[Digikam-users] You're awesome

[Peter Shute]

> From: Linuxguy123 [mailto:linuxguy123 at gmail.com] 
> Sent: Wednesday, 3 March 2010 2:42 PM
> To: digiKam - Home Manage your photographs as a professional 
> with the power of open source
> Subject: Re: [Digikam-users] You're awesome
> 
> On Tue, 2010-03-02 at 17:33 -0600, Paul Hartman wrote:
> > On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 12:16 AM, Guillaume Paumier 
> > <guillom.pom at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > I've been using digiKam more intensively recently, and I 
> just wanted 
> > > to say to you guys: You're fantastic. Really.
> > >
> > > I mean, I knew digiKam was a powerful tool, but the more 
> I use it, 
> > > the more I discover hidden gems and awesome features I 
> would never 
> > > have imagined would ever be available in a libre software.
> > >
> > > So, Thank you. Thank you for your work, your time and 
> your dedication.
> > > You just rock.
> > 
> > I agree with everything you said. Thanks to digiKam & KDE devs!
> 
> +1 !

I agree too, and the website is also unusually helpful for an open source program, outstandingly so. I was at the end of my trial period for Lightroom when I started looking around for alternatives, and was very surprised to find free software that could do so much that Lightroom could do, and so well, better in some cases.  I can see that one day it will be able to also do the few things Lightroom can do that it currently can't.

But I have some reservations.

My reservations are mainly about the distribution process.  It seems like there are periods when the versions included with the various distributions are way out of date, and sometimes quite buggy.  Getting a more recent version involves many hours and gigabytes of dowloading and compiling if you know how to do it, and many more days tracking down help with compilation errors if you don't.  There are various extremely detailed lists of instructions around for compiling, but they're out of date and make little sense to the uninitiated.  I worked my way through it, and got a new set of compilation instructions together.  Next time I tried to update, I ran into different problems.

I'm experienced enough with open source to not expect an easy run, but it just shouldn't be that hard.  I used the relatively new KDE on Windows version, so I knew to expect a few extra troubles, but I see from various list postings that Linux users are having similar difficulties.

I realise that the distribution problems, and even some of the bugs, are out of the control of the developers.  They have little influence over what versions get included in distributions, and newer KDE releases in the distributions are sometimes incompatible.  But until something is done about it, I consider digiKam to be an excellent but unstable program.  If you happen to first install it when a good version is in the distribution, you're ok, if it isn't, you're in for trouble.

I'm still keeping a copy of it running, and I'm staying on this list to keep abreast of developments, but for the time being I'm using Lightroom instead.