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Affinity products for Linux


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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

 

Screenshot_20220629_160131.png

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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.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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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/

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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.

AffinityLinux.thumb.jpg.f18fcdde4d568b368f68abf4ffe32f16.jpg

AffinityLinux2.thumb.jpg.74b2aec4d4629e7069b915d9f3906b24.jpg

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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).

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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.

 

AffinityLinux3.thumb.jpg.5fc7d73071d1117dbb653063cf028172.jpg

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

 

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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

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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.

shortcuts.png.c7e67144fca02067d0f8694e26404829.png

fedoraspecs.png.071f77ffd0f1afaaf87dcb5e8f8ee130.png

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fedora Workstation 39

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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.

 

Fedora Workstation 39

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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.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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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 : >

 

 

 

 

Fedora Workstation 39

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9 minutes ago, 1stn00b said:

(which should be illegal if we look at all closed-source software EULAS)

Most EULAs are filled to bursting with stipulations that sound scary on paper, but are unenforceable from a legal standpoint.

Did you all read the license agreement when you installed your Affinity apps? Do you REALLY think Serif has total ownership of our immortal souls?

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22 hours ago, 1stn00b said:

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 : >

Well, it is up to the community to make Linux a viable platform for developing software. If you want it you have to work for it. That's just the nature of open source.

Epic is also a massive company with billions in their pockets. They have a long history of providing easily accessible tools and funding for game development through their Unreal Engine, Quixel, and donations to projects like Blender. They are charitable because they can afford it and because it is in their best interest to strengthen their own brand that encourages working within their ecosystem.

Also, if Serif was so against people using Wine, why did the lead developer for Windows just post how to fix the GUI on Linux? Being against using Wine and not putting resources into supporting Wine and Linux are not the same thing.

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8 minutes ago, 1stn00b said:

Well they can't go after me or you, but if they wanted they could go after Wine , off course they need to be real stupid to do so but never say never : >

If you really want the best example for how that'd turn out, look to the Google v Oracle lawsuit that popped up in the courts here a few years back. The way Android translates Java calls isn't entirely dissimilar to how WINE works with Windows APIs.

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2 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

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.

It is a no-brainer for CodeWeavers to try to get the three Affinity softwares to work well on CrossOver because of the increased sales they would get.

I think it would be useful if everyone went over to CodeWeavers' website, downloaded Crossover ( https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover/download ), tried it out with Photo, Publisher and Designer, reported the bugs and faults back to CodeWeavers and started a thread discussion about the Affinity products on Crossover ( https://www.codeweavers.com/support/forums ).

They are perhaps the best potential option to try to solve the problem of running Affinity software on Linux (aside from the VM route, that is).

 

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@Frozen Death Knight

From my point of view Linux on Desktop is already a great platform for developing and distributing software with the introduction of Flatpak (i know i'm biased here since i use Fedora Workstation and want to go full immutable on Silverblue) that is actually decades away into the future from Microsoft UWP crapware  : >  

Even with those billions in their pockets they chose to make their anti-cheat run thru a translation layer and not native the same way they didn't make their Game Store Launcher available on Linux like Valve does with Steam that is also offered as a flatpak

Disabling hardware acceleration sounds more like putting salt on wound then fixing something. The canvas still flashes and flickers when u open menus so not really a fix.

 

 

 

 

Fedora Workstation 39

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