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Comment by akerro | Hacker News Reader

I've been using it since 2011 and no problems with anything. Over 200k photos.

The infamous "Works on my laptop"

Conversely the a singular anecdote also doesn't mean it doesn't work either. I strongly suspect that when you have a largish body of people are using something without issue and one person is constantly experiencing problems there might be a reason why.

- Maybe you are constantly trying it on the same distro that constantly has problems with its build for some reason or other. Consistent bad experience for the smaller number of users who conclude incorrectly that digikam is broken. For example suppose it uses out of date libraries that the software depends on.

- Maybe your configuration is unusual in some fashion and because of this consistently hits the same bug. If nobody reports it then it never gets fixed if it doesn't also effect a developers machine.

Neither of these is an indication that the projects low level architectural direction is problematic.

It is not unusual. Contrary to what people in Linux world believe its desktop software that deals with visual image and video processing is atrocious. That's why no one ( rhetorical no one ) uses it rather than Windows or Macs for their photo libraries. It is definitely the case for the software that tries to manipulate RAW files from modern cameras.

What we actually have is a tiny number of users who use Linux as a desktop that have pretty much identical use case with a small number of images succeed. All other workflows flop.

> Neither of these is an indication that the projects low level architectural direction is problematic.

In 2020 having a project where processing a corrupted file under any conditions causes the app to crash means the projects has a bad architecture.

> That's why no one ( rhetorical no one ) uses it rather than Windows or Macs for their photo libraries.

lol, I've actually use Digikam on windows and mac because of how well it works for me

I would guess more people use Windows and Mac because it is the path of least resistance and presumably they are more heavily invested in learning their art and the many complexities of the tools required.

Pixar is an interesting case because as pioneers in their field they made a lot of their own tools and run them on Linux. Presumably unlike single user incentivized to select whatever they are used to they are instead liable to pick the best platform.

Pixar uses Linux

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/pixar-film-production...

Aftershot Pro, Lightworks, Maya, Bloom all seem to be pretty good.

They have in common that they charge money and thus have a budget. Pixars choice seems to suggest linux us a perfectly viable platform and these able tools seem to suggest we can have good tools if we are willing to invest our money in such. This isn't to say that such tools must be commercial. They could well be foss if we change the way we choose to support FOSS. Instead of heaping praise upon them we need to open our wallets and regularly.

yup :)

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