No privacy friendly OS support? No money of mine!

[Wuem]

It seems that Affinity products (v2)are no longer privacy friendly as they are no longer available for Windows 7...Am I right? As a GNU/Linux daily driver user I used Affinmity apps on a virtual machine on my Windows 7. They worked pretty well and that is why I purchased all 3 of them as well as some add-ons. I consider Windows 7 the last user-friendly OS by Microsoft. Windows 10/11 and Apple OSes are all spyware to me that i must avoid. I am very much disappointed with Serif that Affinity is no longer for me. Can you help me in any way? Any plans to port Affinity apps to Linux/Android or at least CrossOver Linux or will you completely ignore such customers like me?

[walt.farrell]

46 minutes ago, Wuem said:

they are no longer available for Windows 7.

Correct.

46 minutes ago, Wuem said:

Any plans to port Affinity apps to Linux/Android or at least CrossOver Linux

They have said they have no plans for Linux or Android support at this time.

 

[Wuem]

Thanks for your reply. Sad but at least things clear to me. They ignore me, so I have to ignore them and look for alternatives. Corporations are always like that; that is why I prefer free/FOSS software. Time to send my money to Krita and other open source projects...

[walt.farrell]

You can, of course, keep using V1.

[kenmcd]

1 hour ago, Wuem said:

Windows 10/11 and Apple OSes are all spyware to me that i must avoid.

There are plenty of free privacy tools to lock down Win10 and Win11.

When I went from Win7 to Win10 it took a little time to get educated and block it all.

And there are free applications (and commercial) to get back a normal Start Menu.

Install Win10 in a VM and test it. Lock it down. Make work how you want it to.

I use Win10 daily, but I also have two Win11 VMs for testing. One is wide open, the other is locked down tight.

The Win10 minimum requirement is about features and performance. That requires things which are not in Win7.

[firstdefence]

Back in the day when I was a windows user I used this website to help tame windows data mining ops: https://www.blackviper.com/service-configurations/

[Wuem]

Thank you, Guys for your answers. I can see clearly that Serif policies are odd, as they completely ignore some customers and their needs and care only for their business. Unacceptable to me. This time they decided not to support customers who use windows 7. They completely ignore Android (which is the most popular OS in the world (more popular than Windows, generally). They do not support Linux, others companies do. What will they decide tomorrow? Subscriptions? Who knows? But I am afraid, they will dissatisfy us more than once...Therefore I cannot count on them. I will choose GIMP+KRITA+INKSCAPE+SCRIBUS+DARKTABLE+NATRON+RAWTHERAPEE to have peace of mind. Supporting these projects will be well money spent that won't turn against me. I will occasionally buy some other apps that support Linux (or at least work on WINE or Cross Over Linux)

[JT_Allen]

What follows won't happen until next year (No ETA yet), but I am willing to be a linux Zorin OS Beta tester for Serif and their affinity software to help with this issue. I just need to purchase a dedicated linux laptop from Star Labs with Zorin OS Pro pre-installed. Here is the link to Star Labs, I will be buying from next year:

https://us.starlabs.systems/pages/starfighter - High Spec: 2000GB SSD / 16", 10-Core intel chip / High Spec Ryzen 7 Chip. I will be using ZorinOS Pro. 

I don't mind being a beta tester for Serif and their Affinity Trio on linux as I am able. For Reference, here is one hollywood focused company that produces professional grade software for those studios using Linux OS for their needs: https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve 

Black Magic Design has Hollywood production quality software available for linux OSes. So, no excuses these days. I highly recommend Serif talk to Black Magic Design on creating software for Linux OSes. @Patrick Connor

[JT_Allen]

P.S. I probably won't be able to buy that StarLabs Laptop until very late 2023. Just a heads up Patrick Connor.

[Unforgiven]

On 12/17/2022 at 10:42 PM, JT_Allen said:

P.S. I probably won't be able to buy that StarLabs Laptop until very late 2023. Just a heads up Patrick Connor.

I just checked the Starfighter laptop. Although it looks like an awesome machine, I think it's pretty expensive. I currently own a MSI Modern, with the older Ryzen 7 version, 32 GB memory, a 500 GB NVME SSD and a QHD screen which costs me about 700 bucks. So I didn't really look into the Starlabs stuff, why would I pay that much for a laptop ?

 

That said, as a quarter of a century professional UNiX/Linux user I would love to become beta tester for Affinity's suite on Linux. Whether on Ubuntu, Zorin OS or whatever distro flavor. Would love that. So by any chance Affinity, I think you would make a LOT of users happy when you would do this.

[DDNN]

On 11/30/2022 at 10:56 AM, kenmcd said:

There are plenty of free privacy tools to lock down Win10 and Win11.

When I went from Win7 to Win10 it took a little time to get educated and block it all.

And there are free applications (and commercial) to get back a normal Start Menu.

Install Win10 in a VM and test it. Lock it down. Make work how you want it to.

I use Win10 daily, but I also have two Win11 VMs for testing. One is wide open, the other is locked down tight.

The Win10 minimum requirement is about features and performance. That requires things which are not in Win7.

Just wanted to say that the fact that users need to go through all that IS the problem. Privacy features being turned on and advertising or data mining features turned off should be the default on all systems, services, etc.

But people will say "It's normal, so don't fight it.", like the GDPR doesn't exist. "Normal" doesn't equate to ethically/morally correct.