More than once people asked me why I left Windows for Linux and more than once said my choices are crazy and out of industrial standards for what concerns my work …
My conversion engine has been the fact that I opened a VAT number to work as a freelancer film-maker and as such.. My computer started to become something that could cause me legal troubles! My windows license was not a professional one and the budget was almost zero so I started informing on alternatives and Linux Popped out of my mind :)
My computer science knowledge was very minimum at the time… so I opted for testing the thing on an old netbook of which hard drive was broken so I flashed a Linux Mint ISO and started playing with the thing. Mint was a good start.. Lightweight and enough similar to win =)
I played with It for like a month and in the meantime, I searched for the right distro to install on my desktop computer. I ended up with Ubuntu Studio! It aimed to be the distro for the artists so It was the distro for me!
Thanks to this amazing distro I’ve been able to rebuild my workflow from scratch! Indeed It comes with almost every software You can need to bring your projects to life! ^^
[on the bottom of the blog, You can find my software choices]
During the 2 years in which I used Ubuntu Studio these things have happened:
- I totally deleted Windows from the dual boot and fresh installed Linux
- I started deploying servers to get my renders done
- I discovered Arch Linux and started wondering to be able to install It ^^
Finally, after the 2 years, I’ve been able to do that and get Arch Installed!
And with great power.. comes a great desire to knowledge! haha! :D this is because after the successful setup of the thing.. I started moving at bigger steps into computer science! My desire to knowledge grow up when, from time to time, I was discovering new things that could be done on Linux that was difficult or not possible on Windows =) For what concerned my work or just my hobbies ^^
SO WHY LINUX?
(or better: GNU/LINUX)
Because the possibilities offered by this OS are limitless ^^ Because I’ve been able to get the thing done when I thought It was impossible with my hardware Because It interested me more and more to computer science Because It gave me, someway, work :)
DO YOU THINK LINUX IS BETTER THAN WINDOWS?
No.. Every OS has It’s advantage… Windows is good for gaming! : ]
SOFTWARE I USE FOR MY WORK
The suite of software I studied and worked with before discovering Linux:
-
Film-Making/Photo: whole Adobe Suite + Cinema 4D (basic stuff)
-
CAD: Autodesk AutoCAD
-
Streaming: OBS
The suite of software I am now working with:
| Film-Making |
|- VIDEO
|– Blender: NLE
|– FFmpeg / HandBrake: codec conversions
|- AUDIO
|– Ardour
|– Audacity
|- COMPOSITING
|– Blender
|– Natron
|- GRAPHICS
|– Inkscape
|– Krita
|– Gimp
| 3D | CAD |
|– Blender
| Photo |
|– Darktable
|– Krita
|– Gimp
| STREAMING |
|– OBS
And in the end… JACK2 to sync audio and video playback between software :)
As You can see.. On Linux, I no longer use only a software suite to archive the final result and this because I learned that despite from the only plausible choice on the Windows OS for these kinds of work… Now I have access to a universe of users maintained software that does the thing well and not a suite of easy to sell software :)
