MattyWS

incidentally if you have a cpu like mine (5950x) which doesn't have integrated graphics you're going to have a bad time in VM without some kind of GPU pass through. As others have said though a good option for serif would be to get affinity working through wine which it *almost* does work, just some small issues of all the UI being blacked out. lol I'd be happy with using wine tbh. The World Machine devs have WM working practically natively through wine, it's actually perfect. the other day I even rendered out a 16k raw heightmap in under an hour. and had a terrain rendered in blender with ease. It's kind of amazing really wine is like magic.

I agree with your sentiment, a small, for-profit company should focus on profit first and go where the masses of users are. They have no obligation really to listen to anyone on this forum and they can do what they want. I'm not trying to strong-arm Serif into porting to Linux in addition to Mac, iPad and windows and no one really has to agree that it's the best thing to do. It is absolutely my opinion here but I think developing for Mac, Windows and Linux is a good thing, at least for the end user to have that choice. Without getting too much into it, I outright disagree with Microsofts ToS for windows which is why I don't use it, and I never really got along with Macs and feel it's the last OS I'd want to daily drive (this isn't bias here, I have an iphone, apple watch, ipad, apple tv and airpods etc, I love apple). This leaves me with linux, I agree to their licenses, the DE offer me the ability to work how I want to work and for the most part all the software I need is there (save for affinity suite). I guess you could say it's selfish for me to ask Serif to bring Affinity to Linux but at the same time, other small companies and even large companies are supporting linux. Not all of them, mind you. I get that not every software company supports a linux version of their software which is kind of what I'm getting at by asking for it. There's no harm in asking at least, and at most, people requesting software for linux is a good way to show there are people asking for it. As for your point about bugging Adobe for linux support, I would rather not use photoshop if I can help it (thats why I use affinity) and their software is a hot mess of legacy code hidden behind a rent-to-use paywall which as an individual I can't get behind. My point about serif with affinity is that the affinity suite is fresh and new, they have the chance to build something agnostic from the get-go and I'd hate for them to get to 20 years down the line and say they can't port it to linux because *their* code is now overly complicated and unruly. If they can get behind this early I think it'd be better than to decide years from now that linux is a good idea. TLDR; IMO, in an ideal world all software would be platform agnostic and should be built that way from the start and serif has only really just begun their journey with Affinity, they have time to make this happen still.

part of the reason I use linux actually is that Blender runs faster (by a substantial amount) and Houdini+blender is part of my vfx workflow. As I do videogame VFX I'm not in need of adobe products to do any of my VFX thankfully, which is also part of the reason I can use Linux as it doesn't have a massive impact on me that adobe chooses not to support this platform. I wouldn't say it's not a viable market though, if anything I would much rather have just one OS to rule them all. Surely it says something that VFX peeps use linux and windows... if windows were that one OS to rule them all then they wouldn't use linux in the first place. As Guernseyman pointed out though Linux is not without flaws and you can sometimes go down a rabbit hole of endless tinkering (which is nice that you can, but annoying that you sometimes have to). Some distros are made to just work out of the box like ZorinOS, which is stable, polished and comes with a bunch of bloat applications out of the box so you can just get started. I had to distro hop for a year to figure out which distro I wanted to stick with and that can be a problem in that its confusing and not straight forward as a platform off the bat, however since all distros can kinda do the same things it's a non issue once you realise. For example you could install endeavour, zorin, pop, fedora, manjaro etc etc etc and they all have that same version of discord, blender and other applications that work on all distros. Once I kinda felt this to be the case I could settle on one and get work done just like Windows and Mac. No need for that endless tinkering. ^^ I think once people pass that mental hurdle that linux is just endless tinkering and distro hopping and realise it's just another set of OS's that do the same things it becomes clear that Linux can compete just fine with Windows and Mac as a marketplace for consumers, hobbyists and professionals. Anyways what OS isn't without problems... you have to use commandline just to uninstall a browser on Windows which I wouldn't call very user friendly/simple and MacOS almost suffers from the same problem linux does, a lack of software support (granted, it's better on Mac but it's still an issue compared to windows which runs everything) and fewer users than windows by far.

These are fair points. When I say "correct" what I mean is a project from the start would be coded to be as agnostic as possible which they've done to an extent. And yes other companies have major cash income to be able to throw at a project like SteamOS, however you'd think they wouldn't have done that if they thought linux wasn't a worth while endeavour. As for promoting other products, I don't know, people here are really suggesting different products that are on Linux so it's really not competing with Affinity if they have no intentions of coming to the platform but yes, it's bad form. I for one am not trying to drive anyone away from affinity. Affinity suite is barely used by the masses and I believe it to be the better option going forward instead of photoshop (much like I feel linux is the better platform going forward) so I'd only ever recommend Affinity unless people uise Linux. I say it's a shame because the paring of Affinity Suite and Linux would be a power play on Serifs part.

there you go again, there is 1. Everyone uses windows why use anything else. you're tiresome trolling is getting really old

I disagree with a couple of your points. This is a topic about affinity photo potentially being for linux so of course people will talk about it the topic. It's not toxic to keep on-topic. It's far more toxic to go into someones request thread and say how they don't want the request because it's not relevant to them. I'd be like me going into a thread about mac support and saying "barely anyone uses mac, Serif shouldn't waste their money on supporting you, all their money should be used to develop their products on windows where I use affinity suite". Kinda silly to do this, right? If you aren't interested in a request the best thing to do is to just not comment and the literal worst thing you can do is trash the request *because* it's not relevant to you, which is exactly what a certain someone has been doing in here. To your other point, why don't we discuss the linux/affinity topic on linux forums? What would that achieve really? We'd be having the same conversation but with more linux users and no affinity devs eyes on it. We *want* Serif to see this topic, we want a discussion on why this would be a good request. There's really no harm in anyone continuing this discussion. Though like I said I'm under no illusion Serif will act on any of this so even though I own the affinity suite on Windows and iPadOS, I can't use the windows version anymore. Sad times, as affinity designer would also be an amazing addition to linux (I use designer way more than I use photo). Anyways if not Serif, I hope at least one company prevails and does the correct thing in supporting all three main desktop OS's. There maybe less stats on who uses linux since by it's very nature, linux distros tend not to collect data on it's users. I imagine there are a lot more than the stats are suggesting, especially when you consider entire cities and country governments are switching to linux and the largest games distributor is banking on linux so it's certainly becoming more the norm these days, even if its mostly governments switching en masse for the moment (I think governments being on linux will only help normalize it). I'll try not to get too political but countries like Russia being sanctioned and unable to acquire windowsOS or macs is also a sure reason for software devs to start supporting the OS people can actually use freely, which is why I happen to use Linux now even as a professional game developer. I've found it a positive experience so far, basically all the software I need is supported. Houdini, Unity, Unreal, Blender, World machine, Substance Suite.. I'm all good on linux apart from a decent photo/vector editor, which I *can* live without even if I don't want to. If you disagree with my points here I'd love to engage in a constructive discussion as to why. Obviously not everyone uses linux but I feel like the "I don't use it so it's a waste of devs money to support it" is a non-argument and non-constructive to this discussion.

No, you appear rude in every single post you’ve made in this thread. The others are right, you are just being toxic and hateful toward a request that people want and you clearly don’t want. When large companies like Valve and Nvidia are supporting Linux as a desktop and gaming platform, you can pretty easily see there is in fact a market for it. I don’t even know why you’re still posting here, the only thing I can think of is you’re a Linux user that likes using a niche OS and don’t want it to get popular like some kind of hipster… or maybe you’re just a troll who never even touched Linux in the last decade. Either one is toxic.

Most people don't use windows because it's good, they use it because it's the default on most computers when they buy them and that is the only reason software developers develop for windows first. It has the marketshare because microsoft has the money to make it the default. Anything else is basically Apple. This is *slowly* changing now as Razer, Dell, Minisforum and system76 sell computers with linux on, albeit very few (apart from system76 which is the apple of linux). I'm 100% on linux now as a 3D artist and you know what the #1 issue is? it's lack of a decent photo editor. It's not that linux is bad. it's not unfriendly to users, it's not a bad UX. Applications work fine on linux *when they're developed for linux* and thankfully a lot of the time even if it wasn't developed for linux it may still work (like world machine for example, no linux version yet runs perfectly on linux). I think Valve are doing a great job also, they're going all in on gaming on linux and it's bringing more and more people to linux with the steamdeck. The thing linux needs the most is for people to just use it. Anyways photopea is pretty decent on linux and it now has a flatpak (which is effectively a web app but still awesome)

Yes sadly there really isn't an update path. I got the application running and it works fine but thats as far as it goes. But hey thats all I needed for now, ^^ Really wish affinity would run via wine at the very least.

Well done for proving you can't read in full. Yes the future of development is to develop once to all platforms. Affinity may be too far down the line for this now which is a shame. In fact I'd say the same thing about game developers who want to try to maintain a Linux Native build as well as windows, mac, consoles etc. Don't make native linux games, just make your games run via proton and you're golden. That said though I'd love for Affinity to start some kind of indiegogo/kickstarter/gofundme for getting affinity suite to linux. It'd do two things; prove whether or not there is a market there for Serif without spending money and gets them the money beforehand so they can happily develop for linux without worry that it'd be a waste of time.

got photoshop cc to work on linux. It was pretty straight forward, using wine ^^

No the numbers are the desktop market share (the link I shared at least). If you wanted to count everything that's not a desktop device it'd be unfair because the vast majority from servers and smart phones to smart devices in the home would be Linux.

http://www.mswhs.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/linux-cafe.jpg

Theoretical, anecdotal and hearsay in one post, good job. Why would it matter who uses what in a coffee shop? By your same logic, go into a studio and see what people are using. I have never seen anyone using Affinity Photo in a studio. I have seen innumerable Photoshop users. Never once, not even one, Affinity Photo user. See how stupid that argument is? By your own logic you shouldn't bother with Affinity photo. More people at my studio use Linux over Windows than they do Affinity Photo over Photoshop. What does that tell you? Absolutely nothing because it's anecdotal and not an average userbase. Stop trolling in here.

talk about misinformation then start throwing numbers that are off. I'll grant you that the linux userbase is small still but it's apparently more than double the amount you claim and almost the same as the ChromeOS userbase. As of writing Linux takes up 2.19% of the market share while MacOS takes up 15.85%. https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide

🙄 This is literally meme. We all know Linux is the kernel, but everyone knows what we're talking about when we refer to linux as an OS. It's right up there with the "btw I use Arch" meme. Moving on; it's probably unlikely to make a difference but has anyone tried Affinity on the latest Wine version? https://news.itsfoss.com/wine-7-0-release/ I'd try it myself but I'm away from my pc for a while, but still kinda curious. =D

There are a few people at my studio still using photoshop CS6, so for sure not everyone is using the latest CC version. It seems Affinity devs aren't looking at Linux at all. It's a shame but it is what it is. There are and will be more alternatives. Tbh the devs here have always been quite abrasive when it comes to feedback/requests anyway (no offense devs, I don't been abrasive as in rude, more just lots of friction against feedback). It also seems like a lot of the people who use Affinity don't want anyone else to request features or give feedback, so much so that they'd be willing to go on to these forums and troll any request that isn't theirs. Very bizarre behaviour. The sad part is Linux is in need of a good photo editing software and Affinity is a great alternative to photoshop that competed directly with photoshop in a market dominated by adobe, Linux and affinity would go well together for this reason. A good OS with good software and not as much competition (personal attack moderated by staff). Anyways, Gimp 3.2 is where things will get a bit more interesting, for now I have Substance Designer/Painter Darktable and Krita and just about anything else I can use my ipad for. I won't be going back to Windows or Mac for my own work/private life so Affinity is getting extremely obscure use from me. That said, I'd still buy it again if it came to Linux as I'm sure a lot of people would, because Affinity Suite would be the best solution on Linux. Given it's taken years to get TGA file format into Affinity and even longer just to sort out channel editing workflows (which still hasn't had any love) I don't expect to see Affinity on Linux any time soon. Serif's sticking to their target audience, which is apparently straggler photographers that don't want to pay lots of money for photoshop, and no one else. Always seems strange to me that Serif doesn't want any more of a target audience than that but it can't be helped.

Photopea works great for sure, I wish they'd make an actual desktop application for it but thats more a personal preference thing (I know you can save it as a web app though). Since my work is mostly adjustments to screenshots/renders I'm not so much doing photography (other than photogrammetry) or print work so gimp is getting there for me. 3.2 is probably the day I ditch everything else for Gimp if Affinity hasn't make things work on linux by then. There is also Darktable (yet another example of an application that is cross platform without any problems, crazy huh) for people that mostly do photography and need something like Lighroom. I heard good things about RawTherapee too but I've not tried it myself. http://rawtherapee.com/ https://www.darktable.org/

I think thats the worst part about it. ; ; That and no vector shape tools.

You misunderstand. I'm not a professional programmer, but I have still published many games professionally with over a decade of experience, a lot of which happen to be cross platform, so I'm not totally clueless, I just know my limits and holes in my knowledge. I'm not about to sit here and say I'm an expert programmer when I'm not, and I'm not about to say I'm an expert in market analysis either, but I know enough to see a wasted opportunity like this one passing Serif by.

incidentally CS6 works really well too via wine, though with Gimp 3.0 coming soon I might just give up on affinity, and I really don't want to use Photoshop. Krita, Gimp and Inkscape I guess are the big go-tos if Serif don't care for it. Afterall, barely anyone uses Affinity compared to photoshop, so why bother with it?(!) 😂

It's a shame really because if Serif had done things right to begin with and made their foundation well, it wouldn't be a problem. If they have to maintain a completely separate codebase per OS they're doing something wrong. It's hard to believe anyone would start from scratch with something as major as Affinity Suite without this kind of stuff in mind. Granted, I'm not a programmer so I wouldn't know the intricate details of stuff like this compared to the devs at Serif, but for new applications it's not a problem in this day and age. I mean people questioning why Adobe don't put photoshop on linux? because they iterated on an application they started in the very early 90's, their code for photoshop is at this point probably layers upon layers of bloat and legacy dependencies. Serif started Affinity what, like 5-6 years ago? They still have a chance to build their foundation for the skyscraper they're making, Adobe on the other hand is the tallest skyscraper around with old foundations that cant be changed so easily now. The difference between Serif and Adobe is that Serif have a fresh start, a chance to do it right. Adobe at this point is just living out its long life, no real innovations anymore, they don't need to.

I'd like to then mention Adobe Substance Suite to compare to Serif, because before substance was sadly acquired by adobe they were just a regular company that started from nowhere, made a name for themselves and were cross platform including Linux (and still are, though Adobes acquisition makes me wonder how long that will last). If Allegorithmic were successful with a similar market and proprietary software that had perpetual licenses while being cross platform, why can't Serif do the same? I dunno, to say they can't do it just seems to suggest Serif is incompetent and I don't think they are, they can make software just fine and they could make it cross platform if they wanted to, so it's really up to them if they want to support Linux. I don't think they'd run themselves into the ground doing it because I'm sure they know how to run a business. If they choose not to because they don't want to "take a risk" that would be a shame, because I'm not going back to Windows and I'm certainly not going to Mac just for serif. I'd sooner choose a to support a company with the same values. Also, Photoshop kinda have become cross platform now, much like Photopea they can just run the software in browser. I think that's Adobes way of supporting all platforms. I don't particularly like that approach (something still bugs me about using photopea just because it's all in a browser) but it is what it is. I'm not saying Serif should make theirs for browser, I'm saying if Adobe is considering getting their product everywhere then adobe can't be used as an argument against going cross platform. I'd really love to support Serif in their journey to making Affinity the best, it can be, but I can't if they won't give basic support for something like channel packing let alone being available on platform I use. I don't see Linux support happening any time soon but I'd still like to voice my vote for it.

Yes I agree with you. I dont think we can sway Serif with this thread alone but if it raises more awareness then thats good. I know serif will make their choice based on their own research for sure. I know what I think the right choice is but given that I've spent years asking them for proper channel packing support I doubt they will get Affinity working on Linux in in the next decade. Maybe if Serif gain popularity they can start to allocate more funds to at *least* getting it to work through wine. Afterall, Wine is just a compatibility layer not an emulator, so it's perfectly possible that Affinity could run on Linux just as efficiently as Windows.

it's a good point that there are various bugs. I find it to be a bug that it outright doesn't run on the platform of choice. How is asking for Linux support any more or less important than all the other requests around the forum? As I mentioned to other people here, I don't need Mac support, I dont care for being able to edit raw, so I don't care about the bugs for that platform or feature yet I don't go to bug reports and request threads for those things and complain about how much I don't need it... So why people are coming in this thread complaining that they don't use linux is beyond me lol. I do find it peculiar that people are so against requests that have nothing to do with them and don't affect them at all. Anyways, Linux is many peoples platform of choice and there's no decent image editing applications, so it's understandable that we'd want the newest, freshest image editing application to begin it's life with a cross platform foundation. Lets face it, Affinity Photo is far from finished or complete and the longer Serif wait, the more work it'll be to get it working on Linux. I'd argue it was a mistake on Serifs part not to develop Affinity to be cross platform from the very beginning. It's not like it's impossible... Plenty of other software out there that works on Mac, Windows and Linux alike. I'd like to hear what Serif have to say about this anyway, more than negative nelly hobbyists who are angry that Linux exists.