Vex

Big disagree with you on this one. I used to work at Microsoft in the dev world, and if your logic actually worked in reality, the company wouldn't have seen a significant increase in Linux users when they decided to open-source a bunch of stuff and start actively working to better support Linux.
Linux is still used for a LOT of stuff, especially in the creative world. While it is not the typical OS one assumes will be used by someone interested in raster or vector graphics, or desktop publishing, that doesn't mean it's irrelevant or its use is negligible.
Linux has a much broader user base than it did even five years ago, and more and more people have "defected" to it in recent years due to a general disenchantment with tech corporations on the part of consumers. It could even be a nontrivial selling point for Affinity's apps to be Linux-compatible, or to work with WINE or Valve's own WINE implementation.
When you're still trying to edge into a market that is completely dominated by a monolithic software juggernaut, it's not unreasonable to consider alternative platforms for popularizing your software - Linux included. Now, I have no idea what the devs have encountered in the past with poking at getting Affinity to work on Linux. It may be that there's just nobody at the company with the right tool set and knowledge to make it work, and there's no justification to make a budget and find someone who can.
That doesn't mean it'd be a pointless exercise, and it doesn't mean Linux is irrelevant. And, ultimately, it seems like a feedback forum for a product is about providing feedback, not trying to trivialize and discredit feedback that is pretty clearly of interest to multiple users, given how old and expansive this thread is. Adobe's apps are probably the single biggest thing keeping me on Windows now. Just about everything else I use on a daily basis is available on Linux now, and if Affinity's apps were on Linux, making the switch could actually be possible for me.

Big disagree with you on this one. I used to work at Microsoft in the dev world, and if your logic actually worked in reality, the company wouldn't have seen a significant increase in Linux users when they decided to open-source a bunch of stuff and start actively working to better support Linux.
Linux is still used for a LOT of stuff, especially in the creative world. While it is not the typical OS one assumes will be used by someone interested in raster or vector graphics, or desktop publishing, that doesn't mean it's irrelevant or its use is negligible.
Linux has a much broader user base than it did even five years ago, and more and more people have "defected" to it in recent years due to a general disenchantment with tech corporations on the part of consumers. It could even be a nontrivial selling point for Affinity's apps to be Linux-compatible, or to work with WINE or Valve's own WINE implementation.
When you're still trying to edge into a market that is completely dominated by a monolithic software juggernaut, it's not unreasonable to consider alternative platforms for popularizing your software - Linux included. Now, I have no idea what the devs have encountered in the past with poking at getting Affinity to work on Linux. It may be that there's just nobody at the company with the right tool set and knowledge to make it work, and there's no justification to make a budget and find someone who can.
That doesn't mean it'd be a pointless exercise, and it doesn't mean Linux is irrelevant. And, ultimately, it seems like a feedback forum for a product is about providing feedback, not trying to trivialize and discredit feedback that is pretty clearly of interest to multiple users, given how old and expansive this thread is. Adobe's apps are probably the single biggest thing keeping me on Windows now. Just about everything else I use on a daily basis is available on Linux now, and if Affinity's apps were on Linux, making the switch could actually be possible for me.

Big disagree with you on this one. I used to work at Microsoft in the dev world, and if your logic actually worked in reality, the company wouldn't have seen a significant increase in Linux users when they decided to open-source a bunch of stuff and start actively working to better support Linux.
Linux is still used for a LOT of stuff, especially in the creative world. While it is not the typical OS one assumes will be used by someone interested in raster or vector graphics, or desktop publishing, that doesn't mean it's irrelevant or its use is negligible.
Linux has a much broader user base than it did even five years ago, and more and more people have "defected" to it in recent years due to a general disenchantment with tech corporations on the part of consumers. It could even be a nontrivial selling point for Affinity's apps to be Linux-compatible, or to work with WINE or Valve's own WINE implementation.
When you're still trying to edge into a market that is completely dominated by a monolithic software juggernaut, it's not unreasonable to consider alternative platforms for popularizing your software - Linux included. Now, I have no idea what the devs have encountered in the past with poking at getting Affinity to work on Linux. It may be that there's just nobody at the company with the right tool set and knowledge to make it work, and there's no justification to make a budget and find someone who can.
That doesn't mean it'd be a pointless exercise, and it doesn't mean Linux is irrelevant. And, ultimately, it seems like a feedback forum for a product is about providing feedback, not trying to trivialize and discredit feedback that is pretty clearly of interest to multiple users, given how old and expansive this thread is. Adobe's apps are probably the single biggest thing keeping me on Windows now. Just about everything else I use on a daily basis is available on Linux now, and if Affinity's apps were on Linux, making the switch could actually be possible for me.

Big disagree with you on this one. I used to work at Microsoft in the dev world, and if your logic actually worked in reality, the company wouldn't have seen a significant increase in Linux users when they decided to open-source a bunch of stuff and start actively working to better support Linux.
Linux is still used for a LOT of stuff, especially in the creative world. While it is not the typical OS one assumes will be used by someone interested in raster or vector graphics, or desktop publishing, that doesn't mean it's irrelevant or its use is negligible.
Linux has a much broader user base than it did even five years ago, and more and more people have "defected" to it in recent years due to a general disenchantment with tech corporations on the part of consumers. It could even be a nontrivial selling point for Affinity's apps to be Linux-compatible, or to work with WINE or Valve's own WINE implementation.
When you're still trying to edge into a market that is completely dominated by a monolithic software juggernaut, it's not unreasonable to consider alternative platforms for popularizing your software - Linux included. Now, I have no idea what the devs have encountered in the past with poking at getting Affinity to work on Linux. It may be that there's just nobody at the company with the right tool set and knowledge to make it work, and there's no justification to make a budget and find someone who can.
That doesn't mean it'd be a pointless exercise, and it doesn't mean Linux is irrelevant. And, ultimately, it seems like a feedback forum for a product is about providing feedback, not trying to trivialize and discredit feedback that is pretty clearly of interest to multiple users, given how old and expansive this thread is. Adobe's apps are probably the single biggest thing keeping me on Windows now. Just about everything else I use on a daily basis is available on Linux now, and if Affinity's apps were on Linux, making the switch could actually be possible for me.

Big disagree with you on this one. I used to work at Microsoft in the dev world, and if your logic actually worked in reality, the company wouldn't have seen a significant increase in Linux users when they decided to open-source a bunch of stuff and start actively working to better support Linux.
Linux is still used for a LOT of stuff, especially in the creative world. While it is not the typical OS one assumes will be used by someone interested in raster or vector graphics, or desktop publishing, that doesn't mean it's irrelevant or its use is negligible.
Linux has a much broader user base than it did even five years ago, and more and more people have "defected" to it in recent years due to a general disenchantment with tech corporations on the part of consumers. It could even be a nontrivial selling point for Affinity's apps to be Linux-compatible, or to work with WINE or Valve's own WINE implementation.
When you're still trying to edge into a market that is completely dominated by a monolithic software juggernaut, it's not unreasonable to consider alternative platforms for popularizing your software - Linux included. Now, I have no idea what the devs have encountered in the past with poking at getting Affinity to work on Linux. It may be that there's just nobody at the company with the right tool set and knowledge to make it work, and there's no justification to make a budget and find someone who can.
That doesn't mean it'd be a pointless exercise, and it doesn't mean Linux is irrelevant. And, ultimately, it seems like a feedback forum for a product is about providing feedback, not trying to trivialize and discredit feedback that is pretty clearly of interest to multiple users, given how old and expansive this thread is. Adobe's apps are probably the single biggest thing keeping me on Windows now. Just about everything else I use on a daily basis is available on Linux now, and if Affinity's apps were on Linux, making the switch could actually be possible for me.

No, I'm not suggesting there's any indication they'd do this.
I'm just suggesting that as the "underdog" in the industry (anyone who isn't Adobe and maybe Corel), introducing a new standard could be a big deal for Affinity.
We need a standard - that much I think is objective fact. The inability to transfer portable digital masters from one platform to another is ridiculous, in that there's no good technological reason for it. Whomever hits the finish line first on some kind of actual standard will have far more influence over its development and evolution, and I think it's inevitable that there will be a standard at some point.

Just going to throw this out there - apps that are published through Steam can make use of Valve's own Proton layer, which makes it possible to access DirectX and other APIs that are otherwise unavailable in WINE. It's kind of like how GOG figured out how to package DOSBox with old computer games, preconfigured to work with each specific game. AFAIK Valve does work directly with publishers whose software is popular enough for them to invest their resources in the compatibility layer.
My husband tried running Publisher last night in WINE on Arch Linux, including running it through Proton, and ran into a failure from one of Affinity's internal libraries. Obviously there's more to making an application work through Proton (or WINE), but releasing through Steam might be a route for both Linux compatibility (which it doesn't sound like the company cares too much about, after skimming this thread), and expanding Affinity's market reach (which maybe they do care about) through publishing and advertising on Steam.
There are a lot of video game tools on Steam, and I think Affinity's apps would appeal to a lot of video game designers and artists out there who spend their time and money on the Steam store.

No, I'm not suggesting there's any indication they'd do this.
I'm just suggesting that as the "underdog" in the industry (anyone who isn't Adobe and maybe Corel), introducing a new standard could be a big deal for Affinity.
We need a standard - that much I think is objective fact. The inability to transfer portable digital masters from one platform to another is ridiculous, in that there's no good technological reason for it. Whomever hits the finish line first on some kind of actual standard will have far more influence over its development and evolution, and I think it's inevitable that there will be a standard at some point.

No, I'm not suggesting there's any indication they'd do this.
I'm just suggesting that as the "underdog" in the industry (anyone who isn't Adobe and maybe Corel), introducing a new standard could be a big deal for Affinity.
We need a standard - that much I think is objective fact. The inability to transfer portable digital masters from one platform to another is ridiculous, in that there's no good technological reason for it. Whomever hits the finish line first on some kind of actual standard will have far more influence over its development and evolution, and I think it's inevitable that there will be a standard at some point.

Because the home user is willing to give them money if the price is right, and there's precious little reason to not offer an affordable option.
To be super clear here: I really am impressed so far with Affinity's products. The use of Qt instead of native UI chrome is sort of a hindrance (AFAIK AppleScript can't interact with the UI very much), but it definitely gives Adobe's apps a run for their money for a lot of stuff (not everything...I'm still learning).
Optimally, there should be competition rather than monolithic platforms that keep you closely tied to a single company's ecosystem in perpetuity. Standard formats are awesome and make things exchangeable between platforms. In the vector world, SVG and EPS are both good alternatives that allow you preserve most fidelity and maintain portability between apps and platforms.
There isn't a similar format for desktop publishing software like InDesign and Publisher. That's probably been one of the biggest hindrances.
Honestly, a format that builds on EPUB might make the most sense - something that uses HTML and CSS on the backend (which makes it absurdly easy to script an entire layout in your chosen language), but adds more special sauce to do page layouts and physical units (i.e. mm and inch). Pack all that up into an archive format (which what EPUB does), and you've got yourself a portable layout/publishing format.
Obviously Adobe wants you to use their formats, but they've been forced by the industry to support a wide variety of portable/standardized vector formats, because those formats already exist. If the same were to be possible with Photoshop/APhoto and InDesign/APub, portability between Adobe and Affinity might be more feasible.

"These are pro apps" seems to be Adobe's business model. It's silly, because anyone who takes a college-level or post-secondary class in graphic design (of any kind) is going to be taught Adobe's apps, which means they have become the de facto hobbyist/prosumer platform. Rather than embrace that, as other publishers have, they've stubbornly refused to offer any real options for people who don't have business expense accounts or the ability to write off the subscription as a business expense. (I say "real," because their Elements line is nowhere near the functionality of CC.)
The Affinity suite is definitely a much better option for prosumers, but is still sort of expensive for hobbyists (at full price; the current 50% off pricing I think is affordable for just about everyone).
There is a general growing dissatisfaction with corporate tech. Whether or not that will extend to Adobe in the long term remains to be seen. Like Microsoft, their software bread and butter is in the enterprise, government, and education markets - all well-known to take a long time to adopt new platforms and technologies.
VirtualBox and any other virtualization software can slow down your machine simply because of how much overhead is required to run a complete second operating system on top of your host OS. Modern computers make this a lot easier - both Intel and AMD offer hardware virtualization capabilities which make VMs much faster and more efficient than ever.
WINE (and Proton, which is built on WINE) aren't emulators, though. WINE is essentially a shim layer between all the libraries (DLLs) and resources in Windows, and the application you're trying to run. There are certain Windows APIs that can't be shimmed for whatever reason, so if Affinity's apps use any of those exclusive APIs, compatibility with WINE might be more difficult.

I found some 4+ years old threads on this, but nothing newer...
I am trying to switch from Adobe to Affinity across all three apps. One big feature missing from Affinity is the ability to collapse tool panels. This is less and less of an issue thanks to high-resolution displays, but one of my laptops is an old MacBook Pro with a 1280x800 display, and Affinity's panels take up a huge amount of screen real estate:

I know I can hide all the panels with the tab key, but I don't want that...I just want to make the tool panels smaller when I'm not actively using them.

Does it preserve text lines? Last time I tried it as an in-between, the text lines were split into different layers. Anyway I think this is going a bit off topic. Also it doesn't work if someone is asking for psd files specifically.

Agreed on all counts. Adobe is prohibitively expensive for hobbyists, prosumers, and people looking to make a little side income. Average, non-tech people are becoming increasingly disenchanted with expensive products published by big tech companies. I decided to buy the Affinity suite for PC (haven't decided if I also need the Mac version since I use both platforms) because it seems like the first viable alternative to the Adobe ecosystem.
If I'm not mistaken, the UI uses Qt, so I am a little curious as to what components would have to be completely re-engineered.

Agreed on all counts. Adobe is prohibitively expensive for hobbyists, prosumers, and people looking to make a little side income. Average, non-tech people are becoming increasingly disenchanted with expensive products published by big tech companies. I decided to buy the Affinity suite for PC (haven't decided if I also need the Mac version since I use both platforms) because it seems like the first viable alternative to the Adobe ecosystem.
If I'm not mistaken, the UI uses Qt, so I am a little curious as to what components would have to be completely re-engineered.

Agreed on all counts. Adobe is prohibitively expensive for hobbyists, prosumers, and people looking to make a little side income. Average, non-tech people are becoming increasingly disenchanted with expensive products published by big tech companies. I decided to buy the Affinity suite for PC (haven't decided if I also need the Mac version since I use both platforms) because it seems like the first viable alternative to the Adobe ecosystem.
If I'm not mistaken, the UI uses Qt, so I am a little curious as to what components would have to be completely re-engineered.

Just going to throw this out there - apps that are published through Steam can make use of Valve's own Proton layer, which makes it possible to access DirectX and other APIs that are otherwise unavailable in WINE. It's kind of like how GOG figured out how to package DOSBox with old computer games, preconfigured to work with each specific game. AFAIK Valve does work directly with publishers whose software is popular enough for them to invest their resources in the compatibility layer.
My husband tried running Publisher last night in WINE on Arch Linux, including running it through Proton, and ran into a failure from one of Affinity's internal libraries. Obviously there's more to making an application work through Proton (or WINE), but releasing through Steam might be a route for both Linux compatibility (which it doesn't sound like the company cares too much about, after skimming this thread), and expanding Affinity's market reach (which maybe they do care about) through publishing and advertising on Steam.
There are a lot of video game tools on Steam, and I think Affinity's apps would appeal to a lot of video game designers and artists out there who spend their time and money on the Steam store.

Just going to throw this out there - apps that are published through Steam can make use of Valve's own Proton layer, which makes it possible to access DirectX and other APIs that are otherwise unavailable in WINE. It's kind of like how GOG figured out how to package DOSBox with old computer games, preconfigured to work with each specific game. AFAIK Valve does work directly with publishers whose software is popular enough for them to invest their resources in the compatibility layer.
My husband tried running Publisher last night in WINE on Arch Linux, including running it through Proton, and ran into a failure from one of Affinity's internal libraries. Obviously there's more to making an application work through Proton (or WINE), but releasing through Steam might be a route for both Linux compatibility (which it doesn't sound like the company cares too much about, after skimming this thread), and expanding Affinity's market reach (which maybe they do care about) through publishing and advertising on Steam.
There are a lot of video game tools on Steam, and I think Affinity's apps would appeal to a lot of video game designers and artists out there who spend their time and money on the Steam store.

Just going to throw this out there - apps that are published through Steam can make use of Valve's own Proton layer, which makes it possible to access DirectX and other APIs that are otherwise unavailable in WINE. It's kind of like how GOG figured out how to package DOSBox with old computer games, preconfigured to work with each specific game. AFAIK Valve does work directly with publishers whose software is popular enough for them to invest their resources in the compatibility layer.
My husband tried running Publisher last night in WINE on Arch Linux, including running it through Proton, and ran into a failure from one of Affinity's internal libraries. Obviously there's more to making an application work through Proton (or WINE), but releasing through Steam might be a route for both Linux compatibility (which it doesn't sound like the company cares too much about, after skimming this thread), and expanding Affinity's market reach (which maybe they do care about) through publishing and advertising on Steam.
There are a lot of video game tools on Steam, and I think Affinity's apps would appeal to a lot of video game designers and artists out there who spend their time and money on the Steam store.

Just going to throw this out there - apps that are published through Steam can make use of Valve's own Proton layer, which makes it possible to access DirectX and other APIs that are otherwise unavailable in WINE. It's kind of like how GOG figured out how to package DOSBox with old computer games, preconfigured to work with each specific game. AFAIK Valve does work directly with publishers whose software is popular enough for them to invest their resources in the compatibility layer.
My husband tried running Publisher last night in WINE on Arch Linux, including running it through Proton, and ran into a failure from one of Affinity's internal libraries. Obviously there's more to making an application work through Proton (or WINE), but releasing through Steam might be a route for both Linux compatibility (which it doesn't sound like the company cares too much about, after skimming this thread), and expanding Affinity's market reach (which maybe they do care about) through publishing and advertising on Steam.
There are a lot of video game tools on Steam, and I think Affinity's apps would appeal to a lot of video game designers and artists out there who spend their time and money on the Steam store.

Thanks for the additional info! I had found the "Add pages from file" feature, but of course having to do each page individually wasn't going to work for me.
It has taken a lot of tweaking the process, but I've figured out a reliable route by using Publisher to process all the PSD page data into a single document, then exporting to PDF, which gets me the real text data I need.

Generally we distinguish between Opening and Importing.
Opening is File > Open. The layers are directly accessible. Importing is File > Place, or drag/drop , or copy/paste onto an open document. The layers are not directly accessible.

Well, I think I figured out my "problem", which is more of a UX issue than a functionality issue. Seeing only the rasterized version of each PSD in Publisher via data merge (placing the PSD rather than importing), I assumed an exported PDF would likewise use the rasterized version. It apparently does not - I'm able to select all the text in the exported PDF, which I think means I should be able to use the PDF for the next phase of this project.
This wasn't clear in the Publisher UI, but I'm glad it's doing what I need it to do.