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Linux user base keep growing !


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6 hours ago, Pyanepsion said:

Linux systems are not as user-friendly as other systems. They are complicated to install and then customise.

honestly you're felling that mostly because you're coming from windows or MacOS, both of those systems discourage the user to learn about their system, and also teach them really oversimplified and often wrong way to do stuff.

6 hours ago, Pyanepsion said:

They actually require a thorough knowledge of the system being used and one quickly comes to the use of the command line.

A good example would be software/apps management, you got used to downloading the apps from the devs/company's website and installing the msi/exe/dmg file ; so yes, having to use a GUI like "Discover"(KDE) or "Gnome Software" or even learning the package manager's syntax is different and you'll have to get used to it.

Just different than what you learn.

4 hours ago, Artsketch said:

For the professional creative design community, Linux isn't significant, neither Windows. Apple is still the choice

Yes. Apple did a lot of heavy marketing toward design schools, companies and overall a just products marketed toward artists of all kinds.

4 hours ago, Artsketch said:

better availibility of pirated illegal creative software

also yes, but peoples pirating software are mostly doing it to learn the software (if there's no trial version, or if its too different) or because it's just too expensive to justify it. so in the end companies and professionals are most likely to be able to afford a license.
>Peoples pirating are gonna pirate whatever the system.

up to date guide for the Affinity Suite on Linux :  codeberg.org/affinity-wine-docs

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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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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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3 minutes ago, Snapseed said:

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.

it is safe to say that Apple *PAYED* Xerox with Apple shares. The only one ripping off here was Microsoft.

Mac mini M1 / Ryzen 5600H & RTX3050 mobile / iPad Pro 1st - all with latest non beta release of Affinity

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43 minutes ago, Artsketch said:

No, Apple was the first company who had serious systems for DTP, 30 years ago.

The Apple LaserWriter was the first laser printer on the market to offer PostScript support, making general market DTP applications feasible for the first time.  Prior to that laser printers all had proprietary page description languages and worked with fairly expensive systems, making such tools impractical.

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52 minutes ago, Snapseed said:

. The first is to use the Adobe and Serif products in the way that Hartmut Doering suggests below if you have 16GB+ RAM:

Virtualization, and thus having to buy a second GPU or having awful performances are honestly not a viable alternative to suggest...

Dual boot or single-gpu passthrough is an immense pain too..

Saying this from both a professional/company and personal point of view..

The only place where virtualization is viable and a necessary thing is for developers, developing multi-platform software (Affinity devs are most likely developing on MacOS and having a Win10 VM running at all time)

up to date guide for the Affinity Suite on Linux :  codeberg.org/affinity-wine-docs

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From Affinitys side I totally understand not to support Linux if development has not been done Cross-Platform-Wise.

On the other hand side I don't understand why Affinity is not at least considering to rebuild the parts that are not cross platform and set a specific target to Linux People to invest in the Idea.

Long story short:
There are several reasons why people and businesses are not running windows or macos - Privacy and GDPR are getting even bigger topics and believe it or not there are companies that take this really serious.

I work in the Viz/VFX industry and we pay for software and we have zero problems with paying for software. Wo do not Dualboot Windows because we would still have Windows Telemetry and Adobe Log Transport, something we are not allowed to have because of contract reasons.

We need a software that can be activated and then works, can be updated without breaking our systems and is not sneaking in our network and sniffing around our machines.

There was already the Post here about running Affinity with Bottles - not working properly. Maybe some help from Affinity-Side to get this working?

How much would Linux Users/Businesses have to invest to see an official port of the suite to Linux as a Flatpak Package?
750 000 $? More?

Maybe a lot of people inside the Linux community love the FOSS Idea and they can embrace the idea but a properly supported 2D pipleline is needed, because 3D (Blender + Maya) is already working and the VFX reference platform is already framing the setup for 2023. There are countless studios just waiting for the 2D side to switch to Rocky or Almalinux, building the foundation of the next gen Crossmedia Web 3.0 and a lot of developers are looking for a signal despite the steamdeck.
Not every Linux-User is a non-creative nerd. We are willing to spend money - but on the right thing.

I love affinity, I love that they are not Adobe. I just wish for a better feedback what people that are willing to invest into something can do to get something done.
Is there an official number about how many users are using v1 / v2 per month? any numbers how the poll turned out with the OS-related questions  a couple of months ago?

greetings from germany,

hartmut

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8 hours ago, Artsketch said:

For the professional creative design community, Linux is not significant, neither Windows. Apple is still the choice, if money doesn't matters.

Many still believe that if they put an Apple in their room, they will automatically be seen as creative by others.

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Affinity estimated $500k to port Designer back when it was only a Mac app, and their only app.

 

Multiply that by all the features added since, and Publisher and Photo and then multiply that by the wage inflation of programmers and the complexities of their new optimisations and building blocks for their future.


Now add the research time to figure out what they should be making it for (targeting) in the Linux world, and how that's going to impact their holistic approach to running all three apps forward at the same time.

 

Now deduct the opportunity cost of tasking programmers with this, and the restrictions it brings to the overall future design and development of the software...

 

Somewhere well north of 2 million pounds... and who knows how much revenue lost due to the inevitable, unavoidable slowing of the development of their trinity of software and whatever else they had planned.

 

Linux users willing to start a kitty?

I didn't think so.

 

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17 hours ago, Pyanepsion said:

The most visible pitfall seems to be that Linux systems are not as user-friendly as other systems. They are complicated to install and then customise. They actually require a thorough knowledge of the system being used and one quickly comes to the use of the command line. This major effort is probably the reason why those who have mastered it have paradoxically become fans of it and proselytise it so much.

I did my first Linux install around 1997.  As I recall, you had to make note of certain parameters on your system to properly install it.  I didn't have a problem.  I did a second Linux install around 1999.  Or, I should say I attempted a second Linux install.  I ended up giving up and switching to a different flavor of Linux.

In recent years, it's been not much different than installing Mac or Windows.  Perhaps easier.

The only except is that I have an older MacBook Pro that I cannot install Linux on.  Well, not in a dual boot configuration that I want on the machine.  But that's because it's a weird model that's 64-bit system with a 32-bit startup something-or-other.

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I'd like to add a +1 for Linux consideration (specifically Ubuntu/Mint). I've been re-evaluating my whole workflow over the last few months, and for a number of reasons would love to make the move to Linux. I tried out a bunch of open source alternatives on Linux, and wasn't happy with them - coming from years of experience with the industry standard tools, I found them rough around the edges and not intuitive. I recently started using Affinity, and kind of love it so far - not just the experience itself, but the privacy policy, purchasing terms, etc.

I'd absolutely pay the same price, or even a little more (I'd imagine support/dev costs for yet another platform would be an issue) to use this suite on Linux.

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4 hours ago, tidyplan said:

I'd absolutely pay the same price, or even a little more (I'd imagine support/dev costs for yet another platform would be an issue) to use this suite on Linux.

What features in Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher do you need/use that aren't available in Inkscape/GIMP/Scribus?

Maybe it would be beneficial to make a list and then throw some money at those projects to help spur development of needed features.

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7 minutes ago, dcr said:

What features in Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher do you need/use that aren't available in Inkscape/GIMP/Scribus?

Maybe it would be beneficial to make a list and then throw some money at those projects to help spur development of needed features.

I suppose it might be worth putting more time into it and documenting it in the future, but that's a discussion for another forum :D. I will say here that the biggest factor in the decision to buy Affinity was the easy transition from Ai->Designer, and Ps->Photo (I rarely use Id, so that wasn't as much of a concern). Ai->Inkscape and Ps->GIMP seemed to have a lot steeper of a learning curve, and to be fair, I was evaluating a lot of products in quick succession (and under time constraints), so I stopped when I hit a set that felt right. I'll be keeping an eye on GIMP/Inkscape those moving forward, and will also hope that it turns out that a port of Affinity to Linux from Mac (which is UNIX-based, or UNIX-compliant, or something like that) isn't catastrophically difficult, and maybe we see some traction on that front too.

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Just came to drop this and re-disappear.

 

Screenshot_2023-01-07_10-34.jpg

Convenience is both the thing that pushes humanity forward and the thing leading us to doom.

Not me though. Y'all be easy.
 

Primary System: Arch Linux (dual-booted with Windoze for some paid apps that can't run on Linux yet)
Secondary System: Android Tablet

Apps: Krita | CSP | Blender | Inkscape | Affinity Suite | Quoll Writer | NovelWriter

 

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  • 10 months later...

There is no commercial reason for Serif to do Linux versions of anything.
This is a fact that has been done to death every time there is a religious outbreak of Linux fever.

www.JAmedia.uk  and www.TamworthHeritage.org.uk
[Win 11  | AMD Ryzen 5950X 16 Core CPU | 128GB Ram | NVIDIA 3080TI 12GB ]
[MB ASUS ProArt B550| C Drive:; 1TB M2 980 Pro | D Drive; 2TB M2 970 EVO ]

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On 11/25/2023 at 12:29 PM, LondonSquirrel said:

Corel built it. They did not come.*

Borland built it. They did not come.*

WordPerfect built it. They did not come.*

 

* in numbers which in any way justify the time, money, effort spent developing for Linux. 

Good point, 10 years ago. A lot has changed in the Linux world since then. In terms of porting to Linux the underpinning of Macs are very linux like and WINE and STEAM let graphic heavy games made for PC run well on Linux. So unlike ten years ago, Linux is easy to install (Mint for one) and easy to use and already runs a lot of PC software under WINE and STEAM. So from a cost POV the question is not totally re-coding Affinity programs but to identify the hang points. Then some code changes and/or working with Codeweavers to add support into WINE. Will it happen? I hope so but am not holding my breath.

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13 minutes ago, Clif Graves said:

Good point, 10 years ago. A lot has changed in the Linux world since then. In terms of porting to Linux the underpinning of Macs are very linux like and WINE and STEAM let graphic heavy games made for PC run well on Linux. So unlike ten years ago, Linux is easy to install (Mint for one) and easy to use and already runs a lot of PC software under WINE and STEAM. So from a cost POV the question is not totally re-coding Affinity programs but to identify the hang points. Then some code changes and/or working with Codeweavers to add support into WINE. Will it happen? I hope so but am not holding my breath.

A few important points.   Macs and Linux are VERY Different, It is like saying that because you have a blue colour Toyota Prius and a blue Ferrari they are the same.  MAC is POSIX compliant and Linux is mostly POSIX compliant.   However under the POSIX they are very different.

The only people to port to Linux were Black Magic and that was to a custom Linux and it only worked when you use ti with the BMD hardware.  Minimum investment of $100,000 a seat. 

When Resolve went to the inexpensive ($500) version, it was on Mac and PC.  The Linux version that worked without the expensive BMD HW (that started at about $20,000 a go) came several years later.  And that was only for ONE version of Linux.  

Linux desktop users are about 2% of the market. Not all of them will buy Commerical software in the first place.
Others have estimated that the market for a Linux version of Affinity tools is sub 1% of the market. It is just not worth doing the work.

 

www.JAmedia.uk  and www.TamworthHeritage.org.uk
[Win 11  | AMD Ryzen 5950X 16 Core CPU | 128GB Ram | NVIDIA 3080TI 12GB ]
[MB ASUS ProArt B550| C Drive:; 1TB M2 980 Pro | D Drive; 2TB M2 970 EVO ]

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i really think you underestimate what could come from having Serif's software suite on linux

they have, with the correct marketing and enough effort, the power of making linux a viable graphic related work environment

it already is one for development, VFX, music production, office work, day to day use and gaming

from my perspective, a lot of people are getting fed up with Microsoft and adobe's monopoly

 

8 hours ago, Chills said:

Linux desktop users are about 2% of the market. Not all of them will buy Commerical software in the first place.

think about companies, as people not earning money directly from a software are less likely to buy it anyway

this is why education licenses of software are a thing,
and this is also why Davinci Resolve has a free version: it lets you learn the software on your side/at school so the company that will hire you will buy the software/ already have commercial licenses

up to date guide for the Affinity Suite on Linux :  codeberg.org/affinity-wine-docs

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46 minutes ago, Wanesty said:

this is why education licenses of software are a thing,

and this is also why Davinci Resolve has a free version: it lets you learn the software on your side/at school so the company that will hire you will buy the software/ already have commercial licenses

BMD have a Linux Resolve because they did a custom Linux when Resolve was $100K a seat and required expensive hardware to run it.
When they did the Free version it was on Mac and PC.  The free version of Linux came later, adapted from the one they already had. However as noted on several threads currently on the BMD forum the Linux Resolve only works on one specific Linux Distribution. It is not supported on any other distro you are on your own, Also it is missing several codecs that are standard in Windows and Mac.
Most of the studio versions (ie paid version) of Resolve are Windows and Mac. 
 
I assume you are asking for a paid version of Affinity on Linux not a free one?

www.JAmedia.uk  and www.TamworthHeritage.org.uk
[Win 11  | AMD Ryzen 5950X 16 Core CPU | 128GB Ram | NVIDIA 3080TI 12GB ]
[MB ASUS ProArt B550| C Drive:; 1TB M2 980 Pro | D Drive; 2TB M2 970 EVO ]

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