Affinity products for Linux

[maor26]

5 hours ago, Alex M said:

Currently, it's about 50 times less important than all other requests around the forum.

No one is asking them to release a perfect product from day 1 but at least try and consider to maybe start working on it
slowly as a side project, then maybe release an alpha/beta release(they can always count on linux users to submit bug reports to make it better) and
eventually release a stable version(even if it takes a long time).
Valve did the same with steam a few years back. It was released as beta and it had bugs and also lacked some fetures.
After a long period of working on it while in beta, they released it as a stable version with feature parity to the windows client.
It took A LOT of time and effort, but they did it and it paid off.

[PaulEC]

3 minutes ago, maor26 said:

No one is asking them to release a perfect product from day 1 but at least try and consider to maybe start working on it
slowly as a side project, then maybe release an alpha/beta release(they can always count on linux users to submit bug reports to make it better) and
eventually release a stable version(even if it takes a long time).
Valve did the same with steam a few years back. It was released as beta and it had bugs and also lacked some fetures.
After a long period of working on it while in beta, they released it as a stable version with feature parity to the windows client.
It took A LOT of time and effort, but they did it and it paid off.

I don't know if you've had a look around these forums, but, if you do, you'll see that there are bug reports and feature requests that have been around for years! That's for all three apps on three platforms. (Actually, of course, we're still waiting for Publisher on iPad.) As has been pointed out many times, Linux has a very small market share, and of those, the number of Linux users who will actually want to buy the Affinity apps is tiny (in comparison to Windows, Mac and iPad). Serif is quite a small company, so I (and I think quite a few other users) would quite like the existing bugs to be fixed, and the existing feature requests to be implemented, before Serif spread themselves even thinner, by starting on developing the Affinity apps for another OS. Commercially, I'm sure Serif will make vastly greater profits by working towards and selling version 2 of the apps to Windows, Mac and iPad users, than developing and selling first versions to Linux users. 

[LondonSquirrel]

14 minutes ago, PaulEC said:

so I (and I think quite a few other users) would quite like the existing bugs to be fixed, and the existing feature requests to be implemented,

Amen. I have run into a couple of bugs personally. They are more annoyances than show stoppers (for me). The list of features requested is long and doesn't seem to be getting shorter. Affinity has its hands full with this, so let's see what version 2 delivers.

Affinity is far better off developing for the 99% desktop operating systems than polishing the 1% (of whom what % will actually buy a licence).

[MattyWS]

53 minutes ago, PaulEC said:

I don't know if you've had a look around these forums, but, if you do, you'll see that there are bug reports and feature requests that have been around for years! That's for all three apps on three platforms. (Actually, of course, we're still waiting for Publisher on iPad.) As has been pointed out many times, Linux has a very small market share, and of those, the number of Linux users who will actually want to buy the Affinity apps is tiny (in comparison to Windows, Mac and iPad). Serif is quite a small company, so I (and I think quite a few other users) would quite like the existing bugs to be fixed, and the existing feature requests to be implemented, before Serif spread themselves even thinner, by starting on developing the Affinity apps for another OS. Commercially, I'm sure Serif will make vastly greater profits by working towards and selling version 2 of the apps to Windows, Mac and iPad users, than developing and selling first versions to Linux users. 

It's a shame really because if Serif had done things right to begin with and made their foundation well, it wouldn't be a problem. If they have to maintain a completely separate codebase per OS they're doing something wrong. It's hard to believe anyone would start from scratch with something as major as Affinity Suite without this kind of stuff in mind. Granted, I'm not a programmer so I wouldn't know the intricate details of stuff like this compared to the devs at Serif, but for new applications it's not a problem in this day and age.

I mean people questioning why Adobe don't put photoshop on linux? because they iterated on an application they started in the very early 90's, their code for photoshop is at this point probably layers upon layers of bloat and legacy dependencies. Serif started Affinity what, like 5-6 years ago? They still have a chance to build their foundation for the skyscraper they're making, Adobe on the other hand is the tallest skyscraper around with old foundations that cant be changed so easily now. The difference between Serif and Adobe is that Serif have a fresh start, a chance to do it right. Adobe at this point is just living out its long life, no real innovations anymore, they don't need to.

[LondonSquirrel]

9 minutes ago, MattyWS said:

If they have to maintain a completely separate codebase per OS they're doing something wrong

Perhaps you have never done any cross platform programming? There are differences in all sorts of ways, such that what is allowed on one OS is not allowed on another. For example, allowed characters in file names. Another is file locking, which is completely different between Windows and UNIX (macOS being UNIX-like).  To handle these differences, you have to have a certain amount of per platform code.

12 minutes ago, MattyWS said:

Granted, I'm not a programmer so

Aha. So you don't know what is involved.

14 minutes ago, MattyWS said:

why Adobe don't put photoshop on linux?

Because the Linux desktop market is not worth worrying about. Linux displaced much of UNIX on the desktop quite a long time ago. And when UNIX on the desktop was a thing, Adobe had a version of Photoshop for UNIX. This was in the days when for high-end computing on the desktop you used a UNIX variant, such as SunOS or Irix. That market disappeared when Windows + Intel on the desktop at the high end became a much cheaper option than UNIX. It has not been replaced by Linux.

19 minutes ago, MattyWS said:

Adobe at this point is just living out its long life, no real innovations anymore

Ever growing list of features...

[Snapseed]

4 hours ago, MattyWS said:

I'd like to then mention Adobe Substance Suite to compare to Serif, because before substance was sadly acquired by adobe they were just a regular company that started from nowhere, made a name for themselves and were cross platform including Linux (and still are, though Adobes acquisition makes me wonder how long that will last). If Allegorithmic were successful with a similar market and proprietary software that had perpetual licenses while being cross platform, why can't Serif do the same? 

I dunno, to say they can't do it just seems to suggest Serif is incompetent and I don't think they are, they can make software just fine and they could make it cross platform if they wanted to, so it's really up to them if they want to support Linux. I don't think they'd run themselves into the ground doing it because I'm sure they know how to run a business. If they choose not to because they don't want to "take a risk" that would be a shame, because I'm not going back to Windows and I'm certainly not going to Mac just for serif. I'd sooner choose a to support a company with the same values. 

Also, Photoshop kinda have become cross platform now, much like Photopea they can just run the software in browser. I think that's Adobes way of supporting all platforms. I don't particularly like that approach (something still bugs me about using photopea just because it's all in a browser) but it is what it is. I'm not saying Serif should make theirs for browser, I'm saying if Adobe is considering getting their product everywhere then adobe can't be used as an argument against going cross platform. 

I'd really love to support Serif in their journey to making Affinity the best, it can be, but I can't if they won't give basic support for something like channel packing let alone being available on platform I use. I don't see Linux support happening any time soon but I'd still like to voice my vote for it.

I'm a 100% Linux user these days and I can get by using Nomacs, Pixeluvo (a good Photoshop Elements equivalent), Canva and full Softmaker Office for the work/projects that I currently need to do. I would at some stage like to see the three rather good Affinity products come to Linux or at least have good Wine compatibility so they can be used on Linux that way (our friends over at PhotoLine already do this).

That said, I do appreciate Serif's practical reasons why they can't yet offer any Linux or Android versions. Firstly, they are 100x smaller than Adobe Corporation and so they just don't have the same large capital/resources to do this. Secondly, and I think they're right in doing this, they are not rashly over-expanding because that can end very badly as shown by the unfortunate examples of Peppertap and Wise Acre Frozen Treats (look them up).

In the meantime, we can politely request that they kindly consider doing a Linux version at some future stage and we can join WineHQ to vote up Affinity Photo (you actually have 3 personal votes to cast! https://appdb.winehq.org/votestats.php ).

[Snapseed]

2 hours ago, maor26 said:

No one is asking them to release a perfect product from day 1 but at least try and consider to maybe start working on it
slowly as a side project, then maybe release an alpha/beta release(they can always count on linux users to submit bug reports to make it better) and
eventually release a stable version(even if it takes a long time).
Valve did the same with steam a few years back. It was released as beta and it had bugs and also lacked some fetures.
After a long period of working on it while in beta, they released it as a stable version with feature parity to the windows client.
It took A LOT of time and effort, but they did it and it paid off.

Other views are available, but I would be personally be happy if the Windows version could be suitably tweaked so that it worked well with Wine/Crossover just like good old Photoshop CS2 does. I think an outcome like that would be an excellent and pragmatic compromise option.

[MattyWS]

3 hours ago, Snapseed said:

Other views are available, but I would be personally be happy if the Windows version could be suitably tweaked so that it worked well with Wine/Crossover just like good old Photoshop CS2 does. I think an outcome like that would be an excellent and pragmatic compromise option.

incidentally CS6 works really well too via wine, though with Gimp 3.0 coming soon I might just give up on affinity, and I really don't want to use Photoshop. Krita, Gimp and Inkscape I guess are the big go-tos if Serif don't care for it.

Afterall, barely anyone uses Affinity compared to photoshop, so why bother with it?(!) 😂

[MattyWS]

3 hours ago, LondonSquirrel said:

Aha. So you don't know what is involved.

You misunderstand. I'm not a professional programmer, but I have still published many games professionally with over a decade of experience, a lot of which happen to be cross platform, so I'm not totally clueless, I just know my limits and holes in my knowledge. I'm not about to sit here and say I'm an expert programmer when I'm not, and I'm not about to say I'm an expert in market analysis either, but I know enough to see a wasted opportunity like this one passing Serif by.

[Renzatic]

28 minutes ago, MattyWS said:

though with Gimp 3.0 coming soon I might just give up on affinity,

And it still won't have freaking adjustment layers.

[msdobrescu]

4 hours ago, LondonSquirrel said:

Perhaps you have never done any cross platform programming? There are differences in all sorts of ways, such that what is allowed on one OS is not allowed on another. For example, allowed characters in file names. Another is file locking, which is completely different between Windows and UNIX (macOS being UNIX-like).  To handle these differences, you have to have a certain amount of per platform code.

Just "playing" here and there, I've found 10-15 years ago that were several stable libs/frameworks to support these differences. Out of those, I've used Qt and wxWidgets, but there was also GTK. So this is not an explanation.

[LondonSquirrel]

33 minutes ago, msdobrescu said:

So this is not an explanation.

How do you think that an app written to make use of Apple's M1 chipset will handle a Windows graphics card? This is another example of where you need to be platform aware, and not just write code for the lowest common denominator. QT and the like do not handle all of this. If it was that simple, cross platform programming really would be simple. 

[GuernseyMan]

You've made me break my "three posts to a thread" rule. It's more of a guideline really but helps to keep me sane. 

This thread has really gone off the rails. What started as a simple request has suddenly turned into some quite passive aggressive insults. 

Serif had been publishing software for over thirty years. I've bought all of their software for at least twenty years and always found them to be exceedingly professional and capable. 

The comment that they somehow don't have the bottle to "take a risk" is ridiculous. It's easy to be brave when you're betting with someone else's money, resources and reputation. None of use have any idea what analysis they've done on this and so we have no idea how much of a risk they would be taking. 

To say that they've somehow painted themselves into a corner by incompetently writing code that can't be ported is pure conjecture as well. We don't even know for sure what tools/engine they've used. This isn't Serif's first rodeo, they've been at this a long time. 

Any attempt to chide, or otherwise shame them into doing what you want won't work. What do you expect them to do at the next strategy meeting? Port the software to Linux because someone on the forums said they can't do it or that they don't have the bottle. 

Try to keep it civilised (I'm english, that is spelled correctly). 

[msdobrescu]

38 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

How do you think that an app written to make use of Apple's M1 chipset will handle a Windows graphics card?

There is no Windows graphics card. The access to hardware is provided by the OS if there is a driver written for it by the hardware maker. That happens when you use an Nvida or an ATI card, for example. That should happen for most of the hardware. For this there are standards like OpenGL, OpenCL and so on. Same as for Internet browsers, they implement standards (HTML, ECMA etc.). Steam bridges the software things related to games Windows specific API calls and, sometimes, shortcuts taken by their makers.

[LondonSquirrel]

12 minutes ago, msdobrescu said:

There is no Windows graphics card.

Yes I know that, but you know what I mean. Apple has a very limited hardware set, while Windows can have almost anything. An app written to make full use of M1 will not be able to use the same APIs on Windows at all. These differences are only likely to grow larger as Apple improves (add features to) M1.

[msdobrescu]

20 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

These differences are only likely to grow larger as Apple improves (add features to) M1.

Then all said about why Affinity would not implement Linux apps due to the presumed volume of effort applies for M1 too.

That made me realize that to develop for Linux has a much larger technical support than for Windows or Mac if we look at the options and the fact that more people contribute to it than a big company does for its own products.

 

[LondonSquirrel]

31 minutes ago, msdobrescu said:

Then all said about why Affinity would not implement Linux apps due to the presumed volume of effort applies for M1 too.

Except the macOS market share... is about 10 times that of Linux on the desktop. And graphics apps are very popular amongst Mac users.

32 minutes ago, msdobrescu said:

to develop for Linux has a much larger technical support than for Windows or Mac

Correct. 

[MattyWS]

3 hours ago, Renzatic said:

And it still won't have freaking adjustment layers.

I think thats the worst part about it. ; ; That and no vector shape tools.

[B-Interactive]

5 hours ago, MattyWS said:

...though with Gimp 3.0 coming soon I might just give up on affinity, and I really don't want to use Photoshop. Krita, Gimp and Inkscape I guess are the big go-tos...

Starting up a virtual machine each time I wanted to run Affinity Photo had become too tedious for me, particularly given the poor performance of running it in a VM.  My Affinity Photo license goes largely unused now.

I've taken to just using Gimp instead.  It's rough around the edges and lacks a feature or two, but it's very capable.  The main hurdle has been adapting to its shortcuts and UI.

I raise my hand as someone who'd appreciate Affinity Photo releases under Linux, but I'm not holding my breath for it.  Serif will do what Serif will do.

As has been alluded of Linux users previously in the thread, I'm not opposed to paying for and using commercial, closed source software.  I've also paid for Davinci Resolve Studio, which I'm delighted to be able to use under Linux, and is a suitable equivalent for GPU/CPU intensive closed source graphics software running under Linux/Windows/OSX.  BlackMagic target and officially support CentOS (although perhaps under review given it's approaching EoL), so whilst you can run Davinci Resolve under other distros (and I do), they're only community supported.  And that's fine, because community support is something Linux has always done and does well.  In a nutshell, needing to support 200+ (or whatever) distros is not necessary.  Target one (eg: Ubuntu LTS or Fedora) and let the community worry about packaging for, and supporting other distros....or don't *shrug*

[Renzatic]

On 11/23/2021 at 5:53 PM, MattyWS said:

I think thats the worst part about it. ; ; That and no vector shape tools.

I can get by without the vectors, but adjustment layers are a make or break feature for me. They're so important, I don't consider a photo editing app a photo editing app unless they're in there.

The good news is that adjustment layers and layer effects are planned for 3.2, which, given the improvements made in the 3.0 release, would finally make GIMP a fairly decent Photoshop/Affinity alternative. The problem is, no one knows how long that'll take. Given their track records, we could probably expect it by 2031 or so.

[Snapseed]

On 11/23/2021 at 7:04 PM, Renzatic said:

And it still won't have freaking adjustment layers.

Yes, very important functions like non-destructive editing, inbuilt CMYK capability, etc are yet to appear and I suspect it will be a few more years yet before we see them in Gimp. The only suggestion I can offer is to keep on donating so that the good work can continue.

On 11/24/2021 at 12:29 AM, B-Interactive said:

Starting up a virtual machine each time I wanted to run Affinity Photo had become too tedious for me, particularly given the poor performance of running it in a VM.  My Affinity Photo license goes largely unused now.

I've taken to just using Gimp instead.  It's rough around the edges and lacks a feature or two, but it's very capable.  The main hurdle has been adapting to its shortcuts and UI.

I raise my hand as someone who'd appreciate Affinity Photo releases under Linux, but I'm not holding my breath for it.  Serif will do what Serif will do.

As has been alluded of Linux users previously in the thread, I'm not opposed to paying for and using commercial, closed source software.  I've also paid for Davinci Resolve Studio, which I'm delighted to be able to use under Linux, and is a suitable equivalent for GPU/CPU intensive closed source graphics software running under Linux/Windows/OSX.  BlackMagic target and officially support CentOS (although perhaps under review given it's approaching EoL), so whilst you can run Davinci Resolve under other distros (and I do), they're only community supported.  And that's fine, because community support is something Linux has always done and does well.  In a nutshell, needing to support 200+ (or whatever) distros is not necessary.  Target one (eg: Ubuntu LTS or Fedora) and let the community worry about packaging for, and supporting other distros....or don't *shrug*

If I may, please, I would like to make some constructive suggestions for you.

The first is to try developer Diolinux's PhotoGIMP patch for Gimp 2.10+ that make the UI more like Photoshop and that introduces the Photoshop shortcuts - https://github.com/Diolinux/PhotoGIMP

The second suggestion is to try the online Photopea image editor and it should look quite familiar - https://www.photopea.com/

The third and final suggestion is to try out PhotoLine and while there is no official Linux version, the developers in Germany make sure that their software works well with Wine so that Linux users are not left out - https://www.pl32.com/

There are some brief guides to PhotoLine below:

http://www.russellcottrell.com/photo/PhotoLine/basic.htm

http://www.russellcottrell.com/photo/PhotoLine/downloads/PhotoLineTutorial.pdf

http://evrencomert.com/PhotoLine.htm

While the interface might be a bit old school, it really is a competent and capable image editor (picture enclosed).

I must stress that all the above options are no commercial threat to Serif Europe whatsoever precisely because Serif Europe does not yet offer any Linux versions of their Affinity products.

 

[MattyWS]

Photopea works great for sure, I wish they'd make an actual desktop application for it but thats more a personal preference thing (I know you can save it as a web app though). Since my work is mostly adjustments to screenshots/renders I'm not so much doing photography (other than photogrammetry) or print work so gimp is getting there for me. 3.2 is probably the day I ditch everything else for Gimp if Affinity hasn't make things work on linux by then.

There is also Darktable (yet another example of an application that is cross platform without any problems, crazy huh) for people that mostly do photography and need something like Lighroom. I heard good things about RawTherapee too but I've not tried it myself.

http://rawtherapee.com/

https://www.darktable.org/
 

[IanSG]

2 hours ago, MattyWS said:

There is also Darktable (yet another example of an application that is cross platform without any problems, crazy huh)

"without any problems" is a bit disingenuous - it was 10 (ish) years before there was a decent Windows version.  Producing something that would run wasn't too much of a problem but supporting it was - sound familiar?

[msdobrescu]

I use RawTherapee and it's great. They are also very responsive as they've created camera profiles in a day for me.

[B-Interactive]

I use RawTherapee too and highly recommend it for photo processing.  In many ways, it's much more advanced than Lightroom or Photoshop Camera Raw, so may be a bit difficult for a new user to approach.

DisplayCAL is also a fantastic open-source screen calibration tool, I use with my X-Rite i1Display Pro.