[Leica] Experience with Apple?

[photo.forrest at earthlink.net (Philip Forrest)]

The wonderful thing I've found lately running X86-64 SuSE Linux 10.3
Gnome is that I've gotten a little rusty with troubleshooting or making
things work better. The reason is that once I got my new system set up
the way I wanted, it hasn't had a hiccup since. I have to go out of my
way to look for some development challenge (which I don't usually.)
That's the way I want my computer to run. I want it to do everything I
built it to do and then I want it to "disappear", into the background,
running all the things and doing all the work I ask of it. The learning
curve migrating to Linux is a bit steep, but there isn't any other OS
that can be customized like this IMO. I can use all 8GB of my RAM as
well, as opposed to XP which is still stuck at just over 3GB. I also
want to chime in that the GIMP is a great tool with everything I've
done and need in PS. I used to run PS in WINE before I really trusted
the open source software, but GIMP just as powerful as the megacorps'
offerings if you ask me. xsane and vuescan both work with my scanners;
I can open up and manipulate all of my digital images dating back about
6 years regardless of format. There's no reason I'd ever want to go back
to a windows machine. I've also got 10.3 Gnome running on an IBM T30
which is obsoleted by a few years. It proved perfect for school this
last semester and if I wanted to run some more graphics heavy apps, I'd
boot into FVWM for a very lightweight environment and go to town on my
images or CAD drawings. 
It just works so well.
PhilFo





I am also a Linux desktop guy--fedora is my flavor since i've run through
a long list of redhats since 2001.  ubuntu seems to be all the rage, and
at some point i'll have to give it a try.

I'm amazed at how well the open source stuff works these days and how
much progress has been made in the past 5-6 years, gphoto2 grabs
photos from my fuji f30 and m8, digikam is fine indexing software which
understands the dng and canon (and other) raw formats.  xsane does my
scans.  cinepaint and gimp are fine photo manipulation software, cinepaint
can do 16 bit images and raw formats.

we also have an imac and powerbook and ancient mac g3 (running osx 10.3)
plus a couple of thinkpads (dual boots--i had to have an xp machine
when i went back to school).  also sharing my subnet are 
2 Tivos (embedded linux computers), a WII and a PS3.  i guess the
home media thing is happening when you have as many entertainment systems
on your subnet as general-purpose computers.

BTW, and OT, i've recently discovered by accident that the PS3 and a flat
panel TV makes for a GREAT DIGITAL SLIDESHOW PROJECTOR, put in a CD or DVD 
with a filesystem and jpgs and you get very nicely-rendered images on a 46" 
1920x1080 resolution screen.  you can entertain (or bore the life out of) 
your whole family for hours.

-rei