I’m trying to build a workstation for my wife who is a graphic design by trade. She has only ever used Window so I thought that this would be a great way to introduce her to Linux. I just have some questions about getting this project off the ground.
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Am I better off buying a cheap, prebuilt desktop and adding some extra parts like a GPU and more memory or building it from the ground up?
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For a distro, I was thinking about Linux Mint but would other distros be better options?
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Other than GIMP, what are some essential software for graphic design and digital art on Linux?
You are going to need to ask her specifically what software she uses and find out if it can run on Linux. If it can’t then she is not going to use the computer. Graphic design is not a profession where you can just easily switch software and trying to convince someone else they should do that is going to be even less likely.
If she works with other teams they will be using Adobe software and a Linux box will slow her down. I don’t have the most up to date computer but had these requirements when buying:
- 64gb fast RAM - large vector files with 1000s of paths will need lots of RAM not to go sluggish
- Upper mid-range processor/GPU- you don’t need an i9 and 4080 card. Graphic software won’t tax the GPU. If she does mostly motion graphics/video editing then if could be useful but otherwise save your money.
- Ultrawide monitor - This is a huge efficiency boost. Being able to run Photoshop and illustrator together on the same screen, without a bezel losing your mouse pointer. Big quality of life improvement for designers.
I’m trying to build a workstation for my wife who is a graphic design by trade. She has only ever used Window so I thought that this would be a great way to introduce her to Linux. I just have some questions about getting this project off the ground.
Whats your ultimate goal here? Getting rid of Windows, or getting rid of your wife?
Hi, graphic design span many disciplines and each one will have different requirements. Unless she does some short of 3D or video rendering intensive workloads GPU doesn’t matter that much. Im am UX designer (formerly graphic designer) and a powerful CPU, something like an AMD Ryzen 5800x or similar, plenty of RAM (at least 32Gb) and SSD HD (nothing fancy, anything will do) should be enough. Sadly, design software hasn’t evolved enough to take advantage of better performance.
However I’m not a Linux user (although have been considering it) so my main concern would be how the software she uses is Linux compatible or can be properly emulated without performance or stability issues. If she is working professionally FOS software won’t do it, you need default industry software.
I mainly use Figma and to lessen extent Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. Figma can run entirely in a browser but I’ve seen reports of slowdown (to the point of being unusable in some distros). Adobe apps seem to be very hard to emulate to the point of seeing people recommending using a Windows VM. So I rather start checking the software rather than the hardware.
First of all, does she agree with it? Second of all, is her software supported? If not, is she ready to switch to FOSS alternatives? Because if she uses Photoshop daily professionally, she is not using GIMP or Krita. At max, I think you may get her to dual boot Linux but maining Linux? Nah.