Dradis

This is all true - and part of the major uphill battle we face.

The most recent page of posts are mostly in anger because Adobe finally hit the "feature declined" button for the feature request (only a couple of weeks ago). Hopes had been raised when, in late 2018, Adobe was forced to reply and say that they would seriously consider it. They had to respond because they received 1000s of votes for the request in one day - this surge of interest happened after Jason Evangelhoa from Forbes posted this article. If you go back a little, you'll start seeing much more reasonable posts and an endless repetition of that phrase "the only thing holding me back is Adobe. Numbers lie all the time. I think there is a lot more demand for an alternative to Windows OS and Mac hardware than the Linux market share currently can show. None the less, I don't fault Serrif or Adobe for their rationale - but I do think there is an argument to be made here.

In Serrif's case: this would be a chance to steel Adobe customers. As a Linux user yourself, I'm sure you've seen the oft repeated phrase: "The one thing holding me back from linux is Adobe." As an imediate example, check out the thousands of replies on Adobe's feature request thread for linux here (the votes for this dwarfs all of the other feature request votes on their site - by a factor of 10: https://adobe-video.uservoice.com/forums/911233-premiere-pro/suggestions/36257581-yes-please-support-linux-this-would-be-a-huge-m

Unfortunately, Adobe's official word (recently), was not "in the near future" : https://adobe-video.uservoice.com/forums/911233-premiere-pro/suggestions/36257581-yes-please-support-linux-this-would-be-a-huge-m

So Serrif, if you're listening, the following Linus Tech youtube video has over 2 million views and over 100K likes. Just sayin... Microsoft Should be VERY Afraid - Noob's Guide to Linux Gaming

My point isn't that dreams and risk always pan out (or even that they pan out most of the time), but, rather, that risk is generally an essential ingredient for CHANGE and we, the Design/Linux community are in the unenviable position of trying to find somebody to take a risk on us. That requires speaking up (and speaking up always tends to annoy people... so be it ...especially in this context - it is, after all, just an online forum - not the front yard of somebody's home). I have to apologize to sciencephysicist, who is making sound points (that I mostly agree with - and I don't think he/she is even saying that people shouldn't speak up here - and that was the point I instinctively felt inclined to push back against). I have my own chips on my shoulder that sometimes get the better of me. I personally think that this forum is a perfectly suitable place for folks to make their case (and occasionally duke it out), and so I wanted to throw my support behind those who continue to join/argue/contribute to the discussion (even if they don't always get along).

It IS an unrealistic dream, but if nobody pursued unrealistic dreams...(well then we wouldn't have Affinity Photo). Dreams can become reality - a quick survey of history reveals that such events quite often involve persistence and very squeaky wheels. I do, however, completely agree that we can (right now) vote with out wallets and support open source products. In fact, my inclination is that this should probably be our first priority. However, they do still have a way to go and I do think that a large commercial product will give Linux an enormous boost in converting market share, and so, is a fight worth pursuing.

I just noticed that the two Linux threads on this forum (this thread: "Affinity for Linux" and the other, similarly named, "Affinity Products for Linux") each dwarf the activity of all other threads by a long shot (the only other thread in the neighborhood is "Sneak Peak at 1.7"). Look not only at the number of replies (which is significant and substantially outranks the other threads) but, even more impossing, the number of views. As I have mentioned before, you see the same thing happening on Adobe's user forum. It's been like this for some time. As far as we know, both Adobe and Affinity still see it the same way. Linux's marketshare is not worth their time. So... The forums aren't working. I remember reading somewhere in my internet travelers (might have been this thread?) someone talking about their inside experience with a tech company in which the going-ons of the forums hardly reached supervisor level attention, let alone executives who make decisions. I'm at a loss of how to proceed. Petitions have never gotten much traction (with the pitiful response they have traditionally had, compared to enthusiasm I've seen elsewhere, I wonder if the problem was more about getting the petition seen, rather than lack of interest - might be time to consider another one - if we can get it into the hands of the right blogger / influencer - but you'd have to get millions of signatures, not thousands). If I had the connections, the experience, the knowledge, I'd foolishly consider trying to find the capital to build the alternative myself (if I didn't, also, realize that it has taken decades for Adobe and Affinity to get their software to were it is now). My only thought now, is to start imploring everyone who wants to pay good money for this, to begin donating to Krita (and others) and try to help them do to graphic design what Blender did for 3D. That, at this point, I think is our best hope. They already have the momentum, they just need more support (while they do get donations -if you follow their website,- the financial support they get from month to month is pretty in-substantial - and yet they still do wonders with it). I think a lot of the people who come to this thread are well aware of the catch-22 that Linux is caught in, in regards to market share/availability of commercial software), and how this single cause (getting a fully developed graphics / content developer sweet available for the platform), could potentially change the entire playing field for Linux desktop at large. But, we remain stuck. Any suggestions?

Agreed with SrPx. Adobe, by all outward signs, is not very interested in this (and, honestly, I can understand why). However, my point, in pointing towards the Adobe site, is to demonstrate that there really, truly, is demand for paid design software on the Linux platform. While, I'm not holding my breath for Adobe, I can feel pent up demand among my fellow content creators. Many, really, really, don't want Windows and they are also, increasingly, becoming less enamored with Apple and its locked in hardware. I understand that the traditional metrics that one might look to in evaluating Linux's role in the marketplace won't show this...but I believe that those metrics are looking in the wrong place. I feel that there is an opportunity for Serif. The demand being demonstrated on the Adobe site is the most immediate evidence that I have on hand.

A month later, and the Adobe Linux request is now at 11,000+ https://adobe-video.uservoice.com/forums/911233-premiere-pro/suggestions/36257581-yes-please-support-linux-this-would-be-a-huge-m Just sayin'....

But now we have Snap and Flatpack which can greatly simplify the challenge of managing app deployment across the countless Linux distros. The other thing Serif can do, if needed (again, I think Snap and Flatpack can potentially negate the need to do this) they only have to officially support one distribution (this is what Blackmagic is currently doing with DaVinci Resolve). Even without these new cross platform package managers, If the software works well on say Ubuntu or Mint, then the Linux community will quickly workout how to get it to work nicely on Fedora, Open-suse, etc. Serif only needs to be officially accountable for one.

You should check out what is currently happening on Adobe's feature request site: https://adobe-video.uservoice.com/forums/911233-premiere-pro/suggestions/36257581-yes-please-support-linux-this-would-be-a-huge-m As of this post, they have 10,822 votes to create a Linux version. The next highest voted feature request on that form only has 1,366 (that's down by a factor of x8). The majority of the other request have less than 300 votes. (I follow that thread closely, and they see an average of about 200-300 additional votes for this request every month).* The overwhelming majority of those votes (over 10,000) have come in since this last December (2018). I know the sticker price for Serif going through the Linux port has gone up, but bare with me on this: At one point at the beginning of this thread a moderator mentioned that Serif would only consider a Linux port if they could reasonably guarantee that they would make back the roughly $500,000 it would cost them to do. Well, as Adobe's site proves there are at least 10,822 people who are clamoring for some kind of professional design software option on Linux (a void Adobe is still unwilling to fill): 10,822 x $50 = $541,000 Allowing that the number of people who actually have voted on that thread merely represents a marginal snap shot of the demand out there, I think it may be well with in Serif's interest to look at this with some seriousness. The free /open source image processing solutions available on Linux are closing the gap at a fairly steady pace (all of these options are available on Windows, and Mac as well) but they do still have a little ways to go (as a person who has made a living with design software for over 15 years, I think I am qualified to say that they do not have as far to go as you might think). Affinity and Adobe, I believe, would be wise to try to overshadow the void these free solutions are threatening to someday fill, sooner, rather than later. * This particular feature request thread on Adobe's site is specifically for Premiere Pro (Adobe's non linear video editor), however, if you read through any single page on the thread, you'll quickly realize that what they are really asking for is support for the entire Adobe suite (Ironically, there already is a professional non linear editing package available for Linux - a solution that strongly competes with the capabilities of Premiere Pro: Blackmagic Design's Davinci Resolve). If you read through any page on the Adobe thread, you'll also see the common refrain that we Linux fan's are so familiar with - the only reason that these people are still using Mac or Windows is because Adobe is not supported on Linux (Serif, if you do any digging around the internet, you'll find this sentiment echoed over and over again). Serif, your software can sooooo compete with Adobe's. Don't you want to try to steal an untapped market from underneath them?