Affinity products for Linux

[Renzatic]

4 hours ago, OS1 said:

That looks pretty much like Plasma with a theme, an icon set and an alternative dock.  No effort required really, theming is fun and easy in Linux, and there's hundreds to choose from!

He might be using an extension or two to move around some stuff on the top bar, but that's almost the default out of the box Gnome setup for Pop_OS.

And Gnome these days, especially Gnome 40, looks a lot like MacOS. 

[MattyWS]

5 hours ago, wonderings said:

Is that how the OS looks by default or did you make it look pretty much identical to MacOS?

apart from the background which I found online (and some settings changed like moving the clock to the corner instead of the middle) this is just how POP_OS looks ^^

[Renzatic]

Hey, it's been 4 days since the last post. Linux here yet?

[Pufty]

I bet if we just slap Proton on Affinity, it will will be done within 4 days. Proton be magic

[thedrumdoctor]

13 hours ago, Renzatic said:

Hey, it's been 4 days since the last post. Linux here yet?

4 days....about the length of time I lost trying to to get Peppermint to sync music with my iPhone.

I didn't succeed; Windows 10 reluctantly reinstated.

[Renzatic]

6 hours ago, thedrumdoctor said:

4 days....about the length of time I lost trying to to get Peppermint to sync music with my iPhone.

I didn't succeed; Windows 10 reluctantly reinstated.

Just do what I do. I use Peppermint for all the songs I have saved to my computer. If I'm out and about, I'll just use Spotify.

9 hours ago, Pufty said:

I bet if we just slap Proton on Affinity, it will will be done within 4 days. Proton be magic

Well, it ain't TOTALLY magic. It's still based on Wine, and very, very game-centric, making it fairly unlikely that it'll support Affinity any better than what we've already seen.

I did hop over to ProtonDB to look up Affinity Photo, but all I saw was an entry for Hentai Jigsaw Photo Studio: Fruit Girls, so...yeah, I don't know what to make of that.

[MattyWS]

I'm a bit of a linux noob but when I tried Affinity via proton and wine it didn't work. Wine came close in that it opened affinity photo and I could click on some of the buttons but the screen was black with some UI elements showing and it crashed after a couples minutes. Proton didn't open it.

[thedrumdoctor]

On 10/12/2021 at 5:12 PM, Renzatic said:

Just do what I do. I use Peppermint for all the songs I have saved to my computer. If I'm out and about, I'll just use Spotify.

I still have a need for putting music onto my iPhone though, for offline listening. I parted company with Spotify a few years ago as well. If there was an Android phone as small as an iPhone SE I'd jump ship, but everyone is happy carrying a house brick in their pockets these days. The Linux + iPhone experience is a non-starter. 

[Renzatic]

32 minutes ago, thedrumdoctor said:

I still have a need for putting music onto my iPhone though, for offline listening. I parted company with Spotify a few years ago as well. If there was an Android phone as small as an iPhone SE I'd jump ship, but everyone is happy carrying a house brick in their pockets these days. The Linux + iPhone experience is a non-starter. 

I was wrong about one thing: it's not Peppermint I use, but Lollypop. You'd think it'd have a lollipop icon, but no, that'd be too obvious. Instead, it's a peppermint.

[thedrumdoctor]

12 hours ago, Renzatic said:

I was wrong about one thing: it's not Peppermint I use, but Lollypop. You'd think it'd have a lollipop icon, but no, that'd be too obvious. Instead, it's a peppermint.

I have to say, there are some beautiful distros available now which run so efficiently on older hardware. 
 

Yet another Windows update released this week, another reboot and another trip through ‘Shut Up Windows’ config to reset whatever the update switches on again!

[Framelynx]

On 10/7/2021 at 8:47 AM, MattyWS said:

A +1 here for the Linux crowd. I Main POP!_OS and the only image manipulation applications worthy are Krita and Gimp... A proper package like the affinity line would be a hit IMO. Linux is no longer for the one or two nerds in the crowd, it's becoming more and more mainstream. 

If the developers need a reason, I would like to use Affinity as an example. Windows is the current King, so why use Linux? Photoshop is the current King, so why use Affinity Photo? The similarities are great IMO. A solid alternative OS deserves a solid alternative photo editing package. And just look at how professional this OS is, and how lovely Affinity would look on this! (screenshot from my pc)

So yea, I think there's a market for it and a hefty gap that Affinity could jump into as well. Substance Designer/Painter, Blender, Unity engine, Maya, Unreal engine etc etc they all have native linux versions.
 

The amount of gorgeous looking OS's coming out of the Linux world is astounding and increasing. There's no lack of design talent and vision there. It's so customizable. You can get a Mac or Windows UI clone if you wanted to or do something completely innovative. It's so awesome.

And yeah, I use Pop OS. It's awesome. Started with a Mac theme, now I figured the dock is annoying and got rid of it.

Wish Affinity was on it. I'd buy it in a second (full price).

 

[wonderings]

2 hours ago, Framelynx said:

The amount of gorgeous looking OS's coming out of the Linux world is astounding and increasing. There's no lack of design talent and vision there. It's so customizable. You can get a Mac or Windows UI clone if you wanted to or do something completely innovative. It's so awesome.

And yeah, I use Pop OS. It's awesome. Started with a Mac theme, now I figured the dock is annoying and got rid of it.

Wish Affinity was on it. I'd buy it in a second (full price).

 

Is it really design talent and vision if it is just copying something else? Personally I no longer care about changing too many things around, I like the way MacOS works in general, would not want to spend the time to make another OS work like it while I can't use the apps I need. The OS is secondary to the apps I run and not something I give all that much thought to anymore. 

[Pufty]

12 minutes ago, wonderings said:

Is it really design talent and vision if it is just copying something else? Personally I no longer care about changing too many things around, I like the way MacOS works in general, would not want to spend the time to make another OS work like it while I can't use the apps I need. The OS is secondary to the apps I run and not something I give all that much thought to anymore. 

Because clones are copies of the proven design choices, it can appear that there isn't design talent, but Linux has no entry bar, no paywall. 100% there is going to be talent amongst clones and some starter design choices (like Garuda's, but I ain't dissing Garuda... I use it as my main. They have a nice color choice, just that their graphic designer game is weak).

Looking at that background of light plates is a damn treat. Soft colored shadows and soft gradients? Daym! That background is pulling all the weight on that Desktop.

[Renzatic]

2 hours ago, wonderings said:

The OS is secondary to the apps I run and not something I give all that much thought to anymore. 

Unless your OS keeps getting in your way, or doesn't do certain things as well as other OSes, hence the reason why some people are jumping over to Linux.

[wonderings]

2 hours ago, Renzatic said:

Unless your OS keeps getting in your way, or doesn't do certain things as well as other OSes, hence the reason why some people are jumping over to Linux.

I completely agree if your OS is getting in the way, I think that is a preference thing though and subjective. One person is effecitient using Windows 10, another (like myself) much more in MacOS. I am more than competent with both OS's but prefer the way MacOS works for when I need to interact with the OS UI. 

4 hours ago, Pufty said:

Because clones are copies of the proven design choices, it can appear that there isn't design talent, but Linux has no entry bar, no paywall. 100% there is going to be talent amongst clones and some starter design choices (like Garuda's, but I ain't dissing Garuda... I use it as my main. They have a nice color choice, just that their graphic designer game is weak).

Looking at that background of light plates is a damn treat. Soft colored shadows and soft gradients? Daym! That background is pulling all the weight on that Desktop.

I think the talent comes from creating it in the first place. You can make copies of great works of art and duplicate them with great skill and precision, but it was the artist that thought of all the little things you love about the painting, the colour, the tone, everything. 

How often are you looking at your desktop wallpaper? I have all spaces with different backgrounds as it helps me quickly know what space I am in, but after that I am only seeing my desktop wallpaper for a brief moment when looking/opening a folder. 

[Pufty]

30 minutes ago, wonderings said:

I think the talent comes from creating it in the first place. You can make copies of great works of art and duplicate them with great skill and precision, but it was the artist that thought of all the little things you love about the painting, the colour, the tone, everything. 

How often are you looking at your desktop wallpaper? I have all spaces with different backgrounds as it helps me quickly know what space I am in, but after that I am only seeing my desktop wallpaper for a brief moment when looking/opening a folder. 

Talent comes from either natural excitement or enough experience. Experience comes from creating, so you might be right. Making copies of great work only creates the illusion that you're great. I've been in that trap. You never get to construct the fundamentals yourself, so you never really are able to stand on your own two legs. Not saying you won't pick up method/technique or experience, but fundamentally constructing something is the best.

As often as it appears as I also use Desktop programs on my Desktop PC? The background in that mac theme was pulling all the design weight, but that's merely because the iOS/Mac theme is boring. It's easy to replicate, simple, but that's likely the intent behind it. The background of some simple plates right there takes the cake for the Desktop looking awesome, because lighting, shadows, entire shape is soft. It's way more than opening Blender and pressing render on the Default cube.

[Framelynx]

@wonderings@Pufty Yeah, I agree with you. I'm not saying there's great design talent in copying the Mac & Windows themes. There really is other original UI designs out there that are better and get out of the user's way. (I just picked the most recent example which probably isn't the best) - Also it's hard to capture how an OS feels to use simply with screenshots.

Ubuntu / PopOS (The og OS. One of the most supported and customizable OS's with its extensions and tweaks. I didn't warm up to it at the beginning coming from MacOS but it's grown on me.)
InstantOS (focusing on snappy keyboard driven interface for power users)
HaikuOS (A little retro, kinda cute, looks and functions different to most)
FerenOS (Feels quite nice, modern, yet familar, quite smooth and functional)
TinyCoreOS (Probably the smallest modern GUI OS)
There's this other weird one that's the most original OS ever but the worst to use! LOL. But it was amazingly light and fast for a graphic intensive OS. The only thing it had going.
Pling OS Themes has 51,078 UI themes there! Some are copies, some are very different and experimental. Some are really cool.

There's tonnes more of course. And I'm not just talking about the tool bar, dock, file manager. I'm guessing most people on a thread about linux is a linux user and has probably distro-hopped right?

Also saying that apart from the cool alternatives, which might scare aware new users to gnu/linux, there is the Mac/Win clones to ease people in. And making the point that g'linux is so damn customizable, it's like a UI buffet!

.....

Sorry, were we supposed to be talking about Affinity on Linux? What more can be said?

 

[nBlaze]

+1 for the Linux version. Windows is getting more annoying to use with every update, so I went penguin on some of my devices - and Affinity is one of the few things I miss in day-to-day use.

That said, I do have a workaround, something I haven't seen mentioned earlier - remote desktop. It's situational and won't work for everyone, but it's the best solution I found so far.

Since my main workstation at work will run Windows for the forseeable future, is on 24/7 and I already had it configured for RDP connection, I figured I can just run the programs there (with all my usual files, fonts and assets readily available) and simply connect to it from my Linux laptop.

Not the most ideal solution, since you still need another PC to run the software on, but hey - it works.

[Renzatic]

I feel kinda dirty saying this, but now that Apple's supporting Blender with native Metal support, it's really got me wanting to buy a Mac. The Affinity programs are already there, arguably being their home platform. Substance Painter and Designer are there. And now Blender. It's got everything I want, and the performance is apparently outstanding.

...am I...am I a bad person?

[Old Bruce]

Just now, Renzatic said:

now that Apple's supporting Blender with native Metal support,

No they are not there yet. Apple has promised some money and a few developers to work on it. Could still be years before Metal and Blender work.

[Renzatic]

2 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

No they are not there yet. Apple has promised some money and a few developers to work on it. Could still be years before Metal and Blender work.

More like a few months. They've already submitted their first patch, and Metal GPU Cycles rendering is expected in the 3.1 or 3.2 release.

Full 100% Metal support replacing OpenGL/Vulkan will take awhile, but we're still going to start seeing some advantages pretty quickly.

[MattyWS]

My reason for jumping ship from Windows to Linux as my daily driver as a 3D artist and gamer is because I don't believe Windows is a healthy OS. much like photoshop, windows is one big legacy bloat, with patches on patches on patches. it's on ship thst still floats because someone keeps nailing boards to the holes. many Linux distros follow a similar path to Mac, in simplicity and efficiency, so in my mind, I quite see some linux distros as a FOSS MacOS. I think Affinity suite would do well investing in Linux because more and more people are realising it's not a scary programmer OS and in most cases things do just work. I'm here playing all my normal games, using blender, substance designer and unity to make my games the same as I did on windows. I even made some notes;


 

Quote

 

--Linux native applications--

---Supported---

-Substance - Annoyingly .rpm only, so for debian based linux distros this is a faf - Use Steam Versions

-Blender

-World Machine (via Lutris)

-Unity

-Unreal

-Krita

-Inkscape

-Gimp

-Steam(patchy support for some games but getting better, all my games work fine)

-OBS

-Houdini

-Maya* (don't care, dont use anymore)

-Modo* (don't care, dont use)

-Agisoft Metashape

---Not Supported---

-Notepadd++ - use the default text editor (which is way better than windows notepad)

-Gaea - use world machine

-World creator - use world machine


-Affinity Designer - use Inkscape ;; 

-Affinity Photo- use Gimp&Krita&Substance ; ;

-Photoshop - use Gimp&Krita&Substance

-All other game stores? - use Lutris but iffy, seems to work ok for most cases, I got all my games running just fine via steam and lutris

-Quixel - Only mixer isn't supported but I dont use that anyway

-Marmoset toolbag - sad times, use substance designer for baking and unity/unreal for showcase

-ScreentoGif -Use Peek (exactly the same but sleak

-Embergen - coming soon!

-3ds Max - use Blender (I use blender anyway)

-lightroom - use darktable (I only need this for photogrammetry anyway)

 

 

--Immediate Problems and software gaps--

adobe/affinity alternatives lacking, Gimp, Krita, Inkscape and substance designer can only take us so far. I really love affinity designer for game UI but I'll have to make do for now. 

No other issues for me.

 

So yea, as you can see the only *major* thing missing is something like the affinity suite. I do this professionally and the only thing holding me back on Linux is this, so there's a massive gap in the market here IMO and affinity could be the only premium suite to fill it.

[Renzatic]

19 minutes ago, MattyWS said:

-Substance - Annoyingly .rpm only, so for debian based linux distros this is a faf - Use Steam Versions

You can use [url=https://ostechnix.com/convert-linux-packages-alien/]Alien[/url] to convert .rpms to .debs, and vice versa. It's a slight pain in the butt, and you'll still have to write your own .desktop file, but it does work.

Also, Quixel Mixer has a Linux version in the works, and the Windows version seems to perform fairly well through Wine. Ditto on that latter bit for Gaea.

[Renzatic]

3 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

That is the Linux kernel in a nutshell.

No, the Linux kernel is pretty lean and mean, from what I understand.

It does a good job of explaining X11 though.

[MattyWS]

3 hours ago, Renzatic said:

You can use [url=https://ostechnix.com/convert-linux-packages-alien/]Alien[/url] to convert .rpms to .debs, and vice versa. It's a slight pain in the butt, and you'll still have to write your own .desktop file, but it does work.

Also, Quixel Mixer has a Linux version in the works, and the Windows version seems to perform fairly well through Wine. Ditto on that latter bit for Gaea.

yea first thing I did was convert substance via alien, however that *is* a faf and the steam versions do simply just work. I havent tried gaea through wine yet I should try that now !