Jump to content
You must now use your email address to sign in [click for more info] ×

Affinity products for Linux


Recommended Posts

6 minutes ago, NNois said:

Did you try the "vfx route" I mean no one use photoshop anymore, we use Nuke, Blackmagic Fusion, Blackmagic Da Vinci to "retouch" our HDR "photos", there is Natron too and that's way more efficient.

If you want to paint on them that's another story

Well, I don't look for a painting or video processing application. Just for photography development, as is Photoshop, or Lightroom (not a fan), Affinity Photo, On1 Photo Raw, Capture One, better than RawTherapee, DarkTable, UFRaw(?) or similar - those free alternatives could do the job, technically, hopefully, but it's a slow and difficult path, even unreliable sometimes. I won't include GIMP here.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

54 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

In fairness, I think this has only been the Questions (Mac and Windows) forum for a few weeks. When this topic was started it was simply the Questions forum.

True, but it has always been the Questions forum, which I think makes it quite obvious that using it to "voice" opinions that are not by any stretch of the imagination actually questions is inappropriate, a breach of long standing netiquette traditions, & maybe more than a little rude.

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The reason Serif doesn't want to invest into Linux is because open source software users have a reputation for not wanting to pay for software. It is a widely held belief that they want everything for FREE. Very few Linux users support development of software for the Linux platform which is why, rightly, Serif doesn't want to tread into the waters. And everyone has a very good excuse/reason for not wanting to fund Linux platform development or software development for Linux. Why would Serif want to invest into Linux when they see users won't support development for existing Linux software?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Definitive answer: Affinity isn't going to create a Linux version for the foreseeable future, so let it go people.

After the foreseeable future, who knows...

iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
B| (Please refrain from licking the screen while using this forum)

Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions

Link to comment
Share on other sites

… or try to urge Apple to build pure Windows-computers in the future …

This …is … ridiculous! If Serif doesn’t intend to create a Linux version, well, it won’t do it. You may try to buy Serif (just hurry up, it is getting even more expensive) and change the business philosophy and orientation …

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, NNois said:

humm, thought there is really great success story about compagny open sourcing their software and porting to linux...

Perhaps Blender is the only one that I can think of that might fit that story but I'm not sure it was ported to Linux or if it was always Linux.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As far as I know, Blender, in several parts of its implementation, inherits stuff from another software that the actual Blender creator (Ton Roosendaal) had made in commodore Amiga for Neogeo, a Dutch animation Studio, (Blender comes from rewriting the studio's internal tools), this software was called Traces. So, originally is from the Amiga Platform (edit: Nah, that is a stretch. I don't know). That was quite a thing in the times (the Amiga 2000 was a wet dream of mine for some time), for graphics, music and animation. I keep a very old friend (I believe he had a 500) that was all about Amiga stuff. Those guys were small Leonardos, the Amiga people. (my machine was from other brand, the one with the rubber keys model, as in my avatar). This friend of mine did (does, now is all 'bout Java, tho) code quite well in C, do outstanding music (and still does it, too), and was/is quite proficient in pixel art. (he can make a full game in his own, indeed, he does this from time to time).

Back to blender, it was made at an early point shareware. I do still remember the C-key. It was kind of sth that never really bothered me as an obstacle, as individual users could handle the app, no probs. My issue was with... guess what, the UI, AND functionality. By the times, despite there were already excessively passionate followers, the thing was besides really a hard UI to learn(waaay harder than today), pretty limited. I could only see there little more than a nurbs modeler, and quite minimal. 3D Studio Splines were easier to learn, and I saw them more functional. Of course, it had way more under the hood for animation, but by then I was mostly after modeling. And let's be honest, it competed with free offers of old Truespace fully free versions in computer magazines, with Organica 1.0, Illusion, etc. 

Then Ton created NaN (Not a Number) company, Blender was made shareware, NaN went bankrupt. There's quite an interesting video of Blender Guru (one of the guys making better tuts for Blender out there) interviewing Ton, and him telling how all the money vanished (I believe they moved to the US, he tells a funny thing, how the TV Show 'Silicon Valley' depicts so well what really happens in start-ups (and so, how "today" is not that different from those times) and all the world surrounding, distros, investors, high chairs movements, ego fights, deliriums, inhuman long hours of work, total instability, money that easy comes, easy goes, etc. Is curious to me, as I thought the same having been in start-ups pretty similar to that, despite being in a very different country),  how delicate is taking certain decisions, etc. Kind of teaches you that a business is such a delicate thing for certain risks...

I felt interested on Blender when Ton crowdsourced (started a crowd funding to release the code, made it open source. It was successful) it in 2002 (when I registered in Elysiun forums, now blenderartists )  . Since then, I started to learn it seriously. And from much later on, 2.28c I think, I started to have real hopes on it while doing actual projects, even at companies. But it has been only since 2.5 (2009) that I really saw fixed important "holes" that were keeping me looking more to commercial packages, yet, as the only safe spot. So, I knew from Blender in '98, it got open sourced in 2002, but it took 7 years till I could consider it ready for most of the regular tasks I'd do inside a game company (I have not been at Valve. In ambitious middle and small ones, doing very complex stuff, yep, totally). Even today, you can't trust only on it, in AAA games, you need there Substance full package, Zbrush, and very specific Max and Maya workflows and interconnected pipelines, in-house solutions, years old mel scripts, etc. But for a freelancer, even with very advanced projects? heck yeah, it rocks. Or for any small/mid size studio. It is very far from replacing Max or Maya in the triple A companies.(sadly, but is a fact) Tho with 2.8... Starting to have very solid doubts that this would be kept written in stone... But IMO, is a very rare and brilliant case, that has needed a  long life/history (24 years?) to get to what is today.

The secret of Blender success, IMO, is an IMMENSE mass of people behind, huge community, but people actually doing stuff, not just saying or posting stuff. Is not very common to have this kind of power (in numbers, and in active people coding, doing documentation, writing plugins, etc) behind. Also, IMO again, an essential part is... Ton. In every successful o. source project, I see some sort of strong individual (/s). I've known some key ones in Krita, and is backed for this kind of people, so you know it is going to last and going to go in the right direction.  

Edit:   BTW, and about coding, it was C code (even Traces).

 

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, InfoCentral said:

Perhaps Blender is the only one that I can think of that might fit that story but I'm not sure it was ported to Linux or if it was always Linux.

More to the point, it should be blatantly obvious to everyone that the criteria for "a really great success story" for free open source software products like Blender are completely different from what they would be for commercial closed source software products like those in the Affinity suite.

This is just another thinly disguised spin on the tired old "software wants to be free" argument that ignores business realities.

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 hours ago, R C-R said:

More to the point, it should be blatantly obvious to everyone that the criteria for "a really great success story" for free open source software products like Blender are completely different from what they would be for commercial closed source software products like those in the Affinity suite.

This is just another thinly disguised spin on the tired old "software wants to be free" argument that ignores business realities.

...and invariably the software being generously open sourced is more of a very wealthy companies philanthropic exercise and great PR, it may also have elements that through community endeavours find their way into commercial products that do give that company a financial benefit. 

iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
B| (Please refrain from licking the screen while using this forum)

Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

... it may also have elements that through community endeavours find their way into commercial products that do give that company a financial benefit. 

True, but if it is open source other companies can use it in their commercial products too, which would dilute or negate its benefit to that company. Worse, it can expose details of a company's proprietary closed source code to its competitors, so i can actually end up being detrimental to that company.

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, InfoCentral said:

Yeah, "if Serif builds a Linux version then they will buy" is what I hear but the truth is probably very few will buy once they find out it will cost them $50.

Actually, it's cheap for its power. It's less than 5 months of my CC, I know it is less functionally speaking, but, for me, would do the job much faster than any Linux version of free RAW development software, and compared to Corel's, it's also much better and faster, again, for me.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, msdobrescu said:

Actually, it's cheap for its power. It's less than 5 months of my CC, I know it is less functionally speaking, but, for me, would do the job much faster than any Linux version of free RAW development software, and compared to Corel's, it's also much better and faster, again, for me.

You say so because you used it?

Since you mention raw development: I purchased Affinity and then I've switched to Darktable and never looked back.

Andrew
-
Win10 x64 AMD Threadripper 1950x, 64GB, 512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD + 2TB, dual GTX 1080ti
Dual Monitor Dell Ultra HD 4k P2715Q 27-Inch

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, verysame said:

You say so because you used it?

Since you mention raw development: I purchased Affinity and then I've switched to Darktable and never looked back. 

I've tried it, under Windows. I can get fast results, almost as simple as ACR. I am looking for that kind of thing only.

I've tried Darktable and RawTherapee, but I fail to be that efficient with those. ACR works naturally for me. Maybe you can help me with Darktable?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

24 minutes ago, msdobrescu said:

I've tried it, under Windows. I can get fast results, almost as simple as ACR. I am looking for that kind of thing only.

I've tried Darktable and RawTherapee, but I fail to be that efficient with those. ACR works naturally for me. Maybe you can help me with Darktable?

Absolutely, I can help with DT. Do you want to PM me with your specific question?

Andrew
-
Win10 x64 AMD Threadripper 1950x, 64GB, 512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD + 2TB, dual GTX 1080ti
Dual Monitor Dell Ultra HD 4k P2715Q 27-Inch

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Sorry, I could not read all answers in detail but I wanted to point that you may not be aware that there is an industry called VFX, encompassing studios like ILM, Weta, Method, Disney, or Pixar. Those represent thousand of artist boxes all running on Linux with fully licensed software and who had to suffer for a decade with Gimp, Windows VMs or Dual Boots when willing to edit an image. These companies would certainly be delighted to purchase a large amount of Affinity Photo licenses to solve their problem. Just to clarify, organizations like those work with a high level of security and are generally operating on closed networks without direct internet access. For this reason, the browser market share charts I have seen floating around cannot be a good indicator for potential users running on Linux.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, Douglas Lassance said:

Sorry, I could not read all answers in detail but I wanted to point that you may not be aware that there is an industry called VFX...

If you had read more of the posts, you would have seen that everything you mentioned & much more has already been discussed to death in this topic. That includes all the reasons why Serif is not currently interested in developing & supporting Linux versions.

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, Douglas Lassance said:

You guys should really just fill that void.

If by "you guys" you mean Serif, their decision should be based on the potential profitability of developing & supporting Linux versions, including the market research they almost certainly have invested much more time & resources in doing than anybody outside the company posting here has even considered doing.

That is yet another thing that has been discussed to death here.

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Quote

should really just fill that void

Void.... That would not be loved by hardworking Krita , Inskcape, Scribus and Gimp's (lately made a huge update) generous authors.  And no, I don't think they are -well in some very particular details they are even better than Adobe's- at Affinity level, but definitely not as far as some of these new linux users do think they are. I know those applications well, from many years of usage, at companies, not just some hobby stuff,  they saved the day too many times, and in many aspects they are pretty near to high end. Blender is already there ( I use it constantly). These are not commercial Win/Mac apps that made a Linux version because in the film industry there were already a lot of UNIX and Linux machines in place, so it made sense, or because was easier due to its coding or app structure, or due to whatever... These are, instead, part of the pure soul of Linux, since almost the start. Most are pure GPL, is really crazy that they are not supported fully by the whole community, as not doing so, goes even against the main OS philosophy. And imo is a bit disrespectful with so many years of effort, to certain apps that are highly underrated by a certain portion of Linux  users (a lot of new linux users, coming from Win/mac,  a bunch of them  :/  ).

Of course, the road ahead is hard, specially competing with the triple A commercial market. But that is the whole point of Linux, IMO. Is a choice for a way of doing things (pestering a company for not doing a whatever OS version is extremely far from original Linux elegant style, btw). Thing is, I have realized with Blender that is not impossible, and the price is HUGE. It is worth it.

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Quote

For this reason, the browser market share charts I have seen floating around cannot be a good indicator for potential users running on Linux.

In several moments of the entire thread this has also been answered.... The prob is that in global numbers, that's really a small number compared to the mass of windows/mac users, at the moment of a business decision, this is all what matters. The mass of licenses of people that have photography as a hobby, or actual job, graphic designers for almost any field, and people interested in a publishing solution, is massive, in an extremely different scale to the niche of film industry, very high end content creators, rare talent. The average Joe or Jane isn't into that, and/or has not the right connections for that.

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Guidelines | We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.