While working on my post for StK about Extreme Background Removal, my eMachines desktop computer decided to go poof. That ozone smell was horrifying. This event required me to turn my Mac Mini back into a desktop computer (it’s been a faithful little file server for our house for months) so that I could get some work done off the laptop. You might think that I just reinstalled OS X Tiger and went about my business. Here’s a secret for you - I’m a professional graphic designer who hates using OS X. Yup. We exist. I won’t go into details but I can say that OS X is broken in very important ways and is a massive step backward from previous versions of the Apple OS.

The system I ended up going with on the Mini was Ubuntu, a version of the free Linux operating system that makes using your computer super simple and fun. I knew I liked Ubuntu because we used the server version on the Mini already, but I wasn’t sure it would work well as a desktop. I was pleasantly surprised that out-of-the-box (or right off the downloadable CD-R) Ubuntu provided every single feature we needed at Shooting the Kids - high quality photo editing using GIMP (I LOVE it on Linux - it works so much better than on XP or OS X), photo management using F-Spot (the UI is incredible) and word processing with the fantastic OpenOffice.org suite - all for free. Using the super cool software installation tool, I was able to download, install, configure and run just about any program I needed with two clicks. For free. Now this is Thinking Differently!

Anyone else out there using Ubuntu or some other form of Linux to work with their photos? I’d love to get some tips from the experts out there.