NewsForge | Switching art students to GNU/Linux

NewsForge | Switching art students to GNU/Linux: Yeah, great idea. Because what we want to learn in college is how to use a nice 3rd-party operating system, and free software like GIMP, Scribus, and Quanta Plus, instead of things that will actually help in a career once we get out of school.

Punditry is all well and good, and truth be told I use a Linux distribution at home on my workstation and web server. but if I were a professional in the art or design industries, you can bet your ass I’ll be using Photoshop, Illustrator, QuarkXpress, Dreamweaver, and a bunch of other software that runs on OS X or Windows instead of a linux box with what is, despite all the loud claims to the contrary, software that isn’t as good.

I’m all for free software, but until Linux “just works” like my Mac, I don’t see any reason to force students to use it. Especially since there’s such a low probability they’ll see it “in the field”.