operating systems????

[diehard67]

oh ok

[Astro Boy2866]

I can't agree more on Vista, the only contacts I had with that "system" were troubles I remember having tried without success to install a wireless driver on that thing. For some reason, the system did install the files, but without uncompressing them, resulting in a completely unusable driver. The same driver installed fine on Windows XP. Fortunately it wasn't on my computer Most people I know who used Vista had problems too.

Worst... system... ever... :d oh: They should have waited until Windows 7, but they hastily shipped Vista for marketing reasons.

I have vista on my laptop and it sucks. I used windows 7 at my friend's house and I liked it a lot better. I then went back home after a few hours to go back onto my crappy windows vista operating system. I couldn't agree more with you.

[diehard67]

vista was just a horible mess, every time I have to fix a goofed windows system I just remember why I diched windows in the first place

[iceytina]

I have a custom gaming computer with Windows 7 and Ubuntu Linux. My friend partitioned the drive and installed Linux for me because I was too dumb to do it but I REALLY wanted it because I love open source thingies <3. My drive was that I wanted a smaller, cleaner OS to do artwork and creative projects on. With Linux, I can make much bigger images in GIMP than I can in Windows. I have 1G video card, dual-core with 4G of ram. Sadly 32bits. I want 64 haha but that means buying some better hardware and I can't afford it at this time. FireFox for my browsing.

my other comp is a piece of junk about. It runs XP which is cool. I bought it darn cheap for the sole purpose of usability testing on interfaces. I use it to vend, raise pets and do other stuff on MMOs.

It's ironic to me how Mac lovers say that Mac promotes a creative environment. Whenever I use macs, even the extremely nice ones, I can't hardly do a thing. I know how to get around them, but they just make me go 50% slower on them doing anything. I despise how they're built for "artists" so its harder to really understand the backend of them. Linux makes me feel the most creative.

[Kabuitsu]

My math teacher had a laptop with a partitioned drive. I think he had about 4 different OS, among them Windows 7 and what seemed to be Linux.

[AprilSeven]

@Icytina - Does Linux support any of the "standard" DTP and graphics programs (such as Adobe Creative Suite, QuarkXpress) -- what about font compatibility?

Mac USED to be faster/more user friendly - never crashed. Not now. My husband is an illustrator and "has to" use Mac (always has), and he'd dump it in a heartbeat if more clients would accept Windows files. Unfortunately, for the time being, Mac is still the "art" platform.

[diehard67]

adobe windows software doesn't work well under wine (windows exe loader for linux), I think the gimp can use photoshop files directley.

[goes and checkes]

yes it can open photoshop files, and just about everything else on the planet lol.

[Atomars]

I have Windows Vista (32 Bit), and Windows 7 (64 Bit) on my laptop.
My laptop has 4GB of RAM, and also 2GHZ core duo Intel processor.
I am currently using this laptop to make Astroboy short movie project using 3DS Max & After Effects.

Astroboy vs Goku

[fafner]

@Icytina - Does Linux support any of the "standard" DTP and graphics programs (such as Adobe Creative Suite, QuarkXpress) -- what about font compatibility?

As mentionned already, there is a software called Wine that allows to "simulate" Windows on a system that isn't Windows. Basically it works by making available to a program the same system calls than Windows, and then forwarding their translation to the underlying real system. In theory it is simple. In practice it is a nightmare, as this may require very specific knowledge of edge cases, and sometimes a deep knowledge of subtle bugs on which some programs rely on to work. It took something like 10 years to have Wine usable. Today it can run many Windows application, including some games. There is a database that documents most Windows applications (including games). Adobe Creative Suite is documented here as working, but with issues with the installer, and a few others in the software itself.

[iceytina]

@Icytina - Does Linux support any of the "standard" DTP and graphics programs (such as Adobe Creative Suite, QuarkXpress) -- what about font compatibility?

Mac USED to be faster/more user friendly - never crashed. Not now. My husband is an illustrator and "has to" use Mac (always has), and he'd dump it in a heartbeat if more clients would accept Windows files. Unfortunately, for the time being, Mac is still the "art" platform.

Font compatiblity works fine as far as I've tried. Like, downloading, installing, using many fonts. Sad that mac is the "art platform". Linux I would go with over them both if I could.

fafner seems to have beaten me to the response but they're all correct about Wine. I tried FlyFF and some other Windows programs on them and most didn't work. It actually bogs down the OS more because it has to run through Windows and suck resources from their to then retranslate it through Wine to Linux. Sort of defeats the point of a smaller OS.
The Adobe CS3 and CS4 suite didn't work for me in Wine. No idea about CS5.

If you ever wanted to test more print design and graphics programs in Linux, try InkScape for vector, GIMP for raster, and Scribus for layouts for magazines, newspapers, etc. Sort of like InDesign. There are wonderful sound and audio programs too that I've been trying out. A good, cute little video editor for novice playing is OpenShot Video Editor. The trick is to find OS programs that work in both Linux and Windows so you can take them anywhere cross-OS.

More open source software supports adobe extensions--of course .psd the most common--and GIMP can open those if you don't make them too complex with layer effects and text and so forth. GIMP tries to translate PS's layer modes which makes some funny effects. Text in PS becomes raster layers in GIMP. I would use InkScape for all the line art I do except it doesn't yet support custom brushes; I know it has a method to get around that--I read up on it--but it was hard to learn.

A bit off-topic, but you asked about the graphic side of it. Hope that helps.