Win8 is shite. win7 works fine for me, I havn't seen a BSOD in years.

I've been tempted to go to linux but being my own sysadmin doesn't sound like much fun...

I've used Mac but don't really see the benefits, at least with what I use the machine for. And the Stalinist control over data (via iTunes) is a ballache I can do without. 

I have seen a BSOD, but that was hardware damage - a snap, crackle and pop, and the little whisp of smoke that is a few hundred quid saying goodbye. 

by 'someone'. 

On Linux I do not have to do the boring "sysadmin" jobs of hunting for drivers or updating all the software individually. 

 

http://25.media.tumblr.com/9477e6ddcca315f6e82c99a841dad76c/tumblr_mmnblnOuVZ1raaf5co1_500.jpg & http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mcipqk1F261raaf5co1_500.png 

http://images6.fanpop.com/image/photos/32200000/Alpaca-Out-Of-Nowhere-random-32254509-201-251.jpg 

apt-get is nice on linux... until it doesn't work.

took 20 minutes of googling just to realize i had to change some servers in some files somewhere. :\ 

Yeah, that personal repository stuff seems quite bad. In Archlinux you don't use that kind of stuff, instead you have https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/ for everything that is not in the official repositories. Works easy and well. 

 

Anybody have a suggestion for a decent program for editing textures for Quake (256 color)? I'm not having much luck so far. I've been using an old copy of PSP (4.0) that I've had for years but it's palette manipulation capabilities are very limited. I also have some version of Photoshop Elements and I downloaded GIMP, but both those are massively bloated overkill for what I need to do. To me GIMP seems to have an incredibly confusing and unintuitive interface, but maybe I just haven't given it a fair chance, and seriously - over 3,000 files in the GIMP folder?

I just need basic editing capability, copy/paste, palette editing with the ability to see exactly which colors are used and how many of each color, pixel by pixel drawing, that sort of thing.

PSP actually does most of what I want except the palette window can't show which of the 256 colors are actually used in the image and how many pixels of each color. 

What I was referring to - on windows it's just 'update'.

Occasionally it's 'uninstall update that made your machine unusable'.

Still might change over though, depending on the inertia threshold of learning a new OS... 

I hit it! Worldcraft: "Warning: too many objects in view!" I haven't even copied all of it from my small test box yet.

And on that note, time to go camping! 

To me GIMP seems to have an incredibly confusing and unintuitive interface
if you know Photoshop, learning gimp is hard because almost everything is backwards.

Spirit linked some other program, krita, but i tried to install it on windows and it blew up. i think the windows version is still a beta. 

Rick, try: http://www.quaketerminus.com/tools/wally_155b.exe
or http://www.quaketerminus.com/tools/fimg_v02.zip 

you could use Photofiltre(7 should be the free version), Paint.net, Photostudio(worked for me) 

I believe there's some pixel art apps, and some open source recreation of deluxe paint floating around. 

Don't know why Paint.net(free) is so underestimated, it has almost all the Paintshop features 

fuck's sake that was a lot of work just to install the base for arch linux. 

Problem with Photoshop, GIMP, Paint.NET, etc. is that they have almost no concept of a 256 color limited palette. They all basically suck for anything other than 24 bit or higher.

Load a bitmap of any random Quake texture in one of those programs and just try:

A) Count the colors.

B) Show the palette with each color used marked.

C) Show how many pixels there are of each color.

Just doesn't seem like it should be that hard.

I think I actually managed to count colors in GIMP. I'm not going to bother re-installing Photoshop.

I had forgotten about Wally, not much help for what I need, but does a lot of useful things. Good to have. 

had heaps of problems with pre-xp versions. Didnt have too many issues with XP but did still have the occasional hiccup.

Win 7 has been working like a dream for a few years though. 

Paint Shop Pro 6 if you can find it supports loading the quake palette IIRC 

I've been using PSP 4 for years. It can't do B or C in my post above. It can at least count the colors. Can version 6 do B and C?

It's a real pain to recolor one texture to match another when you don't know which colors are actually used or how much of a given color is in the texture. 

Pretty sure this must be the Deluxe Paint re-creation that Spiney mentioned above. Horrible clunky 80s style interface but very good 256 color palette manipulation.

http://code.google.com/p/grafx2/

It has a palette "Zap" tool which let's you replace all unused colors with something else, There is a palette histogram, 0-255, mouse over any column to see exactly how many pixels use that color. It's not perfect but I can work with it. 

I use PSP7 ESD. It's a full version that came bundled with, I think, PC Zone or PC Gamer on the cover disc.
If you go to oldapps.com you'll find older versions of lots of software, they should all be legal and public domain too. :)