justajeffy

I don't block opposing views. I block people when they are extremely arrogant or otherwise unpleasant in the way they express their views. If we can have a civil discourse despite being on opposing sides of an issue, then I will always pay attention. Honestly though, it does also get extremely tiresome having to refute the same ol' outdated arguments for being against a Linux version. I also don't appreciate being treated like just some silly home Linux user who's deluding himself about the importance of Linux. My use-case for commercial Linux software is at a studio full of existing Linux desktops already running lots of other commercial Linux multimedia and graphics applications. Adding 40-50 licenses of Affinity Photo to those Linux desktops would be fantastic for us. The Linux users in the VFX industry may represent a small number of global users compared to all the Microsoft Solitaire players on Windows, but we are BIG SPENDERS. If you don't believe me, just ask any other software developer who caters to our industry. They'll probably tell you that you'd be crazy to not release a Linux version.

Hey all. Expressing anti-Linux sentiment in a thread talking about the desire for Linux versions is the epitome of internet trolling. Don't give the trolls the attention they want. Best way to deal with internet trolls: IGNORE them. Do not engage. They're not adding anything valuable to this conversation. Lets move on, please. Also, pro tip: click on your profile name at the top right to open a pulldown menu, then click "ignored users" and enter the username of someone that you don't want to see anymore. As per attached image:

We should continue to make it known that we want it for as long as we still want it. It requires almost no effort to re-iterate our desire ad-infinitum. The rest is out of our hands and no amount of bitching, whining or insulting comments from anybody in this forum will change that. You're obviously tired of waiting, and that's ok. It's understandable. Perhaps you should move on, then. In fact, please do. Unless you can contribute something of any usefulness to the discussion without being so belligerent all the time, it might be better if you unsubscribe from this thread.

That statement does not seem true to me and certainly not fair to Serif. It's perfectly reasonable for them to be extremely cautious in their decision-making with regard to possibly developing for another platform and then having to support it. It would also be perfectly reasonable for them to say they won't make a Linux version because they simply don't want to. That's their prerogative. All we can do is continue to make it known that we want it and are willing to pay for it.

It has nothing to do with being finicky. Anything we install for our users, we then have to SUPPORT. If we have trouble with the software, how much help can we expect to receive from Affinity when we tell them that we're running it in Wine on Linux? My experience tells me that most companies would reply with something like "sorry, we don't support running it that way. Please run it on Windows." We pay for software because we want the official support that comes along with it. The official support is valuable to us.

I'm one of those people who's willing to pay more a Linux version and buy enough copies for everyone at a small VFX studio. However, I would not buy any if it means I have to run it under Wine. I'd pay only only for a proper Linux version for these users. It would be a mistake to count "wine users" as a good metric to go by in order to determine market potential. There are many more of us who would not be represented in those numbers.

That is definitely not always true. A bit off-topic, maybe, but there are often several things that contribute to a company's failure. Creating a good product does not guarantee success. Businesses should focus on creating customers, whatever that means.

You continue to be very disrespectful. Insulting people doesn't help your argument.

Ok. So, how many unique users posting in this thread would it take to justify development of just one of the apps on a new OS?

I'm not sure that all of the arguments in this thread are quite so legitimate or well-articulated. It's a pretty mixed bag. 😀

I use appimages for some applications. I install an appimage on a network share and create a symlink that is used to launch it. Everyone in the studio has access to it. Then when I want to upgrade, I simply download the latest appimage, relink to the new version and boom... everybody in the studio now has instant access to the latest version of the software. Takes 2 minutes. Flatpak is ok, but requires more management.

I'm not a huge snap fan either, but I understand that snapd runs applications in a sandbox to prevent access to outside resources. This is by design for security reasons, and it is somewhat configurable. It should be super-simple to bind mount any path into your home in order to make it accessible to the application. Looks like they also provide binary releases in the form of flatpak or appimage. Perhaps the appimage would be more your style.

I'm Canadian, and I'm very well aware of how offensive the word can be. That said, I would still think it's horrible name even if people weren't offended by it. There's nothing offensive about the name Affinity. 😉

No matter how hard I've tried for a very long time now, I cannot convince artists to use Gimp. They don't like it. They don't want it. I'm tired of acting like an ambassador for a product that does not satisfy our users and is also not showing any signs of eventually evolving into the product that they want. Gimp is no competition for Affinity Photo and, in my opinion, would pose no threat to sales of good quality commercial software alternatives. This is coming from a long-time Linux user and proponent of free open-source software. Affinity Photo's biggest threat would be a Linux version of Photoshop. If Adobe releases Photoshop for Linux before Affinity, then it's pretty much game over. If, however, Affinity takes hold in the Linux market before that happens, then they'd be in a good position to profit in that space.

We're going a little off-topic. We should try to keep this discussion about Affinity products on Linux. Talking about Gimp or others seems ok as it relates to the main topic of discussion, but lets try to remember that this isn't a Gimp forum.

We have no interesting in making a "donation" to either of them. We would happily "invest" in a project that would benefit us. I can't justify giving money away to Gimp developers in hopes that maybe one day it'll pay off. They've given no reason to believe that would be true. I would, however, happily join a crowdfund to port Affinity Photo to Linux. Particularly if expectations are defined up-front and there is at least some accountability for meeting those expectations. You've already made it very clear how you feel about crowdfunding and so I will not engage in that discussion with you anymore. No point arguing about it. Lets just say that we disagree and leave it at that.

Professional VFX artists, apparently. At this point, if Affinity were willing to consider a proper Linux port, we would be more likely to put money towards Affinity Photo than Gimp. To us, that would seem like a sound investment and more likely to result in software that our artists would be actually willing to use. If the Gimp project could demonstrate that there's significant momentum behind a sensible plan to meet specific milestones that benefit companies like ours, then maybe that would be food for thought. Unfortunately, that is not the case at the moment.

I appreciate the sentiment, but I don't share your optimism about what Gimp can maybe, possibly, hopefully become if we pump more money into the project. Let us consider for a moment that in the 24 years that Gimp has been around, they still haven't had the sense to realize that GIMP is a TERRIBLE name. (Yeah, I know it's an acronym.. but it's still awful.) If they can't even get around to changing that, how can I trust that they'd be able to make good decisions about how to spend any money that we would donate to their efforts? It's good software, and develops slowly.. and that's ok. I'd like to convince more of our artists to use it, but honestly, the stigma surrounding turns everyone off immediately. It doesn't matter that it has improved a little since they last used it. Gimp 3.0 needs to be excellent and should be rebranded to retire the old name and logo. Show the community that the project has great momentum in development and has a plan to reach certain milestones by specific dates. THEN, maybe we'll feel better about investing in it. Blender did this, and now money is flowing into the project. They were able to demonstrate that investment in Blender would likely to pay off. The Gimp roadmap page has a bunch of tasks with statuses but no defined deadlines and the page hasn't even been updated since October. There's no obvious momentum there. Chicken and egg problem, I guess.

Do you think maybe you could find a way to argue your points without being such an incredible dick about it? Maybe add some actual value to the conversation instead of this childish "haha evry1 is wrong. i'm smrt and yerall teh stoopid" attitude that you're demonstrating here. ... but yeah, thanks for telling me how business works. I'm learning so much.

Creative Pro Linux customers have become somewhat accustomed to this practice. It's less common nowadays, but some companies used to sell more for Linux versions of their software. I am absolutely willing to pay more for a Linux version of Affinity Photo because I know that even at the increased cost, it'll still save my company money over Photoshop. For that matter, they could double the cost of the software for ALL platforms and, as upsetting as that would be, most would probably STILL consider it to be a great deal compared to the ongoing cost of Photoshop.

Yes, if that's what it took to get the product I want created and released for me to use. That's the whole point of sites like Kickstarter. What you describe is not unprecedented. Consider that a successful game company like Double Fine famously ran a highly-successful Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for a game that would not have been created otherwise. Or how very recently, CoolerMaster completed a Kickstart campaign to fund a case for the Raspberry Pi. Both bigger companies than Affinity, I think. It allows consumers and businesses to put our money where our mouth is, so to speak. It lets us vote with our dollars to help companies (or convince them) to create and release the products that we want. It also allows small companies to venture forth with an idea without assuming great financial risk. If it turns out that people don't want it, then the crowdsourcing campaign will fail and the company is under no obligation to continue with the idea.

Uggh. Seriously, I'm so sick and tired of hearing the "small user base" argument. It's so frustrating. The small VFX company I work for has in the past 4-5 years spent many hundreds of thousands of dollars on Linux software. Almost entirely pro graphics related. (eg Autodesk Maya, Foundry Nuke, and more...) We may be a small user base, but we are BIG SPENDERS.

Which Adobe apps on Linux are you talking about? Not Photoshop, for sure. That was never on Linux. Some time ago it was available for Irix users on SGI machines, but never Linux. Did they ever have any paid software on Linux? I can't remember. Oh, there is Substance Painter. They own Substance now, and we use the Linux versions of Substance apps every day. I bought two more subscriptions to run the Linux version just last month. I'm not blinded to anything. I'm well aware of the size of the Linux "community" that is often referred to in a sort of patronizing way. I'm not just some passionate Linux user. In fact, I'm typing this from my Windows desktop at the moment. I'm a professional with a strong business need for software like this on Linux. That need isn't going away. It's growing. The reality is, that profit potential within a given market usually begins by evaluating the overall size of that market. In this case, that's a very flawed analysis, given that the market size is determined by the applications that are available to run on it. In other words, one of the reasons the Windows user base is so large is that people have a need for certain applications which currently only run on Windows! They don't have a choice. Give them a choice to run on a different platform, and many of them will make that switch. So let us put our money where our mouth is. If only they would open up to pre-orders or maybe use something like Kickstarter for launching a Linux version. They've said that they don't want to use crowdsourcing, but that's just silly to me. What a better way to get-prefunded for the Linux port than to have the customers pay for it up front. If the campaign doesn't succeed, the Linux port doesn't happen and all the naysayers can say I told you so. The browser on the client side merely provides a remote view of the software running in the cloud. The applications run in a virtual machine in the cloud and that virtual machine is running an operating system like Linux. Almost always Linux, unless you're the kind of person who enjoys paying twice as much for no particularly good reason.

Smaller companies than Serif manage to support Windows, Mac and Linux without much trouble. I'm not saying that it can done without adding additional workload on support staff, I'm just saying that nowadays, it's not as big a deal as you're making it out to be. You don't need to be a billion dollar company to support one more commonly-used operating system. Linux has a reputation for being difficult. It isn't. That way of thinking is very outdated. Nowadays a modern Linux distro can easily pass the grandma test. ..and I wouldn't by 10 more copies of Affinity Photo on Linux today. I'd buy 50, and yes.. I would pay more for it. It would still save my company a lot of money over Photoshop and eliminate the need to manage Adobe subscriptions, not to mention VMware. There's plenty of opportunity for profit in the Linux market. Much more than typical market research would have you believe. If professionals aren't using Linux, it's because for many of them, they simply don't have a choice. It's irritating to constantly hear that they won't make a Linux version because there aren't enough Linux users, when the very need for the software they produce is what dictates what OS people are required to use. I'd bet some Affinity users on WIndows or Mac would switch to Linux if that were an option for running the software. Also, as I mentioned before, if there were to be any plan at all to expand Affinity software into cloud services, then Linux support is a must. Mac in the cloud is currently not an option and Windows VMs in the cloud are much more expensive than Linux VMs while offering no significant advantage and in fact do not perform as well. With remote work becoming the norm, I need to be able to scale desktops into cloud virtual machines and for us, that means LINUX. You're right about the capitalism thing. Either Affinity captures the creative pro Linux market, or somebody else will. It's inevitable.

Microsoft used to be very dismissive about Linux. Now Microsoft makes Linux software.