REACTING to a column two weeks ago, reader Bob says that Linux is fine for his grandmother but if you want to do more than surf the Web, you?ll want to pay for your software.

The open source community does a lot of buggy and amateurish software itself,? Bob writes. ?When you use Windows, you?re not stuck using the Microsoft software alone, you can use a myriad of alternatives whether open source or commercial. A good example is the fact the Linux still does not have a good Photoshop and Illustrator replacement (anyone who says that Gimp and Inkscape is [sic] a good replacement, has never had to do graphic design work).?

While I welcome all feedback, this is the kind of misinformation that needs to be corrected immediately because it could keep users from trying out a viable, free alternative to Windows and other expensive proprietary software.

It is perfectly all right to pay for software, as long as we don?t do so out of ignorance.

First of all, of course there is a lot of buggy and amateurish software out there, open source or otherwise. The trick is not to use it. In the open source world, the best programs are powerful, feature-laden and well designed applications that will do what most people need to do on their computers. And if you stumble on a poorly designed program, simply remove it?at least you didn?t have to pay for it.

Second, if you really need Adobe Photoshop, you can run it (from Version 5 to CS2) using Wine, software that enables you to install and run some Windows programs in Linux. This is what I did about two years ago, when I was still unfamiliar with Gimp, the free image editing software that comes with many Linux distributions.

As Gimp improved and as I began to learn how to use its menus and toolbox, I found that it would do most of what I was doing with Photoshop?retouching and enhancing photographs and creating designs for my Web site. Nowadays, I no longer need to fire up Photoshop, even though it is available to me on my Linux system.

The debate about which among the two programs is better is pointless. The important question is: which program will do the job for you at a price you like? If you design professional graphics for commercial printing or if you are too lazy to learn a new program, go ahead and spend $699 to $999 for the latest version of Photoshop (CS4) and run it on Windows. On the other hand, if you don?t need to produce four-color separations (CMYK) but want a powerful image editing tool, it would probably be worth your while to learn Gimp. You can run it on Linux, Windows or the Mac, and it?s completely free.

If you choose to use Gimp, realize that it is not Photoshop and that you will have to learn new ways of doing things. A good example is the way Gimp handles text, which is far from ideal. On Photoshop, you can type directly on the image you are editing; on Gimp you must still type in a text window to create your text element.

Fortunately, there?s a lot of online help available. Grokking the Gimp, a book by Carey Bunks, is a good place to start and is available free at Gimp Savvy (http://gimp-savvy.com). You can also find a good selection of user-contributed tutorials at Gimpology (http://gimpology.com/).

I have had less experience with Inkscape or Illustrator. Back when I designed artwork for a computer magazine, CorelDraw (on Windows) was my tool of choice for creating vector graphics. Inkscape has a lot of the CorelDraw look and feel about it, and if I needed to do some vector-based graphics today, I would not hesitate to use it. Or I could use Xara Xtreme, a very fast and powerful design tool that is available free on Linux.

The bottom line is that anyone who has not done great graphics using Gimp or Inkscape simply doesn?t know how to use these free and open source alternatives?or has not bothered to learn to use them properly. Dismissing these programs out of hand smacks of laziness and intellectual dishonesty.

One last point: I think it?s great that Linux has become simple enough that Bob?s grandmother can use it. This was not always the case because Linux used to be an operating system for nerds, hackers and tinkerers and would send most users fleeing back to Windows. To suggest that desktop Linux today is good enough for anyone?s grandmother is high praise indeed, although in this case, I?m sure it was unintended.

Column archives and blog at: http://www.chinwong.com