B-Interactive

I agree. One argument that has been held against Linux support for the Affinity Suite, is that it's already being built for 3 platforms and supporting Linux would only hinder support, or progress on those existing platforms. Agnostic cross-platform development has come a long way in 10 years and many modern development methodologies embrace developing once, for support under multiple platforms. Perhaps the stronger argument is not to develop a 4th target platform for the Affinity Suite, rather re-approach the development process so there's one body of source that is platform agnostic. Windows, OSX, Linux, even tablet, largely same source code. The tools handle cross-compiling natively for target platforms. I don't suggest it's a trivial task to migrate a code-base, but such a consideration could expand platform support with potentially much lower development overhead going forward. I'm sure the dev team and such are best positioned to weigh that up though.

Thanks @LondonSquirrel. I knew the sum was crude, but that's much further off than intended, so I appreciate you correcting that.

The qualifier "in droves" brings to mind fanboys queuing for the newest model iPhone... which I don't think is being suggested as the case with Linux. That aside, I think the statement is reasonable. Particularly in western countries, Microsoft and Apple dominate mind-share in the desktop market. It's taken for granted by most consumers that a new PC will either be Mac or Windows. It's interesting to look further abroad to other countries, such as India where adoption of Linux desktop apparently surpasses OSX. Perhaps no big deal though, we're still only talking 3.92% market share... in a population of 1.4 billion persons! Do the admittedly crude maths on that, and we have a much greater sum than the entire population of North America. India is not an insignificant presence in the IT market, being a global hub of IT skills and developers. Agreed. If we're using Adobe CC as the example, then the options are very clear, there's really no way around needing Windows or OSX. I'm primarily a developer. Linux is built for development, with the base system designed and ready to build applications from source. Likewise, the custom applications I build do well to run on Linux/BSD, so it makes sense to be developing, building and testing things on a similar system to what they'll be deployed to. As a developer, I receive assets from graphic designers, which I need to then prepare for use in the applications I'm building. I'd like to suggest that as a developer, expressing a need for Linux support of Affinity Photo, is not putting the cart before the horse. It's pointing to a gap that goes unfilled, perhaps unrecognised, in this market. Stack Overflow, which I'm sure any developer is truly familiar with, in their latest survey has Linux being used by 25.32% of developers, just ahead of OSX. JetBrains, creators of industry respected development tools, has Linux being used by 47% of developers, again ahead of OSX and not all that far off from Windows.

Happy to clarify @PaulEC I believe we can all agree Linux does not represent the standard desktop operating system used by the creative industry (or in general). I suspect we could also agree the Affinity suite is not the standard software used by the creative industry (or in general). One could then say, both Linux and the Affinity suite, are non-standard outliers in the creative industry. They both share this characteristic.

That pretty much sums up my scenario. I'd been wanting to transition my workstation to Linux/BSD for a long time, but I have relied heavily on the Adobe CC, which had been a show-stopper as far as Linux support. I got fed up with Adobe Premiere issues and despite still paying for a Creative Cloud subscription out of pocket, I taught myself Davinici Resolve and started to use that instead. Even the free version was better than my paid-for Adobe Premiere. Eventually, I purchased Affinity Photo and finally ditched my Adobe CC subscription. Knowing Davinici Resolve had Linux support, I finally decided to dive into a Linux workstation. Note, I chose to transition to Linux because the software I was using, was supported by Linux, which is essentially what others have been saying would be a driving factor. After transitioning to Linux, I upgraded Davinci Resolve to the (paid for) Studio version, to fully take advantage of it. Naively, I thought professional video editing under Linux was my biggest hurdle. I had expected I'd be able to run Affinity Photo under Linux, in some capacity. It surprised me there really wasn't any working solution outside of a separate Windows (or Mac) PC, or a virtual machine. Given Linux is to desktop operating systems, what Affinity is to creative software, a non-standard outlier, I had mistakenly assumed it would run in some capacity under Linux, as is not uncommon from similarly positioned software. There are a host of reasons why I prefer to use Linux. Switching lost me support for Affinity Photo, but I'm happy with my choice.

I use RawTherapee too and highly recommend it for photo processing. In many ways, it's much more advanced than Lightroom or Photoshop Camera Raw, so may be a bit difficult for a new user to approach. DisplayCAL is also a fantastic open-source screen calibration tool, I use with my X-Rite i1Display Pro.

Starting up a virtual machine each time I wanted to run Affinity Photo had become too tedious for me, particularly given the poor performance of running it in a VM. My Affinity Photo license goes largely unused now. I've taken to just using Gimp instead. It's rough around the edges and lacks a feature or two, but it's very capable. The main hurdle has been adapting to its shortcuts and UI. I raise my hand as someone who'd appreciate Affinity Photo releases under Linux, but I'm not holding my breath for it. Serif will do what Serif will do. As has been alluded of Linux users previously in the thread, I'm not opposed to paying for and using commercial, closed source software. I've also paid for Davinci Resolve Studio, which I'm delighted to be able to use under Linux, and is a suitable equivalent for GPU/CPU intensive closed source graphics software running under Linux/Windows/OSX. BlackMagic target and officially support CentOS (although perhaps under review given it's approaching EoL), so whilst you can run Davinci Resolve under other distros (and I do), they're only community supported. And that's fine, because community support is something Linux has always done and does well. In a nutshell, needing to support 200+ (or whatever) distros is not necessary. Target one (eg: Ubuntu LTS or Fedora) and let the community worry about packaging for, and supporting other distros....or don't *shrug*

If you haven't already, you might consider reviewing from here onward. No commentary from myself necessary. People can read and see for themselves, and come to their own conclusions.

Thanks again @Snapseed. It's interesting to see it's already at #6 (of 15542 listed applications).

I'm comfortable with rigorous debate, but we're not even debating about the merits of "Affinity for Linux" anymore.

I never made the claim they copied from Linux. So why should I defend it?

Why?

Name two reasons it matters?

No change here, but perhaps misunderstood. The entire industry has been copying "the other guy", being anyone else (not Linux specifically) since the beginning.

The entire industry has been copying the other guy since the beginning.

More than 1 million Steam users are using Linux. Steam users (generally) use predominantly Nvidia GPU's. Crypto mining under Linux is popular. Can't put my finger on figures though. Machine Learning is also big under Linux. Nvidia have their own Linux distro Same could be said for Windows and OSX.

I agree @LondonSquirrel.

And putting that point aside, it's not the size of the list that matters. It's whether or not it's lacking. As I've said now a couple of times, it really lacks very little.

Just so happens to be the same good Windows / OSX software. [Windows/OSX Option] - [Linux Option] Davinci Resolve - Davinci Resolve Visual Studio Code - Visual Studio Code LibreOffice - LibreOffice RawTherapee - RawTherapee Audacity - Audacity Brave - Brave Firefox - Firefox Thunderbird - Thunderbird OBS - OBS Steam - Steam VLC - VLC Handbrake - Handbrake KeePassXC - KeePassXC Signal - Signal Telegram - Telegram This is just the stuff I use and I could go on.

And that's why we're here, voicing a need within a community.

Almost every application I frequent under Linux, I was using first under Windows. A side effect of open-source it seems, is Linux support is often a given. I'm using Linux as a development and creative platform for professional purposes and as I stated, it really lacks very little. If one was using it for desktop purposes only, I'd go so far as to say it lacks nothing at all.

Do elaborate.

I appreciate those recommendations @Snapseed. I'll be interested to see how well Pixeluvo can handle PSD files, for my interactive development work. It's an option I'll consider in any case, because I also do a lot of photography. I do a substantial amount of photo editing, 95% of it is done purely in raw using RawTherapee, now that I've stepped away from Adobe Photoshop Camera Raw, which had been my go-to for years. I have been relying on Affinity Photo for that last 5%'ish. Things like panorama stitching, spot removal, finer localised adjustments, etc. Maybe Pixeluvo can fill that gap.

Responses to this reasoning have already been given, by myself and others. Speaking from personal experience here, but echoing what's been said by others also, I would have switched to Linux/BSD long ago if Adobe had supported it. Adobe Premiere was becoming such a mess though, I transitioned to Davinci Resolve, which opened the door to Linux. Perhaps a lot has happened in 20 years, but Linux desktop really lacks very little. If we put Adobe to the side for a moment, I'm hard pressed to think of an industry level application that doesn't have an answer on Linux. Where that becomes unstuck, is an answer to some of the Adobe Suite, namely Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. I suspect you're correct in saying a good amount of Linux users won't use closed source software. I also suspect those users have little to no interest in the Adobe Suite or Serif products too, so no market to be lost or gained for Serif amongst that lot. Identifying a group of people who have no interest in Serif or Adobe products, does not prove no one is interested in an answer to the Adobe Suite, or Serif products under Linux though.

@wonderings, I think this speaks to my point about how hard it is to buck the trend. It's an industry that is saturated by Adobe, so if one wants to exist within that industry, then it's likely, if not often necessary that they go with the flow. Fortunately for Serif, some have bucked the trend. That we're here as a community of Affinity users, might be considered some degree of evidence that people are dissatisfied with big tech. If VirtualBox gets GPU pass-through support, I expect that'd make a huge difference. As it is, Affinity Photo is forced into software mode which is throwing away a significant portion of my systems potential. I don't believe that's a Linux limitation. If you ran VirtualBox on OSX, presumably it'd be the same issue. VMWare Workstation Player may be an option I look into though as it at least appears to have better GPU support.