Jonathan Moeller vs Linux
Joachim asks:
-What happened between Linux and you?
He’s referring to the fact that I don’t write about technology nearly as much as I used to a few years ago.
There wasn’t any big falling out or anything. I still use Linux for some things, and I’m still proud of my two bestselling Linux books – THE LINUX COMMAND LINE BEGINNER’S GUIDE and THE UBUNUT BEGINNER’S GUIDE. In fact, THE LINUX COMMAND LINE BEGINNER’S GUIDE is my bestselling individual paperback title by a long shot. None of my other books even come close in paperback sales.
That said, I don’t really write about technology very much anymore for two reasons.
1.) Photoshop. For years, I used The GIMP for graphic design, and GIMP always ran better on Linux instead of Windows. When The Virus ramped up in 2020, I took some classes on Photoshop. As much as it pains me to admit this, as much as I don’t want it to be true, Photoshop is just better. I don’t like Adobe as a company and I think they’ve had some pretty sketchy business practices, but there’s been a lot of time and money spent on refining Photoshop, and it shows. These Photoshop classes have been of immense benefit to me – I can make way better images for ads and my website, and I have vastly more flexibility around cover design than I did three years ago. This isn’t to say that you can’t do a lot of the same stuff in GIMP, but a lot of things are simpler and easier in Photoshop.
Running Photoshop on a Linux system is a pain, so I spend less time on Linux than I used to.
(I should mention I’ve heard good things about a program called Affinity Photo, which isn’t nearly as expensive as Photoshop, but I’ve never personally used it so I can’t vouch for it one way or another.)
2.) Time. There are only so many hours in the day, and I have no shortage of things with which to fill them. Since I’ve published 132 novels in the last eleven years (SILENT ORDER: RUST HAND will be #133) I haven’t exactly been idle. While I enjoy writing about technology, the money turned out to be a lot better in fantasy fiction, and I didn’t have time to do both. So, fantasy fiction it was.
Anyway, that is why I don’t write about technology very much any more – I’m too busy using it to write fantasy novels. 🙂
-JM
GIMP’s user interface was awful. After much swearing I could sometimes get something useful done with it. Krita is a much better free replacement. It’s very much like Photoshop, but as you said a lot of work was put into some of the special features, and Krita does not have them. If you’re a power Photoshop user Krita isn’t for you, but it’s far more capable and usable than GIMP.
In the 90th I used to read “Sword&Sorceress” books. In 2020 I discovered your Caina story in “Sword&Sorceress 28”, liked it and looked you up on Amazon. I have since bought all Ghost books, and via Ghost&Cloak, also all Cloak books.
As I am using Linux Mint on my Laptop, I was curious on your “other side” 🙂