Affinity products for Linux

[Snapseed]

10 minutes ago, D’T4ils said:

Last week I finally got completely fed up with Windows, mainly because once again they pushed updates down my throat that led to another infamous blue screen. So during the weekend I took the time to give Linux (Pop!_OS specifically) another chance without even looking back.

The thing was that yesterday I was in need of access to Affinity’s tools, and so I decided to try the VM approach once again. This time I went with Boxes, which made the process incredibly easy (specially because of the express install it offers). I only needed to give the VM 8 GB of RAM (it probably would’ve worked with only 4) and I was good to go. I’m pretty new to Linux and VMs, so I’m not sure if Boxes too care of the graphic card side of the matter to make use of my Nvidia card, or if it simply stuck to the integrated one, but Designer as well as Photo worked perfectly fine without any issues whatsoever and quite fluently too. I was honestly very impressed

That is excellent news that you have found a smooth solution to get Photo and Designer working very well on Linux via VM - happy days! Personally though, I wouldn't even try with anything less than 8GB to be on the safe side.

For anyone else reading this post, Gnome Boxes should be available in the relevant Linux software store and you can install Windows plus other Linux distributions. It is also possible to install macOS using Gnome Boxes and online instructions are available on how to do just that.

Here is an introductory guide to Gnome Boxes:

 

[Renzatic]

4 minutes ago, Snapseed said:

For anyone else reading this post, Gnome Boxes should be available in the relevant Linux software store and you can install Windows plus other Linux distributions. It is also possible to install macOS using Gnome Boxes and online instructions are available on how to do just that.

Unless things have changed recently, Gnome Boxes doesn't let you passthrough a GPU. I wouldn't use Photo or Designer in a VM that lacks that option.

[D’T4ils]

1 hour ago, Renzatic said:

Unless things have changed recently, Gnome Boxes doesn't let you passthrough a GPU. I wouldn't use Photo or Designer in a VM that lacks that option.

Too bad that would scare you off. Remember this is not Photoshop, we’re talking about Affinity tools, which are way more considerate on your resources.

And if you’re right and Gnome Boxes does not allow you to pass-through a GPU, then that means it was using my integrated graphics card, which worked perfectly fine in my case

[MattyWS]

3 hours ago, D’T4ils said:

Too bad that would scare you off. Remember this is not Photoshop, we’re talking about Affinity tools, which are way more considerate on your resources.

And if you’re right and Gnome Boxes does not allow you to pass-through a GPU, then that means it was using my integrated graphics card, which worked perfectly fine in my case

incidentally if you have a cpu like mine (5950x) which doesn't have integrated graphics you're going to have a bad time in VM without some kind of GPU pass through.

As others have said though a good option for serif would be to get affinity working through wine which it *almost* does work, just some small issues of all the UI being blacked out. lol I'd be happy with using wine tbh. The World Machine devs have WM working practically natively through wine, it's actually perfect. the other day I even rendered out a 16k raw heightmap in under an hour. and had a terrain rendered in blender with ease. It's kind of amazing really wine is like magic.

[Snapseed]

On 6/13/2022 at 11:41 PM, MattyWS said:

incidentally if you have a cpu like mine (5950x) which doesn't have integrated graphics you're going to have a bad time in VM without some kind of GPU pass through.

As others have said though a good option for serif would be to get affinity working through wine which it *almost* does work, just some small issues of all the UI being blacked out. lol I'd be happy with using wine tbh. The World Machine devs have WM working practically natively through wine, it's actually perfect. the other day I even rendered out a 16k raw heightmap in under an hour. and had a terrain rendered in blender with ease. It's kind of amazing really wine is like magic.

I have to say that l like the way that they have worded it:

"Compatible with Windows 7+

World Machine runs natively on a Windows PC.

(Mac/Linux users: No official support is available. However, we've heard good things using Parallels & WINE)"

In time, it would be nice to see similar wording also apply to Affinity Photo, etc in respect of Linux.

[Snapseed]

4 hours ago, beez said:

I also see Affinity Designer on WINE to be a very happy middle ground if tested and indirectly (not officially is even fine as long as they do it in the backroom and don't tell anyone in order to prevent support requests and complaints of bugs) supported and made to work. I think a lot of people would be more than fine with this path. I know far too many people who have some more limited machines that are working wonderfully with Linux, but find it a burden and sometimes impossible to deal with or live with Windows that would like to use Linux to work with the Affinity line of software products. I use a Mac and it's fantastic, but a lot of people are frustrated with Apple abandoning older (and very powerful) systems who are moving to Linux since they cannot at all tolerate Windows.

Serif, please see this highly voted item: https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=39311

And please dedicate a silent NDA bound developer to the WINE cause.

I agree that many people would be quite content with the Affinity product range working well with Wine and at some stage l hope that progress can be made in this area.

l am not sure what the the highlighted bit means because l think it would be more logical to first start talking to CodeWeavers' CrossOver developers.

 

 

 

[GuernseyMan]

This thread is coming up for 5 years old.

I've got software which runs on Windows, some on Linux and some on both. For most of the Windows software that I have there is a thread like this one which follows the same tired format. Someone asks for a Linux port, the company says categorically that it has no plans to do this then there is an entitled stream of posts about how they will regret it when Linux finally takes off and how, if they port it, there will be a sudden exodus to Linux. It's an attempt to pander to the company's ego as how important they are in the global software market.

There's the "It's easy to make it cross platform" comments when the writers clearly have no idea just how complex a major software project is. Especially trying to re-engineer software to run on a new OS after 5 years of development.

Even the "Well just make it work with Wine etc., because that will be simple" won't have any effect. No company will change the code of it's commercial software to make it run on an unsupported system. Serif couldn't care less that 318 people have voted for Affinity Photo to run on Wine.

The final nail in the coffin for all of these threads is that the company knows, better than anyone, that they just won't have the sales from a Linux version. At the moment even the most optimistic statistics puts Linux market share on the desktop at less than 5%. In some industries it will be higher, sciences have always traditionally favoured Linux as the the VFX industry but its still not enough to warrant throwing resources at it when there are a host of unresolved issues (look at the other threads on this forum if you don't believe me).

"When my daughter wanted a pony I said no. Even she stopped going on about it after a couple of months"

I'd like them to port to Linux but really, this thread is just pestering now. It's serving no purpose other than making the Linux "community" look entitled and naïve.

 

[msdobrescu]

Dear, Serif/Affinity, thank you for the great and accessible tools!

I must say, I understood your point, no problem, I have found my tools to replace pretty well the WIndows apps I need under Linux.

I won't use Windows or Mac or Android for my needs, so it's OK if you or others won't provide Linux tools.

Anyway, following this topic over time, I must say that I see here posters that are obviously paid to discourage, otherwise I don't see the point of all these approaches, direct or even rude, or apparently empathize with the Linux users then actually discouraging again those requesting Linux. No wonder why some reactions to those are in the same spirit.

Why not doing the right thing, just close the topics of this kind and if you really need to know how many users would like to have it under a specific OS, open some poll for that and that's it?

[1stn00b]

On 6/13/2022 at 8:37 PM, Renzatic said:

Unless things have changed recently, Gnome Boxes doesn't let you passthrough a GPU. I wouldn't use Photo or Designer in a VM that lacks that option.

You actually fail to understand the purpose of Gnome Boxes : it's just a very simplified interface to allow you to use/create fast and easy of virtual machines - hence the auto-download of distros and quick no hands install : >

No one is stopping u from opening Virtual Machine Manager (virt-manager) and making your own custom virtual machine or even modify the one made in Gnome Boxes since the underlying virtualization tools used by both programs is the same : >

 

 

 

[MattyWS]

4 hours ago, GuernseyMan said:

This thread is coming up for 5 years old.

I've got software which runs on Windows, some on Linux and some on both. For most of the Windows software that I have there is a thread like this one which follows the same tired format. Someone asks for a Linux port, the company says categorically that it has no plans to do this then there is an entitled stream of posts about how they will regret it when Linux finally takes off and how, if they port it, there will be a sudden exodus to Linux. It's an attempt to pander to the company's ego as how important they are in the global software market.

There's the "It's easy to make it cross platform" comments when the writers clearly have no idea just how complex a major software project is. Especially trying to re-engineer software to run on a new OS after 5 years of development.

Even the "Well just make it work with Wine etc., because that will be simple" won't have any effect. No company will change the code of it's commercial software to make it run on an unsupported system. Serif couldn't care less that 318 people have voted for Affinity Photo to run on Wine.

The final nail in the coffin for all of these threads is that the company knows, better than anyone, that they just won't have the sales from a Linux version. At the moment even the most optimistic statistics puts Linux market share on the desktop at less than 5%. In some industries it will be higher, sciences have always traditionally favoured Linux as the the VFX industry but its still not enough to warrant throwing resources at it when there are a host of unresolved issues (look at the other threads on this forum if you don't believe me).

"When my daughter wanted a pony I said no. Even she stopped going on about it after a couple of months"

I'd like them to port to Linux but really, this thread is just pestering now. It's serving no purpose other than making the Linux "community" look entitled and naïve.

 

I I wouldn't say people showing an unwavering interest in something is pestering. Most of us here have accepted Serif doesn't care about Linux, at this point I just see this as a discussion thread about the potential of it. I still don't really understand why people are coming into this thread to be outraged at people that have an interest in a different platform to them though. "How dare you keep showing interest in linux!! How dare you want your favourite software on on the OS you use!!!" - These are senseless comments and, I mean no offense to you here but yours too. Likening people to entitled children throwing a fit for wanting affinity on linux and discussing it? Apart from comments like these, this is mostly a grown up conversation. I use linux as a platform professionally as do many other creatives. There is a discussion to be had about the potential of it IMO. It's cool if you don't think this discussion is worthwhile, you don't need to get involved if you don't care about the topic. :)

[MattyWS]

1 hour ago, 1stn00b said:

You actually fail to understand the purpose of Gnome Boxes : it's just a very simplified interface to allow you to use/create fast and easy of virtual machines - hence the auto-download of distros and quick no hands install : >

No one is stopping u from opening Virtual Machine Manager (virt-manager) and making your own custom virtual machine or even modify the one made in Gnome Boxes since the underlying virtualization tools used by both programs is the same : >

 

 

 

I'm quite the noob when it comes to virtual machines and my pc doesn't work well with them, but are you saying it's possible to pass through GPU to a VM in Boxes? If so I'd love to be able to do this

[MattyWS]

Photoshop in browser is here, it's not as good as affinity and not worth it if you're on windows or mac, however it works on linux as an alternative.
https://creativecloud.adobe.com/cc/photoshop

[neptronix]

Would Serif listen to us if we crowdfunded a giant pot of money to support a linux port?

[Old Bruce]

8 minutes ago, neptronix said:

Would Serif listen to us if we crowdfunded a giant pot of money to support a linux port?

No they wouldn't, they have said they wouldn't.

So why don't all the Linux people crowdfund a giant pot of money and come up with a far superior graphics suite? [my I-am-not-actually-serious face emoticon]

[MattyWS]

1 minute ago, Old Bruce said:

No they wouldn't, they have said they wouldn't.

So why don't all the Linux people crowdfund a giant pot of money and come up with a far superior graphics suite? [my I-am-not-actually-serious face emoticon]

in a perfect world, people would jump behind Gimp like they did Blender. I don't actually know what made Blender such a success though, whatever it is, Gimp must not have it.

[Old Bruce]

1 minute ago, MattyWS said:

people would jump behind Gimp like they did Blender.

For no discernible reason Gimp became MySpace and Blender became facebook

[Old Bruce]

7 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

Blender (the Foundation and Institute) has a vision for its product.

All you Linux fans here in this topic have a vision for a product, namely a graphics suite. What is stopping you? Lots of talk about crowdfunding for Affinity, why not go crowdfund for a brand new Graphics Suite Foundation and Institute and then make something better?

[MattyWS]

56 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

All you Linux fans here in this topic have a vision for a product, namely a graphics suite. What is stopping you? Lots of talk about crowdfunding for Affinity, why not go crowdfund for a brand new Graphics Suite Foundation and Institute and then make something better?

the same thing stopping most people from beginning a huge undertaking really, talking for myself at least I'm more than willing to admit programming anything close to something like gimp, let alone photoshop, is beyond my skillset, I do not have money and I'm not business savvy to startup a company but more than anything, I don't have the time for such a project. If I have time and money to start a business though, there are so many ideas I'd love to see through to fruition. Alas, everyone has ideas but like me, not everyone has the money, time or know-how. The most I've ever done (not including the stuff I work on for a living like sea of thieves, star citizen and a few lego games) is publish my own solo game on steam and that took what felt like a *lot* of time and effort for one person, and it's not even a complicated game. heck it's actually extremely basic but even something so basic is a large undertaking.

it would be a dream come true if the Blender Institute took on a Gimp fork but that will never happen lol

[Renzatic]

2 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

For no discernible reason Gimp became MySpace and Blender became facebook

No, there's a good reason. The developers actually spent a good amount of time improving Blender, and keep to a regular release schedule, always offering features people want, and are comparable to the competition.

GIMP? Well, GIMP doesn't really do that. Their devs are planning on some nice new features, but we probably won't see them for another 4 to 6 years.

[j0e.org]

Affinity missed his change.

Adobe is now filling the place: https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/14/23162580/photoshop-web-free-freemium-version-adobe

[Kajac]

I've been using affinity designer for 2 years (I have both Windows and macOS versions) and I still don't understand why they don't help people using affinity on linux.

Either by lutris or by linux. Since they don't want to make a version of linux because it's no use running using these tools.

I'm against having to create a virtual machine for this or having dual boot.

Anyway, there's no shortage of people to use affinity in linux!

It's sad to see here on this forum people making fun of anyone who wants to use linux!

[Komatös]

20 hours ago, j0e.org said:

Affinity missed his change.

Adobe is now filling the place: https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/14/23162580/photoshop-web-free-freemium-version-adobe

As you should understand this version of Photoshop will be a tryout. Less functionality as the abo version. 

If a Linux version of Photoshop & Co. were such a big fish, Adobe would have thrown out the fishhook long ago. But it makes no sense to develop for a few hundred users and then become a niche product on this platform. In the case of the Affinity programmes, Serif would have to multiply the purchase price to absorb the costs.

Don't come to me now with open source programmes, here free programmers work for free. Serif, like many of you starving people, has to earn money.

 

[j0e.org]

I don't come to you at all.

But I know, I will be happy to use PS in the browser.

[MattyWS]

On 6/19/2022 at 8:02 AM, Komatös said:

As you should understand this version of Photoshop will be a tryout. Less functionality as the abo version. 

If a Linux version of Photoshop & Co. were such a big fish, Adobe would have thrown out the fishhook long ago. But it makes no sense to develop for a few hundred users and then become a niche product on this platform. In the case of the Affinity programmes, Serif would have to multiply the purchase price to absorb the costs.

Don't come to me now with open source programmes, here free programmers work for free. Serif, like many of you starving people, has to earn money.

 

in all fairness, the number of linux users is in the several billions (that were able to be counted, which is quite difficult to count when linux typically doen't track users). How many of those people need a photo editor I dont know but it'd be unfair to say there's only a few hundred.

[wonderings]

On 6/16/2022 at 3:21 AM, msdobrescu said:

Anyway, following this topic over time, I must say that I see here posters that are obviously paid to discourage

You really think someone is paying people to think that Affinity on Linux is not a great idea for Serif? I don't think people really care all that much about Linux and certainly not enough to pay people to try and hold it back. No conspiracies here.... or have I just been paid to say this? Your will never know! Ok you will, I have not been paid.