I’ve been plagued by the problems with Flash transparency since I switched to Ubuntu several months ago, and I was afraid it wouldn’t get fixed. Well guess what, with the Flash 10 for linux plugin, it’s finally been fixed!

check it out
http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html

I, along with many other Linux users, have wanted Adobe to produce their software for Linux. Supposedly, Photoshop is the number 1 requested product by Linux users. I’m over wondering why they haven’t done it or when they will do it (I’ve pretty much resigned myself to the fact that they will get to it when they get to it if they ever get to it).

But now a new (and even more far fetched) thought crosses my mind. What if Adobe embraced Linux as their flagship platform? What if Adobe made their own Linux distribution? One of the arguments for why Adobe has not produced their suite for Linux is because of the headache of creating and maintaining a product that works flawlessly with all the varying distributions. If Adobe were to create their own Linux distro, they could tweak the operating system and the products to really work perfectly together. This would also allow them to only worry about full compatibility with one Linux distribution. The fact that Linux has such great memory management makes it an ideal base for running software that traditionally eats a lot of memory. They could take advantage of server grade machines utilizing 4+ processors and way more memory than windows or OSX (I realize that OSX is based on UNIX, but we have to remember that we’re tied to Apple hardware). A step like that in the design world (especially when working on huge projects and running multiple programs) would be incredible.

I’m not saying that Adobe should stop building software for the Mac and PC, I’m just saying it would be very interesting for them to capitalize on having their own design centered OS. Now, I realize this will most likely never happen. It would be outright challenging Apple to make a better design suite and with products like Final Cut, we know they have the ability and the resources to do it. Microsoft is already testing the waters for that niche of the software world with Microsoft Expression in which I currently have little interest, though it is a big step up from their standard, MS Paint.

I know that this subject has been hacked up by people all over the internet, but now it’s my turn. I’ve been using Ubuntu on my laptop for a few months now and I think it’s great. The operating system starts up and shuts down quickly. It hasn’t crashed or suffered any periods of slowness and I love the idea of being able to search for software and install it AND have the operating system maintain it. After my Ubuntu experience, I had to ask myself, “What’s holding desktop Linux back?”. The answer is commercial software support. Now I know the argument is to use open source programs such as Open Office, Gimp, Evolution, etc. as a replacement for commercial software and though that may work for people who are willing to learn a new software package or are unafraid to venture into the unknown, it does not work for the average computer user. Take my mom for instance. She recently bought a new laptop that came with Windows Vista and wanted to get Microsoft Office for it (until I told her the price). As an alternative I installed Open Office, a product that I find to be a phenomenal replacement for Microsoft Office. She did not agree with my rave reviews. Even though the interface between Microsoft Office and Open Office are similar and they are for the most part compatible, the minor differences were enough to confuse her (such as the default document format being OTD, a format not recognized by current versions of MS Office). Gimp is another such program that is commonly referred to as a replacement for the commercial Adobe product Photoshop. Though there are many arguments that favor Gimp over Photoshop, from a professional graphic designers position, Gimp is severely lacking. Gimp cannot work in 16 bit images, CMYK, utilize Pantone colors, lacks simple features such as the ability to resize text in a vector format, and does not have the “blending options” featured in Photoshop (some may say these effects can still be created, but I guarantee that they cannot be turned on or off, or experimented with the same ease as Photoshop). Even with the advances being made with WINE and the support from Google and Code Weavers, the Linux desktop does not offer consumers the ability to drive down to Walmart, buy whatever software package they are comfortable with, install it, and go. Overall the Linux desktop is good for 2 groups of people. The first group is people who have no need for a computer other than basic use (internet, email, etc.   Check out gOS). Linux is good for this group because it’s very stable, it’s unlikely that they will get any viruses and the operating system will generally maintain itself. The second group consist of people who like to control their operating system rather than being controlled by it (the majority of desktop Linux users fall into this category). In my opinion this is where desktop Linux will remain until mainstream software development companies start to write software for it. I sincerely hope that the day comes when desktop Linux does become mainstream, but I don’t just can’t see it happening any time soon.