After a couple of weeks of research and digging, I’ve finally decided to fully make the switch to Linux with Ubuntu Studio. My initial plan for my creative computer hardware (photographic and music use) was to use the 2013 21.5″ iMac that I came across at a garage sale a month ago, but I had a couple complications with it; the drivers for my pretty expensive and still high-end audio interface were no longer supported on macOS, and Capture One ran a bit sluggish on the machine.
The specs of the system, although 11 years old, are still very good: 2.9GHz Intel Core i5, 8 gigabytes of DDR3 RAM, 1 terabyte hard disk (although only 5400 RPM), and a 4K Retina display. So I decided to install Linux on it! I’d been playing around with some of the open source alternatives to the photo editing software I use; GIMP, Darktable, RawTherapee, and digiKam. They are all going to take some getting used to as they aren’t straight replications of Photoshop, Affinity Photo, Lightroom, and Capture One, but Capture One wasn’t a straight replication of Lightroom when I made the switch cold turkey after six years of using Lightroom; same with Affinity Photo after my 20 years of dabbling in Photoshop. So I’m willing to invest some time into learning them as they are all pretty powerful applications.
I lied a little bit earlier when I said I fully switched to Linux. That’s not 100% true. Being that the past 3 years of my photographic work is tied up in Capture One and my desktop publishing work is tied up in Affinity Publisher, I’m keeping a Windows system off to the side for when I need to go back and pull up previous work as well as to finish up the current book that I’m working on while I search for a Linux alternative to Affinity Publisher.
One issue that I am running into with Ubuntu Studio is installing Reaper. I haven’t gone through any of the audio recording software that comes with Ubuntu Studio, but I went in with the plan to use Reaper as my Studio One replacement (until the Linux version is out of beta testing and I feel it’s ready for me to invest the money into to upgrade to the current version) since I’m familiar with it. That’s something to work on later, though, as editing photographs and getting my next book completed is my immediate task; music isn’t currently on the list of things to do.
Come with me on my Linux journey! There will be more Linux talk over here. From daily Ubuntu Desktop use on the laptop to Ubuntu Server and Ubuntu Studio talk.