Until late 2010, I’d been using pretty much entirely open source software on my personal desktop and severs. This mostly worked pretty well, except very specifically with regards to my photography work. At that point in my life, photography had turned from a minor hobby to a major obsession. My suite of tools (GIMP, digiKam, ufraw) was becoming increasingly tedious to deal with at the time, so I took a big leap and bought a Mac Mini to run Adobe Lightroom on.
To be honest, this setup worked really well for my photography workflow. Some other aspects of the Mac desktop were a bit of a mixed bag. Yes, it was more polished (except Bluetooth, which to this day is almost as klugey on Mac as it is on Linux). But it was also very closed, and with the rise of iCloud, I had some very serious concerns about what my computer was sharing about me behind my back.
My photography has tapered off as I’ve focused more on my career in systems engineering. I rarely go into Lightroom anymore. So I don’t have a huge compelling reason to be on a Mac anymore. The Mac Mini is feeling long in tooth anyway, and it was time to start looking at something a little faster. I also wanted something more portable this time around.
So I decided to start my exodus from OS X (or, as I’m starting to call it, my OS eXodus). (more…)