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Linux Availability???


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The main image editing program for Linux - GIMP - has a clumsy user interface. Why hasn't Affinity offered Serif for Linux? I prefer a native version without need for Wine or other means. The costs of your licenses seem very reasonable and my hunch is there are many Linux users who would purchase and use Serif. Eventually GIMP may get improved so the opportunity is now.

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Hi EWScott,

Welcome to Affinity Forums  :)

Currently there's no plans to port Affinity to Linux. This was already requested and discussed in quite a few threads where some of the developers have already explained their points of view.

Check those two for more info:

Affinity for Linux

Linux. Seriously now.

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...The costs of your licenses seem very reasonable and my hunch is there are many Linux users who would purchase and use Serif...

 

Indeed. I certainly would. I work in the software industry (QA) and many of the people I work with are switching to Linux, because of where Microsoft and Apple seem to be trying to take computing. I'm switching after being a hardcore Mac user for over thirty years.

 

So I already have AP from the App Store for Mac. How do I sidegrade from Affinity Photo MAS to the Windows version to see if it works on Linux via wine? Is there at least some documentation on getting AP Windows working on Linux, so that Linux users can determine if this is feasible before they purchase a version they can't use?

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bradford,

 

I believe that you can't switch your licences. Here is a link https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/34909-mac-windows-switch/?p=171062.

Why not just download the Windows beta and try it to see if it works. If it does then you can decide if you want to go that route, if not nothing lost.

 

There are some people who post here saying how much money Serif would make by making a Linux version. To all of them I ask, if there is so much money to be made in Linux, don't you think the big players would have already figured it out and released a version for Linux? I mean sure, if the market is as big as Linux people say it is, wouldn't Adobe be stupid not to make a Linux version? To me Adobe is as money grubbing as they come and seeing how they are avoiding the Linux market tells me that the money to be made in Linux is less than the money that would be required to write it and support it for Linux. So for a much smaller company like Serif, I can imagine that it would be even less of an attractive option. 

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bradford,

 

There are no 'sidegrades' for the Affinity products. You can sign up to get a ten day free trial version, for example through this link for US-English users for Photo, but now that both the retail versions of Designer & Photo for Windows have been released, only the customer beta versions are available, meaning you need to own the retail version to use the betas.

 

The free trial versions are identical to the retail ones, except that they expire 10 days after you first open one, so you could use one of them to see if it will works on Linux via wine, but it probably won't. There is no documentation for this because, as Callum, MEB, & other staff members have said, there are no plans to develop anything for Linux.

 

Like Hokusai mentioned, I also have doubts that it would be profitable for Serif/Affinity to develop Linux versions. Even the most optimistic estimates for Linux adoption as a desktop OS are capped at 5% of the total market by the end of 2017, & there is nothing to suggest that there are large numbers of graphics professionals eager to use it.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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  • 2 months later...
  • Staff

A lot....

SerifLabs team - Affinity Developer
  • Software engineer  -  Photographer  -  Guitarist  -  Philosopher
  • iMac 27" Retina 5K (Late 2015), 4.0GHz i7, AMD Radeon R9 M395
  • MacBook (Early 2015), 1.3GHz Core M, Intel HD 5300
  • iPad Pro 10.5", 256GB
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But why not? I can't move to better OS, because there aren't any serious graphic programs. On other hand, how much work is needed to port MacOS version to UNIX?

XNU operating system that Apple uses in OS X and iOS is free software as FSF defines it, and is as well a UNIX licensed. While Linux is as well free software and Unix-like, that isnt enough.

There are lots of middleware and especially graphical user interface toolkits differences that are limiting to porting possibilities as schedule would allow. 

I dont even know what libraries and toolkits Affinity Photo uses, but likely not a Qt or GTK+ to ease the portability.

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  • 1 month later...

A lot....

No, if look in a proper way.

Ubuntu version can by ship within *.appimage executable.

So we have one code base into 3 different system Mac Os (XNU), Windows (NT), Ubuntu (Linux).

So it's logical we looking for a library's that can provide untouched code base of Affinity Photo to run on Ubuntu.

@developer - contact with me on private and tell what library is used on windows and mac - and research for equivalents of it

Of course with a confidentiality clause. I make it a Free of charge.

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chiddekel, thanks for the positivity, but it's much more complicated than that, and we will not be taking you up on your offer.

Patrick Connor
Serif Europe Ltd

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your previous self."  W. L. Sheldon

 

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chiddekel,

 

Just for reference, the Mac version of Affinity Photo includes an Affinity Photo Unix executable, which is just 901 KB in size, but the entire application package is around 1 GB. The bulk of the app is in Frameworks, with the 'persona' dynamic library weighing in at about 534 MB. I am just guessing but I imagine only around 10-15% of the app at most is completely OS independent.

 

From what little I can tell, I think even the open source dlib's are customized to optimize interoperability with the Mac OS, & I imagine the Windows versions are different as well.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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