tlug: Re: Linux GUI reliablity

[Jonathan Byrne <jq@example.com>]

Austin wrote:

> I use a combination of an outdated Compaq i486 (Prolinea 2200), 
> Linux(Slackware 3.3.4) for my web design work, and it is extreemely 
> stable.  The GUI (Xfree86) usually causes me no problems, and also there 
> are all that is needed for web design available for  X (eg: GIMP 
> replaces photoshop, XEmacs replaces BBedit or and other HTML enabled 
> editor).

X is very hard to crash; something I've seen only once or twice.  The recent
occurence required a combined assault by the Muriyari Netscape Japanese hack
and Afterstep, which managed to crash X and make Xemacs dump core on its way
down.  Not a pretty sight :-)  That is, however, a very rare occurence.  X and
Linux are, to be quite honest, not as convenient as the Windows 95 GUI.
However, they do make up for many sins in that area by having extremely good
stability.

I'm still not very impressed with GIMP, though.  I keep really holding out for
the day when Wine will be able to run Paintshop Pro 5.  I wish they would do a
Linux port, actually :-)  Two serious complaints that I have with GIMP is its
inability to do Japanese (that's pretty brain-dead, IMO.  Shows you how much
FSF cares about i18n), and the fact that the way it's designed really seems to
make doing things harder than they need to be or should be.  A powerful
program, yes.  A well-designed UI, no.

Fortunately, there is an alternative on Linux that meets a lot of my needs,
other than creating Japanese graphics.  Well, actually, if I need to create
any graphic, I just boot into Windows.  It's easier and faster than dealing
with GIMP, and PSP5 does anti-aliasing of text much better than GIMP.  In
fact, GIMP does that so poorly that I wonder if in fact it's really doing it.
But I digress.

The wonderful alternative is Image Magick. It's an X app, although a lot of
its tools are really command line driven.  In particular, it has a wonderful
component called Mogrify.  Mogrify changes image resolution, transparency,
interlacing, color depth, file format, and a whole raft of other stuff, from
the command line. And it does it very, very well.  Better than PSP.  Probably
better than Photoshop, too.  Certainly better than GIMP.  And it's FAST.  I
can produce smaller, tighter, better-looking images with it than with anything
else I've ever used.  Oh, and did I mention that it dithers better than
anything I've ever used?  Yup, I love Image Magick, and I'd have to boot into
Windows a lot more often if I didn't have it.

> only one problem that I can think of is that Netscape with the Japanese 
> patch crashes requalry, but it doen't bring X or my system down, so it 
> is only slightly annoying.

That it does.  They did it to make it more compatible with the Netscape
versions on other platforms - it's a feature :-)  Netscape for Linux is pretty
lousy compared to Netscape on other platforms, though.  A colleague of mine
who runs Solaris (Sparc version) Netscape has similar bad things to say about
it, so it may be that Netscape on UNIX just isn't very well done.   I'm
hoping that changes with Netscape's greater committment to Linux.

Cheers,

Jonathan

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