Isn’t Shooting the Kids about digital photography for the baby set? You bet. The thing is, Amy is the one who’s in charge of taking the pictures and I’m in charge of handling storage, slide shows and pretty much anything that goes along with printing out our photos. Switching from Windows to Ubuntu required us to change the way we work, especially with our photos. We don’t have Photoshop anymore and so we’re learning all new software. We discovered that Ubuntu had a cool photo management program called F-spot so we’re learning how that works. For the most part the experience has been positive, but sometimes we run into snags.

But is there more to this story than Amy and I learning new software? You bet. I’ve used Linux for 8 years now and haven’t ever felt like it was ready for desktop use in my home. Our experience with Ubuntu has changed my mind. Personally, I think Ubuntu is a great option for many families out there looking to inexpensively get the most out of their computer hardware. Our readers who take the plunge can use advanced photo editing techniques for free using The GIMP without having to deal with the bugs in the Windows implementation of GTK or the poor X11 integration on OS X. Families with kids old enough to use the computer can relax when it comes to their kids installing software that might cause problems down the road. Another big reason I’d suggest Ubuntu (or any other Debian distribution) is that installing image editing software is super simple and can be done without worrying about getting viruses for “cracked” software. There are lots of reasons for digital photographers with kids to make the switch, and we’d love to share our experience.

So, what’s your experience?