Microsoft Surface Dial & Dell Totem Support Heading To Linux 4.19

[creative]

ElectricPrism While I did do some commissioned work when I was younger I have no intention of becoming a full time professional artist of any kind, that being visual or audio. I don't care for the business side of art, I can't stand that crap to be honest but that is how I am wired. As far as I am concerned the business world tends to rule and ruin the very soul and expression of human creativity.

I am sure I will eventually sell some stuff, maybe even for a lot of money but as far as people coming up to me telling me what to do and how they want it done, hell no. I would say go #$%& yourself, I do what my soul calls as far as creativity goes, I am very uncommercial.

I do art and music as a means of spiritual expresson and as an outlet of emotion and for the exploration of the faculties of the mind/imagination. My sister told me one of my paintings I could probably sell for a ton of money, its really hard even thinking of parting with something I made and poured my heart into, even if it's something I feel I could have executed better in hind sight, I am just that way though.

Heck I even had a facebook page displaying my digital and traditional art. People where liking it and some of it they thought was amazing, but facebook being what it is gave me the major creeps so I disabled my page. It was good while it lasted until I fealt it was a massive waste of time and counter productive.

I have a menial vocation. At least my job has a retirement plan with full medical benefits. I count my blessings and am thankful.

[Vistaus]

As much as I sometimes eye Microsoft products with envy, I am sorry to say that I don't see the appeal of this one. Actually, I already have a scroll wheel (well, two on my mouse, actually), and a few extra buttons. Plus, a limited number of hands (and my desk is a mess).
Besides looking cool, I am not sure this would be an extremely productive way of interfacing with the environment. Maybe more intuitive, but then, I'm not sure; it sounds like it might have a steeper learning curve than a mouse, and definitely more than a touchscreen.

That said, it could bring unified interactions to the table, whereas with other input devices, it's a bit of a mess. I guess that's where the value lies. More constrained interactions.
Now, this could also be useful in VR: to have a knob that you can feel and operate without directly looking at it.

I was also wondering why they didn't put a touchpad on this thing, then realized that it would be hard to guess at the orientation of the device, since it is symmetrical.

Not sure why your desk being full is a valid argument, 'cause you can place the dial on the screen. Look up some demos on YouTube.

[johanb]

Also It is possible that 4.19 will be the last 4.X release so it makes even more sense to make it an LTS one.

Since the major version version bumps is no different from the minor version bumps in terms of functionality, no that doesn't make any sense.

[ElectricPrism]

What an ingenius device, man! But honestly if I could afford a really nice wacom screen surface display/stylus. I want one, but stuff is really expensive. I do prefer the old fasion paint and canvas/watercolor/mixed paper though. Having something digital would just expand my capabilities. I will have to stick with old school for now, right now I am in audio creation mode anyway. I had a wacom graphire pad and stylus once I never could get used to but a display surfce would work much more like sketching/painting on paper.

It seems when it comes to these sorts of things its usually better to by older stuff where support is already available. I can easily at times advocate old tech beats hi-tech.

The last device the Wacom Cintiq Companion 2 was a lot less -- what 500ish used and if you are skilled taking apart laptops you can throw in a CPU and RAM upgrade without too much trouble.

The digital artists I know who use Wacom MobileStudio with Linux have spent quite a while learning the transition from traditional to digital -- so far Krita is #1 at providing "traditional real-world-like brushes and tools.", it does a fantastic job.

Other than that the learning curve can take at least a year or more sometimes to reach close parity and to be honest there are just tricks in both mediums just like oil painting vs Conté Crayon vs Watercolour.

Of course the one big advantage of digital is duplication, the medium doesn't degrade, it can be backed up offsite incase of natural disaster, etc...

I would say the best digital artists were first professional traditional artists in my opinion.

Good Luck

[waxhead]

That Dial stuff is utterly useless. I have a 3d Mouse that I use in Blender (3D Connexion) that I use with the spacenavd daemon in Debian. works great and could do all the thing that dial could do plus more.

[creative]

Well I don't really envy Microsofts products that that much. Often times if something lacks a feature"not actually pointed towards this particular post" it forces the artist to approach things in an unconventional way sometimes with great results executed in unpredictable ways. Sometimes having limitations forces one to think outside the box creating an advanced technique that not many people can get a grasp of how it was executed.

Sometimes advanced features can prove in the future to be very limiting.

Even though I have a Win10 installation for some games does not mean I game in it cause it performs much better and looks nicer in certain ways. I game more in linux even though it has limitations, or lack of performance. I embrace what is present in linux and run with it and enjoy it. I rarely boot to my windows 10 installation, everytime I do I feel like I am hanging out in a walmart super center, who in their right mind wants to hang out there for very long? I will take my limited amount of linux games and less than stellar performance than windows. Funny thing is now I actually have more linux campatible games in my steam library than MS only games. I think skyrim se will eventually get the support it needs in wine. If not I might just buy a copy of old rim.

[M@yeulC]

As much as I sometimes eye Microsoft products with envy, I am sorry to say that I don't see the appeal of this one. Actually, I already have a scroll wheel (well, two on my mouse, actually), and a few extra buttons. Plus, a limited number of hands (and my desk is a mess).
Besides looking cool, I am not sure this would be an extremely productive way of interfacing with the environment. Maybe more intuitive, but then, I'm not sure; it sounds like it might have a steeper learning curve than a mouse, and definitely more than a touchscreen.

That said, it could bring unified interactions to the table, whereas with other input devices, it's a bit of a mess. I guess that's where the value lies. More constrained interactions.
Now, this could also be useful in VR: to have a knob that you can feel and operate without directly looking at it.

I was also wondering why they didn't put a touchpad on this thing, then realized that it would be hard to guess at the orientation of the device, since it is symmetrical.

[creative]

Very cool post though it shows that a lot of tech for artist is being produced, although I am not for microsoft hardware stuffs, have to hand it to them it looks pretty snazy. You can dial in color faster than mixing paint, pretty rad. Although I am very skilled with mixing paint, I only need to have 3 primary colors especially if I am using colored indian ink Dr. Ph Martins Bombay. Some primary colors if you don't due research are biased against each other creating dull colours it has to do with materials in the paint. Digital does not suffer from this, but its also a different aproach as well.

[creative]

What an ingenius device, man! But honestly if I could afford a really nice wacom screen surface display/stylus. I want one, but stuff is really expensive. I do prefer the old fasion paint and canvas/watercolor/mixed paper though. Having something digital would just expand my capabilities. I will have to stick with old school for now, right now I am in audio creation mode anyway. I had a wacom graphire pad and stylus once I never could get used to but a display surfce would work much more like sketching/painting on paper.

It seems when it comes to these sorts of things its usually better to by older stuff where support is already available. I can easily at times advocate old tech beats hi-tech.

[ElectricPrism]

None of us would voluntarily buy a complex Microsoft product and expect it to work right on Linux right?

I mean, I shell out an additional $1500 last year just to buy Wacom instead of Surface Pro -- I thought we were all in agreement that buying from Microsoft is a sure way to be in a world of pain and disappointment if Linux is #1 in your usage.