Cashew Posted November 26, 2024 Posted November 26, 2024 On 11/24/2024 at 9:11 AM, marcelboyen said: I’ve seen several replies here, one mentioned that one issue is that there are thousands of Linux distros, and I already provided a solution to that, just use Flatpaks. People probably didn't touched on Linux in the last 5 years. "Too many distros" should explain why there was never a software developed to Linux ever, if this was true. We have software maintained by big teams, like Valve's Steam, software by few maintainers like Gimp, software that are powerhorses on computing, like Blackmagic Da Vinci Resolve... working all across Linux. To be honest, at this point I just hope any company grab the Linux market share for professional graphic design and make a good product. I would pay for it, advocate for it, talk about it on my community and "never" care to pay Adobe subscription or buy Affinity versions again. Snapseed, OzNate and Wanesty 2 1 Quote
Wanesty Posted November 26, 2024 Author Posted November 26, 2024 5 hours ago, Frozen Death Knight said: I have also started moving over to Krita because the current artistic work I do can be done in Krita alone. krita really is great for raster work; and it is in my opinion way better than gimp 5 hours ago, Frozen Death Knight said: If I get Affinity to work at some point through alternative means, then that's good. peep my signature ↓ it's not perfect but it's pretty usable if you just miss some filters or you need to export old projects! Snapseed and Frozen Death Knight 1 1 Quote up to date guide for the Affinity Suite on Linux : https://affinity.liz.pet, source on codeberg and a gitlab mirror
OzNate Posted November 27, 2024 Posted November 27, 2024 On 11/24/2024 at 11:01 PM, Chills said: That is categorically 100% NOT true. I went from Adobe to Affinity. There is NO WAY I would use Linux as a desktop system. OK, so both statements cannot be generalized to everyone, that's fair. But there is quite a movement toward looking at Linux, even among creatives. And there are common reasons behind people's desire for an alternative - much of it to do with corporate anti-consumer practices that a lot of people are sick of and desperate to get away from. Cashew, Frozen Death Knight, Wanesty and 1 other 3 1 Quote
Chills Posted November 27, 2024 Posted November 27, 2024 11 minutes ago, OzNate said: But there is quite a movement toward looking at Linux, even among creatives. This is 100% wrong. Over the last 30+ years, Linux has oscillated between 001 and 5% of the desktop market. For 30 years it has been the "next big thing" Yet 95%+ of the desktop market has ignored it. Affinity have stated (several times) there is no Linux Version anywhere on the road map. There is no commercial justification for a Linux version. PaulEC 1 Quote 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 ]
Cashew Posted November 28, 2024 Posted November 28, 2024 20 hours ago, Chills said: This is 100% wrong. Over the last 30+ years, Linux has oscillated between 001 and 5% of the desktop market. For 30 years it has been the "next big thing" Yet 95%+ of the desktop market has ignored it. You're looking on data all wrong. You are looking as "winner-loser" situation. Marketing does not work like this, it works on opportunities. Let's say 2% of users are on Linux (I'm basing on Valve's Steam users, because overall is not 5%. 5% would be HUGE and we wouldn't be having this discussion here, we would be discussing which of Adobe or Affinity performs better on LInux). If 2% of users - and let's say that by consequence, 1.5% of designers were on Linux, then you would guarantee this 1.5% of the market because you would be the only player on Linux. Let's say now Affinity have 5% of market, while Adobe and other alternatives have 95%. Jumping from 5% to 6%, giving a margin, is a big deal. Also, it is all more qualitative than quantitative. A lot of schools and universities use Linux. I was an intern on my Design school and while the entire ecossystem was Linux, we had 2 separate studios with workstations running solo on Windows just to run Adobe Suite. All other computer studios, where we had CAD software, Blender and game design stuff (mostly Godot) were on Linux. This would be another opportunity. Hollywood and some TV Stations use Da Vinci Resolve as their solution for film and video editing. Most of them use it on Linux, because it is smoother and works better integrated to servers that have big size files. They would be another opportunity, since they're on creative market. You said about 30 years. Well, for 30 years "gaming on Linux" wasn't a thing. Now it is. Since Steam Deck and Steam OS with a majority of titles performing almost as good or even better on Linux, we have people coming because of this. Today gaming industry moves with a lot of help of creators, and they use creative software to make thumbnails for videos, templates for streaming, and so on. Other smaller, but maybe significant opportunity. Affinity shouldn't be considering if "Windows is bigger than Linux" just because first of all, Affinity isn't even trying to be "bigger than Adobe". They are on blue ocean market, and the argument of which base of user is bigger would be relevant for companies on red ocean, like Adobe. Snapseed, eXcaliburN and Wanesty 2 1 Quote
Snapseed Posted November 28, 2024 Posted November 28, 2024 On 11/22/2024 at 12:55 AM, TravisL said: This seems to be a Linux megathread of sorts, I already have the universal license on Windows but I would happily pay for another if it meant I could ditch my Windows dual-boot entirely for my Linux partition. The only way I know of to run Affinity Photo well under Linux is using Windows in a virtual machine as per Hartmut Doering's useful advice below. I can't see Serif Europe or other software providers making their products available for Linux until such time as desktop Linux's market share approaches that of macOS. Chills 1 Quote
Cashew Posted November 28, 2024 Posted November 28, 2024 21 hours ago, Chills said: This is 100% wrong. Over the last 30+ years, Linux has oscillated between 001 and 5% of the desktop market. For 30 years it has been the "next big thing" Yet 95%+ of the desktop market has ignored it. Affinity have stated (several times) there is no Linux Version anywhere on the road map. There is no commercial justification for a Linux version. And btw, I fact checked, and you're wrong. Linux has, in fact, a notable growth on market share of desktop over the last 3 years, as OzNate pointed. For many years, it oscilated, as you said, but not between "001 and 5%", and yes between 1% and 2%. I grabbed data on last 10 years. This is the % of the market share of Linux on desktop: 2015: 1.48% 2016: 1.57% 2017: 1.54% 2018: 1.69% 2019: 1.85% 2020: 1.93% 2021: 2.08% 2022: 2.93% 2023: 3.83% 2024 (as October): 4.31% You can look it up, if you want. I grab the average from 3 different fonts, but all are very coherent. (And as I said before, 1% is already a big deal for a company on blue ocean strategy.) Quote
Chills Posted November 28, 2024 Posted November 28, 2024 3 minutes ago, Cashew said: And btw, I fact checked, and you're wrong. Linux has, in fact, a notable growth on market share of desktop over the last 3 years, as OzNate pointed. For many years, it oscilated, as you said, but not between "001 and 5%", and yes between 1% and 2%. I grabbed data on last 10 years. This is the % of the market share of Linux on desktop: 2015: 1.48% 2016: 1.57% 2017: 1.54% 2018: 1.69% 2019: 1.85% 2020: 1.93% 2021: 2.08% 2022: 2.93% 2023: 3.83% 2024 (as October): 4.31% You can look it up, if you want. I grab the average from 3 different fonts, but all are very coherent. (And as I said before, 1% is already a big deal for a company on blue ocean strategy.) Over the last 30+ years, Linux has been here before and faded again. (also it is niche areas) You are celebrating that Linux desktop has gone from miniscule to insignificant. As others have said, if Linux ever gets to 25% and there is a single dominant distribution for over half of it, then it *might* make sense for affinity to do a Linux version. Until then, it isn't commercially viable period. Quote 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 ]
Cashew Posted November 28, 2024 Posted November 28, 2024 5 minutes ago, Chills said: if Linux ever gets to 25% man, you're just either dumping misinformation or exaggerating. Mac OS X doesn't have 25%. And the "single dominant distribution" argument already been debunked. And no. This "here before and faded again" never happened since 2003 (before this I didn't found data). I understand this is your personal feeling, but I recommend go see the data. Wanesty and Snapseed 2 Quote
jpileborg Posted November 28, 2024 Posted November 28, 2024 23 minutes ago, Chills said: Over the last 30+ years, Linux has been here before and faded again. (also it is niche areas) You are celebrating that Linux desktop has gone from miniscule to insignificant. As others have said, if Linux ever gets to 25% and there is a single dominant distribution for over half of it, then it *might* make sense for affinity to do a Linux version. Until then, it isn't commercially viable period. Lets say, for simplicity's sake, that there are one billion PC systems in use by actual people. If Linux have a 4% market share, then that 40 million. That's quite a lot. If Affinity, or anyone else, wait until Linux reaches even 10% (100 million system) then they will be very late to the game, and will likely not come out on top. As a comparison Apple with their macOS is around 15% market share, quite a lot less than the 25% you think Linux needs to be a major contender. And porting to Apple commonly happened well before they reached that number (again adding credibility to the catch-22 problem I've mentioned before). Also lets say that one percent of all Linux systems are used by creatives (and it's likely larger than that), then that's 400000 people. If Affinity could sell to even half of those, then that would likely add up to a profit larger than needed for the porting. So instead of defending Affinity and Serif by a useless discussion about market share, we could just tell them that they already have enough potential customers to make the porting worth their time. And if they do the port, then it's also likely that more people will switch from Adobe-hell and buy Affinity licenses on Linux. Thus help breaking that catch-22. Wanesty 1 Quote
Twolane Posted November 28, 2024 Posted November 28, 2024 Exactly what version of Linux would I install? And then, there's this silliness to contend with: Quote ok so I found some guide online here and used it to install affinity inside bottles after many years of no success, and then when I thought everything was fine because the programs started normally (except when it tried to load my online profile) and I could do my work and export it to other formats, but what I couldn't do it open my online account/profile page or save the project as afphoto/design/pub. So the suggestions I got was to use something called rum, and rum is a script that uses custom wine binaries to run windows executable, what I had to do is to get this wine-fork that was modified for running affinity programs and use it instead, but the problem I face with rum and this custom wine is that I can't even install dotnet48 and that's that. But with bottles, I can do everything except save my files. So by far what I've seen in the custom-wine docs is that it says that bottles will not install dotnwt48 properly because it will be missing many reg keys (which I have no proof of, and I don't know how many or what are the keys that's missing) So my final step would be to find and manually enter the missing keys for bottles, or to make the Winetricks install the dotnet48 properly for rum. My recommendation is to find a good bottle of Jamaican rum and pour a drink after the install extravaganza of a nothing-burger where you can get a real burger from In'n'Out. Circulus and Komatös 1 1 Quote
Wanesty Posted November 29, 2024 Author Posted November 29, 2024 14 hours ago, jpileborg said: And porting to Apple commonly happened well before they reached that number (again adding credibility to the catch-22 problem I've mentioned before). erm actually 🤓 affinity released on macos first and then got ported to windows with that said, their previous products look pretty similar to early affinty v1 so it was probably their old windows codebase ported to macos, developed only on there for a bit and then to meet demand, they ported it back to windows. i am fairly sure of this hypothesis seeing how spread out the dependencies used in the windows version of affinity are, ie dotnet 3.5 and then 4.8 and directX version varying from directX 8 for the UI to directX 11 for the filters and canva rendering (might not recall perfectly but that's pretty much that iirc) Snapseed 1 Quote up to date guide for the Affinity Suite on Linux : https://affinity.liz.pet, source on codeberg and a gitlab mirror
Peter Werner Posted November 29, 2024 Posted November 29, 2024 7 hours ago, Wanesty said: with that said, their previous products look pretty similar to early affinty v1 so it was probably their old windows codebase ported to macos, developed only on there for a bit and then to meet demand, they ported it back to windows. This is not correct. An entirely new codebase, intended initially for an iPad product, was used as the basis of the Mac versions. The core part is mostly platform independent and the user interface and the renderers are written more or less from scratch for each supported platform. As for everybody else's points: Market share figures are misleading. The creative market traditionally has a 50:50 split between Mac and Windows, which does not reflect overall market share. Linux overall market share is completely irrelevant to the discussion since the vast majority of potential Affinity Linux buyers can't even use Linux day to day until Affinity (or the Adobe Suite) becomes available. There is no question that the potential market is there (all the VFX studios and web developers alone would likely be enough). It remains entirely a matter of what the priorities of the Serif team are. No amount of repeating the same discussions in circles in this thread will change that. Wanesty, Alfred, Snapseed and 1 other 3 1 Quote www.peterwerner.net
Wanesty Posted November 30, 2024 Author Posted November 30, 2024 On 11/29/2024 at 6:13 PM, Peter Werner said: intended initially for an iPad product earliest infos regarding iPadOS and release date seems to be in July 2018 while Affinity designer (whom came out first of the suite omg congrats queen) released in October 2014 On 11/29/2024 at 6:13 PM, Peter Werner said: The core part is mostly platform independent and the user interface and the renderers are written more or less from scratch for each supported platform. shrug, i genuinely don't know: it might be marketing talk, it might not, all i know is that it is odd how spread out (in version/release year) dependencies are. it might also just be a windows thing and they might have reused old code only for the windows version since it came out (omg again, congrats queen) after the mac version, could also be developers that worked on DrawPlus and were used to those technologies/frameworks. On 11/29/2024 at 6:13 PM, Peter Werner said: Market share figures are misleading. The creative market traditionally has a 50:50 split between Mac and Windows, which does not reflect overall market share. i will agree that the global userbases does not represent precisely the creative niche, however those are the data we can find. i'm asking this genuinely, do you have any source of your 50:50 split? On 11/29/2024 at 6:13 PM, Peter Werner said: Linux overall market share is completely irrelevant to the discussion since the vast majority of potential Affinity Linux buyers can't even use Linux day to day until Affinity (or the Adobe Suite) becomes available. (wrote that before reading your next sentence but yes) we can still extrapolate those numbers by looking at how linux is already used in creative environments such as VFX, video editing and audio production Snapseed 1 Quote up to date guide for the Affinity Suite on Linux : https://affinity.liz.pet, source on codeberg and a gitlab mirror
fde101 Posted November 30, 2024 Posted November 30, 2024 On 11/28/2024 at 1:08 PM, Chills said: Over the last 30+ years The first version of KDE was released in 1998, and was essentially the first "real" desktop available for Linux. Not sure how you get "30+ years" out of something that has only existed for around 26 years? Quote
Chills Posted November 30, 2024 Posted November 30, 2024 5 minutes ago, fde101 said: The first version of KDE was released in 1998, and was essentially the first "real" desktop available for Linux. Not sure how you get "30+ years" out of something that has only existed for around 26 years? Linux started in 1991, 33 years ago. In the 90s I used linux much the same as I used other OS at the time, with a command line. Though to be fair I was developing on Solaris which was a great GUI. Quote 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 ]
fde101 Posted December 1, 2024 Posted December 1, 2024 4 hours ago, Chills said: Linux started in 1991, 33 years ago. Sure, but that is not particularly relevant in the context of its use as a desktop operating system for people doing design work. The real question is not how many people are using Linux (in which case its embedded use in numerous products of all kinds likely gives it a total market share much larger than that of Windows), but rather how many people are using it in a capacity such that they would be likely to consider using the Affinity products. While that market segment may be virtually impossible to accurately gauge for numerous reasons, it is reasonably safe to assume that the "zero" point for it started at some point no earlier than the availability of a desktop environment capable of supporting such applications on the platform. Thus those first 7 years are largely irrelevant in this context. Wanesty, PaulEC and Snapseed 3 Quote
Chills Posted December 1, 2024 Posted December 1, 2024 5 hours ago, fde101 said: Sure, but that is not particularly relevant in the context of its use as a desktop operating system for people doing design work. The real question is not how many people are using Linux (in which case its embedded use in numerous products of all kinds likely gives it a total market share much larger than that of Windows), but rather how many people are using it in a capacity such that they would be likely to consider using the Affinity products. While that market segment may be virtually impossible to accurately gauge for numerous reasons, it is reasonably safe to assume that the "zero" point for it started at some point no earlier than the availability of a desktop environment capable of supporting such applications on the platform. Thus those first 7 years are largely irrelevant in this context. and you wonder why no one takes Linux Devotees seriously. Quote 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 ]
Alfred Posted December 1, 2024 Posted December 1, 2024 4 minutes ago, Chills said: and you wonder why no one takes Linux Devotees seriously. Well, no one except Linux devotees! Komatös and Circulus 1 1 Quote Alfred Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.5.1 (iPad 7th gen)
Chills Posted December 1, 2024 Posted December 1, 2024 3 minutes ago, Alfred said: Well, no one except Linux devotees! Quite, it is a religion. They believe all sorts of wild things. Amusingly, that somehow Linux and UNIX are connected. Just because they both have a POSIX API. It is like saying a Bently and a Trabant are similar because they both have 4 wheels and a blue paint job. Unix predates Linux and has a completely different architecture and no UNIX code in the Kernel. (The Linux Kernel is a complete shambles internally anyway). I started using Linux a couple of years after it first came out in the early 1990s, Though I had been using UNIX (also CPM, OS9, DR-Dos, MS-Dos, BITS,TOS, DR-GEM, and Sinclair) prior to that. I am still running two systems using Linux now. I also have Windows and OSX machines, as well as some systems running RTOS you won't have heard of. Quote 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 ]
Komatös Posted December 1, 2024 Posted December 1, 2024 15 minutes ago, Chills said: It is like saying a Bently and a Trabant are similar I celebrate this comparison! But unlike Linux, the Trabi has cult status. 😋 Quote MAC mini M4 | MacOS Sequoia 15.2 | 16 GB RAM | 256 GB SSD AMD Ryzen 7 5700X | INTEL Arc A770 LE 16 GB | 32 GB DDR4 3200MHz | Windows 11 Pro 24H2 (26100.2605) Affinity Suite V 2.5.7 & Beta 2.6 (latest) Interested in a free (selfhosted) PDF Solution? Have a look at Stirling PDF Ferengi Acquisition Rule No. 49: “A deal is a deal is a deal.”
Chills Posted December 1, 2024 Posted December 1, 2024 6 minutes ago, Komatös said: I celebrate this comparison! But unlike Linux, the Trabi has cult status. 😋 OT: so has the Citron 2CV with restored ones going for over £10,000!!! Which is nuts. (I changed on a program about them last night, I assume the Trabi's have a similar following) Komatös 1 Quote 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 ]
fde101 Posted December 1, 2024 Posted December 1, 2024 1 hour ago, Chills said: Amusingly, that somehow Linux and UNIX are connected. Just because they both have a POSIX API. No, UNIX and Linux are not "connected" in the sense of sharing a common code origin or of having a precisely identical kernel design. Yes, they are connected from the standpoint of UNIX having been the original pattern that the POSIX APIs were developed around in the first place and thus the pattern for most of the system calls and for the command line environment that a typical Linux environment presents to the user. Considering that the BSD systems are considered UNIX systems and that macOS is a certified UNIX system and that they have almost nothing in common with the original "research" UNIX that Linux does not also have in common with it, this is an overblown and pointless argument anyway - whether or not UNIX and Linux are "connected" is an interesting topic for a historian but one which is 100% irrelevant to this discussion. I am completely lost on why you keep circling back to this. Snapseed 1 Quote
Chills Posted December 1, 2024 Posted December 1, 2024 4 minutes ago, fde101 said: No, UNIX and Linux are not "connected" in the sense of sharing a common code origin or of having a precisely identical kernel design. It is not that they are " having a precisely identical kernel design" Linux and Unix have diametrically opposite architectures. This affect all of the OS and how it works, there is no similarity bar the API. There are a lot of POSIX OS out there https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POSIX some are certified for use on aircraft (I have worked with some of them) where Linux is forbidden because other than the API they have no similarities . Quote 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 ]
Peter Werner Posted December 2, 2024 Posted December 2, 2024 On 11/30/2024 at 11:27 PM, Wanesty said: earliest infos regarding iPadOS and release date seems to be in July 2018 I can't produce sources right now, but this is referring to interviews with Serif staff and leadership that were published before the iPad proof of concept versions were shown. The near infinite zoom and tiled rendering feature from their floating point precision rendering system in Designer seems to have come from this project. As far as I remember, the decision to develop an Adobe competitor on top of that engine was made then, and that was the start of Designer for Mac. But I'm sure someone from the dev team could give you a much more comprehensive answer. On 11/30/2024 at 11:27 PM, Wanesty said: could also be developers that worked on DrawPlus and were used to those technologies/frameworks. The Windows versions use mainly .NET for the system specific parts whereas the Plus range used C++. What you describe might just be as simple as some component of .NET Framework relying on a different DirectX version than for example the Affinity renderer. Unlike the Plus range, the Affinity apps use a shared core and everything was developed on top of that, most likely from scratch, judging from all the stack traces I have seen after something crashed. Also keep in mind that modern DirectX, Vulkan, Metal etc. wasn't even around or at least not used when the Plus range was in active development. On 11/30/2024 at 11:27 PM, Wanesty said: do you have any source of your 50:50 split? Again I cannot provide specific links off the top of my head, and I don't know how up to date that information is, but this has been what Adobe has communicated in the past about their overall user base. It might also vary quite a bit from region to region. As I mentioned in this thread before, Photoshop product manager John Nack has on his blog also stated that the reason for Adobe not to go to Linux was not a lack of a market or user demand, but that it would only shift part of their existing user base to Linux instead of generating new sales and expanding their market, which seems to have been their strategy for quite some time now ("Photoshop Extended" was probably the first overt attempt at this even before subscriptions). Which makes sense – you just have to keep subscribers happy enough to not cancel, but if you want to grow the profits, you need to instead invest your resources into features that attract new customers or sell additional products (more cloud storage, stock photos, …). Snapseed, Chills and Wanesty 3 Quote www.peterwerner.net
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