Ask Slashdot: Switching To a GNU/Linux Distribution For a Webdesign School 233
spadadot writes: I manage a rapidly growing webdesign school in France with 90 computers for our students, dispatched across several locations. By the end on the year it will amount to 200. Currently, they all run Windows 8 but we would love to switch to a GNU/Linux distribution (free software, easier to deploy/maintain and less licensing costs). The only thing preventing us is Adobe Photoshop which is only needed for a small amount of work. The curriculum is highly focused on coding skills (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP/MySQL) but we still need to teach our students how to extract images from a PSD template. The industry format for graphic designs is PSD so The Gimp (XCF) is not really an option. Running a Windows VM on every workstation would be hard to setup (we redeploy all our PCs every 3 months) and just as costly as the current setup. Every classroom has at least 20Mbit/s — 1Mbit/s ADSL connection so maybe setting up a centralized virtualization server would work? How many Windows/Photoshop licenses would we need then? Anything else Slashdot would recommend?
Do what everyone else does in this situation (Score:4, Insightful)
Get mostly linux machines for the mainstream work, and get a few windows systems for the jobs that really need windows. People will have to learn the nuts and bolts of data transfer between the systems, but that is actually a pretty useful professional skill.
Re: Do what everyone else does in this situation (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing needs windoze in webdesign. Also gfx design is covered with Krita, Inkscape, Gimp and Blender. The only department where Linux is tailing is desktop MMO games. In every other areas you're only held back by your ignorant self.
Re: Do what everyone else does in this situation (Score:4, Informative)
Parent should maybe be modded up. I mean, if Trump can get away with insulting an entire gender, pointing out that someone who claims to know what he's doing appears instead to be full of shit should be acceptable on slashdot.
As a possibly useful point of information: GIMP seems to handle .psd files perfectly well. I just saved a triple layer .xcf that used a mask and partial opacity as a .psd and then imported it back into GIMP with no discernible damage. YMMV of course. But page templates should not be using esoteric features. ( BTW, the .psd was 134% the size of the .xcf--- but Adobe never did understand the value of efficient data structures. Students who sometimes have to work with low capacity thumb drives do, though.)
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As a possibly useful point of information: GIMP seems to handle a limited selection of .psd files perfectly well.
FTFY.
Gimp can only handle .psd files that use the sRGB colorspace with 8-bit planes. It fucking shits itself with any other colorspace or higher bit depths. I haven't tried it but I hear that Krita (which originated from Gimp) can handle other colorspaces and higher bit depths so it may handle a larger selection of .psd files.
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Good to know. I've looked briefly at Krita but found no reason to learn its ways as 99% of what I want to do I can do in GIMP. (The other 1% is probably a bunch of bad ideas anyway.)
WRT using image files as page templates in web development (the original context) would there ever be a need for the .pdf features that would not import well into GIMP?
A good template needs to be as simple as possible, so it can be used by older software that is still in production and is future proofed--- will not need to be
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that should be ".psd features"
Re: Do what everyone else does in this situation (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, but I always do my word processing with Inkscape. And I use LibreOffice Writer for my image manipulations.
If you choose the right tool for the job, the Linux distros are pretty good. If you insist on trying to drive screws with a hammer, then perhaps a well equipped Linux distro is not the most suitable thing for you. And if you want to play games, well, there is no question that Windows outshines every Linux distro when it comes to entertainment.
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All that massive post goes for naught once you have to configure PulseAudio in a way that Poettering doesn't like (which is many) then you'll be wondering if you could, maybe just run a copy of Windows for media after all :-)
So? Don't need a Ferrari to drive 3 blocks (Score:2)
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... Krita (which originated from Gimp) ...
I really doubt that this is true (of course, I may be wrong). Krita is a KDE application (so QT-based) and it has a very different focus and approach. I can't imagine that the two projects share much code, if any.
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640KB oughta be enough for everyone right?
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but Adobe never did understand the value of efficient data structures.
They developed the PDF standard, which was designed from the ground up to be transferred in a stream and rendered quickly. Don't hate the tech just because they're a proprietary company.
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Yes. Thank you for reminding me that PDF was their baby, and they had to nurse it through some hard times before it became accepted as the better way to transmit and archive documents.
Of course they were under tremendous pressure between Microsoft and Netscape and that gawdawefull browser war. They used the PDF to carve out a space for themselves. Still, they released it as a public standard, and it has held up over the years.
I just wish they had taken the same high road with image files. But I guess if t
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it doesn't handle psd files well enough, unfortunately.
nobody cares if gimp loads psd files created with gimp if the layout design file received from the designer refuses to open or opens in a wrong way and is a total pain to take out assets to use on the page. you seem to think that psd is a format set in stone when it isn't, so supporting it is tricky.
however the question is why the OP wants to switch to linux when he wants to run windows software on every PC? you can run the gimp, inkscape etc on window
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I don't have a dog in this fight, since I'm quite satisfied with the OS I've got and I don't much care what anyone else does.
But as I understand it, Win8 is a messed up dog and there seems to be consensus agreement that anyone running it NEEDS to upgrade to Win10. But those using Win7 can stay with it if they want. It won't bite them in the butt like Win8 will.
The thing about "upgrading" to Win10 is that it is an entirely different licensing scheme similar to paying annual rental fees. Which mount up if y
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What the AC just said.
Only matters if it's another's work (Score:2)
If the students are creating original content instead of playing with an image that has been through photoshop it is not going to matter.
Re: Do what everyone else does in this situation (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing needs windoze in webdesign.
maybe not for design, but you have to have at least one windows system for testing so you can see what your web app is gonna look like on it
Teaching not production (Score:2)
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Yes, or at least a Windows license running in kvm so they can experience how things render differently on various browsers. Thats how I used to set my wife up.
As for Photoshop, maybe have one Windows machine so the kids can put it on their resume because thats really what he is probably thinking about as a classroom?
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vnc seems to work acceptably to allow a unix machine to control a process running on a Windows XP machine. As does rdesktop I believe. I imagine that one or the other or something similar will work with a more modern (i.e. probably even more obtuse) Windows version. Files can be transferred with Samba.
That would be a pain to set up and to make cleanly accessible to an untrained user who
Windows VMs (Score:3, Insightful)
Why exactly would running Windows VMs be so difficult? In actuality it would be quite a bit easier, if all of the workstations are running the same configuration. You setup the Windows VM as needed and then deploy it out to each machine. Or heck, you get the students to do the work for you. I've found knowing how to find your way around Virtual Box to be a very useful skill as a developer and this is something the students should really learn about. It's so easy to do work on a variety of different projects with vastly different system requirements by using VMs. I do work on VMs ranging from Windows 7 to Windows Server 2012 and almost everything between at work with very little difficulty in setting up the VMs (both with VirtualBox and RDC in Windows to a cloud based VM). A lot of it boils down to knowing how to manage and deploy your VMs, or hiring a company to help if this is not your expertise.
Re:Windows VMs (Score:5, Informative)
Licensing, for one. They'd need a license for each VM, which kind of defeats the purpose of switching to Linux for the sake of lower costs.
VirtualBox?? why not KVM-qemu? (Score:2)
It's free and you don't need to install on each system. Just have windows server in a VM that is acting as a app server over RDP.
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You would also need a different server license for each old version of IE to emulate
Re:VirtualBox?? why not KVM-qemu? (Score:5, Informative)
You would also need a different server license for each old version of IE to emulate
Nope, IE VMs for testing are free....
Official VM's for testing IE versions are available from Microsoft:
http://dev.modern.ie/tools/vms/windows/
From the webpage:
"Download virtual machines: Test versions of IE from 6 through 11 using virtual machines you download and manage locally"
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I think that workaround has a max timeout.
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But they only last 90 days. :(
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well, god save us from developers that cannot figure out virtualbox at first go.
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God save us from developers that can't do basic math. Cost of Windows on VM !=0.
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If you are replacing Windows on the bare metal, you already have a Windows license.
The cost of a Windows license you already have is $0.
Re:Windows VMs (Score:4, Informative)
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MS offers convenient licensing based on host count, client count, motherboard sockets, cores per CPU and concurrent hardware threads per core.
Get a lawyer.
let us know when any of these things are available at no cost, then you might convince someone
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Except the lawyer. Still not convinced.
Multi-user instead of VM? (Score:2)
Why set up Windows VM at all? It seems less wasteful to run one Windows OS for all students, well you would need one per site (Windows Server with RDS). One ûber-PC such as with 24 Haswell cores and 128GB RAM and a PCIe SSD (Intel 750 400GB or 1.2TB is cheap) would likely serve about 20 users or more very well. The Windows OS may run either bare metal or on a VM, that actually becomes an unimportant (or less important) technical detail.
Would be interesting if you get a discount on CAL and RDS licenses
All that just for photoshop? (Score:2)
The 1999 solution for the requirements above is a bunch of desktops with linux on them and it's far more compelling, far more capable with an even larger price difference now.
Remember folks - it's teaching not training. If it's in a workplace that already has a pile of people using photoshop in production and you have somebody already taught to draw that's one th
Ahoy there! (Score:2)
Because you have to keep track of all the licences and make sure they are paid for. Why bother when the entire point is to teach people to do things that can be done without the trouble and without encouraging software piracy (ok then - copyright infringement)?
Can GIMP not read PSD? (Score:2)
It's been a lot of years since I've dealt with either Photo Shop or GIMP, but I'm pretty sure it used to (at least open) PSD files with no problems.
Am I remembering wrong, or is this no longer the case?
Wanting to teach people Photo Shop is fine, but if it's just about PSD compatibility, I'm not sure that makes sense.
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I have opened a heck of a lot of psd files in GIMP, and saved to that format as well. Easy enough to find out - try it on Windows GIMP if you need to make sure. If you're just extracting images I would think GIMP would work perfectly. I still use GIMP as my main heavy photo editor.
Re:Can GIMP not read PSD? (Score:4, Interesting)
Adobe WROTE photoshop for Linux YEARS ago, we actually used to run it, but it was a limited release application that was only provided to specific customers and beta test sites. There's just never quite been a critical mass to make it profitable to release stuff like that. Porting, if your a sophisticated shop that already supports several platforms is really pretty trivial.
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Adobe has put a lot of time and effort into building its own little walled garden. Through student and school discounts and various party favors, Adobe products are taught to the exclusion of any alternatives in USA schools. The early graduates have been using Adobe in their businesses for a couple of decades now; they would not know how to manage a shop using any other graphics tools.
That is why to an increasing extent Brazil, the Netherlands, and a few other countries are now eating American graphics des
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Does it matter so long as it comes with the libraries it needs? I'm using a dotnet geosciences thing on linux that works (and was tested by the vendor) with mono and it does the job. Just being able to run on the platform is often enough, in this case it avoids hot-seating with a single licence and an occasionally used thing. Yes there is RDP but that means a dedicated MS server box, annoying, confusing, expensive licencing and the entire desktop exported instead of a window like on
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Don't know which version of WordPerfect for Linux you had, but the versions I had did *NOT* use WineLib, they came from the Unix version of WordPerfect. That was 20 years ago mind you. It all rather sucked and I went back to using LaTeX for everything.
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It was actually a SCO binary and you had to have the SCO binary compatibility patch, which hasn't worked in years (since like kernel 1.2.x or something). I still know a guy that works in a shop that has a linux box (I think its a VM now) running some ancient RedHat just so they can support a specific workflow and print WP documents. That whole tech stack got deeply embedded in the legal field way back and they're STILL not entirely free of it.
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I really don't know, but this was WAY back, I don't even think in those days WineLib was a viable option. We were one of the first web development shops in existence, back in '94. We got access to everything, all sorts of weird "this does not exist" software. Amigas, DEC Alpha based NT4 workstations, tons and tons of stuff that nobody in the current generation knows squat about.
Re:Can GIMP not read PSD? (Score:4, Informative)
WRONG.
This is an example of someone who has not explored the Linux alternatives thoroughly before deciding that since it is free it cannot possibly do the job. Or maybe he's going on what he heard a few years ago, and doesn't realize that major FOSS software like GIMP are undergoing quiet, continuous improvements and upgrades.
In either case, this is not an example of "a real problem with Linux, where some major and/or important products simply don't work and the open-source alternatives won't cut it." There are definitely still such examples out there, but this is not one of them.
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doesn't realize that major FOSS software like GIMP are undergoing quiet, continuous improvements and upgrades.
Wow, you're right. I didn't realize that GIMP finally supports color spaces. If they keep this up, soon they'll be feature-equivalent with Photoshop CS3.
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doesn't realize that major FOSS software like GIMP are undergoing quiet, continuous improvements and upgrades.
Wow, you're right. I didn't realize that GIMP finally supports color spaces. If they keep this up, soon they'll be feature-equivalent with Photoshop CS3.
Which is probably the version of photoshop used to teach students on MS Windows boxes anyway. The latest and greatest is both unlikely and not necessary when you want to point out concepts instead of rote learning of how to use a GUI that is going to change soon anyway.
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Wow, you sure know how to take things out of context, don't you?
Last I looked, web work is limited to a subset of the RGB color space, and one that is impossible to define with precision since it depends on what is common among all the different screens that will show your work. If you intend to do web design, you have to throw out everything that Adobe has put into Photoshop over the last 15 years. Because you are working with only a handful of crayons. Gimp cannot do everything that Photoshop can do, whe
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It probably is not possible in all cases. But we're talking .psd files that are being used as page templates. That's pretty simple layering, even the old GIMP before they beefed up the layering capabilities would be able to handle that.
To put it another way, any .psd page template file that GIMP cannot handle is a bad template. Fancy adjustment layers make sense when doing Fine Art, but not in this context.
Easier? Cheaper? Depends (Score:2, Insightful)
Are you sure it's easier to deploy and maintain linux? Do you have someone who can maintain a linux installation of that size? Not a hobbyist.... for God's sake, don't trust this to a hobbyist. Do you have an actual professional? They might be a bit scarcer than Windows IT guys... and that's the first thing I would check: that you have someone who can reliably maintain this....someone certified, not certifiable. Also, ask legitimate IT guys in your area about your specifics. It may or may not be the way to
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In my experience: Linux is much cheaper to own than Windows.
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Yes, but when you get into installations like this, the upfront licensing costs are only part of the equation.... and that's why I think he should get a consultant to look over his specific situation.
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Linux updates break systems too.... But, if there is no local Linux professional or it often takes them a day or so to get to you because there is only one/not enough to go around and they charge a premium because of it... then Windows just became cheaper without looking into anything else.
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http://lmgtfy.com/?q=ubuntu+wo... [lmgtfy.com]
Seems a lot of people have had stuff break. I had a toshiba laptop become unusable after a kubuntu upgrade myself. Just froze up on boot.
Winblows on the other hand, driver hell making a 1 year old scanner unusable after updating from 98 to XP.
QQ.
Some 3rd party software not made by MS broke during one of the biggest os upgrades in Windows history, and the 3rd party didn't step up with new drivers. And this is 'winblows' fault, somehow, not yours, that you selected a bottom feeding windows 98 only piece of crap scanner that likely didn't even have a windows 2000 driver.
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You obviously haven't spent too much time in linux or do it with rose colored glasses. Someone below posted about Ubuntu...here's my favorite from opensuse:
https://www.google.com/#q=opensuse+black+screen+after+boot [google.com]
and Debian is a joke between me and my friends because of this kind of thing:
https://www.google.com/#q=debian+broken+packages [google.com]
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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"I've seen some mighty capable hobbyists and some downright retarded experts."
Yes, but which are you more likely to see: an expert who can't do his job or a hobbyist who can't do the job of an expert? For every capable hobbyist out there, there are 20 out there who think they could handle a project like this because they installed Ubuntu on their laptop and set up an FTP server for their friends to share things. They networked to their sister's computer, so they have networking down pat too... Now, do you h
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And they are probably correct. The requirements are not hard here.
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A linux hobbyist will probably be able to get the job done, just be prepared for it to take a little longer.
Maybe, maybe not (on the longer part). A lot of the Windows "experts" that I've known didn't have the thinking skills of a typical Linux hobbyist, not to mention the determination and drive. A self-taught Linux expert can solve problems and get things done.
We do not have to be wizards for this one (Score:2)
FFS I could do it with a pile of knoppix CDROMS. In the year 2000 or any time later. Give it a couple of weekends and you could too if you can't already.
It's about providing a suite of applications, a machine to run them on, and somewhere to save them. Something like knoppix is ideal for that because they can take it home and run it on other stuff without changing the base OS.
WINE for Photosohp (Score:5, Informative)
Not sure why this hasn't been mentioned yet, but depending on what version you want to run, Photoshop runs quite well on Linux under WINE [winehq.org] depending on what version you need to use, including CS6 and Creative Cloud versions. If you require support, Code Weavers [codeweavers.com] packages a popular and easy-to-use version of WINE with varying levels of technical support available for purchase. (No affiliation with Code Weavers, just a happy customer.)
If you want to get fancy (i.e. complicated), you can probably set up some sort of application server that will allow you to limit the number of Photoshop licenses you need to purchase, but that's a bit out of scope for a simple Slashdot comment. :)
- Dave
Stop teaching slicing (Score:5, Insightful)
Slicing PSDs is crude, antiquated (even though most shops still do it), and reinforces the fallacy that web design begins in Photoshop.
Modernize your curriculum to teach progressive enhancement of wireframe layouts in the browser. At some point you teach about creating the individual image assets for what they are (backgrounds, icons, etc) rather than treating a PSD as a giant slab of source material. For this, you can use GIMP, Inkscape, or anything else Free.
You are perpetuating Adobe's dominance by furthering a bad workflow that benefits them. Your course isn't about Photoshop, that shouldn't be the keystone of it.
Slicing PSDs is the equivalent of beginning a construction project from a child's crayon drawing of the not-yet-existing building.
Re:Stop teaching slicing (Score:4, Interesting)
Agreed. Good designers know CSS and at-least try to understand the technologies they're asking to be used.
- Microsoft & Linux-based small corps I've seen.
If the designers aren't supporting the company's end-product in an effective way, the company should be critical of the designers. And you can't be effective at guiding tech creators if you don't understand the tech.
We no-longer are painting banners and putting them online as websites. We now have transitions to consider, varying screen sizes (not just 3, or just X, but 100s).
Copy-pasting images is worthless. If you really want to teach it, make them do it from JPG, but it'll look like crap in Retina no-matter what. Honestly trash the copy-paste and teach a little Inkscape hacking on SVGs.
Re:Stop teaching slicing (Score:4, Insightful)
Slicing PSDs is crude, antiquated (even though most shops still do it), and reinforces the fallacy that web design begins in Photoshop.
Modernize your curriculum to teach progressive enhancement of wireframe layouts in the browser. At some point you teach about creating the individual image assets for what they are (backgrounds, icons, etc) rather than treating a PSD as a giant slab of source material. For this, you can use GIMP, Inkscape, or anything else Free.
You are perpetuating Adobe's dominance by furthering a bad workflow that benefits them. Your course isn't about Photoshop, that shouldn't be the keystone of it.
Slicing PSDs is the equivalent of beginning a construction project from a child's crayon drawing of the not-yet-existing building.
I agree, and this is coming from someone who came into web programming from graphic design. I first learned Photoshop. I soon abandoned it once I got a job in web programming.
It is better to write HTML in a text editor. Then add CSS. If you must, add images from Photoshop or whatever. But I hardly ever even do that anymore. Granted, it's harder to learn to code raw HTML in a text editor. But I would rather you start with Dreamweaver or some WYSIWYG editor than making a web page in Photoshop, slicing it up, and converting it into a web page.
Photoshop is pixel-based. The web is elastic. Photoshop encourages you to make image-heavy, user-unfriendly, obnoxious brochures --- instead of lean, useful, get-out-of-the-way web pages.
Your doing it wrong (Score:4, Informative)
but we still need to teach our students how to extract images from a PSD template. The industry format for graphic designs is PSD so The Gimp (XCF) is not really an option
Really? Sure i'd chose photoshop over gimp, but i'd choose nether for web design... manipulating rasters for anything more than tweaking images should not be part of modern web design, slicing up images is 1990, don't teach this, design with grid systems, use pen and paper or a wireframing tool, teach typography, the rest is code.
Color Support (Score:2)
Serious question since I've not touched GIMP in years (or any other Linux graphics utilities), but one of the primary reasons why I've stuck with Windows/Photoshop is simply for color management. Does GIMP+Linux support proper color management, ICC profiles, 10/12-bit displays, 16/32-bit per channel within images, CMYK color, Adobe RGB color space, and ProPhoto RGB color space? These are all tools used in various aspects of professional graphics design. Also, designers love to hand me AI files instead of PS
Re:Color Support (Score:4, Interesting)
Inkscape's native format is SVG, and it works great. It should be part of the curriculum long before hand-holding designers who can't produce consumable assets.
Re:Color Support (Score:4, Interesting)
I have some love for SVG... at least the sane parts of the spec, and it's quite a big part of my day job... But i have a lot of hate for inkscape:
A significant part of that is because it's really shitty at generating SVG. It might "use" SVG as it's format, but it does not treat it natively, it uses it's own name-space, litters files with it's name-space even when you request it to save plain SVGs. It converts much of it's data into SVG while saving the original "inkscape" data embeded in it's sodipodi namespaced XML embedded in the same file... really not very different from illustrator, SVG is it's output not it's internal format.
I don't touch files intended for the web with inkscape, but make them by hand, using inkscape to generate path data but that's it... Creating web safe SVGs with inkscape is just too much pain.
Simple (Score:2)
Use FOSS first before switching to Linux (Score:3)
From experience (i.e. failure) with switching people over, you get the best results if you introduce people to the free software first then change the operating system. Use Inkscape, Krita, GIMP, or Scribus on Windows, rather than switching two things at once.
Apple - What's Happening in France (Score:2)
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It's France, they do strange things in Europe. For instance when Muslims kill French people, the French respond by harassing Jews. It's not for us to judge, it's a part of the rich European cultural heritage.
It's Slashdot, they do strange things on the Internet. For example, when a poster discusses the use of Apple computers, the trolls respond by bringing up islamophobic ideas and allude to the holocaust. It's not for us to judge, it's a part of the rich Internet cultural heritage.
No need for Windows in Webdev. Seriously. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a seasoned pro webdev and havent touched Windows or PS in years. Gimp does most of the gfx work just fine, especially with the modern flatty designs. As does Inkscape for the vector work.
I do use a mac though - less hassle with the gui and some neat tools unavailable on Linux (SourceTree, Kaleidoscope, Transmit, etc.) but those are tools you definitely don't need for learning.
My advice: ... Train your students on Atom or Brackets and learn and teach Grunt, Gulp or both and build a webdev pipeline with those. Build a pipeline that your students can take with them on their career. Way more worth than learning Adobe crap.
Move to Ubuntu LTS right now and set up one Mac Mini in every classroom if you must teach your students PS filters and the Adobe Suite. Although I wouldn't.
The one thing desperately missing on Linux is a FOSS Git gui that doesn't suck. You'll have to get a bundle licence for SmartGit - it's Java, but it's OK. As a full blow IDE Netbeans and the Netbeans Chrome extension + perhaps FF WebDev Edition are are the tools of the trade. All FOSS, all perfectly at home on Ubuntu.
For testing set up VBox on every PC and pull the official Windows Browser Webdev Testing VMs. They only run an hour before needing a virtual restart, but they're perfect for Testing IE and Spartan.
What ever you do, spare yourself and you Students the hassle with remote desktop.
Good luck with your business.
PSD files are not part of web development (Score:3)
>"The industry format for graphic designs is PSD so The Gimp (XCF) is not really an option."
That has to be the stupidest statement I have read in a week. Who cares what the "industry format" is for "graphic design"? That has nothing to do with a web coding school. And GIMP opens PSD files just fine. Did you even TRY this before posting?
There are cases where it is difficult to replace an MS-Windows environment. Web development is certainly not one of them.
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Do yourself a favor and cool off. Are you sure GIMP will open and properly deal with all PSD files made by all Photoshops, no matter what options and features? And are you sure that GIMP will create PSD files with all desired options and features, and that all Photo
You are a WEB design company, not graphics (Score:4, Interesting)
Let the graphics design industry use what it wishes. They can export to web formats, which is what you need.
I spent over thirty years in the computer industry, working on many projects with user interface and graphical elements, and not once did the graphics designers deliver what we needed in Photoshop-specific formats.
Photoshop runs well on wine (Score:2)
Aren't most designers on Mac? (Score:2)
It seems that designers use macs most of the time. They used them even before Apple was considered cool and are the prime target for the Mac pro.
So I think that for students, it should be the platform of choice rather than Windows or Linux. So don't be so cheap and buy at least a few iMacs as they may encounter them when they start working. The coding and other parts that don't need Photoshop can be done on Linux.
Cloud compute instances (Score:2)
If Photoshop skills are only a small part of the class, Amazon/Microsoft/Google cloud compute instances with Adobe creative suite and remote desktop could be the easiest/cheapest way to go. You just need a pool of licenses to accommodate simultaneous logins and all the instances can be torn down except when that specific part of the class is in session.
Most of the world uses Windows (Score:2)
Most of the world uses Windows, unless they use Mac. Also many employers use Adobe. It would be of benefit to NOT eliminate Windows and Mac entirely. Maintain a class size lab of these different platforms, while switching everything else to Linux and Linux based software.
Ubuntu (Score:3)
Ubuntu would be my answer for pretty much any desktop use including this.
No, I'm not really a fan of Ubuntu. No, Unity is not necessarily the best interface. No, I don't think going their own way with Mir is a good idea.
But...
Ubuntu has the most people out there already doing this kind of thing. That means the most liklihood things will 'just work' and the most online community support when it doesn't. Since you have a whole lab to support and probably other things to do with your time you will likely apreciate taking the path of least resistance.
So.. I wouldn't pick the 'best' distro, I'd pick the most popular one. Currently that's Ubuntu. It sucks.. because this kind of thinking is what causes incumbant favorites to remain at the top even when they cease to deserve it. But... that's reality.
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App means application. Maya and Angry Birds are equally apps.
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Making this all legal is why the asker is trying to limit Windows and Photoshop to a small number of seats.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... [youtube.com]
Handling .PSD files in gimp.
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yes, he really needs PSD!
they're trying to teach vocational skills-- when the students get to the job interview (and/or skills test), the question will be "can you drive photoshop"-- not "do you know how to drive something that kinda/sorta works like photoshop?"
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His class is focused on HTML/CSS/JS/etc. which means it's not Web design. Design is artwork and layout, for which yes PS is one of the standard tools (and maybe not the best one if, for instance, you're doing Material design for Android access or responsive design where fixed layouts to fit artwork are a no-no). But Web development, using HTML/CSS/JS/etc. to build the mechanics of the site and make it work, generally doesn't require any particular set of tools. In fact Photoshop's a bad fit here because the
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This.
And for testing with IE, the occasional *real* photoshop need, etc. look into a Terminal Server setup for the Windows stuff.
Or remove your costs completely - you are teaching students who will then need to go out and get jobs, from what I've seen from our graphic design track is a LOT of folks do freelance work, and occasionally one of them gets lucky and lands a full time gig. So why not just provide connectivity, and have students supply their own machines and own software. Much less admin issues t
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It got renamed and an extra digit added to the end of the costs per seat.
That's only going to work at the top end of the market at which point they probably expect the school to supply a lot as well and would not like the idea, so there goes a pile of potential students from that constraint. It's all very libertarian of you but reality bites.
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...except MySQL supports and encourages crapulence out of the box. It does simple fundemental things poorly. It will allow developers to do stupid things that won't be tolerated by any RDBMS. Even it's SQL support is crippled.
It's a quick and easy product for developers that don't know any better and don't want to know any better.
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No it doesn't (anymore), a standard setup comes relatively ACID compliant. Developers doing stupid things will happen regardless of the stack you use. Looking at modern web stacks (nginx, Node.js, NoSQL, ...) more stupid things are only going to be easier.
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You really don't need it. In fact as webdesign work a huge amount of production should be done in Inkscape. Even if you need to create/edit a raster image GIMP is fine. Students don't need Photoshop. Hell you can do most work in mspaint.
If the students move on to various gigs and workplaces, they might be in trouble if they don't know Photoshop.
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Hire a consultant instead of lookin' for free shit here
Why? Is it a crime against The American Way Of Life (TM) to invite free suggestions from people who are willing to offer them? I thought it was only the IRS that insisted we should pay hard dollars (and get receipts) for everything good in life - possibly including each breath we inhale.