Kubuntu Linux 19.10 for a digital painting workstation | Hacker News Reader

Kubuntu Linux 19.10 for a digital painting workstation

davidrevoy.com

138 pointsjrepinc45 comments

> This is something apparently Developers enjoys more than anything because it will never change despite my efforts reporting it

I've personally believe that the biggest change operating systems should have is to prompt you for the kind of workflow you want to do and give you sane defaults for that (software developer, graphic artist, video editor, etc etc). These workflows could even be sourced from the community & customized at an individual level so that you could point it at someone's published workflow or fork it for your own purposes & have everything set up for you regardless of which machine you move to. This would go beyond settings to setting up your environment & installing programs where you like it (e.g. installing homebrew + relevant packages, etc). You could even have it per user for those that have multiple different workflows.

great idea!

You're totally free to share all your dotfiles on github and encourage others to use them...

Not every applications uses dotfiles to store settings...

And then you have dotfiles which store a unique id so anyone you share it with has to dig into it and tweak things...

Dotfiles aren't enough to fully describe a system configuration, though. I'll regularly use both CentOS to Ubuntu, and both the available configuration tools and default services (along with other differences like SELinux vs AppArmor) trip me up more than I'd like to admit.

Seems like a possible future use-case for systemd's homed. Maybe there will be a utility in the future to help setup configuration. 1 internet point for the person whom implements it first.

Or Nix (via Home Manager [1])

[1] https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Home_Manager

That’s fine for techies, not so much for everyone else.

So, Fedora Spin ?

No. Fedora Spin AFAICT is just a different window manager selection. I'm talking about very deep customization - which SW is installed (doesn't have to be through your package manager - e.g. Photoshop provided you can supply a license file), which shortcuts do what, etc etc. Selecting a different window manager may be part of it but it's deeper than that.

Sorry, was thinking about https://labs.fedoraproject.org/

There also used to be things like that for ubuntu (like https://ubuntustudio.org/).

Yes! This but democratized. Should be possible for someone in the community to publish their own URL that you can point to at startup (or even have your own personal one on dropbox). I think one limitation is that these are separate ISO images. It should instead be a customization point. Yes probably would be convenient to generate a customized offline installer but the majority should be exposed to it directly through NUX.

I really agree with this.

I recall Slackware had something like this, where you could e.g. install the 'D' series if you were a software developer.

Other than how the software is used (the workflow), how is this anymore than a single apt install command?

The article does a great job explaining the setup. We need more articles like it, organized and searchable. It would be nice if there were a buzzword associated with what you are describing, because then I could just google it. Without it, I'm forced to google for 'DIY' (e.g 'DIY audio engineer') at best. Software + workflow ... Softflow?

It did, RedHat, Mandrake and SuSE as well.

However the result wasn't that good, as you still needed to select what kind of development you wanted, as the default preselection might not fit your own workflow.

The Ubuntu-like distros are getting ever-so close to being a great candidate for a standard Linux desktop for general users. Ubuntu and Kubuntu are close to this and probably are great for a specialised user such as the author. Unfortunately, one thing that's still a problem in many Linux distros are the inconsistent support for system-wide shortcuts and the still in progress transitioning from X11 to Wayland. i.e apps complaining about Wayland support on X11 DE and vice versa.

I have confidence that distros from the Ubuntu family are at least getting there in making the Linux experience more pleasant, but it isn't as consistent and integrated as macOS whenever I use system-wide shortcuts recognised in the OS and all apps and Time Machine being able to backup instantly to another Mac. If I told someone to do the same from Ubuntu to another distro, you're just 20-30 Duckduckgo searches away to type the solution in the terminal.

Thanks, but I'm perfectly fine with macOS on my Macbook for now.

Isn't this something where X11 can shine:

An X11 shortcut application could intercept all keystrokes and map shortcuts to the expected keystrokes from the application that has the focus.

Ubuntu is a server OS.

It only has a limited set of old software. To get new software, you have to mess with weird (possible expired) PPAs sourced from StackOverflow posts. Eventually, you have to reinstall the OS to get new software packages or DE features.

This is fine for servers which need super-stable, tested packages.

But does that sound like a typical end-user OS, like Windows? No. That's why a better candidate are nerfed rolling releases like Manjaro. c: New stuff all the time, indefinitely. Nerfed rolling, so less bleeding edge breakage risk. No reinstalls. No PPAs; the AUR has everything. Great forum to boot. Also Arch Wiki compatible.

This is why I like KDE neon: solid Ubuntu LTS base (still a bit newer than Debian usually) with the latest KDE apps on top. There's not too many open source apps that aren't covered by KDE, with the exception of GIMP. Then I just install proprietary stuff as needed (Skype, InteliJ, etc).

Yep. Bafflingly, you'd think an older version of the DE would be more stable and bug-free than newer versions, but this wasn't my anecdotal experience: on Kubuntu, I had to reset KDE all the time. And Baloo segfaulted all the time. Two years on Manjaro, and I've never either problem once. Have you had the same experience on Neon?

You still have the problem of being stuck with an LTS package list (and dealing with PPAs) though.

Also, out of scope of this convo, but this is about what is

>a standard ... desktop for general users

but what a modern desktop should look like for general users is a subjective or moving target. If it's something like Windows 10X[0] (sandbox containerize all the things), which I think it should be, then no Linux distro currently suffices at all. :D

0: https://www.howtogeek.com/442767/what-is-windows-10x-and-how...

Project Silverblue (Fedora + Project Atomic) is trying to move in that direction, I believe.

It's this really something "general users" want? Outside of tech enthusiasts, people have allergic reaction to upgrades. Not changing software is great for them. They're already clicking "update later" / "try tomorrow" on windows/macos. Even developers in established companies are worried about upgrades. There's lots of documentation to update, standard processes and scripts may stop working. (How many docs and scripts have been invalidated recently by awscli 2.0 dropping "ecr get-login"? That's likely weeks of global productivity lost.)

Even if I'm in a tech enthusiast group, I moved away from rolling distros to fedora - still getting fairly fresh things, but don't have to deal with lots of unnecessary updates installing every day. On work laptop I'm a major update of the system behind and every time I actually go for it, it means a few hours to a day of making the environment work again.

> To get new software, you have to mess with weird (possible expired) PPAs sourced from StackOverflow posts.

Somehow I magically am typing this on an LTS system with the latest usptream versions of Firefox, slack, discord, blender, vscode, libreoffice, OBS, spotify, golang, and node, all without PPAs or stackoverflow.

I get it you use Arch, but you should perhaps educate yourself on how other distros work before throwing shade?

Between snap, flatpak, and appimage, a lot of those issues really go away. Regardless of distribution or version.

> Ubuntu is a server OS.

...and a desktop OS, and a mobile OS. I don't see where it's optimized for one over the other.

> No PPAs; the AUR has everything.

I'm not fond of PPAs, but are they really that much worse than the AUR, which works by manually compiling software using unvetted scripts from strangers?

While I have most of the annoyances for potentially switching from MacOS to Linux as a daily driver, the inconsistent system shortcuts are the big killer. Even with emacs-style shortcuts enabled at the system level, there are no guarantees. ctrl-n may go down one line, or it may open a new window. It's even inconsistent within a single app: ctrl-w will close your browser tab unless you're in a text field, in which case it will delete backwards one word... maybe (in firefox, even some text fields fail to intercept ctrl-w, and you still end up closing the tab).

macOS does a great job of supporting Emacs navigation keys at the system level, while using the super key for things like copy/paste, close tab, quit application, etc. This leaves the ctrl key free for those system-level emacs bindings.

I started down the path of attempting to customize my Linux machine to use super like in MacOS, but gave up due to inconsistencies in whether or not an app recognizes the super key or if it even allows you to customize your bindings (e.g. make super-w close a tab).

I use system-wide shortcuts >recognised in the OS and all apps and Time Machine being able to backup instantly to another Mac. If I told someone to do the same from Ubuntu to another distro, you're just 20-30 Duckduckgo searches away to type the solution in the terminal.

Hmmm I'm not sure about this statement, you can...:

- Use Timeshift to the same on Linux. - Install Linux on a separate partition - Use third party tools, like AOMEI or Acronis

And the last one, that I use is, Deja-dup with an installation script, and it works great. I'm new, but I see potential to install my OS and software unattended.

There are several ways to accomplish this.

*With Linux I mean Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch and the rest.

This is my first post, I mark it for myself.

Coming from Linux to macOs (macOs user for 2 years), I have the very opposite feeling : why does the cmd key is used instead of Ctrl for copy ? why can't I set up cmd+E to open a finder window ? Why € sign not under the E key with a modifier ? At least in Linux, I was able to remap the things the way I like it : 'windows' key is used for windows interaction (move, resize, close) and global desktop interaction (lock, sleep, shortcut for standard apps like mail, web browser, file explorer), Ctrl is mostly used within apps for common functions, Alt is used within app for app specific functions

I think it comes down to what you're used to in the end. But Linux is the only system where I was able to tell the machine to behave the way I want and not to fight against counter intuitive shortcuts (for me) ...

For those that care about graphics programming and hardware video acceleration, it is the same hit-and-miss as always, it hardly changed other than drivers crash less, specially on laptops.

So while the 2D accelerated Ubuntu desktop might work quite well, if one starts pushing it on GL/Vulkan, intends to watch hardware accelerated video on the browser, actually switch between their multiple laptop GPUs, the experience is less than stellar.

I think Seth Kenlon has made a huge job on slackermedia - "documentation providing the information a user needs to create a full multimedia studio running on Slackware Linux". Way broader and deeper, in my opinion.

http://slackermedia.info/about/

I have always wanted to get a entry level graphics tablet for Linux but whenever I have looked for well supported Linux hardware it was always confusing. Does anyone have a good recommendation for entry level graphics tablet? I mainly want to do basic sketching and diagrams for furniture designs.

I've read up recently that Wacom typically have Linux drivers available. I currently have a huion 1060 and it's been a nightmare to even try to get working and any distro. Oddly enough my first try was with Kubuntu which was why I thought this was a weird article. Kubuntu is one of my favorite distros but KDE is just so buggy especially with nvidia cards (which isn't kde's fault more or less).

I use a Wacom Intous tablet that was sub $100 that works just fine on Linux (I use it with Krita)

Yeah I've read Wacom at least provides support for Linux so that's one option for them. I never bothered to look into it and bought a Huion tablet cause it was cheaper and offered more.

I basically am unable to use it for Linux period. i've tried literally every option and it just doesn't work.

We've been using a Wacom Intuos (CTL-490, I think) tablet for several years. It was about $60. It's literally plug-and-play on Ubuntu and there's a section in the settings for it. I assume the newer entry level ones have the same level of support.

The exact model I have hovers around $30 on eBay these days.

It's really good to have some of that feedback / solutions documented. It'd never think of the window tint affecting the experience for example, but I don't do any art work - it makes sense in retrospect.

Hopefully if more people like/adopt this, it will get prepackaged as a common system flavour / package.

Krita seems to be coming along nicely and I'm very happy it exists.

But it's no Photoshop.

I'm more positively surprised every time I check it out. As opposed to Gimp, which always feels like a poor man's Photoshop, Krita seems sensible and tasteful.

But it's no Photoshop.

Until/if Adobe releases its suite for some blessed distro, I can't use Linux on my day to day machine. I believe there are a lot more people in my situation than Adobe seems to think.

We are pros and love to tinker with our tools. Linux is, to a fault even, the tinkerer's OS par excellence.

Krita is not an image manipulation tool, it's a digital painting application aimed at artists. Comparing the two is like saying that oranges are inferior because they're not a truck.

GIMP on the other hand is an apt comparison. Linux users are best to use photoshop under wine.

> Krita is not an image manipulation tool, it's a digital painting application aimed at artists

There’s a big intersection between the two groups

You can always check photopea.com It's a photoshop in the browser.

Anything in-browser just doesn't qualify for the pro market. They have gigabyte-sized files on fast local disks, they're not going to start uploading those to a cloud application.

Photopea is not a cloud application.

Number of people gained on releasing a linux port is low, since most of them are existing customers. Thus the cost to port to a new platform is not justified.

Why not contribute a little every month to Krita so that it can hire more developers to work, if Krita has the budget of Photoshop, it would just blow it out of water.

PS: Right now there are 5 full time devs and 2 part time, :)

Out of curiosity, does anyone know the hardware specs of the machine he is using.

> No graphical user interface for color management of your monitors, printers, etc... I'll write a workaround in the second part about it.

> Thumbnails and image viewer are not color managed (eg. don't expect displaying correctly a PNG using a linear profile).

In 2020. Stay classy, Linux.

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