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

[deeds]

I often wonder how many fewer greenhouse gases would be emitted if all the world's Linux users simply used Windows or MacOS for creativity.

 

 

 

[yesreallylinux]

44 minutes ago, deeds said:

I often wonder how many fewer greenhouse gases would be emitted if all the world's Linux users simply used Windows or MacOS for creativity.

 

 

 

Well, it's probably still less than all the greenhouse gases all the Windows AI stuff is emitting...

[Frozen Death Knight]

6 hours ago, Gokul Balram said:

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?

It doesn't. Tried it multiple times and it is not able to run the latest version of V2. From what I learned from a coder I know who helped me out during install, there are some Windows dependencies that aren't available on Linux which makes it significantly harder if not impossible as of now to run Affinity through Wine like a regular software.

Also, even if it did work there is no guarantee for it to work long terms, which is why having official Linux support would be crucial for the longevity of using Affinity.

I suggest sending feedback to Canva through those links I posted on the last page about Linux support for Affinity. It's the best opportunity we have as of now.

[LilJ]

I just launch a group by for linux version, we need your help!
 

 

[slizgi]

Considering all the hot water that Adobe is boiling right now, and how people are not happy about the direction that Microsoft is going with W11 and further, Linux will grow, and the opportunity is there, it is viable right now - no probably not, but in the long run of being the best and first pro suit for Linux, maybe it is... Maybe...
I moved to Linux this year, yea there is learning curve, but it is way better how I remember it from ~2008.
Some things work under Wine/Lutris/Bottles as w win emulation, some don't. Some win apps have Linux releases, DaVinci Resolve works, Substance Painter works (in distrobox tho), 3DCoat works, Maya works, so there are pro and paid programs that are just fine.
The question is will the today's average Linux user buy Affinity instead of using Gimp, Inkscape, Krita, no probably not.
But pro people would, pro people would also use Adobe on Linux, but that will not happen because of Microsoft and Apple lobbing to not do so.
However, if I can be honest I am guessing that affinity might be not even happy that they have windows release (cost to profit ratio), all that suit was created for apple, and now it is backported, I doubt it was ever designed under the hood to be a multiplatform app.
For me, it would be nice if Affinity suit will be able to run in emulation in bottles/lutris etc. and that would be just enough for many people.
And now it is Canva, and I don't know, I don't trust them for now, future will tell of course... but I have that feeling that Canva is Adobe Jr. growing quite fast...

[Frozen Death Knight]

7 hours ago, slizgi said:

Considering all the hot water that Adobe is boiling right now, and how people are not happy about the direction that Microsoft is going with W11 and further, Linux will grow, and the opportunity is there, it is viable right now - no probably not, but in the long run of being the best and first pro suit for Linux, maybe it is... Maybe...
I moved to Linux this year, yea there is learning curve, but it is way better how I remember it from ~2008.
Some things work under Wine/Lutris/Bottles as w win emulation, some don't. Some win apps have Linux releases, DaVinci Resolve works, Substance Painter works (in distrobox tho), 3DCoat works, Maya works, so there are pro and paid programs that are just fine.
The question is will the today's average Linux user buy Affinity instead of using Gimp, Inkscape, Krita, no probably not.
But pro people would, pro people would also use Adobe on Linux, but that will not happen because of Microsoft and Apple lobbing to not do so.
However, if I can be honest I am guessing that affinity might be not even happy that they have windows release (cost to profit ratio), all that suit was created for apple, and now it is backported, I doubt it was ever designed under the hood to be a multiplatform app.
For me, it would be nice if Affinity suit will be able to run in emulation in bottles/lutris etc. and that would be just enough for many people.
And now it is Canva, and I don't know, I don't trust them for now, future will tell of course... but I have that feeling that Canva is Adobe Jr. growing quite fast...

Well, there are a lot of PCs out there that won't even be able to run Windows 11 even if people wanted to. Either they will need to be thrown into a dump (which would be stupid if they still work), or they will have to install Linux once Windows 10 becomes too unstable. I know which option I would take if I was a casual user at least. Heck, even though I have no issues running Windows 11 I would rather skip that release entirely rather than force myself to use something that is worse than Windows 10 in a lot of ways.

As for the professional field, yes, there is definitely a market for it on Linux. I personally know a few professionals who use Linux, one guy being from India who works in the animation industry and has done work for big companies such a Disney. He told me that besides a couple of PCs that run Windows because of Photoshop, everything else is run on Linux only. They all use Gimp and/or Krita because those are the only options available for their regular workstations while they do CG work in Substance, Maya, Blender, Houdini, etc. Pretty sure these companies would invest in Affinity licenses if the software were available on Linux and offered better features than the open source alternatives, which in regards to Gimp I would definitely say would be a massive upgrade.

So the market is out there. It's mostly a matter of being able to reach out and make sure the products are solid for production work.

[woo]

On 6/14/2024 at 6:06 AM, RNKLN said:

This conversation started with the position that Windows was bleeding users to Linux. I'd be curious to know what source was used. I've checked with Statcounter. Linux on desktop has gone up a little bit, in the past year, but not as much as Windows (which certainly isn't bleeding), according to Statcounter. Even if you assume that what is reported as Unknown in real life is Linux the market share is well below 10% and not really going up. 

These analytics are not true market share. This data was collected by looking at what platform users visit websites from.

If you look at what Linux is used for, it's mainly productive activities. The average windows user(in my opinion) is more likely to be surfing the web, visiting websites, and contributing to growing their statistics more.

But that also could be the wrong assumption. Linux users may use their computers more, so they have more visits and their real market share is lower than those statics show.

But, if we are using statcounter as an indicator of market share, and we want to assume market share is the driving factor for supporting a platform. Why is there an iPad app and not Linux? All tablets(ios and android) has a smaller market share than Linux does according to statcounter.

Obviously that last paragraph is a bit fallacious, there's real issues with that point. In order to convert someone from adobe you do need that iPad app for a lot of people.

I'm not really sure what my point is here, other than that market share and Statcounter are not a good indicator of why Linux isn't supported or shouldn't be.

Maybe one that should be looked into is blenders annual report. Blender reported around 600,000 downloads on Linux in 2022, with a 120% increase from 2021. Linux accounted for 3.5% of their 2022 downloads.

Affinity currently serves 3 million users, assuming the number they give is purchasers. If affinity got that same 3.5% that's 90,000 users.

If they just sold the $35 sale price to each of those users that's still millions in revenue.

Even without a native version, just a wine based version, that isn't even advertised as a version and a "use at your own risk" affinity would quickly become the sole recommendation to Linux users.

[FredDCS]

Given the fact Microsoft is as bad as Adobe, a lot of people are migrating from Windows to Linux.

So there is going to be a new crowd of Linux users, who are not in it because it's free as in beer, but free as in freedom.

With that, will you release a linux version?

[pixelstuff]

3 hours ago, woo said:

Maybe one that should be looked into is blenders annual report. Blender reported around 600,000 downloads on Linux in 2022, with a 120% increase from 2021. Linux accounted for 3.5% of their 2022 downloads.

Affinity currently serves 3 million users, assuming the number they give is purchasers. If affinity got that same 3.5% that's 90,000 users.

If they just sold the $35 sale price to each of those users that's still millions in revenue.

Even without a native version, just a wine based version, that isn't even advertised as a version and a "use at your own risk" affinity would quickly become the sole recommendation to Linux users.

It would be interesting to know if Davinci Resolve has a similar ratio on Linux.

[Petar Petrenko]

1 hour ago, FredDCS said:

Given the fact Microsoft is as bad as Adobe, a lot of people are migrating from Windows to Linux.

So, what about Acrobat among others? In our workflow we use some apps together with Affinity and Adobe apps AFAIK do not work on LINUX. And if we don't have all apps we need, it is not a good idea to jump to LINUX.

[wonderings]

40 minutes ago, Petar Petrenko said:

So, what about Acrobat among others? In our workflow we use some apps together with Affinity and Adobe apps AFAIK do not work on LINUX. And if we don't have all apps we need, it is not a good idea to jump to LINUX.

Linux users constantly talk and say how people are jumping ship from Adobe, Windows and Mac OS. Of course it is not true. People are leaving Windows 11 and going to Windows 10 more then they are going to Linux. Adobe is growing month after month, year after year. According to Linux users, Linux has been at the verge of becoming mainstream for the last 20 years. Of course that is not happening and not going to happen anytime soon, or at all. 

[kelement]

1 hour ago, wonderings said:

Linux users constantly talk and say how people are jumping ship from Adobe, Windows and Mac OS. Of course it is not true. People are leaving Windows 11 and going to Windows 10 more then they are going to Linux. Adobe is growing month after month, year after year. According to Linux users, Linux has been at the verge of becoming mainstream for the last 20 years. Of course that is not happening and not going to happen anytime soon, or at all. 

Linux has been getting much better and Windows much worse. I have been a major Windows fanboy for my entire adult life, during which time I professionally serviced and managed Windows machines exclusively.

I am an expert at lobotomizing the OS to remove and block its spyware, but this has finally become too onerous. Over the past few weeks I have migrated three machines to various Linux distros.

KDE Plasma is so good I don't feel as though I have lost anything. In fact, some functionality has been drastically improved thanks to the infinite configurability of Linux.

One of the machines I put Linux on is a brand new Zenbook Duo with two displays and a bunch of bells and whistles. I was able to get everything to work (albeit after trying many different distros).

Linux is absolutely going to take more desktop marketshare from Windows. There was a time when Internet Explorer had almost the enitre market too, but now it doesn't even exist. Open source based browsers are the standard now.

[yesreallylinux]

5 hours ago, Petar Petrenko said:

So, what about Acrobat among others? In our workflow we use some apps together with Affinity and Adobe apps AFAIK do not work on LINUX. And if we don't have all apps we need, it is not a good idea to jump to LINUX.

Adobe Acrobat Reader was the first app Adobe ported to Linux over a decade ago, followed by Flash, I think. They didn't keep it up, for whatever reason. Nowadays, Adobe Acrobat is probably the most fully-featured of the webapps Adobe makes available for all OSes, like Linux and ChromeOS. You can sign PDFs digitally, edit text, re-order pages; basically anything you'd want to do with a PDF in Adobe Acrobat DC on the webapp.

There's also the Lightroom, Photoshop, and Illustrator webapps, which have varying degrees of functionality available. I can only see them continuing to bring more of their apps and more functionality to the web.

For my purposes (mainly simple collaboration with other's files), it works well enough, minus After Effects and inDesign. If you rely on Affinity and not just Adobe, though, then making the jump to Linux is more challenging.

[Petar Petrenko]

6 hours ago, yesreallylinux said:

Adobe Acrobat Reader was the first app Adobe ported to Linux over a decade ago

I am interested in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC, not Reader.

BTW, what LINUX distribution would anyone recommend?

[yesreallylinux]

3 minutes ago, Petar Petrenko said:

I am interested in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC, not Reader.

BTW, what LINUX distribution would anyone recommend?

The point is moot, anyway, since Adobe stopped releasing it for Linux. The acrobat webapp has essentially everything you'd expect to find in the desktop application, so that's a good option.

Ubuntu is fine.

[anto]

50 minutes ago, Petar Petrenko said:

I am interested in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC, not Reader.

 

You can try Qoppa PDF Studio Pro 2024. It has color separation tool. It is free with watermarks.

There is also version for Linux.

https://www.qoppa.com/pdfstudio/download/

Also you can try PDFgear. For Linux there is only online version.

https://www.pdfgear.com/edit-pdf/

[slizgi]

2 hours ago, Petar Petrenko said:

I am interested in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC, not Reader.

BTW, what LINUX distribution would anyone recommend?

I moved to Fedora, to have the perfect balance between being stable and relatively fresh. If you care about stability, probably Debian, but because of that forget about the newest things. I was thinking about VanillaOS, but they are uncertain because it is mall team, already overdue release of 2.0. Would maybe pick Ubuntu Studio, but whole Ubuntu family didn't adapt to Plasma 6 with latest LTS so, no, thank you.

I am Win user since ~95, I moved through 95 in school, and from 98 to 11 on my own PCs, tried mac for just a tiny bit (I really don't like macOS UI/UX choices), and tried Linux few times also, it was meh or bad in the past, but no? Now it is a different story in my opinion, if you just need a system for web, mail and just everyday stuff, I really don't see a reason these days why people will pick Windows.

[Petar Petrenko]

5 minutes ago, slizgi said:

if you just need a system for web, mail and just everyday stuff, I really don't see a reason these days why people will pick Windows.

I use Affinity studio for pre-press and design, so I would like a LINUX distribution that will suite my needs.

[Dusd]

I've been watching / lurking on various Linux discussions on the Forum here the past few years.

And to be honest, i would be already more than Happy when the affinity Suite would simply run on with wine on Linux with at least comparable speed and stability.
That alone would be more than enough for me to upgrade my old v1 Licence.

Because the "alternatives" that are existing right now may be very powerful but also render complex drawings very slowly (oh, hi Inkscape!) or are a bit outdated in terms of usability (Hey Scribus!).

It's not that those software can't get the job done and that they are a nighmare to use, far from it.
But truth to be told, the Affinity Suite is far, far faster in terms of getting good results, work flow and rendering.

There is nothing comparable to it on the olde Penguin.

My hopes for anything going into a native direction are completely zero at this point.

Sorry for my mini rant, i'll return to the regular lurking of Linux related posts here!

Edited July 11 by Dusd

[Frozen Death Knight]

10 hours ago, Petar Petrenko said:

I am interested in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC, not Reader.

BTW, what LINUX distribution would anyone recommend?

I'm running Linux Mint personally. It's basically a branch off of Ubuntu, which is branched off of Debian. The Debian tree of Linux is pretty stable, well documented, and has a bunch of software support out of the box, so a lot of solutions you find within that family tree will likely work on either distro if you need to find solutions.

To best explain the main differences between Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and PopOS (another branch off of Ubuntu) it would be that there are different packages for installing software on some of them (i.e. Mint and the rest use Flatpaks that are more universal across most Linux distributions and Snap being proprietary to Ubuntu), the desktop environments being run on different infrastructures, and how much community driven vs commercially driven each are.

Ubuntu is the most commercial one because of its own proprietary systems and having some telemetry features that are luckily opt in. It also looks and behaves a bit closer to Mac than it does Windows. Linux Mint is more community driven that strives for a smooth experience moving from Windows to Linux, which is why it looks and behaves a lot like it out of the box, thus making it an excellent jumping on point for trying out Linux. PopOS is also a popular community driven choice that is a bit more modern looking while doing some of its own thing. Debian is basically as vanilla Linux as you can get and is community driven as well.

Just remember that picking a distro family is more important than the individual distro, but because of the nature of Linux you can install and customise any of these Linux distros to your liking, even going so far as to make one look and behave like another if you know what you are doing. I would suggest trying Linux Mint Cinnamon if you are a Windows user, but nothing wrong with trying Ubuntu either. It is the most popular Linux distro after all regardless of some controversies surrounding it over the years.

[pixelstuff]

1 hour ago, Frozen Death Knight said:

I'm running Linux Mint personally. It's basically a branch off of Ubuntu, which is branched off of Debian. The Debian tree of Linux is pretty stable, well documented, and has a bunch of software support out of the box, so a lot of solutions you find within that family tree will likely work on either distro if you need to find solutions.

To best explain the main differences between Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and PopOS (another branch off of Ubuntu) it would be that there are different packages for installing software on some of them (i.e. Mint and the rest use Flatpaks that are more universal across most Linux distributions and Snap being proprietary to Ubuntu), the desktop environments being run on different infrastructures, and how much community driven vs commercially driven each are.

Ubuntu is the most commercial one because of its own proprietary systems and having some telemetry features that are luckily opt in. It also looks and behaves a bit closer to Mac than it does Windows. Linux Mint is more community driven that strives for a smooth experience moving from Windows to Linux, which is why it looks and behaves a lot like it out of the box, thus making it an excellent jumping on point for trying out Linux. PopOS is also a popular community driven choice that is a bit more modern looking while doing some of its own thing. Debian is basically as vanilla Linux as you can get and is community driven as well.

Just remember that picking a distro family is more important than the individual distro, but because of the nature of Linux you can install and customise any of these Linux distros to your liking, even going so far as to make one look and behave like another if you know what you are doing. I would suggest trying Linux Mint Cinnamon if you are a Windows user, but nothing wrong with trying Ubuntu either. It is the most popular Linux distro after all regardless of some controversies surrounding it over the years.

I tried Ubuntu recently and it seems like they are actively trying to make  apps harder to install if they aren't released in the Ubuntu Snap store. Linux Mint on the other hand still supports double clicking on a *.deb file and installing. Linux Mint does seem to be a closer Windows like experience than Ubuntu.

[Petar Petrenko]

3 hours ago, Frozen Death Knight said:

I would suggest trying Linux Mint Cinnamon if you are a Windows user

Yes, I am, but also work on Mac. So, some LINUX similar to Mac GUI?

[Frozen Death Knight]

On 7/11/2024 at 9:58 PM, Petar Petrenko said:

Yes, I am, but also work on Mac. So, some LINUX similar to Mac GUI?

From what I understand GNOME based desktops are the most like MacOS with some Linux distros likes Zorin OS apparently being pretty similar to Mac out of the box. Ubuntu can apparently be customised to behave more like MacOS like this video explains it.

That being said, I know that Linux Mint Cinnamon can be modified to have some similarities to MacOS, like the close/maximise/minimise buttons being in the left upper corner instead of the right one and more. Ubuntu seems like a pretty safe bet for you however.

[RoseTinted]

4 hours ago, Frozen Death Knight said:

From what I understand GNOME based desktops are the most like MacOS with some Linux distros likes Zorin OS apparently being pretty similar to Mac out of the box. Ubuntu can apparently be customised to behave more like MacOS like this video explains it.

That being said, I know that on Linux Mint Cinnamon can be modified to have some similarities to MacOS, like the close/maximise/minimise buttons being in the left upper corner instead of the right one and more. Ubuntu seems like a pretty safe bet for you however.

I have Linux Mint and use it alongside my Macs. I do have it set so that it uses those close/maximise/minimise buttons on the left and as the coloured dots just like MacOS. In fact the window colours and style matches MacOS as well. All of this was easy to set from the tools which come with Mint.

A word of caution though for new Linux users coming from Mac is that although you can make Linux look and behave like MacOS it will never be quite the same. There will be annoying little things which are different and I found it easier if Linux doesn't look too much like a Mac so that I adjust to the different system.

Something which occurred to me yesterday while sorting out a mess made by another commercial software on my Macs (I used Linux to look at my drives over the network at home). Last weekend I bought an old book on Digital Photography from 2011 and realised that the way things worked then is just how Linux works today for photo management. I use Pix for browsing my library then launch GIMP from there which invokes Rawtherapee as a RAW developer. This is an environment Affinity Photo would fit into nicely if it were available.

 

[Frozen Death Knight]

On 7/11/2024 at 7:49 PM, pixelstuff said:

I tried Ubuntu recently and it seems like they are actively trying to make  apps harder to install if they aren't released in the Ubuntu Snap store. Linux Mint on the other hand still supports double clicking on a *.deb file and installing. Linux Mint does seem to be a closer Windows like experience than Ubuntu.

Snap packages and some of its other forced on features are what make Ubuntu controversial. From my understanding Snaps are somewhat slower than other packaging methods and Flatpaks are now seen as the future going forward for making software able to run on basically any Linux distro out of the box, thus making Ubuntu the black sheep. Flatpaks aren't fully flawless either, but when the format solves so many technical issues it makes Ubuntu's refusal to support it a pretty big downside.

Linux Mint basically removed all of Ubuntu's controversial features and has focused a lot on making Linux approachable to people like I who have been running Windows practically my entire life. I was able to get a lot of the basics running in a couple of hours of installing, with only audio being a massive issue until I found a solution that works perfectly for my home studio. Not having HDR support is one feature I've come to miss, but I'd rather have a stable workstation than an experimental one that can potentially break. At least the Mint team seems dedicated and they are working on adding Wayland support for Cinnamon and Pipewire for audio production (which solved my issue by manually installing it), so the distro is keeping up with the latest trends at least.