In a previous post, I covered Shotwell Photo Manager, the default application available to manage pictures in Ubuntu starting from the Maverick (10.10) release. Today, I'm going to cover Picasa as an alternative to Shotwell. Yes, the same Picasa that's popular on the Windows platform, the same Picasa promoted and made available by Google. The same Picasa that lot of people look in awe and wonder, is also available for Linux.
That is not true. It's not the same Picasa available for the Windows platform anymore. Google has announced that releases for Linux will not be made anymore and the latest version available for Linux is Picasa 3.0 beta. This beta version is also not a native Linux application, rather than making one, Google has taken a shortcut and used the windows installation and bundled it with wine, so despite a Linux variant being available for downloading and installing, it is the same Windows application running on top of Wine. This means that even if Google is too lazy to bundle latest release of Picasa with Wine and release it for Linux, you can install Wine and then install latest version of Picasa for Windows directly on Linux.
Anyone who uses Picasa knows that Picasa is rich, easy to use, intuitive and probably the best picture and photo managing application available for all three OS's (Windows, Mac and Linux). However, anyone who tried to use a Google applications may also have realised that it only integrates well with other Google applications and services and Picasa is also a victim. The mere fact that Google didn't release a native Linux version and instead chose to run it on top of bundled Wine is a major turn off for me. All this eventually means that Picasa is not available for download in the software center, doesn't integrate well with the look and feel of any Linux distribution, doesn't work with the Global Menu of the Unity interface. Drop down menu's and dialogs are in the lack luster and dull grey color of the Windows 98 era and doesn't contribute well to the user experience when using on Linux
Despite those things, once installed it runs superbly on a system with enough prerequisites to handle heavy memory usage. It runs well on my Acer Aspire 3680 and flawlessly on HP DV9000. The features Picasa offers make it useful enough to have around despite the many drawbacks of having an application running on Wine.
Pros
Comes bundled with a lot of features not available on Shotwell. This includes, more editing options of photos, useful plugins like collages, clip creation, automatic face recognition, sorting pictures according to color etc
Cross platform. Runs on Windows, Mac and Linux
Integrates well with other Google services such as Blogger
Ability to browse by folder, a feature not available on Shotwell
Once installed, you don't have to specify a 'watched directory' as you do in Shotwell. Picasa scans the entire file directory.
Ability to create albums, and synchronise them with the web. You can clearly see which pictures have been uploaded and which albums are synchronised. This feature is absent in Shotwell
Manage folders. You can choose which folders Picasa can and cannot look into.
Ability to import photos from a camera.
Cons
Bundled with Wine and is essentially a Windows application running on top of Wine. The application takes a bite out of the memory usage and doesn't fit in well with the look and feel of Linux
Not integrated with any other Linux application. Basically a stand-alone application
Latest version not available for Linux. Workaround: install latest Wine and then download latest version for Windows and install on Linux
Only supports uploading and synchronising with Picasa Web Albums.
No rating system available. Only 'starring' a photo feature is available that doesn't make any comparison between the photos
Conclusion Comparing with Shotwell, I have to say that having Picasa around would be useful. But Shotwell is a native Linux application and has certain advantages which makes it more easy to use than Picasa. Others will differ over their choice.
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