Affinity products for Linux

[Renzatic]

3 hours ago, the.ckb said:

Instead, all that's offered is GIMP, and no, that's not an effective substitute for Affinity or Adobe CC.

There is Krita, which is a helluva lot better than GIMP, though I still wouldn't quite consider it a 1:1 match for Affinity or PS.

[iuli]

I hope you Linux guys will eventually get Affinity working 100% through Wine. No harm done and Serif gets to sell even more copies at no extra development cost.

There’s always some users being against stuff if it’s not benefiting them personally; when I asked for certain missing (and quite crippling) Affinity features on iPad I got the absurd response from a folk here that iPad doesn’t deserve better. Oh well.

[Xatonym]

So I tried out Photo, Designer and Publisher in Bottles today (a Wine frontend) with the latest caffe-7.10-1 runner, and they all successfully installed and ran. I can open, edit, save and export documents like I can on Windows. Affinity Publisher can open large documents without crashing.

One big issue at the moment seems to be that the GUI is very glitchy and acts up when you hover over certain elements. Often entire windows can go black and only certain elements can show depending on what part of the window your mouse cursor is. Another issue is that clicking the "Edit in Photo/Designer/Publisher" option in the menu brings up an error message saying "Failed to launch designer - Could not hand over the file to the other application."

All in all, a big improvement over the last time I tried to get it running in Wine a couple of months ago, in which it wouldn't even run at all. We're not there just yet, but I have a feeling we're getting close.

 

Here are some screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/k3XpPuF

 

 

Edited June 28, 2022 by Xatonym
Moved screenshots to imgur

[gukosowa]

Still can't wait to have a working solution. Bottle looks promising!

As a Web Developer i really miss nothing in Linux, just the ease of affinity programs for making the graphics 😅

Btw why there are ppl against the port? Does it hurt to have more options? It must be a market, or else nobody would invest in it, even Microsoft wouldn't do. I remember most people, me included, were feared to go Linux because #1 missing Game Support and #2 missing enterprise software. #1 is tackled by valve ❤️ #2 looking to serif. When this done, having the freedom to choose the OS not bound to it's 3rd party software is a nice thing! Why the counter words 😅

[wonderings]

14 hours ago, MattyWS said:

 I don't really understand why anyone on these forums are gatekeeping Serif devs and their "time and money" when it's up to Serif devs what they do. Even if no official version is made for linux, if they casually see to it that it may work through Wine then that's awesome, if the community getting working without Serif needing to step in then thats awesome too.

It's also just good for software devs to engage with their customers in a nice way IMO. A healthy discussion about getting Affinity working via wine or otherwise should not be a problem, where I'm sure LondonSquirrel will have everyone believe that trying to get Affinity running via wine will cost Serif billions and make them go under lol. 

It is nice for sure when a developer replies, especially when it is something you want to hear. Of course when it is not something you want to hear then you have threads that go on and on about what a no brainer it is to develop for Linux. No one is gatekeeping Serif, they, I, am simply disagreeing with your line of reasoning. Again I think it would be great if you had Affinity on Linux, I just don't think it is a good thing for Serif to do. And I completely agree with you, it is up to Serif developers what they do, and they have been pretty clear on the subject. So Serif has made the decision to not develop for Linux, but hey it would be great if they still did even if only on their free time and casually, just as long as they are working on it. 

[Leigh]

This thread has been flagged numerous times over the years but more so over the past month. I don't want to give out warnings or lock this thread but I wanted to clarify Affinity’s position regarding some of the topics that are the cause of heated exchanges which get subsequently reported to moderators.

Affinity do not have an issue with users trying to get our apps working on Linux, as long as users are aware that Affinity won’t be offering any support or advice on how to get our apps working or how to improve performance via WINE etc.

Feel free to use this thread as a way of sharing information that may be useful to other Affinity users trying to get the apps running on Linux but as we’ve stated numerous times, we have no plans to bring our apps to Linux, so it’s pointless arguing and getting frustrated with each other.

I would also like to state that if you’re not a fan of Linux or have no intention/interest in wanting/trying to get our apps working on Linux, perhaps you should avoid this thread completely.

[Snapseed]

21 hours ago, Leigh said:

This thread has been flagged numerous times over the years but more so over the past month. I don't want to give out warnings or lock this thread but I wanted to clarify Affinity’s position regarding some of the topics that are the cause of heated exchanges which get subsequently reported to moderators.

Affinity do not have an issue with users trying to get our apps working on Linux, as long as users are aware that Affinity won’t be offering any support or advice on how to get our apps working or how to improve performance via WINE etc.

Feel free to use this thread as a way of sharing information that may be useful to other Affinity users trying to get the apps running on Linux but as we’ve stated numerous times, we have no plans to bring our apps to Linux, so it’s pointless arguing and getting frustrated with each other.

I would also like to state that if you’re not a fan of Linux or have no intention/interest in wanting/trying to get our apps working on Linux, perhaps you should avoid this thread completely.

Thank you very much for those clarifications for it is appreciated. To be fair in the second highlighted aspect, it was really only ever one particular individual who behaved in a confrontational and baiting manner.

We currently have two known ways of getting the rather good affinity products to run on Linux machines. The first of which is dual booting which is somewhat cumbersome and the second of which is using virtual machine technology that can work very well as we can see below from forum member Hartmut Doering's very helpful advice although l personally wouldn't try this method on a computer with less than 16GB RAM:

"Hi,

AP has currently no maintainer for Wine, that's why it does not work flawlessly like PS in Wine. But I found a way to make it work. Instead of Wine which "emulates" Windows and needs a Maintainer who asks Serif which Libraries AP needs and puts them in the AP-Wine-emulation, I use Virtualbox.
Virtualbox is a complete Virtual Machine, I had to install Windows in it.
I found out AP worked flawlessly in Virtualbox when I give the Virtual Machine (VM) 8 GB of RAM and a separate SSD from Mint. Also, 3D Acceleration needs to be turned on. 
- The downside for some people is, you need a Windows Licence Key for this approach.
+ The upside is you have for example a super sturdy Mint Workstation, and Windows runs controlled inside it, with drag and drop and all the good stuff.
+ Also, you can snapshot the VM, so when I start it, it does not boot Windows and such. It just opens a Window with the Windows 8.1 Desktop and AP already open and ready to use. I just have to drag my file over in AP, hit fullscreen and get stuff done.
+ All these, Windows-Registry stability problems or updates that interfere with my schedule are gone.
+ Also, I can use 8.1 far beyond its support cycle because I can manage what access to the Internet I allow the VM specifically."  (see the image at the end of this post)

Thanks also go to forum member Xatonym for sharing his recent experiences above. That has reminded me that there is something else that we can try. There is a 30 day trial of CodeWeavers' Crossover - please see https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover/download

We can download that, try the three Affinity products out and then report the bugs/errors back to CodeWeavers. This is an area where it would be commercially advantageous for CodeWeavers to get the Affinity products  working under CrossOver because they would then gain extra sales of CrossOver.

[MattyWS]

17 hours ago, Xatonym said:

So I tried out Photo, Designer and Publisher in Bottles today (a Wine frontend) with the latest caffe-7.10-1 runner, and they all successfully installed and ran. I can open, edit, save and export documents like I can on Windows. Affinity Publisher can open large documents without crashing.

One big issue at the moment seems to be that the GUI is very glitchy and acts up when you hover over certain elements. Often entire windows can go black and only certain elements can show depending on what part of the window your mouse cursor is. Another issue is that clicking the "Edit in Photo/Designer/Publisher" option in the menu brings up an error message saying "Failed to launch designer - Could not hand over the file to the other application."

All in all, a big improvement over the last time I tried to get it running in Wine a couple of months ago, in which it wouldn't even run at all. We're not there just yet, but I have a feeling we're getting close.

 

Here are some screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/k3XpPuF

 

 

Oh this is a great step in the right direction. I tried and failed to install affinity last night via Wine but I haven't tried bottles before. Did you use the .appx file of affinity photo or did you unzip it and choose the .exe?

Edit: hm, I tried bottles and couldn't get affinity photo running at all but then I don't really know what I'm doing with bottles so it's a bit confusing. Time to learn

[Snapseed]

5 hours ago, chiddekel said:

Hey. I have idea to start small project - nothing Big - using existing code of Krita, Gimp, Inkscape with new UI. Prototyping will be on Python and use library will be pick on development - OS api independent . Any help form creating community, web-page, developers also are welcome. Project will be call Infinity Design - licences on M.I.T.  - all message pleas send on PRIV. Cheers.
 

Personally, I think that Krita's UI is relatively good although the interfaces of Gimp 😮 and Inkscape could do with improvement. It would seem more efficient to cooperate with the existing set of developers to improve the user interfaces rather than set out on a new path as, for example, the contributors to Glimpse did with their spinoff project.

[Kamei Kojirou]

35 minutes ago, Snapseed said:

Personally, I think that Krita's UI is relatively good although the interfaces of Gimp 😮 and Inkscape could do with improvement. It would seem more efficient to cooperate with the existing set of developers to improve the user interfaces rather than set out on a new path as, for example, the contributors to Glimpse did with their spinoff project.

Krita is decent. Inkscape got quite the UI/UX upgrade in 1.2 if you haven't tried it in awhile. GIMP however... yeah still in the same situation it has been for years.

[Kamei Kojirou]

18 hours ago, Xatonym said:

So I tried out Photo, Designer and Publisher in Bottles today (a Wine frontend) with the latest caffe-7.10-1 runner, and they all successfully installed and ran. I can open, edit, save and export documents like I can on Windows. Affinity Publisher can open large documents without crashing.

One big issue at the moment seems to be that the GUI is very glitchy and acts up when you hover over certain elements. Often entire windows can go black and only certain elements can show depending on what part of the window your mouse cursor is. Another issue is that clicking the "Edit in Photo/Designer/Publisher" option in the menu brings up an error message saying "Failed to launch designer - Could not hand over the file to the other application."

All in all, a big improvement over the last time I tried to get it running in Wine a couple of months ago, in which it wouldn't even run at all. We're not there just yet, but I have a feeling we're getting close.

 

Here are some screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/k3XpPuF

 

 

Yeah, it's getting closer! It's missing a core graphic dll which causes issues with Vulkan Surfaces. This same missing dll is holding up all of the affinity programs with the issue you described. Support will come from the community eventually.

The other way you can help support making Affinity a priority is making it reach #1 on the https://appdb.winehq.org/votestats.php top 25 requested programs page. Affinity Photo is currently listed as #2.

[Xatonym]

2 hours ago, MattyWS said:

Oh this is a great step in the right direction. I tried and failed to install affinity last night via Wine but I haven't tried bottles before. Did you use the .appx file of affinity photo or did you unzip it and choose the .exe?

I used the .exe files from the Affinity website. IIRC, I believe the .appx version is only available through the Microsoft Store (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong), but I don't have access to that version since I bought it directly from Serif instead.

Quote

Edit: hm, I tried bottles and couldn't get affinity photo running at all but then I don't really know what I'm doing with bottles so it's a bit confusing. Time to learn

You might need to install the 'dotnet48' package in the dependencies menu. I believe that's what got it running for me. I hope that can get it working on your end.

 

[MattyWS]

Ah I might have a harder time than you, I got my affinity license from the windows store so I have to fish for the .appx which is effectively a zip file containing the "installed files" with the working exe in there, so no actual installation file for me ; ;

 

[walt.farrell]

5 minutes ago, MattyWS said:

Ah I might have a harder time than you, I got my affinity license from the windows store so I have to fish for the .appx which is effectively a zip file containing the "installed files" with the working exe in there, so no actual installation file for me ; ;

 

My guess: you would need to start with the installer from the Affinity Store, and run the installer under Wine to install the application and properly populate the Windows Registry.

[Kamei Kojirou]

19 hours ago, MattyWS said:

Ah I might have a harder time than you, I got my affinity license from the windows store so I have to fish for the .appx which is effectively a zip file containing the "installed files" with the working exe in there, so no actual installation file for me ; ;

 

So you can download the exes here. Including old versions of the software. You can test on a trial I believe.

https://store.serif.com/en-gb/update/windows/photo/1/
https://store.serif.com/en-gb/update/windows/designer/1/
https://store.serif.com/en-gb/update/windows/publisher/1/

[Renzatic]

This is the closest I've yet managed to get. I can open the application, and screw around with all the various bits and bobs in the UI, but when I try to open a document, it crashes on me.

This is the farther I can go.

Edit: Okay, further experiments. I managed to get it to open both a new document, and an old, fairly complicated Photo file I had lying around.

The good news is that it works, and it looks like it works well. That old complicated Photo file I opened up has a fair amount of adjustment layers stacked on top of groups of layers each with their own adjustement layers within. It looked like it was handling things like a champ.

The bad news is that the UI is a flaky, flickering mess that's nearly impossible to use.

So we're 3/4ths of the way there. Underneath it all, there's a working program. We just need to wait until a fix comes by that stabilizes the UI.

[Mark Ingram]

9 hours ago, Renzatic said:

So we're 3/4ths of the way there. Underneath it all, there's a working program. We just need to wait until a fix comes by that stabilizes the UI.

The UI is rendered via WPF, which by default uses Direct3D9. You can try disabling this, and rendering the UI via software instead with the --no-hw-ui command line parameter... (noting the double hyphen at the start).

[Renzatic]

6 hours ago, Mark Ingram said:

The UI is rendered via WPF, which by default uses Direct3D9. You can try disabling this, and rendering the UI via software instead with the --no-hw-ui command line parameter... (noting the double hyphen at the start).

That helped out tremendously. The canvas is buggy, flickering when you drag, pan, and zoom, and occasionally it'll stop drawing portions of your image (which you can get back with a quick pan), but it's actually functional. I opened up an old image, threw a couple of quick adjustment layers on it, then opened a new canvas, dragged the tab over a slot, then ran a paintbrush over it. Didn't notice any lag or hiccups beyond the canvas issues. So you CAN edit in it, even if the experience is sorta janky at the moment.

 

Edit: Here's a quick little video showing off some real basic functionality.

 

[1stn00b]

@Renzatic : Can u attach the Affinity bottle exported configuration yml file ?

[Renzatic]

Here you go.

Just let me add that it's far from perfect. For some odd reason, I can't access the preferences from the instance that can open a canvas, but if I lead the Run Executable command directly to the .exe in the Program Files folder, it can open the preferences, but crashes when it open a new file.

Also, when you make your brush size overly large, it gets very, very flaky.

backup_Affinity-Photo.yml

[1stn00b]

Same results, flashing canvas, but not so bad as yours. Well it's a start - but then again is up to Affinity to make it compatible if they don't want to make a native version - like all the other companies that are releasing Steam Deck updates for their Windows only games.

For those who don't know Steam Deck has a immutable Arch based Linux OS (like Fedora Silverblue) supporting only Flatpak Apps and running Windows games thru Proton :

That's exactly how Wine works translating Windows API calls to Linux API calls and not emulating anything.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Renzatic]

31 minutes ago, 1stn00b said:

Same results, flashing canvas, but not so bad as yours.

Think this could be because you're using Wayland? Since I've got an Nvidia card, I tend to stick to X more often than not.

[1stn00b]

I have an AMD RX 580 like in screenshot so it just works out the box, next card will also be AMD when prices stabilize for 6800 XT, so no problems here running Apps or Games on Wayland, everything is butter smooth.

The canvas flashing is related only to Affinity products, i tried Sketchup that actually uses the GPU and didn't experience any of the flashing problems i see in Affinity.

P.S. Bought my Affinity Photo and Designer in 2016 , and Publisher when was available and also their books from Amazon, but since i switched fully to  Fedora  i'm not interested in running the Microsoft ADs OS just for Affinity. So yeah 1 lost customer, that before wanted to pay for version 2 but now doesn't care since it's not available on Linux.

Also i think it's lost opportunity for Affinity to gain free advertising and be the 1st "Adobe like" commercial software on Linux ;> the same way Valve is now synonyme with Linux gaming thru their work on Proton.

 

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, 1stn00b said:

but then again is up to Affinity to make it compatible if they don't want to make a native version

Sorry, but I'll disagree.

Serif has said they do not plan to support Linux. If it is going to work there, it is up to the Wine community or to CodeWeavers to get it working, in my opinion. Serif does not want to expend resources (a) getting it to work and then (very important) (b) keeping it working with future development.

[1stn00b]

Well it's their problem not mine or Wine community, i already moved on. This is a commercial closed-source software so i don't think spending community time to reverse engineering their software (which should be illegal if we look at all closed-source software EULAS) to see why it doesn't work.

It's the same way as with Windows games anti-cheat : Epic made Easy Anti-Cheat available on Linux thru Proton and Wine not Valve or the community.

Also since Serif business model is to sell a unique non-sharable license on every platform they support i'm 100% sure not only that they won't support the Wine community, but make sure in the future that their Windows Apps will never install on Wine again : >