Affinity products for Linux

[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.

[LondonSquirrel]

2 hours ago, MattyWS said:

windows is one big legacy bloat, with patches on patches on patches

That is the Linux kernel in a nutshell.

[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.

[LondonSquirrel]

2 minutes ago, Renzatic said:

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

Then you misunderstand. Over a decade ago, Torvalds said that the Linux kernel was bloated. It has only got much worse since then.

3 minutes ago, Renzatic said:

It does a good job of explaining X11 though.

X11, or X desktops? X11 is not bloated - it has not changed much over the years. X11 desktops like Gnome and KDE, yes they are bloated.

[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 !

[Renzatic]

32 minutes ago, MattyWS said:

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 !

I initially tried using the Steam versions, but I got tired of someone popping in scream "HEY WHAT'S UP YOU WANNA PLAY SOME VIDEOGAMES" every time I'd open Steam to fire up Painter, so I just learned how to install it the hard way.

If you're as desperate as I was, and can't get Alien to work, all need to do is unpack the rpm file using your archive manager, drop the the Allegorithmic folder you find within inside of /opt on root, create a .desktop file leading to the executable, and drop that in /.local/share/applications in your Home folder, and BAM...

:jazzhands: LINUX!

...or you could just install Fedora.

[wonderings]

4 hours ago, Renzatic said:

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?

Not sure why you would feel dirty saying that. You might be taking and making your OS/Computer choices a little to personally. They are tools to get various tasks done. Buy the best tool for the job, there is no right or wrong, simply what is best for you. 

 

3 hours ago, MattyWS said:

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;


 

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.

How is Windows not healthy? You could probably argue the amount of time most people spend in front of a computer is not healthy, but not sure how you can say any OS in itself is not healthy. I have no issues with Windows 10, think it is a good OS and the best version of Windows so far. I play some games and do surfing, the heavy work with Adobe is all done on my Mac. I built my PC myself so maybe the bloat is coming from store bought computers?

[Renzatic]

4 minutes ago, wonderings said:

Not sure why you would feel dirty saying that. You might be taking and making your OS/Computer choices a little to personally. They are tools to get various tasks done. Buy the best tool for the job, there is no right or wrong, simply what is best for you. 

I was being facetious.

Though I am deeply considering a Mac, which does tread on my geek street cred a bit.

[nBlaze]

15 hours ago, wonderings said:

How is Windows not healthy? You could probably argue the amount of time most people spend in front of a computer is not healthy, but not sure how you can say any OS in itself is not healthy. I have no issues with Windows 10, think it is a good OS and the best version of Windows so far. I play some games and do surfing, the heavy work with Adobe is all done on my Mac. I built my PC myself so maybe the bloat is coming from store bought computers?

I suppose he meant bloat as in constantly adding bells and whistles on top of old stuff rather than rewriting some of it from scratch. Like the Settings, which, after 10 years, is still half-baked and doesn't have half the commonly used stuff from the good old (or rather 'ancient') Control Panel. (At least from an IT professional standpoint, maybe end users don't need to go there half as often).

But you could also count other stuff as bloat - ton of useless apps (even before hardware manufacturers add their own), ads and insane amount of telemetry that you can't even turn off without digging in the registry or using third-party software.

[MattyWS]

What nBlaze said. I'm not talking about Windows being unhealthy to use, I'm talking about the OS being filled with floatware *from microsoft*, the fact that they have several versions of software that do the same things (settings... the snipping tool+snip&sketch, random other junk). If you look in the windows store you'll see theres a bunch of stuff including *games* already installed, and some stuff isn't removable. I don't want MS edge, I want to remove it but that shit keeps appearing still. You don't have the control you want over your OS with windows and more importantly Microsoft will scrape every little bit of data out of your usage of their OS. Some services are so reliant on MS as well (anyone remember when an MS server went down and stopped the task bar from functioning correctly? wtf). 

Miss me on that junk. At least with Mac OS you may be limited, but you know what to expect. You know you're a customer because Apple sells hardware and trust as opposed to MS which needs you to use their OS, which is the unhealthy part. Linux is just there for us to use with no bs, Mac is a byproduct of having bought apple hardware, MS's Windows is latching onto their users as hard as facebook is (and no, I don't have a facebook/instagram/whatsapp account, nor a google account). 

TLDR; windows sucks and we shouldn't be forced to use a different OS of our choice, but sadly this is currently true and only developers like Serif have the power to change that.