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

[Shaggy1007]

I understand the staff's position and reasoning why a linux version is not in their interest. I'd personally love it an use it.

Maybe meet us half way, and over time make it compatible with Wine or Codeweaver's crossover? 

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, Shaggy1007 said:

Maybe meet us half way, and over time make it compatible with Wine or Codeweaver's crossover? 

Aren't the incompatibilities today due to Windows functions that Affinity requires but that Wine or Codeweaver don't support?

If so, it's on Wine or Codeweaver to implement them, in my opinion. I would not want the Affinity Developers to waste time that they could be using for enhancements and bug fixes by instead rewriting their code to use different functions that are supported by Wine or Codeweaver.

[Shaggy1007]

True. And some things cant be emulated on linux. But if thats the case, how many Mac unique components are used in  the Mac version? I know way back it was possible to go from one to the other, given that you were fine with re-writting the gui to not use Cocoa inside Xcode on a linux system. 

My Mac/PC programming days ended a long time ago, so I don’t know the ins and outs anymore. My mind was blown when an intern showed me all the target os’s that exist in Visual Studio now. 

[yesreallylinux]

For DXVK, there's a guide on what not to use, though it's targeted at games: https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/wiki/Developer-guidelines

For Affinity to meet us halfway, I think it would require an investment in CodeWeavers' services (e.g. PortJump). Get them working on supporting the features Wine currently doesn't support while continuing development of the Windows and macOS versions undisturbed.

[Frozen Death Knight]

On 7/17/2024 at 8:54 PM, walt.farrell said:

Aren't the incompatibilities today due to Windows functions that Affinity requires but that Wine or Codeweaver don't support?

If so, it's on Wine or Codeweaver to implement them, in my opinion. I would not want the Affinity Developers to waste time that they could be using for enhancements and bug fixes by instead rewriting their code to use different functions that are supported by Wine or Codeweaver.

Which is why one of the simplest solutions is to just port Affinity to Steam. Valve are doing a lot of that work just out of their own best interest by building Proton and contributing to Wine directly, so putting the entire suite on Steam would add another incentive for Valve to add those missing dependencies while Canva/Serif don't have to lift a finger beyond maintaining their own software for their already existing platforms.

There are next to no downsides besides Valve taking a pay cut for hosting the software on their platform and them having to sell both the Mac and Windows versions together instead of separately like it's done now, but the upsides are many since then Affinity can be built for the Steam infrastructure that is working on making everything be able to run on Linux out of the box. Not to mention that Steam is just a massive marketplace so it will just boost the sales of their software on both Mac and Windows.

That being said, I wouldn't call it a waste of time considering that Serif are no longer that little independent company competing against the behemoth of Adobe. They can now easily afford doing a proper port and build their team to support a full on native Linux version while still adding tons of new features if they so desired. It's just a matter of willingness from the top to invest those resources and also if it is worth doing it over just supporting Linux through compatibility layers which are a much cheaper and faster method.

Having a bit of customer support for running it on Linux with compatibility layers isn't really asking for much considering the size of Canva.

[Stags]

Windows and Mac users can use Adobe products. Linux users have a problem that Affinity can solve, giving them 100% of the Linux market. Often, it is claimed that the multiple distributions of Linux make it difficult to develop, which I agree with. But if Affinity chooses a single Linux distribution to target (any distribution), the community will happily work around the limitation.

In addition, many Linux users are very loyal to companies that work with the community, and this can be seen with very high percentiles of bought programs and higher donations on platforms such as Humble Bundle, eluding that even non-professional designers will gladly purchase affinity products on Linux. Perhaps even before release, using a 'pre-order' sales method to confirm the viability of Linux as a profitable platform.

[walt.farrell]

10 hours ago, Frozen Death Knight said:

Which is why one of the simplest solutions is to just port Affinity to Steam.

Sorry, but I'm a bit confused. Who would do that porting?

[yesreallylinux]

13 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Sorry, but I'm a bit confused. Who would do that porting?

He's suggesting Serif/Canva publish the Windows and macOS versions on Steam.

[walt.farrell]

19 minutes ago, yesreallylinux said:

He's suggesting Serif/Canva publish the Windows and macOS versions on Steam.

That is not what I would call "porting", though, as porting generally requires making application changes.

[Frozen Death Knight]

On a slightly related note, Windows is making headlines for basically crashing infrastructure across the entire world right now due to a faulty patch update done by CrowdStrike that had faulty file formating. Linux and Mac are unaffected. Microsoft just can't catch a break with bad PR this year. XD

[Shaggy1007]

I came to say "Hey, isn't linux looking alot better today?"  

 

[Laura Ess]

On 7/20/2024 at 2:30 AM, Frozen Death Knight said:

On a slightly related note, Windows is making headlines for basically crashing infrastructure across the entire world right now due to a faulty patch update done by CrowdStrike that had faulty file formating. Linux and Mac are unaffected. Microsoft just can't catch a break with bad PR this year. XD

Ah but it wasn't a "Windows thing" so much as a CrowdStrike thing. If you didn't use Crowdstrike's services you weren't affected. All very well bragging about Linux, but let's not forget about the recent Backdoor scandal! I have 2½ Windows and 2½ Linux PCs (one's dual boot) and I wasn't affected at all because I had no connection to Crowdstrike. I have a friend on Facebook who was boasting that their Apple tech was unaffected as well, but really it's because they werem't connected to Crowdstrike either. 

[Frozen Death Knight]

On 7/20/2024 at 11:54 PM, Laura Ess said:

Ah but it wasn't a "Windows thing" so much as a CrowdStrike thing. If you didn't use Crowdstrike's services you weren't affected. All very well bragging about Linux, but let's not forget about the recent Backdoor scandal! I have 2½ Windows and 2½ Linux PCs (one's dual boot) and I wasn't affected at all because I had no connection to Crowdstrike. I have a friend on Facebook who was boasting that their Apple tech was unaffected as well, but really it's because they werem't connected to Crowdstrike either. 

Yeah, I know it wasn't the direct fault of Microsoft and Windows specifically. It's not like Mac and Linux are immune to things breaking down. That being said, considering all the other controversies that Microsoft have had just this year, having your flagship product completely break across the world that causes billions in damages will reflect poorly on them regardless of them having no part in it. The timing couldn't have been worse.

Sadly the vast majority of people are technologically illiterate, so it won't matter if it was all CrowdStrike's fault to these people. I personally won't blame Microsoft for this when the reality is that this incident was inevitable because of people's over-reliance on technology and how patch updates are nowadays forced upon you across a lot of software. Not the first or last time things have broken down. The big difference is the sheer scale of it.

The true lesson from this should be to have backup systems that aren't tied to the current PC internet infrastructure we have built for ourselves whenever possible (i.e. hospitals). Also, having forced updates are a really, really bad idea and should especially not be pushed across the entire world at once like what was done with CrowdStrike. Having smaller patch rollouts to see if everything works before patching elsewhere needs to be standard procedure if you want to avoid this blunder from ever happening again.

[cyberlizard]

I used to be a windows user but switched to Mac.  I would have switched to Linux but alas no Adobe or affinity.  
 

there seems to be a thinking that Linux users only want free stuff but it’s not true.  If something is worth using it’s worth buying.  
 

i would definitely make the purchase. 
 

affinity have the opportunity to corner the Linux space when it comes to pro level applications.  
 

hopefully they will consider it an option after the recent global debacle caused by Microsoft software. 

[cyberlizard]

Here’s a potential way for affinity to approach the Linux issue.  
 

cast your minds back to when Lotus123 was the dominant spreadsheet.  Windows 95 came along and Lotus dragged their feet and what happened?  Excel happened!  Where is 123 now?

 Same thing happened with Quark.  They dragged their feet and InDesign came along.  Now, next to know one uses Quark.  Same with Corel.  
 

Sure they all have a niche following, but in the great scheme of things, these giants, these behemoths have been consigned to the dustbin of history.  
 

Adobe is bleeding users and Affinity is on the rise, but nothing lasts forever.  
 

If Affinity don’t want to release a Linux version due to perceived minority need someone else may step in. 
 

The other option is to consider Affinity for the web and have the software within browser technology like a progressive web app.  (For people who say it’s unrealistic and you can’t run heavy software in browsers, they’ve clearly never used the CAD package OnShape).  
 

Affinity only have one shot when it comes to Linux as someone will eventually fill the void as they always do.  It’ll be Affinity or someone else. 

Steve

[pixelstuff]

11 minutes ago, cyberlizard said:

cast your minds back to when Lotus123 was the dominant spreadsheet.  Windows 95 came along and Lotus dragged their feet and what happened?  Excel happened!  Where is 123 now?

 Same thing happened with Quark.  They dragged their feet and InDesign came along.  Now, next to know one uses Quark.  Same with Corel.  

I'm not sure you applied that analogy correctly. Those examples were all the industry standards and thought they slack off without taking damage. Excel and InDesign didn't target a minor platform when they picked up the slack.

[Chills]

4 hours ago, cyberlizard said:

If Affinity don’t want to release a Linux version due to perceived minority need someone else may step in. 

The market simply isn't big enough.   Linux is less than 4% of the market. Of that 4% how many would want affinity?  Estimates are less than 1% of the total market. Also, it is a Hell of a lot of work to support Linux.  Also, Most likely it will be ONE specific Linux (out of the 100's of distros out there) so you are down to 0,00x % of the market.

It is never going to happen.  

[wonderings]

4 hours ago, cyberlizard said:

Here’s a potential way for affinity to approach the Linux issue.  
 

cast your minds back to when Lotus123 was the dominant spreadsheet.  Windows 95 came along and Lotus dragged their feet and what happened?  Excel happened!  Where is 123 now?

 Same thing happened with Quark.  They dragged their feet and InDesign came along.  Now, next to know one uses Quark.  Same with Corel.  
 

Sure they all have a niche following, but in the great scheme of things, these giants, these behemoths have been consigned to the dustbin of history.  
 

Adobe is bleeding users and Affinity is on the rise, but nothing lasts forever.  
 

If Affinity don’t want to release a Linux version due to perceived minority need someone else may step in. 
 

The other option is to consider Affinity for the web and have the software within browser technology like a progressive web app.  (For people who say it’s unrealistic and you can’t run heavy software in browsers, they’ve clearly never used the CAD package OnShape).  
 

Affinity only have one shot when it comes to Linux as someone will eventually fill the void as they always do.  It’ll be Affinity or someone else. 

Steve

I don't think Adobe is bleeding the users you think they are. They have been having year after year growth. Adobe, the company that makes Canva look like the mom and pop shop around the corner looked into Linux years ago and opted to stay out producing for the user base. I think it is simply there is not enough money in such a small market. Apple is a small market, but the small market that is Apple is predominantly used by creatives and thus an obvious target for Affinity. Capitalism will find a way if there is money to be made, so far no one really seems to think there is much money with creative software in the Linux market. 

[Shaggy1007]

Agree with Cyberlizard. 

Regardless of Linux compatibility or not, I think there's alot of little things that need done before they can be a major contender, though the foot is definitely in the door. 

People may not be jumping ship as social media would like us to perceive. But a lot of eyes are on Affinity. I tried it some years ago, found it didnt meet my needs, but after the beating adobe pushed out, I came back to check it out. Photo for me is lacking. Design though, just need to figure out how to get the files out into a format my CAM software can read, and I'll probably never touch illustrator again. 

Lotus123....Remember Word Perfect?

[Frozen Death Knight]

1 hour ago, wonderings said:

I don't think Adobe is bleeding the users you think they are. They have been having year after year growth. Adobe, the company that makes Canva look like the mom and pop shop around the corner looked into Linux years ago and opted to stay out producing for the user base. I think it is simply there is not enough money in such a small market. Apple is a small market, but the small market that is Apple is predominantly used by creatives and thus an obvious target for Affinity. Capitalism will find a way if there is money to be made, so far no one really seems to think there is much money with creative software in the Linux market. 

The size of your userbase is not directly related to company growth both in terms of revenue and on the stock market. For example, Blizzard have lost millions of subscribers in World of WarCraft over the years, but in terms of revenue WoW has never been more profitable because of in-game transactions. That being said, we don't have much data on how many decided to drop Adobe and what the user market looks like.

Regardless, Adobe most certainly did lose business with a bunch of creators over the decisions surrounding AI and the scraping of user content. As for how many were lost that is more up in the air, but when long time professionals have started to look for and even promote alternatives to Adobe, then it's starting to look pretty bad. People who built their careers on specific software don't usually stop using them on a whim, so having some of your most dedicated users jump ship is never a good sign.

Adobe burnt practically all their good will with their core customers, so even those who still have to use their products are way more likely to try other products until something equivalent or better pops up. Just within my personal social circle and the content creators I follow online I have seen more and more people recommending and using alternatives like Affinity, Krita, Davinci Resolve, etc. It's not just some fringe groups that's for sure.

As for how commercially viable Linux is, there already are commercial markets in the creative fields such as CGI. Though, those same companies also have Windows and/or Mac available to run Adobe products, since the alternatives are Krita and Gimp on Linux. Still, Linux is not all just open source and there are businesses that rely on Linux for work.

There is always risk involved when developing software for any platform, but those risks are also being vastly over-exaggerated for Linux since both software and hardware support have become significantly easier than just 5+ years ago. Heck, making a full Linux port of Affinity may not even be necessary by using alternative and cheaper methods like officially supporting Steam/Proton/Wine/etc., so there are ways to vastly reduce most negative risks of developing for the platform. It's not like they can't afford it at this stage.

[Laura Ess]

On 7/21/2024 at 9:30 AM, Frozen Death Knight said:

The true lesson from this should be to have backup systems that aren't tied to the current PC internet infrastructure we have built for ourselves whenever possible (i.e. hospitals). Also, having forced updates are a really, really bad idea and should especially not be pushed across the entire world at once like what was done with CrowStrike. Having smaller patch rollouts to see if everything works before patching elsewhere needs to be standard procedure if you want to avoid this blunder from ever happening again.

Indeed. I back everything up on my NAS, and back that up quarterly.

[fde101]

12 hours ago, Shaggy1007 said:

Remember Word Perfect?

https://www.wordperfect.com/

[yesreallylinux]

One thing is for sure:

Endless debates on the merits of Linux never convince anyone. We all just become further entrenched in the position we already believe is correct.

There is only one thing that will convince Serif/Canva to put resources behind Linux, regardless of how good or bad it is as a platform, and that is numbers. Serif isn't interested in fulfilling a niche within a niche and they've expressed as much over and over again throughout the years.

The Web does have that requisite number of users, and it's Canva's primary platform. If anything is viable, it's the Web. It caters to Linux users on Chromebooks, GNU/Linux, Windows, and macOS. It's a single platform.

But Serif/Canva haven't expressed any interest in doing that, either. If there isn't any interest in doing Affinity on the web, I don't see how desktop Linux has a prayer.

Happy to be proven wrong in the future, of course. Unsubscribing from this thread now...

[Chills]

17 minutes ago, fde101 said:

https://www.wordperfect.com/

I used to use Word Perfect on DOS  and early Windows versions.

The current one actually looks very good!  I didn't realize it was linked with Corel. The home and student version is not expensive.  (£65)
As it reads M$ Office files, I will put it on the "pending" list in case my M$Office suite 2012 ever stops working on Win11/12/13

What surprised me was that whilst M$ Word became THE word processor globally, M$ Publisher didn't do the same.
What surprises me even more is that 20+ years on, M$ Publisher is still around and being used by some people!
I thought it had dieds years ago.

Given the low-cost availability of A-Pub I wondered why anyone would be using M$-Pub. Then I realised it is mostly those home users with "borrowed"  corporate M$ Office licences where they got M$ Pub for free.  I am having to deal with several clubs and societies in this position who wonder why I can't read M$ Publisher files.  No one can AFAIK other than in Publisher.   I have to get them to save any files as PDF's. 

I note that several local printers now have "We do not accept MS Publisher files" on their websites. Also, I have noted where all of them were Adobe CS/CC users, most now have Affinity as well.  As a couple of them have said to me as a commercial company the cost of Affinity suite is a no-brainer.  This is because they have seen that a lot of their customers are using affinity.

 

[wonderings]

15 hours ago, Frozen Death Knight said:

The size of your userbase is not directly related to company growth both in terms of revenue and on the stock market. For example, Blizzard have lost millions of subscribers in World of WarCraft over the years, but in terms of revenue WoW has never been more profitable because of in-game transactions. That being said, we don't have much data on how many decided to drop Adobe and what the user market looks like.

Regardless, Adobe most certainly did lose business with a bunch of creators over the decisions surrounding AI and the scraping of user content. As for how many were lost that is more up in the air, but when long time professionals have started to look for and even promote alternatives to Adobe, then it's starting to look pretty bad. People who built their careers on specific software don't usually stop using them on a whim, so having some of your most dedicated users jump ship is never a good sign.

Adobe burnt practically all their good will with their core customers, so even those who still have to use their products are way more likely to try other products until something equivalent or better pops up. Just within my personal social circle and the content creators I follow online I have seen more and more people recommending and using alternatives like Affinity, Krita, Davinci Resolve, etc. It's not just some fringe groups that's for sure.

As for how commercially viable Linux is, there already are commercial markets in the creative fields such as CGI. Though, those same companies also have Windows and/or Mac available to run Adobe products, since the alternatives are Krita and Gimp on Linux. Still, Linux is not all just open source and there are businesses that rely on Linux for work.

There is always risk involved when developing software for any platform, but those risks are also being vastly over-exaggerated for Linux since both software and hardware support have become significantly easier than just 5+ years ago. Heck, making a full Linux port of Affinity may not even be necessary by using alternative and cheaper methods like officially supporting Steam/Proton/Wine/etc., so there are ways to vastly reduce most negative risks of developing for the platform. It's not like they can't afford it at this stage.

In a subscription service new members does relate to growth and profits. What numbers are you using to show that Adobe is bleeding users? From what I have read they are seeing growth year after year, this is growth in users. For year end of 2023 they were estimated 10,000 new subscribers a day. Maybe there are new numbers that say something different, I have no real care if they are succeeding or not, I do like the product and don't see it going anywhere anytime soon as it is fantastic that the majority of people in the same field are using the same software and same version. No more fragmentation. 

You may have friends who are jumping ship, but I can tell you the vast majority of users are not jumping ship as the price would be insane to switch over to new software and deal with everything that comes with that. Huge industries depend on the software and will keep plugging along, just as we are at my company and everywhere else that I deal with. Not even a ripple of complaints from people who just want to use the software to get the job done. Internet is an echo chamber and would not say it gives a very accurate picture of what is really happening. BMW had issues with some motorcycles in 2005 to 2007 and the shaft drives. On the forums it was the end of the world, and made it seem like every bike in that year would spontaneously explode because of all the issues one read about every day. And while it was an issue, it was nowhere near as big as what one made it out to be by reading and the percentage was incredibly low for anything happening at all.