Snapseed
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Posts posted by Snapseed
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On 1/11/2024 at 4:43 AM, Volant said:
bump + just wanting to say I am adamant that I WILL purchase this software a third time when it gets Linux support (I say "when" because it has to). it is the only reason I spent the past week setting up a vm with gpu passthrough. I can handle every other open source alternative, but this one does not have an acceptable replacement yet. please and thanks @dev team
I'm afraid that Serif Europe has made it crystal clear that there will be no Linux versions of their Affinity products not least because the Linux desktop market share still unfortunately lags well behind that of macOS.
The only way I know to get a Unix-only solution to getting Affinity Photo to run on Linux is to use macOS as a VM on a Linux computer.
However, there are promising developments about Affinity Photo to run in Wine on Linux as set out in this very useful discussion and the comparable one here:
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On 10/9/2023 at 9:14 PM, samurainine said:
I want to state that I have been trying to run Affinity products on Linux for a while now. The only solution I could get running is to use Oracle VM, but as others have said, I can do this easily on my desktop PC but my laptop is not as powerful and it falls a bit short when using the virtual machine.
I am no expert on using Wine so it's been a frustrating experience. Usually I find better alternatives to apps that I used on Windows before, but Inkscape doesn't do it for me, and I haven't seen other apps like Designer (besides Illustrator, but I'm not willing to use Adobe products anymore).
I will keep trying to install the apps for a while and tell my experience on it, but I do wish Affinity could help us a bit with this, even by supporting wine devs as I read a while ago in this forum.
I stand here with every other Linux user.
Update:
I see what my problem is now. I am trying to use Wine on Wayland, but Wine does not work very well with Wayland yet, I even tried using ElementalWarrior's wayland branch but it throws a viewport error. I will be using a VM, but will keep an eye on any update around here.
if you are using a VM on Linux to get the Affinity products to work well on Linux then the following discussion might be of interest:
https://forum.endeavouros.com/t/affinity-designer/14494
It is technically possible to have a Unix-only way of get the Affinity products to work well on Linux...but only using a macOS VM with macOS Catalina 10.15 or later:
https://www.makeuseof.com/macos-ubuntu-linux-virtual-machine/
- samurainine and Westerwälder
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20 hours ago, samurainine said:
I want to state that I have been trying to run Affinity products on Linux for a while now. The only solution I could get running is to use Oracle VM, but as others have said, I can do this easily on my desktop PC but my laptop is not as powerful and it falls a bit short when using the virtual machine.
I am no expert on using Wine so it's been a frustrating experience. Usually I find better alternatives to apps that I used on Windows before, but Inkscape doesn't do it for me, and I haven't seen other apps like Designer (besides Illustrator, but I'm not willing to use Adobe products anymore).
I will keep trying to install the apps for a while and tell my experience on it, but I do wish Affinity could help us a bit with this, even by supporting wine devs as I read a while ago in this forum.
I stand here with every other Linux user.
Update:
I see what my problem is now. I am trying to use Wine on Wayland, but Wine does not work very well with Wayland yet, I even tried using ElementalWarrior's wayland branch but it throws a viewport error. I will be using a VM, but will keep an eye on any update around here.
It might also be possibly helpful to check out this discussion below:
- Wanesty and samurainine
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On 9/23/2023 at 7:09 PM, ElementalWarrior said:
Rebuilding for a different instruction set is trivial compared to changing your 3M line of code software to use an entirely different set of window, filesystem, keychain, network, etc libraries.
Drop the criticism of Serif on this thread.
They don't "simply" support Linux for the same reason not everyone here is debugging, patching and upstreaming wine code. It is time consuming, not straightforward, and requires expertise.
The more people rag on Linux support on serifs own forum, the more likely they will be to just lock every thread talking about Linux.
Just for the record, I would like to confirm and state my gratitude and thanks to all the good staff at Serif Affinity for allowing this, and other similar discussions, to continue because they are very helpful in terms of trying to get the rather good range of Affinity products to work well on Linux
I would also like to confirm that I do recommend the use of the Affinity range of products to Windows and macOS users (including on other tech forums) as they are great alternatives to the expensive permanent subscription model that is offered by a certain large competitor corporation.
Indeed, professional photographer Joe Cristina fully recommends Affinity Photo in his Cutting the Cord series of videos that are still available over on Youtube.
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23 hours ago, ShadeOn said:
I might not speak on CodeWeavers behalf, as I just translate from EN to RO part of the app, but I do the beta testing for new versions also.
Be sure that almost every time I test the Affinity Suite v2 in a advanced user way (but still as newbie) (click click, setting up environment, no library installs etc cause I don't know those stuff) when a beta is up, and if I see any progress done, I will give a small "update and Hurray" on this forum where the discussion is continued.
Currently it isn't even showing a .exe part after install, just like some other apps that I test.
But... surprisingly v23 (with Wine 8.x) has made huge progress on Guild Wars 2, made it almost lag free even in big battles (20vs20) with only integrated graphics card, no dedicated one, so yeah.. it's a big thing alright...
But we all must know that those from Valve with their steam games app (arguably.. cause even software works now there, and can't be said it's a games app "only") and their Proton made this possible, as they mostly contribute to the development of Wine nowadays by a fair margin.
But what I can say for sure is that.. CodeWeavers are dedicated on making porting apps and games possible on Linux so we skip the dual boot or VM variants, but the priority development and updates of Wine is given to those companies that give a funding (it doesn't need to be every month, it can be even yearly or whenever they see bugs and want to be fixed asap) for keeping their apps/games working. (or after a initial funding and the app works, the company with the funded app can dedicate a developer for the Wine part to keep their apps in check, and then they don't need to give funding afterwards, as far as I know at least).
And of course, apps that weren't funded in any way, are "tried" by us, aka users to see if any progress made on other apps, helped the non-funded app to progress forward also (as most might have same library in common)
Only after this, when they got available time to dedicate to something else, they check that list where we voted which ones we want to see it ported, and they check what libraries mostly in the list have in common
And while we are on the topic.. yes, I have a dream that if Affinity or Gimp doesn't progress further (Gimp 3 seems to be interesting when they'll let it on the market) , I would like someone with courage and intuition from the Blender development to step forward and start a funding for a app or a series of apps that give raster and vector capabilities and can complete each other .
I know Photoline exists, but it's UI needs to be updated and make some tabs separate for raster and vector, not all in same area like in Photoshop...
But even Blender team some time ago acknowledged Affinity Suite and given a thumbs up to have courage to become a default icon on Linux as a "go-to" for raster and vector editors (and this can translate in giving a idea option for other OS users to make a workflow on their system as well).
But same as Blender and CodeWeavers... the ball is on Serif's side to decide how to handle the SWOT table in the unforeseen future. (or just stay relaxed and let us try and try and try (15 years later....) the app to work under Wine if enough development was made from Wine developers side for free
)
There was a very helpful Serif Europe member of staff who really did try and assist in the efforts to get Affinity Photo to work well with Wine but he left the company a year or so ago. Since then, it's been nothing and so all we can now do here is share our helpful tips and updates to try to get things to work.
Their understandable main priority in recent years has been to ensure that the Affinity range of software products works well on Apple Silicon M1 and M2 chip sets.
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On 9/15/2023 at 7:30 PM, Sorn said:
I work professionally doing CGI and Linux workstations can be tailored to user needs and even workflows and kept stable and sane. That's a productivity boost. I don't care that much if it's free or not, we have budgets, but the most expensive to us is losing work hours because the system updates, changes in different machines causes issues... there are many things that get out of wack in Windows we can't easily afford.
Mac products have that somewhat sorted by limiting hardware and tailoring the experience and configuration possible to make it manageable. And colour management it's reasonable and, most importantly, fixed for almost all macs. For a heavy 3D production environment Macs are not really a choice due to some hardware limitations.
That is why I so wish we had Affinity software for Linux. In some scenarios is really a great bonus to have it right there, instead of dedicating workstations just for that use, either windows or mac machines. Dual boot sometimes doesn't solve the issue at all and presents other challenges.
I thank all of you for taking the time to test and evolve the solutions presented here, hopefully until we find a way to actually work with Affinity software in Linux, be it native or with WINE. It's really appreciated and some of the less Linux tech savvy part of the community truly hopes you succeed. Thanks.This is what gets me. The special effects industry is huge and wealthy and yet the companies concerned seemingly cannot find any funds to pay developers to turn Cinepaint, Gimp, etc. into the highly professional competent products that they need to be.
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On 9/16/2023 at 5:49 AM, Wanesty said:
imo this isn't really a solution, getting it working correctly and smoothly enough for professional use requires your to have two gpu (or use vmware's emulated gpu driver idk how good it is but i heard nice things)...
just don't bother and stick to windows/macOS, imo if you have to start an os(vm) or worse, loose your current flow of work by rebooting your machine just is not worth the trouble
(like i much prefer the software crashing randomly than having to babysit two os with my settings etc)anyway, thank you @Sorn for your professional insight of your situation with the affinity products :)
I do fully agree with you, and you need to have a high specification computer to use VMs and to get good results.
I do know that staff over at CodeWeavers were open to cooperation so as to get Affinity Photo, etc. to work well with CrossOver but that openness was not reciprocated by the other necessary party.
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1 hour ago, Wanesty said:
ahah no,
exporting to anything but vector format crashes all three affinity software, save, export, and if it stays stuck on a frozen state, kill wine with the command listed on the tips and fixes page
it's kind of a pain ngl but as i said a few times, i sadly can not recommend using affinity on linux if you're using the affinity suite intensely, for professal work purposes.
it is usable for most of it's usecases, but far from flawless..Currently, the only way I know of getting Affinity Photo to really work well on Linux is to use a Windows or macOS/Sosumi virtual machine on Linux (there are loads of guides online on how to do this).
I wish it were otherwise, but Serif Europe have made it all too clear that they are not going to bother with Linux although they are thankfully fine with us discussing how to try to get Affinity Photo to work on Linux.
- Wanesty, samurainine and Westerwälder
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20 hours ago, Grunt said:
Well, it works for starters. You might not be aware but Serif's software has been tested by man users in Wine for long time. Look. I presume, mostly very unsuccessfully. Affinity Suite (v2) doesn't deserves Garbage rating. Definitely not. But yes, as with any software there is many bugs, crashes, different glitches and even freezes. Some identical to Windows, some unique for Wine. What Affinity deserves as of right now is thorough testing. I believe crashes are caused by another unfulfilled dependencies or things yet not implemented in Wine. I would appreciate some coordinated effort or thread for testing and identifying bugs. Then maybe it might get "on par with Windows experiences".
Until now I haven't been able to test Affinity on Wayland (not on Debian), but as I have Affinity on Fedora/KDE i guess now is right time to test dxvk.
Yep. As of now no plans for supporting Linux. So community effort it is. As always.
^ Exactly this. While they cannot devote any staff time to supporting Linux, they at least tolerate discussions like this one that allow us to share our experiences in trying to get Photo, etc to run well on Linux.
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21 hours ago, ElementalWarrior said:
Alright I've figured out the magic incantations to get it to run.
- Build and use this version of wine, it includes numerous patches to get it to run: https://gitlab.winehq.org/ElementalWarrior/wine/-/tree/affinity-photo2
- Download the msix version of affinity photo
- Unzip with the unzip command
- Run winetricks dotnet48 renderer=vulkan corefonts
- Copy all the winmd files from a proper install of windows to .wine/drive_c/windows/system32/WinMetadata/Windows.Services.winmdI think that should be it. It runs shockingly well. Its not as performant as on windows. But it works.
My branch is based off of wine 8.3. Which is the latest release as of like yesterday. It will not get through setup or start properly without changes from my branch linked above.
Thank you for all your good work that you have put in thus far and you clearly deserve a gold medal for your valiant and productive efforts:
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On 3/2/2023 at 11:26 AM, PSDfield said:
I was thinking about switching to a Linux Laptop for work but it seams only Affinity Photo and Designer V1 work properly with whine, not Publisher and not V2 so far - thanks for sharing your experiences and I really hope this will change in the future
There is one way to get the Affinity range of products to work well on Linux and it involves the use of a virtual machine method as described by Hartmut Doering below:
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On 1/27/2023 at 10:49 PM, kcbdr said:
Hi there!
I am in the same situation as michie. I own Affinity Designer and Photo v1 and would like to purchase a copy of Publisher v1. I am unable to run macOS Catalina on my computer, and so am unable to use v2. I have purchased a v2 license as an investment, but I really would just like to activate a copy of Publisher v1. I have contacted support and posted to Twitter, and have been told in both cases this is not possible. Is there any way to receive a license for Publisher v1?
Thanks.
I have three suggestions if I may, please. You could see if any of VivaDesigner, QuarkXPpress or the free and open source Scribus meet you needs and all good luck there. I have tried out VivaDesigner and I think it is competent software and I've seen excellent work done with QuarkXPpress.
While I do recommend the rather good Serif Affinity products over Abobe's perma-rental extortionware, I think it is unfortunate that they cannot supply the previous editions of their software where there are difficult and specific circumstances such as yours. Some software companies openly make previous versions available while others like DxO ask the customer to make a specific request to their DxO Support Team.
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1 hour ago, NotMyFault said:
Here you go.
Two words: Many thanks!
Thank you for sharing that file so that anyone in a similar situation can now benefit from your act of kindness. 🙂
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22 hours ago, NotMyFault said:
Use one created on a different PC
22 hours ago, Kit Chan said:Create a dummy file in Windows/Mac?
^ Thank you both for those constructive suggestions.
In my case, I'm a 100% Linux user and the Windows users and Mac user I know don't use any Affinity products.
In this Resources section, quite a few people have already shared their projects/designs/images with others for them to download.
Perhaps someone could kindly create something like an empty affinity photo project file for us Linux users to download and use e.g. something along the lines of Project1.afphoto
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45 minutes ago, Muq said:
In my experience, saving actually works but only if you resave an already existing project. So I always have a copy of empty afphoto file to create a new project from it. I also can export to any file, like .png, .jpg, .pdf without issue.. The linux I use is Arch preinstalled on SteamDeck, with bottles version 2022.12.14.1.
^ Thank you for your excellent advice and I have a question that I hope is not too illogical.
If saving a new project cannot be done, what is the method please of creating the initial empty afphoto file? Thanks.
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3 hours ago, jaizon said:
Blender is backed up by big companies, also, GIMP is a completely different story, it already has great tools and functionality but a really bad ui/ux.
Gimp's sucky interface can be cured with the addition of the PhotoGimp patch so it then looks like it has joined the 21st century. While the current development team has made good and useful progress, Gimp is still missing essential features like non-destructive editing and full, inbuilt CMYK capability and that will hopefully start to change with the Gimp 3.0+ series of releases.
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4 hours ago, jaizon said:
Sure, that's what most of us here are looking for, a good paid software to go to Linux so that we can get productive
I also use Gravit Designer (now Corel Vector) for any design work I have to do although my design needs are relatively modest.
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3 hours ago, jaizon said:
There's also content creators, be it in social media, bloggers, vloggers, writers, etc. Almost everyone today needs a vector or raster software in some capacity. If given the option, I'd rather have it than don't.
TBH, and this is a completely baseless argument, I would guess that even if they'd port only the 1.10 version to Linux it'd sell, as we don't really have anything to go against it. And please, don't even joke about Photopea/ GIMP/ Inkscape/ Scribus.
Then the logical thing to to do is use paid-for professional grade software that can run on Linux such as VivaDesigner and PhotoLine+Wine:
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9 minutes ago, Artsketch said:
No, Apple was the first company who had serious systems for DTP, 30 years ago.
Tbh though, the real pioneers of desktop publishing, and GUI computing in general, was Rank Xerox at their Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in California and their Gypsy software was basically the world’s first desktop publishing package.
It is safe to say though that both Microsoft and Apple (along with others) heavily borrowed (as in ripped off) all the work that was going on at PARC. If this happened today then there would probably have been a huge lawsuit over what was going on.
Anyway, there's a good account of the early days of computing in Robert X Cringely's book Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition, And Still Can't Get a Date.
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1 hour ago, Clif Graves said:
I am a Linux user who has used Scribus for years and Indesign for about 2 years. I just purchased Affinity Publisher 2. It seems to have a lot going for it beyond not being 'rental' software. BUT as of now the only thing I use Windows for is Indesign and Affinity. It is a pain to have to reboot and share file back and forth. I know that there is a poor track record of for profit software being adopted by Linux users. (open source / freedom and probably cheepism). But I think that would change given compelling software like Affinity were usable on Linux.
Just my thoughts...
I have two suggestions there if I may. The first is to use the Adobe and Serif products in the way that Hartmut Doering suggests below if you have 16GB+ RAM:
The second suggestion is to try out the native Linux VivaDesigner in place of InDesign and Publisher and to try out PhotoLine + Wine in place of Affinity Photo. While the developers of PhotoLine don't make a specific Linux version, they do make the effort to ensure that PhotoLine works well with Wine to cater for Linux users. That is a commendable thing to do and it is a good example for others to follow.
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On 12/30/2022 at 5:02 AM, deeds said:
Interesting that you think the relative lack of creative users willing to pay for creative software, on Linux, is a negative thing.
How do you plan to address this in a way that would provide both sufficient recompense and incentive for a company like Affinity to spend the millions of dollars in man hours (and even more in opportunity cost) to convert their software to the many fragmented versions of Linux?
I have to ask if you have ever used Linux because that comment makes no sense whatsoever.
There are now universal containerised package types, such as Flatpak, and so all a company or free software provider has to do is supply the software in that single format and it will work on all Debian, RedHat and Arch based Linux distributions.
That is not the issue. The real and only issue is that desktop Linux's current overall market share is at 2.77% (figures from Statcounter for November 2022) and that is significantly behind that of both Windows (75.11%) and macOS (15.6%).
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11 hours ago, 1stn00b said:
Microsoft joined the party later for PR : https://fund.blender.org/
Blender is supported by Intel, AMD, Nvidia, Volkswagenag, Google, Adobe , game studios etc : >
I wish all those very same wealthy corporations would do the decent thing and fund full time professional developers for both Gimp and CinePaint and then we would not even want/need Affinity Photo on Linux.
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On 8/3/2022 at 6:09 PM, Mark Ingram said:
The WPF UI is rendered (by default) in Direct3D9. The --no-hw-ui flag disables WPF's hardware rendering and switches it into software mode. The document view is always drawn with Direct3D11 and Direct2D.
I am not sure if you are going to see this but thank you for the advice and suggestions that you have provided in this thread. I hope that things work out for you over at DuckDuckGo and you might very well have a quieter life over there (in a good way).
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7 hours ago, emko said:
How is it that a lot of the VFX software has Linux versions or started on Linux like da Vinci resolve etc ? This is a missed market
Microsoft joined the Blender Foundation’s Development Fund as a Corporate Gold member in order to help Blender continue to develop and improve its software.
I'd like to see the prosperous VFX companies pull their fingers out and follow Microsoft's excellent example by funding multiple, paid full time developers for Gimp and CinePaint and then wondrous things will happen.
Affinity Suite v2.0.4 on linux [ Wine ]
in Resources
Posted
That reminds me, if anyone who bought version 1 and needs to get it again, e.g. because of a change in computer, then details of how to get the Affinity 1 products are shown below:
I have no idea if the Affinity 2 range works this way and if there are even more problems with it.