New Zealand (South Island)
Seth Kenlon is a UNIX geek, free culture advocate, independent multimedia artist, and D&D nerd. He has worked in the film and computing industry, often at the same time. He is one of the maintainers of the Slackware-based multimedia production project Slackermedia.
Authored Comments
Open source creative applications don't have to be alternatives to anything. They provide creative options for users of open source. Creativity isn't the exclusive domain of proprietary software vendors.
I think you'll find that people use Inkscape and GIMP and Krita and Mypaint and many many other open source applications every day with great success (and the end product is indistinguishable from something created with any other tool, open source or otherwise).
As my cinematography professor back in film school used to intone: "All that matters is what's on screen." That is, people don't care _how_ you produced your work of art (or whether you walk or fly to San Francisco from New York), they only care about the end result, and what it inspires. For many of us, open source itself is inspiring, and we aim for the same in what we create with it.
I see your point. I actually didn't intend to suggest that Chromebooks were designed only for Chrome OS, but that they were branded as laptops that ran Chrome OS, and that Chrome OS accordingly released a build for that laptop design. Without motherboard support, it's non-trivial to build and install Chromium OS for a device.
As others out in comments, though, Gallium OS is a good alternative to Chrome OS, should a user have no need for the Chrome OS component. And that's a lot easier than building Chromium OS. This article assumes, however, that a user has a need or desire to run Chrome OS.