Squirrel Logic

Oookay. Earlier I was starting to think that having the thread locked was the intended consequence of his posts, since it was the only logical explanation I could think if. I didn't realize that it had happened before.

The reason why people thought that you came off as trolling was because you were using the same "one or two home truths" (i.e. arguments) ad nauseam. Usually repeating the same thing over and over again is considered spamming.

1% of the total desktop users does not equate to 1% of Serif's target demographic. Serif makes design software, not a universal application like a web browser, so you should be taking into account only Serif's potential customers in this argument, and not the entirety of computer users. The number of creative professionals that use (or want to use) Linux is higher than the total population. The thing is, we don't know exactly what Serif's target demo is. If Serif is only interested in taking current Adobe users (who are ipso facto only Windows and Mac users), then yes, making a Linux version makes no sense. But I would assume that Serif is interested in more than Adobe's current customers that need design software: students, UI designers, front-end developers, film editors, 3D animators, software developers, and marginalized creatives. I don't know what their target demo is, but I what Serif to know that there are designers who work in software development that want Affinity applications available in Linux, even moreso in web design. I know people who work in animation who would give anything to use something besides The GIMP at work because their 3D pipeline is Linux (Pixar, WDAS). As someone who has a graphic design degree, who is currently working on 3D assets, does web design and front-end development as part of their job, I'm in Linux for 70% of my day. I spend $323 USD annually on software that I run in Linux (no VM, no WINE). It fluctuates every year, but this year I donated €40 to open-source software that I use in Linux and Windows. Not technically commercial software, but it's software I use commercially, and I gave them my money. That sounds like a business to me. It shows that if it was not open source, I would have paid at least that much money for the software. So abso-freaking-lutely, successful commercial Linux software exists. Again, I get it. Serif might not care about large film or animation studios. They may not care about software developers. But I think it is the right of customers, and potential customers, to let Serif know that there's a need for it. So instead of pretending to know what Serif's demo is, accept that there is demand for it. The argument that an electric car shouldn't be made because not enough electric cars have been made doesn't make sense to me.

That's not the point of this thread. People are not trying to make Affinity products Linux-only.

M1 chips perform very well for some tasks, but 3D rendering has not been one of them at the moment. A lot of rendering engines are not written for M1. Apple's Metal has also been a problem for us. The chips in the current line of Macs are geared for efficiency rather than raw power. I expect future M1 chips to catch up in that department. Even when they do hit the market, they won't be as cost effective. For every dollar we put into an iMac we can get so much more rendering power out of a PC and graphics cards that are dedicated to that type of processing. And with Intel's Alder Lake around the corner, the benefits of the M1 won't be exclusive to Apple.

I will add that I think the big lesson here for people who are doing app development is to plan ahead from the very beginning to not write software that will only work in one operating system. The tools to make fully cross-platform apps have been around for years.

That is actually one of the futures I imagined, since it's the reason why we use Figma for most of our work. Web and software development is very cross-disciplinary, so we need something that developers can also use, and not have arbitrary boundaries get in the way. If it's performant enough we don't care that it's in a browser. We do care if we have to have a second computer or dual-boot just to open a file. It's the worst kind of task switching we have to do when we use Affinity products. We don't have that problem with Figma, so we don't use Affinity as part of that pipeline. The problem companies are experiencing is that there's no perfect set of software with OS compatibility for technology-oriented businesses. We can't use Apple for everything because it's under-powered for 3D rendering and content creation. We can't use Windows for everything because of how poorly it works with backend development. Linux works great for 3D, content, and development. So why not have everyone just specialize then? We don't want to create silos, and our success depends on multidisciplinary teams; that's just how things are now nowadays. We consolidate our tools as much as we can to have everyone on the same page. It's easier to deploy, onboard, and support. The whole team uses one IDE, one Git client, one VM, one project management system, one modeling and animation app, one video editor, and it's great. But when it comes to the vector and print design it's a mess. The apps that have stuck around that everyone uses are Figma and DaVinci because they work everywhere we need them to. At this point I see one of two things happening that will solve the problems that companies are facing with regards to software and OS support for teams that need to do everything smoothly. Microsoft will improve their OS and WSL so that backend development is just as good as it is in Linux, or someone is going to create a cross-platform design suite (web-based or otherwise) to make it universal. At this point, I think it's more likely that Microsoft will fix the problems it has with software development. They've been putting a lot of effort into that and it's almost there. That means Windows can become a universal operating system. If that doesn't happen first (and it might not happen due to limitations inherent in Windows), I imagine that Adobe will create cross-platform apps, since they probably have a better understanding of what companies are struggling with. But that's just from the business side of things. I'm also concerned about students and the millions of people who are in that in-between space of being a solopreneur that are not part of a big company. Even if Adobe releases cross platform solutions, I don't see Adobe looking out for them. Maybe Serif might?

I've been using the go-avif CLI tool for encoding, and it's been working pretty well. I haven't switched over to the bleeding edge AVIF CLI tools yet. Because people were talking about it so much, I shared the PowerShell source code I use to create WebP and AVIF files. As I mentioned above, because graphics for the web benefit from image optimizers that remove necessary data and can brute-force different compression techniques to find the smallest file, I think CLI scripts are the best solution for now until optimization is also included in the exporting options. And yes, I also can't wait for JPEG XL. It's a very elegant solution.

Because it is more cost-effective to purchase than to develop. Several years ago when I asked people who work at animation studios that run Linux what software they used for image editing and digital painting, they said GIMP. When I asked her how they've been managing using GIMP for their texturing work, she said that it gets the job done. I have heard about studios using Photoshop CS5 and WINE when they didn't want to use GIMP. For concept art and texturing, Photoshop hasn't changed much since then. There's still fragmentation, even with Creative Cloud. I've had machines that were running older versions of Windows that Adobe products would refuse to install on because they were no longer supported. On MacOS we had to roll back a couple of times on new updates while the Windows machines ran the new versions of the software. The fragmentation you are describing is making sure everyone is using the most recent version of the software. With the realities of bad software updates aside, Adobe CC forces it by making everyone pay in advance for the upgrade. The Creative Cloud license validation and updater app is a separate technology that any software company can implement. That is not a feature exclusive to subscription software. Even without such software, a company with an IT department will be running an RMM to remotely patch and update 3rd-party software on employee's computers. So perhaps the best use-case for the CC license validation and updater app is for small businesses that don't use an RMM. But small businesses and freelancers are the best candidates for being okay with not having their software up-to-date all the time.

Seeing as how Apple hasn't supported WebP in their web browsers for 10 years, and no major graphics application supports WebP either, I wouldn't hold your breath for AVIF support. Especially since the accepted way to convert image files to these formats is to use build tools and <picture> element fallbacks. I just use a script that converts all my PNG files to WebP and AVIF, and use partials/components in my code to handle the fallback HTML code. It would be nice to not have to rely on the script to create WebP and AVIF files, but I would still have to rely on scripts because I run some image optimizers that remove metadata and optimize the compression to make PNG and JPEGs much smaller. So, practically I don't think adding AVIF support would really improve the quality of life for people who make images for the web. What would be nice is to include the same functionality that jpegoptim and OptiPNG have within the export options. It would dramatically reduce the file sizes for images (good selling point against Adobe's file export) and with those optimizations bundled with WebP and AVIF support I would not need those scripts at all. That would be a huge benefit for people creating WordPress websites that don't optimize their files before uploading them.

Whatever they're plans were, I'm sure all of that was delayed due to Apple Silicon coming out soon.

Oops. I mean to say that the risk of not having internet connectivity does not affect my day-to-day activities. Our uptime is solid and I have not had instances where I was not able to use online software for work.

I totally agree. I prefer to have a local version of the software running, but if I have to choose between online-only software and being locked into just a couple operating systems, I'm going to choose the online-only option. Not having internet connectivity does not affect my day-to-day activities, but not having it run on Linux does. Of course for others it's a different story, where they are not working with Linux or good/cheap internet is not available. But for us, Linux support is more important. Again, I don't like that mentality either of browsers-based software being the solution to our problems, but let me repeat this: Linux support is far more important to us. If there's no other option, we have to chose a solution that actually exists. It is important to accept the reality that browser-based software is a viable alternative, even if there is a better way. I don't think operating systems will go subscription. It's against Apple's hardware business, and they already have perpetual income through the App Store. Microsoft has a greater focus on their cloud computing business than Windows (if their most recent update fiascos are any indication). In the apocalyptic scenario that any of these companies decide to make their OS subscription based, it's all the more reason why it is more important for software companies to t support Linux.

I think browser-based applications are totally valid. How many of us have replaced Microsoft Word with Google Docs? How many of us use our browser for email clients like Mailspring or Gmail instead of Outlook? Instead of Microsoft Project, we now use JIRA and Trello—all applications that run in a browser. Slack and Discord are browser applications; the desktop versions are just Electron apps. At the last agency I worked at, we used browser-based video software to create video for social media. Adobe is creating products like Spark, Lightroom CC, and Mikamo (3D rigging and animation) as browser applications. For us, Figma is a valid replacement for two desktop applications that do the similar jobs (Sketch and Adobe XD). In other words, there's plenty of desktop applications that we do not buy because a browser-based equivalent was better. If that doesn't prove validity of a browser application, I don't know what does. Like it or not, the browser has become the newest operating system. They might not be as performant as desktop applications, but more often than not it does the job just fine, and have completely replaced desktop applications. WebAssembly (compiled code as opposed to JavaScript) allows CPU-intensive tasks run client-side in the browser, further opening up the possibility of more browser-based design applications. PWAs allow websites to be installed as apps on desktop and mobile devices. In the future, there shouldn't be a need to install the mobile app version of Trello, Notion, JIRA, Reddit, and so on. Just because a piece of software is written in JavaScript, Wasm, and uses HTML/CSS for the UI, doesn't disqualify it from being a replacement for something written in C# or Swift. Do I want every piece of software I used to be browser-based? No. I typically install the Electron/desktop version of most of the online software I use daily. I would rather use software that doesn't have the overhead of an Electron app. But these companies are using a tech stack that lets them write the software once and have it work everywhere. If Figma can do it for UI design, I don't think it'll be long until someone else does it for digital illustration, vector art, desktop publishing, and so on. I would much rather have native apps, but if a browser-based app comes along and does the job for everyone on our team that uses Linux? We'll take it.

Okay. They are not Linux-exclusive designers; as you say, VMs running Windows. All our UI design work is done in Figma because it is a cross platform tool. There are design roles that can be done 100% in Linux without compromise. I count product designers and illustrators as "designers" too. Their tools also work 100% in Linux without compromise.