tamjk

The way things are trending now, it will be the drift of existing Windows users towards user-friendly Linux distros that drags Affinity to Linux rather than the other way around. Windows 11 is something that will drive this trend. So will the new-found independence people feel after working alone from home during the covid crisis. No one wants to be a client of Microsoft, Apple, Adobe or whoever any more than have their social exchanges monitored by Facebook.

How about a crowd-fund for enhancing Inkscape ? Windows 11 will drive many people onto the Microsoft cloud for software applications as they won't be able to afford new PCs. Creative people will not trust the cloud environment - moreover when a very good alternative (Linux + open source software) already exists. I wouldn't have anything againt say $20 a head for a better Inkscape . . . especially if the improvements were agreed by consensus/

@pixelworker I suppose frontend designers would favour Deepin distro 🙂

I'd heard the name before but never realized that this is the kind of thing they did. Very interesting products. Thanks for tip !

Haven't you tried LibreOffice software yet ? While it may not look as good as MS Office, it does all the things the latter does - sometimes more, e.g. frames in LibreOffice Writer enable interesting résumé templates with different coloured columns, fonts, etc. I couldn't see how to do these in MS Word. See sample attached. I don't think the Wine option is workable for Affinity. I couldn't get it going anyhow as my laptop is 64-bit only and making it 32-bit kills so many drivers and apps that it's not worth the hassle. I tried running it via Virtual Box but this took over 30 GB off my 250 GB SSD drive and I couldn't get Radeon driver reinstalled for Windows. It was slow and squinty to look at. You should appreciate by now that Serif is likely getting something out of both Microsoft and Apple for not providing a Linux native version of Affinity Suite. That something could be a lucrative sales channel through Apple or Microsoft software bundles - promising a sales volume high enough to compensate for quite low sales margins. I just don't see Serif forsaking their current deals for the vague hope of something better from the "why pay" community within Linux. Having spent 5 terrible years of my own life in Nottingham, I don't expect any altruism whatever from any business sector there - individualism is the standard modus vivendi there.

Okay, LondonSquirrel - only on Unix-like systems. Either way I had to leave Windows there and then.

@thedrumdoctor Surprised you haven't been more involved with Linux as you are in IT support, at least for servers in LANs. But then, outside the IT sector itself, most users can only work in Windows and with MS office/productivity apps so it's no wonder in that sense. The last straw in my own departure from Windows wasn't the bloatware and the spontaneous reinstallations of Skype. It was the simple fact that Redis database - which only runs on Linux - was something I had to have for fast authorization in a web app. I have had no trouble getting all the main IDEs to run on Ubuntu plus 99% of the main apps for audio, video, images (GIMP, Inkscape), document production, conferencing, web development, etc. And the much smaller usage of SSD space was such a welcome boon. I was a bit lucky in that I had a Radeon GPU and free Mesa drivers were readily available. I hear it's not always such plain sailing with Nvidia and these users sometimes struggle with the functionality of their GPU. Like you, I wonder how long it can be before the critical mass of Linux adoption we see happening in China will occur in the western hemisphere. The forced changes to working and education over last year or two may be the catalyst for this change. So many more people with much less money must get online for their work. Ubuntu offshoot distros like Pop, Zorin, Elementary and Neon are now very attractively skinned out to appeal to adults looking for an intuitive user experience. These distros will also attract junior users who want to spend their money on better CPUs or GPUs than on Windows/OS or Microsoft Office. IT savvy parents will be anxious to save cash by using the many free packages available on Linux for media and other pastimes. Affinity is a package made by a commercial operation. It's taken them decades to get to where they are now. Fair dues to them for their achievement. But Inkscape is an open source project which will inevitably consider the attractive functionalities of Affinity, Adobe Illustrator and other innovative packages.

Oh, don't be such a commercial baybee ! Serif doesn't want us bad boys from Linux hacking away at its lovely little happy-appy. So we're all off to bed at 5 pm and no supper. And you cawn't upload any user profile data till you have at least 100 posts . . .

I agree with others from Germany, Sweden, Slovakia, etc on the desire of Linux users to have a native compilation of Affinity on, say, Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For me, as a web designer for small businesses, there is always a client expectation of getting a logo and custom icons for a website - even when the client does not want to pay €200+ for a graphic designer to do this work ! Yes, I can make something acceptable with Inkscape. But once I saw the intuitive layout of Affinity plus its many useful functions not present in Inkscape (e.g. displaying font changes on a text object as one scrolls through available fonts), I want to have Affinity. I am not a commercial baby: I know that most media software users have (usually) Mac or else Windows machines. And I know that it is quite likely that Serif may have done a commercial deal with Apple or Microsoft to provide Affinity to MacOS and Windows users exclusively . . . That way they sell a lot of copies of the software in a single deal. But Affinity on Linux will happen soon - with or without support from Serif. It is inevitable. =================================================================== Ich stimme mit anderen aus Deutschland, Schweden, der Slowakei usw. über den Wunsch von Linux-Benutzern überein, eine native Zusammenstellung von Affinity auf beispielsweise Ubuntu 20.04 LTS zu haben. Für mich als Webdesigner für kleine Unternehmen gibt es immer die Erwartung eines Kunden, ein Logo und benutzerdefinierte Symbole für eine Website zu erhalten - selbst wenn der Kunde nicht mehr als 200 € für einen Grafikdesigner zahlen möchte, um diese Arbeit zu erledigen! Ja, ich kann mit Inkscape etwas akzeptables machen. Aber sobald ich das intuitive Layout von Affinity und seine vielen nützlichen Funktionen gesehen habe, die in Inkscape nicht vorhanden sind (z. B. die Anzeige von Schriftänderungen an einem Textobjekt beim Scrollen durch verfügbare Schriften), möchte ich Affinity haben. Ich bin kein kommerzielles Baby: Ich weiß, dass die meisten Benutzer von Mediensoftware (normalerweise) Mac- oder Windows-Rechner haben. Und ich weiß, dass es sehr wahrscheinlich ist, dass Serif einen kommerziellen Deal mit Apple oder Microsoft abgeschlossen hat, um Affinity exklusiv für MacOS- und Windows-Benutzer bereitzustellen. . . Auf diese Weise verkaufen sie viele Kopien der Software in einem einzigen Geschäft. Aber Affinity auf Linux wird bald passieren - mit oder ohne Unterstützung von Serif. Es unvermeidlich ist.