Affinity products for Linux

[thedrumdoctor]

14 hours ago, Renzatic said:

I'm always up for a good lawsuit.

So...who we suing?

We're not suing, we're using!

https://snapcraft.io/sosumi

[tamjk]

How about a crowd-fund for enhancing Inkscape ?

Windows 11 will drive many people onto the Microsoft cloud for software applications as they won't be able to afford new PCs.

Creative people will not trust the cloud environment - moreover when a very good alternative (Linux + open source software) already exists.

I wouldn't have anything againt say $20 a head for a better Inkscape  . . . especially if the improvements were agreed by consensus/

[msdobrescu]

The problem with Inskape is that is SVG oriented and lately even SVG standard has become unstable (they've postponed or removed meshes...).

If it needs EPS, must be able to reverse engineer it and support the similar feature forth and back.

Otherwise, for me, it's pretty capable as it is now.

Photoshop/Photo have no match, IMHO.

[km.au]

CaptureOne is a chance, if affinity ever gets a linux it would be a gamechanger.

[chris35]

+1 it would be a great thing to port them to Linux! I haven't used Windows for years, and my Affinity licenses don't help me ...

[wonderings]

On 8/25/2021 at 3:36 AM, chris35 said:

+1 it would be a great thing to port them to Linux! I haven't used Windows for years, and my Affinity licenses don't help me ...

You have Affinity licenses but have not used Windows for years, are you using a Mac or just super generous to buy software you don't use?

 

On 8/16/2021 at 5:38 AM, Framelynx said:

Ahh right you are. I wonder how much a port of Affinity would cost?

I'm sure it would still be cheaper than actual dedicated development for linux, which would be in the millions.

What do you get with this port if you had the group in the link you posted do it? What happens when Affinity has updates, are they given the base Linux code to do this themselves? Curious how this would work for developers who do not have in house people to maintain and program for Linux. 

[wolle]

A native Linux version of the Affinity package would be the last missing piece to convince me to finally switch from Windows to Linux. Especially because Publisher would be the first really modern and usuable DTP software on Linux. Also, Photo and Designer are far ahead of GIMP and Inkscape. Affinity on Linux would really fill an urgently needed gap.

[tamjk]

10 hours ago, wolle said:

A native Linux version of the Affinity package would be the last missing piece to convince me to finally switch from Windows to Linux. Especially because Publisher would be the first really modern and usuable DTP software on Linux. Also, Photo and Designer are far ahead of GIMP and Inkscape. Affinity on Linux would really fill an urgently needed gap.

The way things are trending now, it will be the drift of existing Windows users towards user-friendly Linux distros that drags Affinity to Linux rather than the other way around.

Windows 11 is something that will drive this trend.

So will the new-found independence people feel after working alone from home during the covid crisis.

 

No one wants to be a client of Microsoft, Apple, Adobe or whoever any more than have their social exchanges monitored by Facebook.

[thedrumdoctor]

36 minutes ago, tamjk said:

Windows 11 is something that will drive this trend.

I have a feeling the Google Chromebooks may well kick into the Windows 11 market. People really don't need Windows to do most domestic stuff these days. I mean, when the internet first became affordable on dial-up everyone needed a Windows 9* machine and a modem to connect. To connect to the internet now, you can do it on a phone or tablet. Office 365 still has legs for business and educational licensing plus for domestic users, there are great family subscription deals with generous cloud storage and access to the most full-fat versions of the hand-held device Office apps (as well as full-blown desktop installs). But the need to buy new hardware to run Windows 11 at home is going to be a hard sell. People have been asking for years now, "do we really need a 'home computer'?" as hand-held devices offer 90+% of their needs. I keep telling a friend who regularly calls me with problems from his 2 Windows 10 laptops to sack the laptops and buy an iPad Pro or a MacBook Pro. I'd never suggest Linux as it would confuse the issue more for him and his wife, but they are ideal candidates for Apple OS' - especially as they both do photography as a hobby.

I still think Linux is a hard sell to mainstream consumers but the recent pushes into gaming could tip the balance. We could see a world-wide revolution of millions of teenagers building their own Linux machines as gaming digs in. This would really be a kick in the balls for M$ and their home market and especially OEM licensing on pre-built high-end gaming machines. If the world-wide OS usage stats take a distinct turn for Linux then it's going to be an opportunity for software developers.

[wonderings]

44 minutes ago, tamjk said:

The way things are trending now, it will be the drift of existing Windows users towards user-friendly Linux distros that drags Affinity to Linux rather than the other way around.

Windows 11 is something that will drive this trend.

So will the new-found independence people feel after working alone from home during the covid crisis.

 

No one wants to be a client of Microsoft, Apple, Adobe or whoever any more than have their social exchanges monitored by Facebook.

I think most people don't care as much as you think they do. If people really hated Adobe why is their user base continually rising? Windows 11 from my understanding is going to be free for anyone using Windows 10 so upgrading on that alone costs nothing. Of course you need a PC that supports Windows 11 which seems like it is going to be a very small number to start. That being said the OS is becoming less and less important. I prefer Mac OS but like Windows 10 as well, but very little time is spent in the actual OS itself, it is all spent in the applications.

[Amadeusz]

LINUX please! MAC users prefers PS but gimp users could switch to Affinity...

Even NASA uses Linux

Edited September 4, 2021 by Amadeusz

[Pufty]

Hi, I've read the first few initial posts in 2017 about this and it wasn't very hopeful to see Affinity on Linux, but I'd like to know whether there has been any different judgement/decision today in 2021. I'm one that has been losing trust in windows for a few years now and switched to Linux with mostly no hitches. My workflow was re-adjusted almost completely within a week and I'm not very good with consoles etc.

I will look into the 'compatability layer' methods I've heard about to maybe use Affinity as a windows program, but so far I'd like to know if I can hold back from messing with console commands

[Pufty]

4 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

Has the 'Linux on the desktop' market share increased substantially since 2017, say about 5 times to make it viable? No. 

Then I hope it does soon enough. I'm ready to pay for the software again on another platform just for the sake of comfort.

[thedrumdoctor]

12 hours ago, Pufty said:

I will look into the 'compatability layer' methods I've heard about to maybe use Affinity as a windows program

There's a video earlier in this thread of Photo being run under Wine. It looks fantastic until the menus are accessed and none of them work. So near, yet so far... 

[nMAC]

Yes please! Linux version. Already have the MacOS version but would buy again.

Thanks

 

[Stephen_H]

For years I've been wanting to move off Windows and onto Linux, but without pro apps for a graphic designer, I can't. I understand the chicken and egg situation - No designers using Linux because there's no apps for them. There are no apps for them because all the graphic designers are using Windows/Mac.

I truely do not care what OS I'm using. I started on Macs and loved the interface, but moved to Windows because Mac's hardware stopped giving me ports and storage. (When you live in Africa, we can't just fit in with first world thinking of "everything in the cloud" and just connect wirelessly. We barely have electricity, let alone always-on highsleed, affordable broadband) It was a hardware decision not an OS preference. I support Affinity because I've always been a sucker for the under dog. It's as much of a poke in Adobe's eye as it is a better financial choice. (I suspect that's the case for many Affinity users).

I apply the same attitude to Linux. It's the under dog and want to support it.

I don't even care what distro I have to use. If Affinity announced that their apps only ran on one speciffic Linux distro, eg: Mint KDE, I would choose that distro as my Linux OS. If they chose Manjaro or Suse... done.

Side note... I'd support a kickstarter fund - even if it's to guage the financial viability of Linux support.

[Pufty]

1 hour ago, Stephen_H said:

For years I've been wanting to move off Windows and onto Linux, but without pro apps for a graphic designer, I can't. I understand the chicken and egg situation - No designers using Linux because there's no apps for them. There are no apps for them because all the graphic designers are using Windows/Mac.

I truely do not care what OS I'm using. I started on Macs and loved the interface, but moved to Windows because Mac's hardware stopped giving me ports and storage. (When you live in Africa, we can't just fit in with first world thinking of "everything in the cloud" and just connect wirelessly. We barely have electricity, let alone always-on highsleed, affordable broadband) It was a hardware decision not an OS preference. I support Affinity because I've always been a sucker for the under dog. It's as much of a poke in Adobe's eye as it is a better financial choice. (I suspect that's the case for many Affinity users).

I apply the same attitude to Linux. It's the under dog and want to support it.

I don't even care what distro I have to use. If Affinity announced that their apps only ran on one speciffic Linux distro, eg: Mint KDE, I would choose that distro as my Linux OS. If they chose Manjaro or Suse... done.

Side note... I'd support a kickstarter fund - even if it's to guage the financial viability of Linux support.

Love this response to the point where I got nothing to add... Only that I'd be behind paying again or joining the kickstarter fund.

On my own I STILL switched to Linux, even though it heavily hurt my ability to create, but I took extra hours after work to do my design tasks on windows and now I've got a virtual machine(Wine path wasn't a success for me) on my Linux Desktop. It's slow and finnicky, but I still choose to use Affinity any way I can.

[thedrumdoctor]

2 hours ago, Stephen_H said:

For years I've been wanting to move off Windows and onto Linux, but without pro apps for a graphic designer, I can't. I understand the chicken and egg situation - No designers using Linux because there's no apps for them. There are no apps for them because all the graphic designers are using Windows/Mac.

I've just had to reluctantly give up on Peppermint after exhausting attempts trying to transfer music to my iPhone over USB. The furthest I got was access to the folders under DCIM where the photos are stored. It's a non-starter and before anyone says, "switch to Android", I used Android for years before conceding that the iPad Pro + Apple pencil is superior to any drawing/handwriting/photo editing experience I had on a Samsung equivalent. Buy the tablet and the phone follows.
 

If you spend a lot of time with an electronic pencil in your hand or record music, then Linux is a road to disappointment. I really want to use Linux, but it is ignored by the software companies whose software I have purchased; which leaves me questioning, if it is effectively useless in the commercial graphic design and music production world (two large sectors of revenue in the creative arts world), then who is Linux for? 

[wonderings]

On 9/21/2021 at 5:01 AM, Stephen_H said:

For years I've been wanting to move off Windows and onto Linux, but without pro apps for a graphic designer, I can't. I understand the chicken and egg situation - No designers using Linux because there's no apps for them. There are no apps for them because all the graphic designers are using Windows/Mac.

I truely do not care what OS I'm using. I started on Macs and loved the interface, but moved to Windows because Mac's hardware stopped giving me ports and storage. (When you live in Africa, we can't just fit in with first world thinking of "everything in the cloud" and just connect wirelessly. We barely have electricity, let alone always-on highsleed, affordable broadband) It was a hardware decision not an OS preference. I support Affinity because I've always been a sucker for the under dog. It's as much of a poke in Adobe's eye as it is a better financial choice. (I suspect that's the case for many Affinity users).

I apply the same attitude to Linux. It's the under dog and want to support it.

I don't even care what distro I have to use. If Affinity announced that their apps only ran on one speciffic Linux distro, eg: Mint KDE, I would choose that distro as my Linux OS. If they chose Manjaro or Suse... done.

Side note... I'd support a kickstarter fund - even if it's to guage the financial viability of Linux support.

I would never "support" a company just because they are the underdog. These are not charities or institutions helping change the world for the better, they are companies trying to make money, lots of money, by hopefully selling a product that lots of people will buy. I purchased all 3 because I was curious and the applications are cheap and it allows me to see what options are out there and to learn why I could or could not move away from Adobe. I could care less about who came to market first with what feature, just what is best for me at the end of the day. That company gets my money, for no other reason than they offer me the service and software I deem best for my uses. I am not donating money to any for profit companies. 

[Renzatic]

7 hours ago, thedrumdoctor said:

I really want to use Linux, but it is ignored by the software companies whose software I have purchased; which leaves me questioning, if it is effectively useless in the commercial graphic design and music production world (two large sectors of revenue in the creative arts world), then who is Linux for? 

3D DCCs, where a good 90% of the software available has Linux support in some shape, form, or fashion. It's also has small, but decent amount of video editors available for it too.

[jea-n]

On 9/13/2021 at 10:48 PM, anto said:

Problem is in wine's bug

https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=45277

and from crossover forum i have got answer that

 

I had a hunch Valve’s new Proton stuff would handle that eventually. Looks like the Experimental version added support for Vulkan child windows today. I wonder if you could set it up to run with Proton through Steam.

I haven’t tried it yet.

 

Edited September 21, 2021 by jea-n
remove links

[Snapseed]

On 9/21/2021 at 10:01 AM, Stephen_H said:

For years I've been wanting to move off Windows and onto Linux, but without pro apps for a graphic designer, I can't. I understand the chicken and egg situation - No designers using Linux because there's no apps for them. There are no apps for them because all the graphic designers are using Windows/Mac.

I truely do not care what OS I'm using. I started on Macs and loved the interface, but moved to Windows because Mac's hardware stopped giving me ports and storage. (When you live in Africa, we can't just fit in with first world thinking of "everything in the cloud" and just connect wirelessly. We barely have electricity, let alone always-on highsleed, affordable broadband) It was a hardware decision not an OS preference. I support Affinity because I've always been a sucker for the under dog. It's as much of a poke in Adobe's eye as it is a better financial choice. (I suspect that's the case for many Affinity users).

I apply the same attitude to Linux. It's the under dog and want to support it.

I don't even care what distro I have to use. If Affinity announced that their apps only ran on one speciffic Linux distro, eg: Mint KDE, I would choose that distro as my Linux OS. If they chose Manjaro or Suse... done.

Side note... I'd support a kickstarter fund - even if it's to guage the financial viability of Linux support.

I am afraid there is little chance of that happening in the short to medium term. Using the example of Photoshop, Pixeluvo is a native Linux equivalent of Photoshop Elements and PhotoLine is a full Photoshop equivalent that works very well with Wine. For finding native Linux options for other Windows softwares then I would suggest using https://alternativeto.net

If a Linux user really has to use Affinity products (or any other Windows software) then WinApps is a useful virtual machine option and there's more about is here https://github.com/Fmstrat/winapps plus there are tutorials on Youtube about how to set up WinApps on a Linux computer. That said, I personally would not even try that option with less than 16GB of RAM.

 

[Solarius]

14 hours ago, Snapseed said:

If a Linux user really has to use Affinity products (or any other Windows software) then WinApps is a useful virtual machine option and there's more about is here https://github.com/Fmstrat/winapps plus there are tutorials on Youtube about how to set up WinApps on a Linux computer. That said, I personally would not even try that option with less than 16GB of RAM.

 

I have used WinApps for a while (with 16Gb of RAM), when I needed my Affinity suite for small graphic works on a big project that required me to be on linux. It does not crash and work fairly well, until you try to do stuff. Then you realize that the interface is really slow and barely usable when you need to display several elements (which is a common case) : adding a point to a curve could take from half a second (blank page) to a few minutes (big file). I ended up switching OS again as it was more efficient…

It looks like the display relies a lot on hardware acceleration (and that makes sense), a feature that is in most cases unavailable on virtual machines. Unless you have a dedicated second graphic card for your virtual machine (which is not common and requires specific hardware and setup), forget about it. More dedicated RAM/CPU won’t make it more usable.

WinApps is a great option for cpu-based softwares (I have used it for Rhino3D almost flawlessy), for Affinity apps it requires too much hardware and power to be reasonably considered as a viable option in my opinion.

[Pufty]

I tried Wine at this point and I got as far as installing Affinity Designer. Launching it creates a field where the loader should be, but instead my screen in that area gets frozen and nothing ever happens further. Virtualbox and trial windows just to run it was slow. Disgustingly slow when dropping files into the virtual machine.

Now WinApps sounds hopeful, so thank you for pointing it out. I might wanna try it. I'm willing to wait a second for a single click, because so far I've barely reached that part and my PC seems might be able to take that. CPU is i7 6700K and DDR4 32GB RAM.

[kamanderside]

I'll be frank, with Steam moving to make Windows/Mac games compatible with Linux out of the box, Affinity's the only program holding me back from switching back to Ubuntu again. Especially with the upcoming Win11 release that will likely render my 10-yr-old computer useless, because I'll need to upgrade the motherboard, to upgrade the processor, to keep it compatible.
I would be willing to purchase new Affinity license keys for a Linux version, really, instead of dumping money on what would essentially be a new computer when Win11 comes out.