Requester

Hello everybody! Due to the trade war between the USA and China, Huawei has started to deliver its laptops with Deepin Linux. And now China has recently decided to promote its own operating system on the basis of Deepin Linux, which will completely replace Windows in the next few years in the offices in China. It is called UOS (Unified Operating System) and the first version will be released in a few days, on January 20, 2020. https://www.chinauos.com It remains to be seen whether it will also be used outside China. It is quite conceivable that Asia, perhaps Russia or even the EU, will be inspired by it and could further detach itself from Microsoft with its own Linux variant. For Affinity, however, the Chinese market may soon be equated with Linux. Therefore Linux may soon become especially important for Affinity.

Hi guys, i think at the moment serif is focusing on affinity publisher ... and maybe another adobe killer after. Because there is a much more bigger market for new Adobe killers than a linux port at the moment. Maybe later, if the adobe palette is finished, there may be a more serious thought about linux. Don't ask how many years ... But I think there is currently another realistic option to get affinity on the Linux desktop. Ask the wine community ... do a crowdfunding for WINE (developers) to make the affinity products run on linux! A good annual salary would be enough to put one experienced wine developer to make it run. We would even not need 500.000$. What do you think about that?

Linux is not the big thing, it is a grown Alternative that got mature. Since Microsoft is making Windows (with Win10) very unpopular with its policies anyway, the desire for real alternatives is greater than ever. Affinity products on Linux would be a big thing.

Bill Gates said, that no one will ever seriously need internet. How many people said, when Steve Jobs presented the smart phone, that the smartphone will end up in a niche product (like here people talk about linux). The truth is, we never know.

I just removed my linux os from my laptop (went away when windows 10 screamed me 2 years ago) a few days ago, installing Windows 10, to get the affinity products running. It was unbearable for me to work with it. In my opinion it's non-professional to work with it. It's more like a alpha of some (failing) experiment. It became even worse than it was about 2 years ago. Two days Later is installed Windows 7 and now i can work ... but Windows 7 Support will end in 2020. - Since I've been watching Valve for quite some time, the idea came to me of whether Affinity could partner with Valve. Valve is interested in becoming independent from Windows (Microsoft). For this purpose, "Proton", an extended WINE for Steam, has been available for four months. Under www.protondb.com there is a community platform, on which the executability of games is documented. With Valve as a direct partner, the affinity products could be made executable accordingly. The Affinity products would be a great move to also have a potential program as a showpiece. I expect Valve to work with game developers to make the games executable. Serif could do the same with its affinity products. A deal would have to be for Valve to promote this port accordingly. It's quite possible, however, that Valve would like to do the exclusive distribution for Linux via Steam for one year in return. This joint project between Serif and Valve would be good marketing at all for all affinity products, even far beyond Linux, and would also open up new target groups (gamers), although many also need such products. Just think of the web designers of the clan websites ... and so on ... Wouldn't it be interesting for Serif to check out Valve? Might be a win-win-deal for Serif and Valve.

FYI: See what's going on with windows games on linux: https://www.protondb.com/

Hi, what hardware is under the hood? I gave it a try as well, but my laptop did'nt do the job well. (i7 Quad Core, 8GB, 500GB SSD, Intel HD Graphics) CPU/RAM/GRAPHICS CARD Did you test it on a laptop, with a hybrid intel/nvidia graphics card?

Tried out, but the performance is very, very poor. Guess, because in Virtual Box i have only a simple virtual graphics card. Did anyone get it running fast and smoothly that way?

For several years now I have been using only Linux (Manjaro Deepin) on my computer. At the moment, however, I am actually considering switching back to Windows because of the affinity products. So far I have mainly programmed and was satisfied with Inkscape. Photoshop ran via Wine. But since I chose Affinity products at work a year ago, as I'm doing more and more design work, I've been missing Affinity products more and more on my Linux desktop. Dual boot is no option for me, because it's not comfortable, bad UX.

You're giving me hope. If there woulde be an popular android tablet like the iPad with super pencil support, the Android platform might be interesting for Serif. And if there is a Android version, the linux desktop version might be not so fary away any more ...

People are looking more and more for alternatives, while apple starts to unsatisfy professional users more and more, to optimize the money making. And Microsoft increases calling to home ... Windows 10 is a mix of good parts and shit. Feels some like Apple and Microsoft starts sacryfing themselves. I moved to Linux completely about 2 years ago, after the Deepin Desktop convinced me to be a better alternative. I didn't like Microsofts politics ... resetting system settings (for advertising) after some updates, asking me if i really want to switch the browser and not to use the better edge browser, when I just to set another browser as default. I want to use my system, not to be patronized. At work we have windows ... and after evaluation i found that the affinity products match my needs best. Unfortunately, i can not use them on my linux machine at home. If there would be a WINE solution ... unfortunately, as far as i know and tried out ... there is NO support for 64bit DOT.NET on wine. And won't be within next time ... I guess supporting 64bit dot net would be the first step, because i don't expect another solution for affinity products on linux, then that.

SrPx, thank you for your detailed reply! I think a third KS option would be finding talented developers with experience in the (linux) graphics world, which would start from scratch, funded by the KS.

What about starting a kickstarter to collect 500.000 bucks for the GIMP team to temporary employ some full time people, including a qualified ui/ux designer to highly improve and refactor GIMP? So we can reduce the gap between GIMP and it's non-free competitors - and even may not need them anymore.

Fortunately a company and its designers in china started creating a new linux desktop that combines best from windows and mac a few years ago. It is called Deepin. Besides a fluent desktop design they complete the environment with lots of standard apps, to fill the gap, having a app for every use. (Screenshot, Backup, USB-Media creator, Calculator, Calendar, ...) and even a programming interface, to integrate your application in its desktop. With using Manjaro Deepin, i was able to move sucessfully away from mac and windows. For me it is the first serious competitor for mac and windows, still having some missing features, but getting updates and new applications regularly. But with Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer, two new great apps, i start missing them in linux for sure. At the moment lots of web developers migrate to Linux, due DELLS developer editions of the XPS notebook. Some get back to windows, since there is a linux subsystem available. The old Photoshop ran fine with wine. But it's getting old ... and a software like Affinity Designer is painfully missing on Linux. So i want to push the linux question again ...

+1 for me as well. Currently I'm evaluating different tools for creating UI/UX concepts. Affinity Designer is one of the favorites, but missing this feature could be the killer feature ... :-( One solution would be make this feature for text only - or even let the user select in a list of checkboxes, what attributes of the symbol are synced or not.