Affinity Suite V2 on Linux [ Wine ]

[ShadowDrakken]

Is there any chance of moving these changes (or a more universal implementation of them) upstream to WINE and Proton so that it isn't such a beast to get Affinity V2 working?

I followed multiple different guides, including this thread, and none of them are working on Zorin 17.2 (Ubuntu 22.04)
I can't get V1 or V2 running correctly (V1 can't write files) on WINE, Rum, or Bottles. And even running V2 in a Win10 VM it just crashes because there's no real video card (tried both VMWare Workstation Pro and Virtual Box).

We need a more universal solution, and while I wish that Serif would hear us I doubt Linux is even a blip on their radar. The tedium of making these things work is not something a non-technical user is EVER going to want to deal with. Hell even as a power user I don't want to deal with it.

[maxler]

Might aswell ask. i've followed the guide step by step and encounter an issue with the "../configure --prefix="$HOME/Documents/ElementalWarrior-wine/wine-install" --enable-archs=i386,x86_64" command. first it told me about missing packages, so i installed them. then i got the following error:

"configure: error: i386 PE cross-compiler not found.
This is an error since --enable-archs=i386 was requested."

then, i manually removed all the dependencies that Bazzite (the distro i use) told me came pre packaged from the dependencies command, THEN it looped me around and told me other packages like bison were "already requested", so i removed those. i installed the remaining dependencies and executed the configure command. same error, and i have no idea what went awry. could anyone enlighten me on the issue?

[Daegalus]

36 minutes ago, maxler said:

Might aswell ask. i've followed the guide step by step and encounter an issue with the "../configure --prefix="$HOME/Documents/ElementalWarrior-wine/wine-install" --enable-archs=i386,x86_64" command. first it told me about missing packages, so i installed them. then i got the following error:

"configure: error: i386 PE cross-compiler not found.
This is an error since --enable-archs=i386 was requested."

then, i manually removed all the dependencies that Bazzite (the distro i use) told me came pre packaged from the dependencies command, THEN it looped me around and told me other packages like bison were "already requested", so i removed those. i installed the remaining dependencies and executed the configure command. same error, and i have no idea what went awry. could anyone enlighten me on the issue?

So doing something like that can break your Bazzite installation. Immutable Distros have a different approach to compiling that makes it so you don't break your system or mess with ostree layers.

That solution is Distro box. Create an Arch or Fedora distrobox, and do the build in there. The resulting binary can then be moved to the right place on your Bazzite host system once done.

[maxler]

16 minutes ago, Daegalus said:

So doing something like that can break your Bazzite installation. Immutable Distros have a different approach to compiling that makes it so you don't break your system or mess with ostree layers.

That solution is Distro box. Create an Arch or Fedora distrobox, and do the build in there. The resulting binary can then be moved to the right place on your Bazzite host system once done.

now that you say that, i did do an arch install and a guy on a discord server guided me through the install. when it was finished, however, we ran into an issue were if i used gl to render, a second window that was on top of everything and didnt accept inputs would appear. on vulkan, the affinity window would become a black void. these happened when opening/creating files. got a clue on that? because even the guy that helped me had no idea

[Daegalus]

1 hour ago, maxler said:

now that you say that, i did do an arch install and a guy on a discord server guided me through the install. when it was finished, however, we ran into an issue were if i used gl to render, a second window that was on top of everything and didnt accept inputs would appear. on vulkan, the affinity window would become a black void. these happened when opening/creating files. got a clue on that? because even the guy that helped me had no idea

Did you make sure to only build within the distrobox? Once its built, you leave the arch distrobox, and go back to the host bazzite. Then do the rum steps from bazzite using the stuff you built under arch.

[maxler]

2 hours ago, Daegalus said:

Did you make sure to only build within the distrobox? Once its built, you leave the arch distrobox, and go back to the host bazzite. Then do the rum steps from bazzite using the stuff you built under arch.

i believe so, yes. the telltale sign for working within the box is that the command line text pre writing changes colour and content. example with a recent box i made:

 

but screw it, might aswell make a new box and try again. do i follow the same guide for a box? or do i have to follow something specific?

[affikaimasu]

Hi, I followed the guide but I'm not using rum, I just use a bash script to start Affinity. It exports the WINEPREFIX env var and ./AffinityWine/bin/wine /path/to/executable

I've ran into a problem where if I open an .svg, clicking on the svg will cause Affinity Designer to freeze.

If I open, then copy, the .svg into an already open document, it will freeze as well.

It's worth noting that when running any Affinity program for the first time, it will crash before displaying the activation window. Then it will skip the activation window altogether when ran subsequently.

Currently using Arch Linux. I've already tried winapps and rdp'ing into a VM manually, but the software runs very sluggishly this way.

Have there been no further developments on getting Affinity running properly on Linux? Also wouldn't it be better for ElementalWarrior's fixes to be merged to upstream?

[Pacific]

vcrun2022 solves exporting and saving crashes. @Wanesty

Edited December 12, 2024 by Pacific

[affikaimasu]

Now it happens that when I open a file, any file, and then click on any object, Affinity Designer would just freeze.

I'm at my wits' end, please somebody help.

I have also installed vcrun2015 and (never mind, 2015 conflicts with 2022) vcrun2022 if that helps. corefonts and dotnet48 are installed as well.

Edited December 13, 2024 by affikaimasu

[Ignore]

This might be a dumb question:

On startup affinity is notifying me that a new version is available (2.5.7) and when i click download it redirects me to the download page, where i can grab the newest .exe file.
But how do i install it?
Do i just have to call

rum affinity-photo3-wine9.13-part3 $HOME/.wineAffinity wine ~/Downloads/affinity-publisher-msi-2.5.7.exe

again, even if v2.5.3 is already installed?

I am hesitant because i don't want to break my installation since it is working more or less right now. I am new to linux and am just getting started in understanding how wine/rum is working.

 

On that note @Pacific:

• How do i install vcrun2022 in my wine instance?
  • Do i have to check if an older version of vcrun is installed?
    • If yes, do i need to remove it first?
  • Do i need to download it first and place it in a specific location?

I suspect calling

rum affinity-photo3-wine9.13-part3 $HOME/.wineAffinity winetricks --unattended vcrun2022

or something similar to this is needed to install it, but as i said before, i'm quite hesitant to just try it out out of fear of breaking something 🙃

Thanks for the help everyone!

[Pacific]

4 minutes ago, Ignore said:

This might be a dumb question:

On startup affinity is notifying me that a new version is available (2.5.7) and when i click download it redirects me to the download page, where i can grab the newest .exe file.
But how do i install it?
Do i just have to call

rum affinity-photo3-wine9.13-part3 $HOME/.wineAffinity wine ~/Downloads/affinity-publisher-msi-2.5.7.exe

again, even if v2.5.3 is already installed?

I am hesitant because i don't want to break my installation since it is working more or less right now. I am new to linux and am just getting started in understanding how wine/rum is working.

 

On that note @Pacific:

• How do i install vcrun2022 in my wine instance?
  • Do i have to check if an older version of vcrun is installed?
    • If yes, do i need to remove it first?
  • Do i need to download it first and place it in a specific location?

I suspect calling

rum affinity-photo3-wine9.13-part3 $HOME/.wineAffinity winetricks --unattended vcrun2022

or something similar to this is needed to install it, but as i said before, i'm quite hesitant to just try it out out of fear of breaking something 🙃

Thanks for the help everyone!

if you just followed the gude you just do,

rum affinity-photo3-wine9.13-part3 $HOME/.wineAffinity winetricks --unattended vcrun2022

and you can update by,

rum affinity-photo3-wine9.13-part3 $HOME/.wineAffinity wine [Path to the installer].exe

[Daegalus]

Also, if you copy your `.wineAfinity` to say `.wineAffinity2`, you can experiment with the upgrade and vcrun2022 without breaking your primary installation. Just use the new folder when running the commands. Or just use it as the backup folder Incase you need to revert.

[affikaimasu]

@Wanesty@ElementalWarriorcan any of you please help me?

[Ignore]

22 hours ago, Daegalus said:

Also, if you copy your `.wineAfinity` to say `.wineAffinity2`, you can experiment with the upgrade and vcrun2022 without breaking your primary installation. Just use the new folder when running the commands. Or just use it as the backup folder Incase you need to revert.

Great tip, thanks!

 

23 hours ago, Pacific said:

if you just followed the gude you just do,

rum affinity-photo3-wine9.13-part3 $HOME/.wineAffinity winetricks --unattended vcrun2022

and you can update by,

rum affinity-photo3-wine9.13-part3 $HOME/.wineAffinity wine [Path to the installer].exe

Works like a charm, thank you. And i can confirm that using vcrun2022 let's me export to .png without crashing!

[affikaimasu]

Am I invisible or something? I give up. Windows just works.

Edited December 14, 2024 by affikaimasu
f*** you all.

[Daegalus]

32 minutes ago, affikaimasu said:

Am I invisible or something? I give up. Windows just works.

No, but you are acting like an entitled asshole and expecting fast support for an issue that isn't easy to solve and behaves differently on every computer.

Wanesty and ElementalWarrior are busy people and have their own lives and priorities. Everything they do is in their free time and for the community, but they are not obligated to you. If you haven't noticed, they haven't messaged at all for a while.

Also ElementalWarrior has mentioned that his changes aren't easily upstreamable as they might break many other apps. It might be possible, but it would take time to get it just right.

Finally, have you considered using Rum, or Bottles, or any other means of setting it up? Each one has different success rates for people. I get great success using Bottles for my affinity, but not Heroic. Others are the opposite.

No one can guarantee it working on Linux for you, especially since Serif does nothing to make it easier for us. This is a long shot in the dark to begin with.

So maybe cool your jets. Linux is not perfect and I am not sure why you expect everything to work when trying to use Windows software on Linux. 

[breathless19]

On 12/12/2024 at 7:50 AM, Pacific said:

vcrun2022 solves exporting and saving crashes. @Wanesty

I can also confirm!  Thank you! 

Also, the updates went perfectly for me.  No issues at all. 

Does anyone know how to remove the "lessons" pop up that "shows on startup"?   Unchecking the box doesn't seem to help as it doesn't remember the setting change. 

2 hours ago, affikaimasu said:

Am I invisible or something? I give up. Windows just works.

You should abandon everything you've done and start over with an Arch distrobox container.   I know basically nothing about Linux and was able to get it to work with the help of someone else's instructions on making an Arch box earlier in the thread.   Go follow those instructions and chances are you will succeed.   

[rastarr]

I have all programs running pretty well except for one issue.

It seems that Settings are never saved and persistent on the next restart.

Is this due to a missing dependancy? Anyone else have this issue or provide some insight?

Using Bottles install from https://github.com/Twig6943/AffinityOnLinux/blob/main/Guides/Bottles/Guide.md

[Pacific]

7 hours ago, affikaimasu said:

Am I invisible or something? I give up. Windows just works.

Yeah use windows.

You haven't told anything helpful, you just shouting its not working. You haven't told your installation process, which distro I on or anything else and you expect everyone to just reply to you.

Clearly state your problem, try following the guide once, reinstall it, properly tell what is happening.

If you can't do that don't use Linux. Affinity is not on Linux anyway, shout at the affinity devs to support linux, not the people who try to make it work with wine for free.

[Pacific]

4 hours ago, breathless19 said:

I can also confirm!  Thank you! 

Also, the updates went perfectly for me.  No issues at all. 

Does anyone know how to remove the "lessons" pop up that "shows on startup"?   Unchecking the box doesn't seem to help as it doesn't remember the setting change. 

You should abandon everything you've done and start over with an Arch distrobox container.   I know basically nothing about Linux and was able to get it to work with the help of someone else's instructions on making an Arch box earlier in the thread.   Go follow those instructions and chances are you will succeed.   

 

1 hour ago, rastarr said:

I have all programs running pretty well except for one issue.

It seems that Settings are never saved and persistent on the next restart.

Is this due to a missing dependancy? Anyone else have this issue or provide some insight?

Using Bottles install from https://github.com/Twig6943/AffinityOnLinux/blob/main/Guides/Bottles/Guide.md

this might be the same issue of settings not saved.

[rastarr]

30 minutes ago, Pacific said:

 

this might be the same issue of settings not saved.

Yes that's right. settings don't get saved, as I asked about.

Note, projects and image exports do function correctly with vc2022 installed

 

@Wanesty @ElementalWarrior

[Pacific]

2 minutes ago, rastarr said:

Yes that's right. settings don't get saved, as I asked about

this happens for everyone i think

[affikaimasu]

9 hours ago, Daegalus said:

No, but you are acting like an entitled asshole and expecting fast support for an issue that isn't easy to solve and behaves differently on every computer.

I asked for help 3 days ago.

9 hours ago, Daegalus said:

Wanesty and ElementalWarrior are busy people and have their own lives and priorities. Everything they do is in their free time and for the community, but they are not obligated to you. If you haven't noticed, they haven't messaged at all for a while.

I could've at least been acknowledged by others. Every comment after mine was unrelated to my issue.

9 hours ago, Daegalus said:

Finally, have you considered using Rum, or Bottles, or any other means of setting it up? Each one has different success rates for people. I get great success using Bottles for my affinity, but not Heroic. Others are the opposite.

The results are the same for rum and bottles.

9 hours ago, Daegalus said:

No one can guarantee it working on Linux for you, especially since Serif does nothing to make it easier for us. This is a long shot in the dark to begin with.

So maybe cool your jets. Linux is not perfect and I am not sure why you expect everything to work when trying to use Windows software on Linux. 

I am perfectly aware. I am not sure where you got the idea that I expected it to work right away. I expected help.

7 hours ago, breathless19 said:

You should abandon everything you've done and start over with an Arch distrobox container.   I know basically nothing about Linux and was able to get it to work with the help of someone else's instructions on making an Arch box earlier in the thread.   Go follow those instructions and chances are you will succeed.   

I might try this later down the line, thank you. For now I'll just use Windows.

2 hours ago, Pacific said:

You haven't told anything helpful, you just shouting its not working. You haven't told your installation process, which distro I on or anything else and you expect everyone to just reply to you.

Yes I did. I stated in my very first post that I used Arch Linux, and that I followed the guide except for using rum, exporting env vars for the WINEPREFIX (and WINE path itself). I'll quote myself for you in case you missed it.

On 12/11/2024 at 10:11 PM, affikaimasu said:

Hi, I followed the guide but I'm not using rum, I just use a bash script to start Affinity. It exports the WINEPREFIX env var and ./AffinityWine/bin/wine /path/to/executable

I've ran into a problem where if I open an .svg, clicking on the svg will cause Affinity Designer to freeze.

If I open, then copy, the .svg into an already open document, it will freeze as well.

It's worth noting that when running any Affinity program for the first time, it will crash before displaying the activation window. Then it will skip the activation window altogether when ran subsequently.

Currently using Arch Linux. I've already tried winapps and rdp'ing into a VM manually, but the software runs very sluggishly this way.

Have there been no further developments on getting Affinity running properly on Linux? Also wouldn't it be better for ElementalWarrior's fixes to be merged to upstream?

Here it is. I don't know what more information you expected.

2 hours ago, Pacific said:

Clearly state your problem, try following the guide once, reinstall it, properly tell what is happening.

I did already.

2 hours ago, Pacific said:

If you can't do that don't use Linux. Affinity is not on Linux anyway, shout at the affinity devs to support linux, not the people who try to make it work with wine for free.

I will continue to use Linux, but not for Affinity software.

I'm already done with you.

[breathless19]

22 hours ago, Pacific said:

this happens for everyone i think

Ok, thanks for confirming.  At least its not just me 😀

 

Here is a potential temporary work around for the preferences not saving issue, taken from another site: 

"One issue with Affinity on Linux is that preferences don’t save properly, and no one knows why. The best option for now is to set important preferences (like OCIO config) on Windows, bring the config over from AppData/Roaming to the WINE bottle, and then change the XML as needed for any paths. Not ideal, but better then nothing."

[dkz]

Created my account just to send a big thank you to @Wanesty @ElementalWarrior and everyone else who has put effort into trying to make the Affinity suite usable on Linux. I'm running Photo and Publisher on openSUSE Tumbleweed within an Arch distrobox (shout out to the guide by @markusdd. It runs almost flawlessly for me, except for the known bugs such as no settings saved. With vcrun2022 I can export files from Photo without crashing.

That's all.

Peace, love and Merry Christmas! ❤️