A warm welcome to FOSS

About how open source software offers that opportunity to reinvent yourself.

Article pubilshed on 2023/09/30
This post is assigned to the categories: Documentation, Favorites, People and creative portraits, Profound

FOSS. FOSS. FOSS. Free open source software.
What does that topic have to do with this blog or photography? What is open source anyhow ???
Here is the definition: Open source software is software that includes the permission to view the source code of the program or to modify or enhance it according to own wishes.
There is most often a movement behind that. A community which promotes a collaboration, and exchange of experience.
Self-developed or proprietary software would be the opposite. The authors reserve their right to control the code.
To what extent this affects the blog, however, would not be resolved at this point.
I’ve always been keen on what happened alongside the mainstream. That is how I came across Linux one day as an enthusiastic, as well as admittedly nerdy teenager.
At the time it was just fun to click around in operating systems other than Windows. My parents didn’t need to get me a chemistry set, I carried out my own experiment.
I was a real troublemaker in my younger days.
But it had never been enough for a complete switch. There were many dependencies due to school and college. Special software only worked on Windows back in the day.
This would probably be the most common reason why Linux still does badly in the private sector. Whoever has the market share makes a profit.
Photographers are also affected:
The software industry standard is largely set by Adobe. And although promising new products have appeared in recent years, Linux has come away empty-handed again.
No question, I am a huge fan of Adobe’s software. It is incredible what you can do with their stuff. But as much as I like Lightroom and Photoshop, them products would have been the last obstacles in terms of the final entry into the Linux world.
And I did overcome them.
Because I had ignored open source software at that time, I was not aware of what great alternatives were natively available for the Linux system.
And so I discovered the world of Rapid Photo Downloader, gThumb, Darktable and GIMP. Tools that can compete with Adobe, that have great performance and are free of charge.

Switching an operating system is one thing, throwing knowledge and an elaborated photo workflow overboard is another. Different tools also work differently.
Furthermore, Adobe does set the industry standard with good reason, which means that some functions will be missing or will be available to a limited extent.
You may wonder why I’m up for that struggle.
In the end I am thrilled like I was in my younger days. Thrilled by what a movement without any financial interest can accomplish with the least of all resources.
And I guess this is the ultimate point of FOSS.
But it also offers me the opportunity to get a new perspective and to reinvent.

Back when I started and wasn’t yet an Adobe customer, I had produced one of the most beautiful images so far with GIMP.
But now, however, Linux instead of Windows has a role in the game as well. A reason to be proud.

Enough with the writing. This article has become faaar too long. If you have held out until the end, you’ll receive a suitable appreciation from me here.
What do you think about all that? Let me know. I am so excited. But love only.

PS: I actually wanted to publish that article already in 2019. Somehow it got lost among the many other drafts.
But in retrospect, this means: All images of the last four years have been processed exclusively under Linux. Who would have thought.