Praise from sir Hubert
I used to take my old Powerbook G4 firewire with me on holidays -- to have some music and to offload the contents of my digital camera into iPhoto. I used to be completely satisfied with iPhoto. I admit that iPhoto is a bit slow, but it did the job. And I don't mind using OS X now and then. It's a slow mess of inconsistent application styles coupled with really bad font rendering -- something I've blogged about before -- but it's got the its menubar in the right place, it's instant on and it doesn't invite those long hacking sessions that are so inappropriate when on holiday.
But I'm really trying to find excuses to take a Linux laptop -- perhaps even the Powerbook, but running Kubuntu (which I'm also using on my main laptop following a slight accident with SuSE and a new kernel that I don't have time to resolve now). Not to fix bugs in Krita during the beta period, mind -- no, in order to be able to use Digikam and its plugins. Digikam is really the very last word in photograph archive maintaining and image editing.
I don't know where Gilles and Renchi find the time for the amount of work they do -- but the result is impressive. A smooth, well-documented, beautiful application that beats everything I've ever seen before in this area. Including iPhoto. There CImg-based image restoration plugins have completely got Krita's tentative plugin beat and the find-similar images plugin is a godsent. And it's all a real pleasure to use.
Now I only have to make sure I don't spend the holidays hacking Krita even if I've taken a Linux laptop. Maybe just remove the KOffice source tree... That should work.