Nope, I actually said those (predominantly) Linux programmes are not substitutes - it's right there in the comment.

I'm not hating on Linux, I have just used it totally as my daily driver for the last year, I prefer it and would go back to it as I said but I actually need the speed and quality that Lightroom and Photoshop afford.

They cannot currently be replicated by FOSS alternatives unfortunately.

Partly I think the UNIX philosophy gets in the way slightly, as Lightroom offers both catalogue, RAW development, printing, book creating and galleries in one place. This is important as when you manage multi terrabyte catalogues and hundreds of thousands of photos, having a single tool to keep track of everything is a real speed boost.

There are some pretty awesome options in Darktable and RawTherapee but it takes longer to get to the same place as Lightroom and neither tool offered the same ease of noise control.

GIMP on the other hand isn't Photoshop, doesn't aspire to be and is no substitute for the full power Photoshop gives you. It's just got non-destructive layers in the latest release hasn't it? Maybe it'll start to be a bit more of a contender if that's in place now.

I wish Adobe would just bite the bullet and release on Linux, there are tens of thousands of votes/comments for it on the various forum and feedback sites calling for it stretching back probably 10 years.

It looks like you literally read his first three sentences, thought of a retort, and stopped reading any further so you could start typing.

If you'd kept going, speed was only his (comparatively minor) opening bullet-point. Most of his comment discussed quality issues.

There are substitutes, but they are of such poor quality and such user unfriendliness that they're inaccessible to all but the most technically inclined, patient and sympathetic users.

That's sort of the story of desktop Linux, to be honest.

And Ubuntu was keytracking in searches, collects data on its users usage, and does centralized update authority as well. It's marginally better for a substantially inferior experience with much worse hardware support. Especially if you're on a modern laptop.

Again, I fail to understand why we're off on this "linux sucks" tangent in a discussion about privacy. You too sound like you're just making a value judgement (though you use some more colorful language) that software quality trumps privacy. Well... fine. Just say that and be done.

People aren't going to "say that" just because you demand it. So you're saying that, yes, using a text editor to edit JPEG files is a pain, error-prone, and horribly time consuming, but privacy. Fine, just say that and quit cajoling people into falling into your argumentative traps.

Someone said "I switched to linux, it's great", someone else said "I'd like to, but it's missing some key features/workflows/whatever that I need". I really fail to see how that's "flamage". It's a Windows thread, after all, he/she didn't bring Linux into it.

Perhaps privacy isn't their exclusive value. I think that's also a perfectly valid argument in this discussion.