Comment by pizlonator | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pizlonator | Hacker News Reader

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I've been living on an Unbuntu variant (Pop_OS) for over a year now and it's surprisingly good. Note that I had been a Mac-and-some-Windows user as far as desktops go for about 10 years prior to that, and had lots of Linux experience before that - so I'm experiencing a 10 year before-and-after.

Things that intrigue me:

- For photos, darktable is surprisingly good. I think this was my biggest single surprise, being a Lightroom user.

- GIMP was always great and now it's even better.

- LibreOffice is good enough that I can live on it just fine. I do miss Keynote, but it's not a showstopper.

- Dia is good enough for diagrams, though I miss OmniGraffle.

- Notice how there aren't any Windows apps I miss. There are Mac apps I miss (Keynote and OmniGraffle).

- Anything involving the web just works.

- Suspend/resume on my Linux laptop works better than suspend/resume on Windows, but not as good as what you get on Apple M hardware.

- Battery life on my Linux laptop is better than on Windows, almost entirely because Windows wakes the laptop up while it's suspended, so if you close the Windows laptop and carry it around unplugged, you'll find that the battery is totally drained after some number of hours. Linux doesn't have this problem.

- Development workflow is amazing. I'd rather program on Linux than anything else.

- The lack of crapware and nagware is so amazing.

- For diagrams, draw.io is a decent alternative

- Similarly for Photoshop users, Photopea might suit them better than GIMP. And there's also Photoshop Express/Online if they really want to stay in the Adobe ecosystem.

If you just want to draw a simple diagram, Excalidraw is amazing.

Draw.io is my go-to tool on any platform now. I did an entire bachelors and masters using it for all my diagrams.

I like OmniGraffle but personally I didn't think it was worth it when draw.io was free anyway. Like I don't feel it was $150-$250 better than draw.io, especially since it's not cross platform.

Draw.io’s development philosophy is just too cool: “doesn’t use artificial scarcity to produce a bloated sales-centric company with matching revenues.”

https://www.drawio.com/about

Draw.io all the way. I've operated as a Network Consultant and Architect for the last 3 years using it exclusively. Not only is it great, it's fast and cross-platform. I will never use visio again.

Have you ever tried Excalidraw? It doesn’t have as many features but with the keyboard shortcuts you can whip up diagrams so fast. It’s just so nice to draw in.

We use Excalidraw at work. I have a friend who uses it for everything.

I've played with it, and it seems pretty ok; the only reason I haven't used it much is because draw.io has been good enough, but I really should give it more of a test drive before I draw any conclusions.

I just checked and Draw.io is just Electron slop. Disappointing.

Well part of the appeal is that it can be in the browser without installing anything.

> GIMP was always great and now it's even better.

For adding shapes/colours/annotations etc to photos, I found krita to be more accessible than gimp. E.g. I wanted to do changes to my contractor's realistic concept drawings and I could learn krita (guided by Claude Sonnet) and make the changes in a span of couple of hours.

Adding shoutout to Inkscape, also a very good piece of software for editing graphics.

Pinta is the best for editing screenshots, I’d say.

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