msdobrescu

Well, I hope you will do satisfy them as they are the ones that pay for your work and that makes your employees sustainable and happy. I personally think it is good to have alternatives to the good products as Adobe's are, so we have more choices too. Maybe, someday, Serif could afford to do the crazy thing and provide some of their great tools for Linux too ;).

Do I feel some frustration ? Well, not everybody, but part of Serif community started this topic. Or part of the community wanna-be's. Why not full members? Because they need this stuff on their platform and have no technical means to get it and they want to pay for it too. So Serif should listen. Listening means not at all doing, just considering, IMHO. Probably they did already. Do you try to blame Linux community for not having software they need, as long as there are good solutions for them functionally, but present on other platforms only? And when they come and ask them to come on theirs too, why do they meet people that upset on them for not having those? Help me understand, please. Linux is for users just as any other OS, the users are the majority, not the developers. So the users have come to devs and ask for something. They have come to professionals, like Serif, not to free volunteers. They are willing pay for this service. As Serif say they will not do it, it's OK, but why third party people would come to say "no" in their place? Are they afraid of something? I don't get it.

You've got it wrong as I was unclear. I am talking generally, especially related to the big or successful companies that produce widely used hardware or even define the industries standards. While there are companies ignoring Linux, there are ones at least sponsoring the support for Linux for their products, like HPLIP project, or ones that are major and produce themselves for Linux, like database servers from Oracle and Microsoft. But let's not blame Linux for @toltec's printers missing the support. Some tried but did it wrong. For instance Corel made PhotoPaint for linux and offered it for free. But they were well known for CorelDraw and that would have been a hit, and should have been offered for the same money as the other OS versions, or promoted when a license for Windows was sold, give the Linux one to try. Of course they could not do it alone, as in @toltec's case when the printers did not have a driver for Linux. A friend of mine had a fridge to give. He advertised that and nobody was interested, thinking it is something wrong with it. So, he put a price and the next day somebody bought it. What I don't understand is why you say Serif tries to build a company as long it is for decades on the market, as was stated here already. I am so sorry to tell this, but they state they have the knowledge to build for Linux too. I am sue they have the means also. It is simply their choice not to. I am not saying to come here and do what I say. They should listen to their community, though. In this field, am a hobbyist now, I used to draw and sell photos in the past too, I've just changed my options, so I chose the tool to do the job better for me. I've tried lots of software before, I am doing that now too. Under Linux, couldn't find commercial software as good as the free alternatives. I am sorry to name here, I have tried Corel AfterShot, but is not better than DarkTable or RawTherapee and others, sorry. Affinity Photo is, as far as it concerns me, so fast and natural even being at the beginning of its life. It could bypass Photoshop soon, but I am sure won't be as adopted because Photoshop is so long established in this area as the standard. It is surely a deserved place. It's hardly a choice, it's rather a necessity. I really want to have an alternative, and Affinity has all the chances here regarding the current approach, but needs to work more, of course, as it is young. I wish them to become as everybody expects it here. So, the fact @SrPx you've stated so well, the general situation is the issue, not a specific company support. I am just writing my opinion, I won't force anybody to produce for Linux, how would I? As for the heroes, definitely those of Inkscape, Gimp, Scribus, Blender's are deserving Nobel price for peace at least! I have used those and still do, but I am also amazed by the Gimp's approach to be software developper's rather than photographer's - hence people looking for some other tool. Inkscape is great, for me it is a good replacement for Illustrator, but printing is so bound to its close format so would be hard for designers and publishers to beat that - as you know, some modern features of eps are not editable in Illustrator without its proprietary format embedded. Blended is known for being hard to learn - for me it is really unintuitive after modelling in Studio Max. Anyway, I might have misunderstood, but your anecdote tells me how the wrong choice of tools ruins a project, not Linux itself. Linux is the kernel, missing the around stuff to make it a desktop environment is the problem. So we ask for that stuff everywhere. Not only here. I chose Photoshop because I love ACR + content awareness. Not much, isn't it? Content awareness is under Gimp too, people are giving credit to Gimp's Resynthesizer (which is developed by e brilliant guy as a university project). But ACR is seamless. Affinity seems to be close of that too, still not there. As for the subscription, it's OK if you need people taking care of ideas rather of struggling for their day to day living. What I try to avoid is an OS that brings me needless privacy issues, like Windows, and probably more people might go away due to this reason, in time. I don't even know what data Windows collects, see? Just think, I have a display calibration device, but has support for Windows and OSX only. Under Linux there is software supporting it. Many people do this way. It is possible. Why the calibration device company did not do a Linux driver and software from the start? Also, TV tuners don't look a market that big compared to graphics and photography, still there are companies providing native support for a TV tuner.

This is what I call a vicious circle. Linux is not taken into consideration by several market segments, so it can't be used by these professionals. The driver/hardware and software makers ignore it, the publishers and graphic creators have no choice but skipping it. They skip it, the driver/hardware and software makers say it is not an attractive niche and won't produce their stuff for it. And so on. Linux moved a lot, in my experience. For a start, it became a reliable desktop, which was not that good 10 years ago. There are things that started under Linux, like gimp's resyntesizer, which became the content aware technology in Photoshop. Web hosting is better under Linux. As effect, web browsing is faster under Linux - looks like linux machines collaborate better in this reqard. A paradox here is that software development looks better organized under linux, because the financial pressure does not exist. This makes things slower. Look at Java technologies, they were not a success from the financial point of view, so Sun disappeared, but there are so many firmwares relying on it! Microsoft's .net is a java clone that started as Windows desktop oriented technology, but slowly drops that, it becomes .net core, that is so close to java as I wonder why use it after all. Sometimes, it is enough to rename some objects in order to compile the same program under one or another of these technologies. Yet, Linux it's a democratic platform, things go in the users advantage in time. As software developer I saw people stating they wont use tools and technologies of some companies just because they ignore Linux, I hear that more and more often. I remember Linus making git for Linux kernel development and one of the best graphical git managers are now under OSX and Windows only. Why a company is so self confident in order to ignore all these requests? Do they think we will buy their software forever just because it's excellent? I am sorry, but as long as I have, for example, Photoshop, under Windows or MacOS, I won't choose some othes company product just because I am used to Photoshop and I think it's that good as I won't skip it for less. That unless I have an advantage, like this, working under my OS of choice. For me, the Linux stagnation is a pain due to its rejection by the commercial software companies. I don't buy their arguments, as you can see, although I understand the effort. Still, years ago I have user VMS, where the application methodology was so close to OS X, as I hardly believe it is so complicated to be ported under. And yes, I understand your pain too.

I am so sorry, then. I use them all, Windows, Linux, Unix, even some exotic ones. So, I am not typical - and I'm proud of it. I am not proud of not paying for it, I am grateful they are available, I've donated more to free software than I've paid on Windows and related software licenses. I just say, when you offer free software, you can't expect anymore to get paid for each copy. But when you sell as business model (as in Photoshop case) you will get paid even for a Linux version. Your market is different. I wouldn't say Linux products are inferior as a rule. Indeed, for photography and vector graphics there are few matches to the main products as Photoshop and Illustrator on any platform, they being industry standards. As fact, during my student years, I have paid for my linux distros at the time (Slack and Deb). There already is a Microsoft Linux, a server. But I would chose an open distro. As I've stated above, I try to avoid being so hard spied as on Windows and Mac OS. They spend too much on this so it becomes too costy for me to avoid it. I need a honest and plain environment that does the job, even flawed as you think Linux is. Something to offer me the windows and graphics, sound and image, no more, not even media indexing when not necessary. I know the danger is there, but I have lived well with Windows when it did not try so hard to gather all sorts of info on the user, I think Linux would be harder to be nailed down because it is open and thgere will always be people keeping it free of this stuff. This is why I don't rely on Android either. A big Pandora box it is.

Actually, perfect snapshot of the mindset of somebody claiming knows how a Linux user thinks.

Probably, but Synfig is open source free software, right? Asking for paid software to move to Linux is different as the mind is not set you could get it free anyway.

Sorry, I was referring to this thread only.

Synfig? People here look for Affinity products on Linux, not Synfig, so I would not expect them to pay for Synfig. Synfig it is already under Linux. This is offtopic or at least a false argument.

Well, now you've poked the bear. I am so sorry to answer you ~ you definitely don't deserve it, but I will make an effort for everybody here. I will explain to you why do I chose Linux. Linux is not free as you think. You don't pay for it, but the time to learn it is consistent. Well, there is a gain here. The communities are usually friendly and willing to help you. You might start to understand the technology, even though you are not an IT specialist. But, first of all, Linux, not talking of its derivatives, llke Android, won't spy on you, or if it tries, will have somebody to point that out just by looking into its code. I am no paranoid. But other OSes along with searching engines, they try so hard to figure out what commercial to serve you, as they spend lots and lots of resources on your computer. And you pay for that too, meaning your hardware, the energy spent, the OS licensing (without saying OSX or Windows are free, the costs are included in the hardware acquisition, even as OEM). It is almost impossible to tune that lately, as these services become part of the OS cores, so will crash them if removed, if not illegaly (by the licensing). You pay for that as before, also, meaning you won't purchase some OS cheaper with your consent of collection all sort of information, oftenly not knowing what. Once, monitoring the OS because I've thought some malware was active, I've noticed accessing sites at boot time. So, Linux is my way just for that, I will not discuss here how flexible it is, how somebody could tune every software on it, in order to have only the necessary. Then comes the latter upgrading problems of Windows, for example, that requires having it the unique system and the one booting on a machine in order to keep it to date, and I have to wipe the bootloader and reinstall its bootloader just to go further with updating. Or its virtualization issues that send its boot in an infinite loop... etc. etc.. I let you, @toltec, to pay for these and more, as you are also ric$. Good luck.

I've tried it, under Windows. I can get fast results, almost as simple as ACR. I am looking for that kind of thing only. I've tried Darktable and RawTherapee, but I fail to be that efficient with those. ACR works naturally for me. Maybe you can help me with Darktable?

Actually, it's cheap for its power. It's less than 5 months of my CC, I know it is less functionally speaking, but, for me, would do the job much faster than any Linux version of free RAW development software, and compared to Corel's, it's also much better and faster, again, for me.

Well, I don't look for a painting or video processing application. Just for photography development, as is Photoshop, or Lightroom (not a fan), Affinity Photo, On1 Photo Raw, Capture One, better than RawTherapee, DarkTable, UFRaw(?) or similar - those free alternatives could do the job, technically, hopefully, but it's a slow and difficult path, even unreliable sometimes. I won't include GIMP here.

Well, if I find an Adobe Photoshop or similarly efficient application for photography (I exclude painting as there are enough apps on Linux to do the job as others stated here too), I'll jump buying it instantly. Whether is Adobe, Serif etc. I use ACR, I click <auto> and the tune it a bit, some "content aware" retouching and it's done for me, I go to the next one. Sometimes I play with panos, where Photoshop + ACR are again proficient (for me). I'm a simple guy. I couldn't find a match to this kind of workflow. I've tried all the major Linux free apps, but the colors were simply dull (even weird sometimes). So I long for a good app on Linux.

Ah, no, I've meant generally, not form Serif.

Aren't we all? I, personally, just want to notify, I'm not pushing. Nobody would start doing anything if we don't ask, anyway. I just show my interest in some direction. That's all. Not to say, I won't expect it to be done tomorrow, not to say I don't expect the company to change its priorities or even postpone releasing the so expected (by some) publishing application. Just telling my preference in hope that expressing it would add that to the statistics at least... Off-topic, sorry, Linux lack of support for drivers, software and other things is simply because the large majority of companies don't think should develop for it. Linux is the kernel, which is available and reliable, it is not more faulty than other OS'es. What is built around it, is the problem, sometimes. Still, I don't blame Linux for being underrated, I don't blame Serif for not willing, I don't blame the community for not adhering to this. As a side question, seeing here technically educated people, I would like to know, on Linux, how is it possible to have professional video, 3d, VFX etc. software, that should rely on color quality, but not design and photography too?

I was about to ask the same thing. Is there already a request or should I create one?

Thank you NNois, but no, I don't feel bashed at all, SrPx has reasonable arguments, we discuss and I enjoy that.

Hi, I'd like to add my voice here. I am an ACR user, I don't like the Lightroom approach. I couldn't find some software doing what ACR "auto" command does. I'll try Affinity's Photo to check it's performance. I am also a hobbyist paying for Photoshop CC, I've payed for Illustrator CC for years too. And, yes, I am able to integrate a javascript machine in the Adobe's products. First of all, I try to get rid of Windows and move to Linux. The only thing binding me of Windows is Photoshop. I've watched for years the discussions and requests to port Photoshop to Linux. In the late years, it was a huge Adobe "get satisfaction" page where people paying for Adobe products, especially Photoshop, asked to be ported to Linux. The number of posts there was about 1 million when it was closed and re-opened again as a second topic. Now they have retired it, so I can't find it anymore on the Internet, but I bet people here know it. I know that 1 million posts there were made by same people several times, but even if 10% of these posts were made by the same hundred thousand people, this would have been motivating to create a competitive product by other company. As there are Linux video, animation and graphics applications at commercial level already, why not adding some Photoshop competitor there? Probably, the community should say how many are willing to pay for a Linux version, including ones moving from Photoshop. Why not? But don't think in OS user base therms. Take into account that graphic designers/photographers are a small fraction of Windows users. Also the fraction of this using a free or a paid software. And from those, how many are willing to move to Linux. That's an interesting poll, at least. Technically speaking, there should be no more a problem regarding the distribution, as packaging like AppImage or FlatPak or SnapCraft (to name a few) make it possible. Years ago there was a guy walking on streets presenting to people the KDE as the new Windows. They believed it, so this shows the power of misconception. Sure, Linux is far from perfect, it has red screens instead of blue screens (in theory - I haven't seen one in the last 15 years), when something crashes, usually there is some applet informing you. But this is another useless debate. Of course, every OS crashes at some point, after some upgrade. Last time Windows did it on my i7 920 system was few weeks ago and I still can't upgrade it as it is stuck at boot time even with the fresh new installing media made by Microsoft apps. This is the risk using any OS, you just need to keep a dual boot system for backup when one of them fails. IMHO, a professional using a computer in any other domain (than IT) would pay for support for its OS if he depends on that. And, remember, Android is Linux kernel-based.

This is outstanding! Thank you!

Hi, I have the same problem, and using Inkscape does the same. I've always wondered why is there no import as full vector as long as Inkscape (using Cairo) and Affinity export a full vector. Though, Inkscape imports an .ai file even from the latest CC (2015.3). I have a question: how is specified the gradient in the .eps text file? Isn't it a vector after all? Why Inkscape or Affinity import the .eps file as full vector and Illustrator doesn't? Would this be some limit from Illustrator in order to impede using .eps files in Illustrator, files created with other software, as Affinity or Inkscape? Or do I understand something wrong regarding .eps gradient format? Is it stored as vector or not in .eps files? It is so painful, to depend on one software only in this regard...