Not really so interesting
June 6th, 2006 | by Tony Steidler-Dennison | 1 viewsDoc Searls wrote on his Linux Journal blog:
What the hell, scoops are over-rated anyway. News is news. In this case, news that Google has released Picasa, its photo editing and organizing software, on Linux. That’s before they release it on Apple (if they ever do). I believe this is a first.
This is really a ho-hum item. I downloaded the Picasa for Linux application late in the week last week and was pretty underwhelmed. Rather than creating a true Linux version of the application, Google chose lto utilize Wine to implelment the Picasa app. I find that a bit baffling, as Google clearly has the resources to create a real Linux version. I’ve never been big on using Windows apps in Linux (though they do seem to run a bit better). The release just seems to be a half-measure when we’ve come to expect full measures from Google.
Not to mention that Picasa barely scratches the surface of the photo-sharing universe. If Flickr released a Linux app, that’d be news.
[tags]Picasa, Google, Linux, Flickr[/tags]
5 Responses to “Not really so interesting”
By Erik Weibust on Jun 6, 2006 | Reply
Tony,
Help me out here. I’ve just recenlty started using Ubuntu for home use. I’m trying to find some Win equivalent “home apps”. In this case I really like what Picasa does for looking at photos on my machine. It also works very well for quick edits.
I’m not even comparing it with Flickr, which I’ve been using for over a year and have shoved 5000+ photos on.
Anyhow, I understand and agree with your point that Google can afford to write a linux version of PIcasa, but I think it’s a great app, even on Linux.
Erik
By Tony Steidler-Dennison on Jun 6, 2006 | Reply
It’s not that it’s a bad app or that it doesn’t work well. From what I saw, it seems to work very well. I’d just always prefer to see a company like Google adding to the base of native Linux apps rather than porting something over from Windows via Wine. It was disappointment at that, I suppose.
By Erik Weibust on Jun 6, 2006 | Reply
One more question on the subject. What do you reccomend over PIcasa for managing thousands of pictures? I have a pretty good “old school file system” mgmt process, but Picasa is really nice.
Erik
By Tony Steidler-Dennison on Jun 6, 2006 | Reply
I don’t. I don’t have too many pictures to store so I’ve never really had to mess with it. That may change. If so, I’d dig a bit, but I don’t have an alternative recommendation right now.
By Erik Weibust on Jun 6, 2006 | Reply
Thx, Tony.