Your probably should if your interested in digital rights. Pretty good author too.

Mmm I know what you are saying but I used to work with a lot of 3D game artists. All but a few hated Blender and said they found it counter-intuitive. But really it was that it wasn’t just like 3DS Max and Maya (and it is a bit like Max to be honest). I’m delight over a decade later it’s use has ballooned anyway.

During the same time in games, they switch all the non-2D artists to GIMP to save money. Every time I went into the animation room for something, I could hear “GIMP can’t do X or Y” and every time I could show them how it could. They didn’t want to try and were confused/cross it wasn’t PS.

Problem is it is used to clean out copyleft too. Copyleft is a social good version of copyright. Using AI to wash it away, along with authorship, is not ok. Lots of open source wouldn’t have taken over if it wasn’t for stickiness of copyleft breaking “the tragedy of the commons”.

Blender used to get a lot of stick about it’s UI, but it’s now it’s doing amazingly well. It seams to be freeing 3D from Autodesk.

GIMP seams to be going through a bit of a development phase and after GTK3 move is complete, other features will get the that development. It could be interesting few years.

As for trying RISC OS, no where is especially active to be honest. Though it can be run on Raspberry Pi. The big thing it still does best is save dialogs. Just drag into a file manager window. For the decades after leaving RISC OS I have to copy paste directory paths like a primitive! The ROX Linux desktop gives you a bit of a taste of it, but only ROX apps have the dialog magic. Last I run RISC OS was ArcEmu to play Bug Hunter 1 & 2. I did some open source work on RPCEmu to run games I made as a kid. I should run it again to show the kids what I was doing at their age!

My point is intuitive isn’t the same for everyone.

GIMP doesn’t come from a clone of PS. It has it’s own history and its users are used to it as it is. Any change to be a PS clone isn’t what it’s existing users (and developers) want. Forks to do this have come and gone. Single window mode is all that came out of mainline GIMP to appeal to PS users. This is part of a thing with open source, it’s not possible to force something on the developers. You have to fork, work hard, win people over and become the new main branch. GIMP mainline keeps winning those battles.

Edit: oh and I am totally a freak in my software background outside of British computer people my age.

To you. It fit me like a glove straight away. It just made sense to me. It’s quite RISC OS like with the multiple windows thing. I used it first in about 1999 when flirting with Linux (CorelLinux) after Acorn and before Windows. Then switch about 2006 when where I was clamped down on pirate software at the workplace and bought PS for artists.

Coming from RISC OS art programs, I found GIMP’s UI perfectly intuitive. I had used PS for a few years after Acorn and before GIMP. It’s just different UI paradigms.

Things that reduce consumption are frequently successful in capitalism. Generally, using less, costs less. There are always those selling a thing who are trying to increase the consumption of that thing, but often at expensive of those selling a competing thing. One successful way of doing that is to be cheaper to buy or run or both, by doing more with less.

However, sometimes we want something to be made with more a bit more to last longer and be repairable.

Raw capitalist won’t do all this on its own. The invisible hand isn’t very good at planning long term. Governments need to structure markets for outcomes they want, and keep measuring and correcting.

I hope it continues to be a non issue for you. Without you having to take any measures. Just saying it can be an issue. Search “zigbee 2.4ghz wifi interference” if you don’t believe me.

You have any 2.4 GHz WiFi problems? In theory there is a problem, and I know a dude with a lot of ZigBee and a lot of 2.4GHz problems, but without going over with work equipment and spending some time doing work for free, I can’t be sure it’s ZigBee. It’s just my best guess.

You already married to ZigBee? If not, maybe don’t. It causes 2.4Ghz interference. You’ll need to think about WiFi channels and avoid ones that overlap with ZigBee. Either that, or use 5Ghz WiFi and repeaters to make up for the lower penertration (if an issue).

Turk in a box you say? I’m shocked! Shocked!

MS were going to be broken up at one point. https://time.com/3553242/microsoft-monopoly/

We have wins before, via groups like EEF. There are Pirate Parties and all kind of Right To Repair and digital freedom groups. The corporations don’t want us to fight or even have a voice.

Technical fixes only work for the technical and often it’s technically working against the law. We need the law on our side, not the corporations. So we need to engage with law as much as technology. Or we end having to break technologies like secure boot and laws.

This is the problem with digital serfdom, those lording it over us aren’t perfect either. Not only should we be able to connect our cars to our own server, we should be able inspect provided server implementation to see if it’s a bag of nails.

Our emperor Elon gave him a fair trial in a court of his peers before serving out the sentence?

Totally not unchecked power right?

Not diametrically apposed to Right To Repair right?

Have a spoonful of horseradish and tell me British food is all bland. Or Marmite.

No worries. I think your not the only one. I wasn’t clear, sorry.

Corporation? I’m not anti business, far from it. But I have an interest in economics as well as technology. We need effective markets. CUDA is an example of a market problem caused by a corporation’s own language. It has screwed up competition.