As Linux moves into the desktop, users want to
connect their digital devices to their Linux computers, and, well, at
least have something happen. Long associated with difficulties in
dealing with devices, Linux has come a long way. Quite a few devices
such as cameras and music players, work immediately. All you have to do
is plug them in. Linux has supported SD and Compact Flash cards an card
readers for a long time, and USB support in Linux keeps getting
better.
Once you connect your devices, the next step is to do
something with your pictures, music and files. For digital cameras,
you'll want to manage and organize your photo collection.
On
Linux, two applications really stand out for working with photos: F-Spot
and LPhoto.
A recent development, F-Spot presents the type of
user interface you'd expect from a digital photograph manager. You
organize your photographs into photo albums, each of which appears on
the left-hand side of the Outlook-styled F-Spot window. Available at
www.gnome.org/ projects/f-spot/, F-Spot is a relatively new application,
as reflected by its low version number, 0.1.0. Even so, F-Spot shows a
lot of promise. SUSE Linux
includes F-Spot.
Written in C#, the language of Microsoft's .NET
efforts, F-Spot runs on top of the Mono infrastructure which runs .NET
applications on Linux. Windows .NET applications often use Microsoft's
Windows.Forms library for creating the user interface. F-Spot, though,
uses the Linux GTK libraries for the user interface, fitting directly
into the GNOME desktop.
Like F-Spot, the Mono project, at
www.mono-project.com, shows a lot of promise. Despite raising a number
of issues by basing a project on recreating Microsoft technology, and
all the pro- and anti-Microsoft arguments that implies, Mono-based
applications are impressive.
Unlike F-Spot, LPhoto
has a long history, at least in terms of Internet years. It's part of
Linspire's Click-n-Run application service. LPhoto concentrates on
supporting as many digital cameras as possible. The goal is to create a
so-called plug-and-play experience for end users, especially those new
to Linux.
Linspire's LPhoto application hews as close as possible
to the example set by Apple's iPhoto Macintosh application. Other
Linspire applications flatter the Macintosh applications by imitation,
such as LSongs, an iTunes look-alike music application. The Linspire
developers chose a good suite to emulate, though. Apple's applications
are considered easy to use and among the best for non-technical
users.
LPhoto also includes features to help create Web pages of
your photographs, emailing photos, displaying slide shows and burning
pictures to CDs. All of these are tasks that may prove daunting to Linux
or computer newcomers.
In other news, SUSE Linux has split into
professional and freebie versions, much like Red Hat, which its Enterprise Linux,
with support options, and its free-for-all-comers Fedora Linux
versions. Splitting off Fedora let Red Hat concentrate more on large
customers, and the income-generating enterprise versions of Linux.
Similarly, SUSE, now part of Novell, split off what it calls openSUSE.
The name openSUSE looks weird, but then this is based on the product
that was known as SuSE for a long time, funny capitalization and all.
One of the welcome changes brought by Novell, aside from major
enterprise support, was the renaming of the product to the more rational
SUSE. --Eric Foster-Johnson
