Please consider Linux as a viable platform - Microsoft is bleeding users to Linux because of their choices.

[Nerve]

I would also like to request Linux support, with the caveat that it be prioritized through Wine/Proton. It is an exceptionally capable translation layer and I've been able to use many desktop applications and games via Wine/Proton. This would minimize the workload on Affinity by providing a well-defined set of system dependencies, in the form of what is essentially a stable Windows VM target, which would take a minimum of extra legwork beyond the current Windows compatibility. If you wanted to go the extra mile, you could package a preconfigured Wine prefix together with the Affinity applications and throw that into an AppImage that will work on just about any Linux distribution with no fuss.

Edited June 20 by Nerve

[fde101]

18 hours ago, Laura Ess said:

How is that relevant?

Where are your preference files?

Where is the downloaded content from the Serif site, and how does support instruct you to navigate there to fix something when they suspect it has become corrupt?

If the application itself has become corrupt, how do you remove and reinstall it?

 

Online help is generally useful within the application, and I agree that it is not a big deal there.  The problem is that support sometimes needs to work outside the application using tools provided by the operating system to deal with issues that the application itself might not address, and the available tools, how to find them in the menus, and so on, can vary quite a bit depending on the distribution, on what version of what desktop environment is being used, on user customization of the environment, and so on.  Users can customize closed-source platforms somewhat as well, but not nearly to the same degree.  Even at the command line, depending on the user's $PATH, custom shell functions and aliases, and how such things might have been modified, not to mention which shell is used (bash, tcsh, fish, etc. all have different syntax from each other), there could be differences - again, possible in Windows or macOS, but much less common.

[yesreallylinux]

2 hours ago, fde101 said:

Where are your preference files?

Wherever Serif wants to put it inside these folders (probably a "preferences" folder):

• ~/.var/com.serif.affinity.Photo
• ~/.var/com.serif.affinity.Designer
• ~/.var/com.serif.affinity.Publisher

Quote

Where is the downloaded content from the Serif site, and how does support instruct you to navigate there to fix something when they suspect it has become corrupt?

Wherever Serif wants to put it inside these folders (probably a "downloaded_content" folder):

• ~/.var/com.serif.affinity.Photo
• ~/.var/com.serif.affinity.Designer
• ~/.var/com.serif.affinity.Publisher

To get there:

• cd ~/.var/com.serif.affinity.Photo

I guess the simplest way would be to just remove it and re-install it:

• rm -r downloaded_content/

You could direct a user there using their graphical file manager, too. You could just say:

"Navigate to the .var/com.serif.affinity.Photo folder inside your home directory and delete the downloaded_content folder. Re-download your downloaded files."

Quote

If the application itself has become corrupt, how do you remove and reinstall it?

1. flatpak uninstall --delete-data ~/.var/com.serif.affinity.Photo
2. flatpak install com.serif.affinity.Photo

Quote

Even at the command line, depending on the user's $PATH, custom shell functions and aliases, and how such things might have been modified, not to mention which shell is used (bash, tcsh, fish, etc. all have different syntax from each other)

Flatpak encapsulates all data inside of the ~/.var/APP_NAME folder. I don't think syntax between shells is so different that it changes how you invoke and use the options for a program on the command line. None of the commands you'd expect to tell people to use would be lines and lines of bash-isms.

[Dunestorm]

On 6/19/2024 at 12:00 AM, fde101 said:

It is likely to be a contention point but in and of itself is not a major obstacle.  As you pointed out, Flatpak is one way to get around that; there are others.

One example of a bigger obstacle is likely to be training support personnel on a platform that many people customize past the point of recognition, such that support personnel trying to help people find their way around may have no idea where to tell them to look for things.

Serif provides product support, not OS support. This is a moot point.

They’d only have to support a standardised package format such as Flatpak and that’s it.

Edited June 21 by Dunestorm

[Alfred]

31 minutes ago, Dunestorm said:

This is a mute point.

<pedantry>
You mean ‘moot’ (/muːt/). If if were mute (/mjuːt/), you wouldn’t hear anyone talking about it!
</pedantry>

[Dunestorm]

24 minutes ago, Alfred said:

<pedantry>
You mean ‘moot’ (/muːt/). If if were mute (/mjuːt/), you wouldn’t hear anyone talking about it!
</pedantry>

Thank you, I’ve just corrected my auto-correct’s work of art 😂

[dam]

Please Canva make it happen 

[fde101]

17 hours ago, yesreallylinux said:

To get there:

• cd ~/.var/com.serif.affinity.Photo

Most users would be working from the graphical interface rather than the command line, so the question becomes how to access a hidden folder from the linux GUI the user is working with.

 

18 hours ago, yesreallylinux said:

Flatpak encapsulates all data inside of the ~/.var/APP_NAME folder.

Sometimes under /var/lib/flatpak instead.

[anto]

29 minutes ago, fde101 said:

Most users would be working from the graphical interface rather than the command line, so the question becomes how to access a hidden folder from the linux GUI the user is working with.

Ctrl+H

[fde101]

2 hours ago, anto said:

Ctrl+H

Not always.

 

Examples:

In older versions of KDE, it was Control+Period.

In GWorkspace, Control+H hides the application (much like Command+H does in macOS).

 

Granted these specific options are not as likely to be choices of Linux users who are less technically inclined, but it does help to demonstrate the point: there are more variations to account for than there are on the other major platforms.

[myclay]

9 hours ago, fde101 said:

Most users would be working from the graphical interface rather than the command line, so the question becomes how to access a hidden folder from the linux GUI the user is working with.

For my purposes on Arch Linux where access to hidden Folders and Files where needed, I found way to circumvent this with just the GUI.

Open the File Explorer (Dolphin)> click on the Burger icon ≡  > enable Show Hidden Files.
Then you can go to the hidden files and folders you need to see/edit.

To quickly find hidden files, I recommend to install FSearch and include the hidden folders into the Database of Fsearch.

 

 

[fde101]

6 hours ago, myclay said:

For my purposes on Arch Linux

Bingo.  For your purposes, on a particular distribution...

 

6 hours ago, myclay said:

Open the File Explorer (Dolphin)

... using a specific file management tool.

 

Not everyone who is using Linux is using the same file manager, or the same desktop environment.

For *most* of the more likely desktop environments and their standard file managers, Control+H works, and that hamburger menu is an option for those using KDE Plasma or some other environment that borrows Dolphin (like we apparently both are, though in may case under Fedora, at least on my primary Linux desktop - I have WindowMaker set up on another one) - but not for all desktop environments, and different desktop environments can be used even on the same distribution.  Some distributions let you pick which one you want when you are installing, while others have a default that the user can change later.

[anto]

4 minutes ago, fde101 said:

Bingo.  For your purposes, on a particular distribution...

 

... using a specific file management tool.

 

Not everyone who is using Linux is using the same file manager, or the same desktop environment.

For *most* of the more likely desktop environments and their standard file managers, Control+H works, and that hamburger menu is an option for those using KDE Plasma or some other environment that borrows Dolphin (like we apparently both are, though in may case under Fedora, at least on my primary Linux desktop - I have WindowMaker set up on another one) - but not for all desktop environments, and different desktop environments can be used even on the same distribution.  Some distributions let you pick which one you want when you are installing, while others have a default that the user can change later.

Compare different versions of Windows, and each one has different settings. In new versions, you need to look for where, what, and how.
Those who want to solve a problem look for ways to solve it, those who don't want to solve it look for reasons.

[fde101]

4 minutes ago, anto said:

Compare different versions of Windows, and each one has different settings

Granted, but most places will support 2-3 versions of Windows and the most recent versions of macOS and thus have a limited range of things to look for.  There are hundreds of Linux distributions with dozens of desktop environments.  Even if you limit the choice of distributions that are supported you still have the possibility of users using desktop environments you never even heard of, and telling users, "yeah we'll support Linux, but only if you are using a stock installation of KDE or Gnome" is not going to go well with many users.

Note that I agree that it would be good if Serif changed their minds and supported Linux (I don't think they will any time soon, but who knows - it could happen eventually); I am not arguing against that, but rather pointing out some of the concerns that I suspect would be raised which complicate the inclusion of Linux compared to the other major platforms.

Sure, there are ways to handle this.  "We provide a flatpak of our software and field bug requests if the problems can be reproduced under either KDE or Gnome running under Fedora or Ubuntu.  Our support engineers will make a best effort attempt to help with problems, but if you are using an environment other than KDE or Gnome, you are expected to know your way around, or be prepared to execute commands at the command line in a terminal window, which you are expected to know how to open on your system."

It is a bit more complicated than to say "We support macOS versions 11 and newer and Windows versions 10 and 11."

[yesreallylinux]

13 minutes ago, fde101 said:

Granted, but most places will support 2-3 versions of Windows and the most recent versions of macOS and thus have a limited range of things to look for.  There are hundreds of Linux distributions with dozens of desktop environments.  Even if you limit the choice of distributions that are supported you still have the possibility of users using desktop environments you never even heard of, and telling users, "yeah we'll support Linux, but only if you are using a stock installation of KDE or Gnome" is not going to go well with many users.

Note that I agree that it would be good if Serif changed their minds and supported Linux (I don't think they will any time soon, but who knows - it could happen eventually); I am not arguing against that, but rather pointing out some of the concerns that I suspect would be raised which complicate the inclusion of Linux compared to the other major platforms.

Sure, there are ways to handle this.  "We provide a flatpak of our software and field bug requests if the problems can be reproduced under either KDE or Gnome running under Fedora or Ubuntu.  Our support engineers will make a best effort attempt to help with problems, but if you are using an environment other than KDE or Gnome, you are expected to know your way around, or be prepared to execute commands at the command line in a terminal window, which you are expected to know how to open on your system."

It is a bit more complicated than to say "We support macOS versions 11 and newer and Windows versions 10 and 11."

I don't think you're wrong, but I also think this particular problem is small potatoes: just give users commands that will work anywhere.

I don't see what's wrong with giving users commands. It's just a fact that Linux versions are never the most-used versions and Linux users are willing to jump through more hoops and adapt to their software than the other way around.

We use Linux. We're used to kludge.

[anto]

33 minutes ago, fde101 said:

Granted, but most places will support 2-3 versions of Windows and the most recent versions of macOS and thus have a limited range of things to look for.  There are hundreds of Linux distributions with dozens of desktop environments.  Even if you limit the choice of distributions that are supported you still have the possibility of users using desktop environments you never even heard of, and telling users, "yeah we'll support Linux, but only if you are using a stock installation of KDE or Gnome" is not going to go well with many users.

Note that I agree that it would be good if Serif changed their minds and supported Linux (I don't think they will any time soon, but who knows - it could happen eventually); I am not arguing against that, but rather pointing out some of the concerns that I suspect would be raised which complicate the inclusion of Linux compared to the other major platforms.

Sure, there are ways to handle this.  "We provide a flatpak of our software and field bug requests if the problems can be reproduced under either KDE or Gnome running under Fedora or Ubuntu.  Our support engineers will make a best effort attempt to help with problems, but if you are using an environment other than KDE or Gnome, you are expected to know your way around, or be prepared to execute commands at the command line in a terminal window, which you are expected to know how to open on your system."

It is a bit more complicated than to say "We support macOS versions 11 and newer and Windows versions 10 and 11."

Initially, Reaper also released a Linux version, but with a note: "Linux builds are experimental and unsupported."
However, it worked as smoothly as the versions on supported platforms.

[myclay]

2 hours ago, fde101 said:

Bingo.  For your purposes, on a particular distribution...
... using a specific file management tool.
Not everyone who is using Linux is using the same file manager, or the same desktop environment.

It´s the exact same configuration (hardware/software), which is on ~3-4 million devices of the to me available customer base.
The given explanation is with preinstalled programs - as vanilla as you can imagine. It also has like you described the CTRL+H shortcut.

[LinuxMint]

On 6/15/2024 at 9:43 PM, yesreallylinux said:

If we want to get into more domain-specific data, the Steam hardware survey has Linux at 2.32% for last month while macOS is at 1.47% and Windows claims the rest. And obviously the StackOverflow survey has Linux, macOS, and Windows share divvied up pretty evenly.

 

 

 

Steam survey is decent but there's no way to trigger a steam survey when you switch to linux. It seems pretty random on when you get the survey. I've done that survey almost once a year I would say for 5 years now, but since I switched to linux I haven't gotten it once yet. So it's not entirely accurate.

[yesreallylinux]

3 minutes ago, LinuxMint said:

Steam survey is decent but there's no way to trigger a steam survey when you switch to linux. It seems pretty random on when you get the survey. I've done that survey almost once a year I would say for 5 years now, but since I switched to linux I haven't gotten it once yet. So it's not entirely accurate.

I've gotten it three times. Random is good. It means you get a decent variance in sample size, which errs toward the more accurate.

[Laura Ess]

Not everyone on Linux is a gamer, and on Steam.

[yesreallylinux]

38 minutes ago, Laura Ess said:

Not everyone on Linux is a gamer, and on Steam.

Certainly not, but it's the source of one of only two semi-reliable market share statistics I could find.

[Frozen Death Knight]

I found this comment on one of Canva's videos.

 

So here are the links for people who want to contact Canva directly about supporting Linux.

canva.com/help/get-in-touch/general-feedback/

m.me/canva

canva.com/help

This is probably the best opportunity for people using Linux to make our voices heard and that there is in fact a demand for Linux support on Affinity. I'll at least try my best and send my feedback over about there being a need for these products. It would be a shame to have to part with my work software after having used it for the last 7 years.

[pixelstuff]

39 minutes ago, Frozen Death Knight said:

I found this comment on one of Canva's videos.

 

So here are the links for people who want to contact Canva directly about supporting Linux.

canva.com/help/get-in-touch/general-feedback/

m.me/canva

canva.com/help

This is probably the best opportunity for people using Linux to make our voices heard and that there is in fact a demand for Linux support on Affinity. I'll at least try my best and send my feedback over about there being a need for these products. It would be a shame to have to part with my work software after having used it for the last 7 years.

Strangely all of your links go to Youtube.

[Frozen Death Knight]

8 hours ago, pixelstuff said:

Strangely all of your links go to Youtube.

Yeah, I fixed it now. I copied the text directly from that YouTube comment and somehow the link had YouTube URLs built into the links.

[Gokul Balram]

On 6/21/2024 at 12:09 AM, Nerve said:

I would also like to request Linux support, with the caveat that it be prioritized through Wine/Proton. It is an exceptionally capable translation layer and I've been able to use many desktop applications and games via Wine/Proton. This would minimize the workload on Affinity by providing a well-defined set of system dependencies, in the form of what is essentially a stable Windows VM target, which would take a minimum of extra legwork beyond the current Windows compatibility. If you wanted to go the extra mile, you could package a preconfigured Wine prefix together with the Affinity applications and throw that into an AppImage that will work on just about any Linux distribution with no fuss.

Yeah honestly, this in itself would be a lot less work for the devs, but this leads me to wonder, does it not already work through Wine/Proton?