Affinity products for Linux

[LondonSquirrel]

5 hours ago, Pufty said:

has been any different judgement/decision today in 2021

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

[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.

[thedrumdoctor]

1 hour ago, warzmanda said:

Affinity's the only program holding me back from switching back to Ubuntu again.

I still need iPhone-over-USB capability to use Linux as long as I use an iPhone. Trying to sync music to any native Linux music management application is a non-starter. iTunes under Wine gives zero phone connectivity either. If Windows 11 is going to demand ridiculous resources, it'll be interesting to see how far the Linux + Snap + Sosumi VM has moved forward, or whether Apple find a way to stop the project or similar. 

[IanSG]

12 hours ago, warzmanda said:

 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.

Why "useless"?  I've seen nothing to suggest I'd want to move to Win 11, even if I could - 10 still works and support will be available for years.

[Pufty]

47 minutes ago, IanSG said:

Why "useless"?  I've seen nothing to suggest I'd want to move to Win 11, even if I could - 10 still works and support will be available for years.

Heh, seeing Win11 was the final step to fully committing to Linux

I think the 10yr old computer still got a good shot of being useful. Not that I know for certain, but people on Linux have more control on what they want to see on their PC, so a lot of background bloat can be cleared.

Windows 10 was fine at the start, could get rid of stuff I didn't use at all, could clear background processes that changed nothing in my usage, but pre-installed items always appearing after the mandatory, unskippable updates became more annoying with the cool addition of not being able to Uninstall certain programs anymore. Started using a debloater (giving long strings of code in a console admin rights from a random source online, lol), but that was becoming regular too. Updates kept adding everything back. Compared to Linux, I took things for granted on Windows (like video codecs, editing and designing software working out of the box), but was also given the shaft at the same time 😬

[ralphleue]

I am a Linux, Mac and Windows user. I would love to have Affinity programs for Linux. I would pay for them. I would pay double for them. I have paid for two complete sets of Affinity products so far (one set for me and the other a gift for my brother), plus almost all of the other software they offer (brushes, etc.). I bought all of the Serif software prior to Affinity. There must be more folks like me.

[thedrumdoctor]

8 hours ago, ralphleue said:

I am a Linux, Mac and Windows user. I would love to have Affinity programs for Linux. I would pay for them. I would pay double for them. I have paid for two complete sets of Affinity products so far (one set for me and the other a gift for my brother), plus almost all of the other software they offer (brushes, etc.). I bought all of the Serif software prior to Affinity. There must be more folks like me.

Me! And others, from what I’ve seen on this thread.

However, it seems Linux has lost out in the cross-platform usability stakes. So much today is done on hand-held devices and this as we know, is dominated by iOS & Android. The ability to switch between desktop and hand-held is a must-have in business/productivity and in the desktop creative world, Mac & Windows dominate. I don’t think Affinity will port to Linux as long as they can seamlessly go from iPad to Mac & Windows desktops.

I’m going to start experimenting with Mac running on Sosumi on Linux with hardware pass-through. I’d build another Hackintosh, but Apple’s proprietary CPUs will eventually kill bare-metal installs, so KVM pass-through looks like the longterm ‘Hackintosh’ future. If Apple didn’t insist on making their factory stuff impossible to upgrade I’d likely invest in another one. 
 

Windows 10 continues to annoy me after every update with its auto-resets, so I run the ‘Shut Up Win 10’ app after every update. But Linux is just so ‘no-nonsense’ in its outlook. Microsoft could make a killing with a version of Windows just to run pure productivity software - no games or fun. To run music recording software on a Windows box without interruption requires the switching off of a lot of background crap. Again, Linux would be great, but there is next to no development for industry-standard VSTi plug-ins. So everyone is forced back to Win/Mac because people just don’t have the time in their lives to fight to make stuff work on Linux and the software creators go with the market share. People just want to get things done at the end of the day.

[kamanderside]

On 9/30/2021 at 2:22 AM, IanSG said:

Why "useless"?  I've seen nothing to suggest I'd want to move to Win 11, even if I could - 10 still works and support will be available for years.

Win11 is essentially putting the kabosh on older processors, and that's including relatively recent ones that are younger than my AMD FX-4###. It will still be useable, but performance is going to be quashed severely.

 

On 9/30/2021 at 3:27 AM, Pufty said:

Heh, seeing Win11 was the final step to fully committing to Linux

I think the 10yr old computer still got a good shot of being useful. Not that I know for certain, but people on Linux have more control on what they want to see on their PC, so a lot of background bloat can be cleared.

Windows 10 was fine at the start, could get rid of stuff I didn't use at all, could clear background processes that changed nothing in my usage, but pre-installed items always appearing after the mandatory, unskippable updates became more annoying with the cool addition of not being able to Uninstall certain programs anymore. Started using a debloater (giving long strings of code in a console admin rights from a random source online, lol), but that was becoming regular too. Updates kept adding everything back. Compared to Linux, I took things for granted on Windows (like video codecs, editing and designing software working out of the box), but was also given the shaft at the same time 😬

Was dual-booting Ubuntu on my Vista laptop back before I built my desktop :P. Only fully switched back to Windows when I got a copy of 7 through school and started playing games on Steam.

But yeah, been watching quite a bit of Linus Tech Tips (LTT) lately, esp. on Win11 and the new Framework laptop (option to come as a DIY kit and can install your own components/OS). Even if the Framework startup company were to fail, one can still do a lot of the repairs/replacements that would be near impossible to an end user on a typical laptop.

Linux distros have come a long way in being user-friendly recently (use it on our entertainment PC that's hooked up to our TV), and even Steam gaming is getting serious about cross-compatibility with Linux, adding functionality without having to use WINE. If I were forced to get a new computer, the Framework Laptop running Pop! Linux would be my current go-to. My copy of 10 is locked to my current system, so either way I'll have to buy a copy when I'm someday ready to move to more recent hardware, and just making a donation to my fav Linux distro would be so much nicer.

Linus of LTT was going to give Linux as a daily driver a go to see if he could handle a full-time, perma switch from Windows, something I'll be watching closely.

[IanSG]

19 minutes ago, warzmanda said:

Win11 is essentially putting the kabosh on older processors, and that's including relatively recent ones that are younger than my AMD FX-4###. It will still be useable, but performance is going to be quashed severely.

The fact that I can't run Win 11 on my old system doesn't make my system unusable, it makes Win 11 unusable.  I can't be the only one whose looked at 11's new features and thought "so what?".  

[EmanueL-AT]

Here is one more vote for "Affinity for Linux", especially when it comes to Publisher. When I look at what's going on with Windows 11, I see one more good reason for me to switch to Linux, at the latest when Win 10 support will expire.

However, there's mainly one thing keeping me "locked-in" so far: There's no Linux version of Affinity, and the range of DTP alternatives for Linux is terribly narrow. With Affinity running on Linux, it would be much easier to shut Windows down on my PCs finally.

So, if Affinity and the penguin will become friends (I hope they will), keep a licence ready for me.

[Stephen_H]

On 10/2/2021 at 4:31 PM, thedrumdoctor said:

But Linux is just so ‘no-nonsense’ in its outlook. Microsoft could make a killing with a version of Windows just to run pure productivity software - no games or fun. 

Ahhh... remember the days of Windows NT?

[thedrumdoctor]

9 minutes ago, Stephen_H said:

Ahhh... remember the days of Windows NT?

Hell yeah! I used to admin NT 4 domains! But just imagine if Microsoft did NT 4 with plug-and-play support....

[kamanderside]

23 hours ago, IanSG said:

The fact that I can't run Win 11 on my old system doesn't make my system unusable, it makes Win 11 unusable.  I can't be the only one whose looked at 11's new features and thought "so what?".  

That's the point. In 2025 they're dropping support for Win10. If my box is still working well at that point, I'll either have to upgrade Win11 and deal with the crappy performance, buy a new computer and run Win11 on that, or...

...just use Linux, which is usually free with the option of donating to the distributor of whichever Linux OS was picked. But Affinity doesn't run natively on Linux, and I need it for my personal work. I could just go back to using GIMP or some other free/open source solution, but I'd rather not.

Honestly Affinity would be a great pairing with Linux - breaking with the Adobe model they've done, why not break with with the Mac/Windows OS model and offer a Linux option as well? (Not denying it could be a ton of extra work to do it, and last I checked they're strapped for programmers as it is).

I'm at the point where I'm just going to nab another ssd to throw POP! on and start dual booting again. Throw the 10-day Photo demo on WINE and see what happens.