Mikey Boldt

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linux

Geequie: Cull Photos on Linux

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I recently decided to take advantage of Google’s automatic photo and video backup. Previously, I was using Sweet Home to synchronize them to my computer. I’m happier to have them in the cloud so I don’t have to worry about offsite backups, etc.

I took this opportunity to do a quick culling of my photos. I started off simply using the Nautilus file browser to view thumbnails and delete the cruft. I got annoyed with the nested directory structure of my photos, so I wrote a perl script to flatten it. After that, I found the thumbnails in Nautilus too small, so I started looking for other tools.

That’s when I discovered Geeqie. I fired it up in my photo directory, and I quickly figured out how to efficiently cull my photos. The key was using Geeqie’s marking capability, where you can “mark” photos with numbers 1–5. I simply used the up and down arrows to navigate through the photos, and marked photos I wanted deleted with mark 1 (by pressing the 1 key). To make the marks visible, I enabled the “Show Marks” option in the Select menu. After going through all the photos, I selected all photos with mark 1 (Ctrl + 1), deleted them (Ctrl + d), done!

Geequie made culling photos on my Linux machine a breeze!

Why I left Mac OSX for Linux

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Background

In my days, I’ve explored many different operating systems. My first computer exposure was playing games like Oregon Trail, Number Munchers, and Odell Lake on an Apple II in the classroom (ah, the classics). The first computer in my home, an Intel 386, ran DOS, eventually with Windows 3.1 on top of it. Through high school and college, I ran many flavors of Linux and BSD. When I started collecting a paycheck, I got a Mac, which provided the best of both worlds—a full Unix environment with hardware that just works. I don’t have as much time as I used to for tinkering with device drivers, X configuration, and window managers, though I still spend a lot of time on the command line, so Mac was a good fit.

Lion

First, I admit I hastily upgraded to Lion. I hadn’t had trouble with any previous OSX upgrades. A coworker had good things to say. I was sold. And the upgrade went fine (and even if it hadn’t, I still had my Time Machine backup). But when I saw the new features, I started getting uncomfortable.

My Computer is not an iPad

In my new Lion environment, the new launcher and full-screen apps make my computer look and feel like an iPad. I don’t want my computer to be an iPad. If I wanted an iPad, I would get an iPad. I understand there is nothing forcing me to use these features, but this direction and philosophy worry me. If this is where the train is going, I want off.

The Final Straw

Being a bit of an experimenter, I decided to try to embrace some of the new features. I added a second desktop in Mission Control and started using some full-screen apps. That’s when my machine started acting up. Every so often, apps would become unresponsive. I could switch between apps, but they wouldn’t respond to input. This, for me, was the final straw.

Horror Stories

Beyond my own concerns and issues, I’d heard several people have bad experiences with Lion. My wife’s network card got flaky after her upgrade. I know folks needed to spend time getting MacPorts back together. One coworker’s machine had severe performance issues after his upgrade, and Apple support walked him through their equivalent of fsck. The filesystem “repair” left his machine unbootable, requiring him to start over at Snow Leopard, upgrade again, and recover from his Time Machine. Then there was Tim O’Reilly’s tweet about Lion. These horror stories were reputable enough for me to seriously question Lion’s quality, and not write off my own experience as a fluke.

Linux

So, I installed Ubuntu Linux, as it has the reputation of “just working.” And, that was exactly my experience. Everything down to e.g. the screen brightness buttons on my MacBook Pro keyboard worked out of the box. I’d heard some murmuring about problems with Skype on Linux, but even that worked fine for me. Now instead of my browser taking up a full 1920×1200 screen, I’m running xmonad in Gnome to maximize my screen real estate. Desktop Linux has come a long way since I first used it in the 90’s.

Conclusion

In brief, I do not like the direction Mac OSX seems to be taking. My computer is not an iPad, and I don’t want it to act like one. I’ve heard about and experienced Lion’s bugginess. Over the years I’ve been using Mac, Linux—specifically Ubuntu Linux—has caught up to the point where it works out of the box, while providing the ability to tweak it to my tastes. Linux is the friend I haven’t seen for years, but after reconnecting we have more in common than ever. It’s good to be back.