuff, the alternative is Windows (where it's more stable) not Linux. If you need Logic, you are stuck on macs. For everything else you MAY be able to get away with linux, but simple stuff like Evernote or Google Drive are not available