What kind of quality can I expect from Linux software?

[Haopengyou]

Hi,
I am a relative newbie in the video editing/authoring field. I am also on a rather tight budget so am looking to switch to a Linux OS, not only for multimedia but for all apps.

If I stay with the Linux applications to do MM work - given the same level of expertiese and talent - can I expect equally good output? That is to say, is the Linux software good enough to produce about the same results as I would find with the best Windows software?

[mats.hogberg]

Yes. IMO, what's lacking on the "bright side" is user friendliness, not lack of features or applications. You'll have a hard time finding, installing and learning to use some apps, but they are there, and they are mostly free. There's also several Windows "emulators", allowing you to run Windows apps from Linux.

/Mats

[courtrrb]

While what mats.hogberg is somewhat true is not entirely correct. It depends on which distro you pick. Some distros make it very difficult. I use Mandriva and all apps are very easy to load. A lot of them come with an easy to use GUI but not all. I've heard others on this fourm say that have a real pain load this or that app and is very buggy but I havn't had any of the problems they have had.

[mats.hogberg]

That's was what I was trying to get across. Mainstream apps often are easy to install, specially precompiled for your distro. More obscure apps (and video editing still isn't reallly man stream) can't be found precompiled for your distro, so you have to compile it from source code yourself. Usually not that difficult (type "make install" in the CLI) but at times, you find yourself hunting high and low for different missing libraries days on end.
Second hurdle is using them. Many are pure CLI apps (and it seems like less and less are willing to type stuff on the kbd to make things happen), others come with a GUI made by someone as an afterthought, rarely there are any manuals & cetera. But once mastered, the feeling of achievement is great!

/Mats