Affinity products for Linux

[icetnet]

I know... This has been beaten to death for more than 5 years.... However, there are some assumptions that are inaccurate...

History: I use the Affinity Suite on Windows (VM) and MacOS and have for a while. I'd love to use it on Linux as well.
It is true that the majority of Linux use is server and the main slice of that usage does not employ a GUI interface. The other side... the Desktop side... Well, yes, it contains a LOT (probably majority) of people that want something for nothing and that leaves a horrible taste in developer/organization mouths. I get it.

Yet, I, and quite a few of my peers do not fall into this category. We are looking for stability as a baseline... I've been MacOS for a long time, however, now moving the base OS for the third time due to hardware adoptions changes, this will be my third time having to adopt different tools to do my same job in the last 12-15 years. The reasonably unreasonable will tell me "get with the program... change is the only constant". I get it. Unfortunately, everyone wants to make money... gobs of it. I get that too, but, arguably the major version costs and especially the subscription fees actually cost so much more than needed. Thus, back to stability... The standard assumption in looking for Linux software is that I want FOSS. No, not necessarily. I want something that I can incorporate into my organizational tools long term. I've purchased CAD, Email, Calendar, Virtualization, and other software/tools for my system (Dual Xeon, 128G RAM, Radeon RX560, etc.) Not a gamer machine, but perfect for the Development, DevOps, and Engineering stuff that I do.
The reason that stability, longevity matters is automation. Software that constantly changes core functions becomes painful in the continuous improvement and integration scheme of things. Collaboration and sharing are also important, as I would never want to mandate what OS my peers/employees use. Thus, IF someone would build this, and NOT charge astronomical fees (but a similarly priced product), I would buy it and I would definitely appreciate it.

I get it, it is hard. It is one of the reasons that Java was created and also one of the reasons that the Java experience has failed. BUT, the dream is still alive, and I'm getting crotchety in my old-ish age. I'm tired of the lame excuses and name calling... I have NO problem with "We have no plans to support", but 'MoveOnPeople' and the other agitators here really have no business making any attempt to speak for real business.

I'll keep looking for a true cross-platform suite of tools. When I find it... if I can afford it, I will buy it and incorporate it into my workflow. Until then, un-moderated agitators continue to dampen my desire to use the products that they "represent". Thanks for letting me rant.

[Snapseed]

On 2/10/2022 at 3:25 PM, Bez Bezson said:

I'd be happy with it working under either Wine or Lutris, that'd be enough for me to buy licenses for all three products.

Surely that'd be much less work than a native version.

The separate developers behind Photoscape and Sagelight don't make Linux versions of their softwares but they do try to ensure that they work well with Wine. Indeed, Photoscape works so well with Wine that it is now an official Ubuntu Snap.

Given Linux's current modest desktop market share, it might not be economically viable to develop Linux versions of the Affinity range at this time but I don't think it's unreasonable to ask Serif Europe to at least investigate whether they could consider trying to make their products work well with Wine/CrossOver.

[LondonSquirrel]

11 hours ago, Snapseed said:

don't think it's unreasonable to ask Serif Europe to at least investigate whether they could consider trying to make their products work well with Wine/CrossOver

The problems are partly technical, which can be overcome. It's a matter of spending time making things work on a different OS.

But the main problem as you wrote is the 'modest desktop market share'. The Linux desktop market share has barely changed in 20 years. Despite outright misleading and wrong information from some people in the Linux community to the effect that Linux has a greater market share on the desktop than macOS, Linux desktop usage hovers around 1% at most.

[MattyWS]

On 2/15/2022 at 12:26 PM, LondonSquirrel said:

The problems are partly technical, which can be overcome. It's a matter of spending time making things work on a different OS.

But the main problem as you wrote is the 'modest desktop market share'. The Linux desktop market share has barely changed in 20 years. Despite outright misleading and wrong information from some people in the Linux community to the effect that Linux has a greater market share on the desktop than macOS, Linux desktop usage hovers around 1% at most.

talk about misinformation then start throwing numbers that are off. I'll grant you that the linux userbase is small still but it's apparently more than double the amount you claim and almost the same as the ChromeOS userbase. As of writing Linux takes up 2.19% of the market share while MacOS takes up 15.85%.

https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide

[GuernseyMan]

If you use these stats, which I'll take as read, then Serif have a product which is usable on 91.35% of all desktops by supporting two versions. If they supported a third, Linux, that could rise to 93.54%. Even more if the third OS was Chrome!

Linux has increased from 1.91% market share to 2.19% market since 2012. That's a 14% uptake or about 1.3% per annum compounded over 10 years.

I'm a Linux fanboy and really enjoy using it but I have to admit, it's not gone anywhere in the last ten years and I don't blame Serif for not getting involved in it.

I'll continue to play around with Linux and do real work on Windows.

[LondonSquirrel]

29 minutes ago, MattyWS said:

As of writing Linux takes up 2.19% of the market share while MacOS takes up 15.85%

Evidence of the old glazzies. Go to any coffee shop and see for yourself what people are using. I have never seen anyone using Linux in a coffee shop. I have seen innumerable Macs and Windows users. Never once, not even one, Linux user.

Linux people have forever pretended that their desktop market share is bigger than it actually is. 

[LondonSquirrel]

12 minutes ago, GuernseyMan said:

I don't blame Serif for not getting involved in it

Others have tried and wasted their money. They were led astray by big words and grandiose claims that Linux is going to be a big thing and now is the time to get into it. WordPerfect, Corel, Borland, etc. They spent the money to develop for Linux and it was money down the drain.

[Renzatic]

1 hour ago, LondonSquirrel said:

Evidence of the old glazzies. Go to any coffee shop and see for yourself what people are using. I have never seen anyone using Linux in a coffee shop. I have seen innumerable Macs and Windows users. Never once, not even one, Linux user.

That's probably cuz they were all posers.

[MattyWS]

1 hour ago, LondonSquirrel said:

Evidence of the old glazzies. Go to any coffee shop and see for yourself what people are using. I have never seen anyone using Linux in a coffee shop. I have seen innumerable Macs and Windows users. Never once, not even one, Linux user.

Linux people have forever pretended that their desktop market share is bigger than it actually is. 

Theoretical, anecdotal and hearsay in one post, good job. Why would it matter who uses what in a coffee shop?

By your same logic, go into a studio and see what people are using. I have never seen anyone using Affinity Photo in a studio. I have seen innumerable Photoshop users. Never once, not even one, Affinity Photo user. See how stupid that argument is? By your own logic you shouldn't bother with Affinity photo.

More people at my studio use Linux over Windows than they do Affinity Photo over Photoshop. What does that tell you? Absolutely nothing because it's anecdotal and not an average userbase. Stop trolling in here.

[LondonSquirrel]

12 minutes ago, MattyWS said:

anecdotal

It means what I have seen. I have never seen a single Linux user in a coffee shop. Go to 10 coffee shops and see what people are using for their laptop OS. I would expect to see 1 or 2 Linux users if the statistics that Linux people quote are correct.

[MattyWS]

32 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

It means what I have seen. I have never seen a single Linux user in a coffee shop. Go to 10 coffee shops and see what people are using for their laptop OS. I would expect to see 1 or 2 Linux users if the statistics that Linux people quote are correct.

http://www.mswhs.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/linux-cafe.jpg

[EmanueL-AT]

28 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

It means what I have seen. I have never seen a single Linux user in a coffee shop. Go to 10 coffee shops and see what people are using for their laptop OS. I would expect to see 1 or 2 Linux users if the statistics that Linux people quote are correct.

You expect 1 or 2 linux users in a coffee shop? So, since your coffee shop experience is a mathematical function of the number of Linux users out there, and considering the fact that you haven't seen one, this conversely and inevitably means that there is not one single Linux user anywhere in the world. --> Your mathematics doesn't seem very convincing to me.

[wonderings]

Do the numbers for Linux take into account all those devices that run a version of Linux but are not really laptops or desktops? Amazon echo devices running a version of Linux, would these be counted to bring up the total numbers or are they able to differentiate? If not then I have 7 Linux devices running in my house daily 

[LondonSquirrel]

17 hours ago, EmanueL-AT said:

You expect 1 or 2 linux users in a coffee shop? So, since your coffee shop experience is a mathematical function of the number of Linux users out there, and considering the fact that you haven't seen one, this conversely and inevitably means that there is not one single Linux user anywhere in the world. --> Your mathematics doesn't seem very convincing to me.

No. Your argument is a fallacy. I have never said there are no Linux users. I have said that I have never seen a Linux user in a coffee shop. As I go to a coffee shop > 3 times a week I would expect by now to see at least 1.

[GuernseyMan]

As a Linux user I can confirm that we don't get out much 😃

[Renzatic]

5 hours ago, LondonSquirrel said:

No. Your argument is a fallacy. I have never said there are no Linux users. I have said that I have never seen a Linux user in a coffee shop. As I go to a coffee shop > 3 times a week I would expect by now to see at least 1.

Yeah, and I'm telling you they're all POSERS! Like those people who drop $3 grand on a Macbook Pro, and only use it to hit up Facebook and Instagram.

FOR SHAME!

[MattyWS]

8 hours ago, wonderings said:

Do the numbers for Linux take into account all those devices that run a version of Linux but are not really laptops or desktops? Amazon echo devices running a version of Linux, would these be counted to bring up the total numbers or are they able to differentiate? If not then I have 7 Linux devices running in my house daily 

No the numbers are the desktop market share (the link I shared at least). If you wanted to count everything that's not a desktop device it'd be unfair because the vast majority from servers and smart phones to smart devices in the home would be Linux.

[Bez Bezson]

8 hours ago, LondonSquirrel said:

No. Your argument is a fallacy. I have never said there are no Linux users. I have said that I have never seen a Linux user in a coffee shop. As I go to a coffee shop > 3 times a week I would expect by now to see at least 1.

I've seen Linux users (other than me) in coffee shops in Sheffield, Manchester, and Madrid.

Your local coffee shop(s) is not a significant sample size.

(Also, if we're basing numbers off coffee shops, I'm positive we'd over estimate the number of Mac users in the world)

[IanSG]

9 hours ago, Bez Bezson said:

I've seen Linux users (other than me) in coffee shops in Sheffield, Manchester, and Madrid.

All university cities, and we all know that university students are too poverty stricken to buy software and therefore producing Linux versions wouldn't be commercialy viable. 😉

[MattyWS]

got photoshop cc to work on linux. It was pretty straight forward, using wine ^^

[msdobrescu]

3 minutes ago, MattyWS said:

got photoshop cc to work on linux. It was pretty straight forward, using wine ^^

There is no Wine to support IE authentication, or is it?

[gukosowa]

I freshly switch from windows to Linux. I miss nothing but my affinity programs..

I read about 500.000€ serif needs to build a Linux version, where is the button to pledge? Only money makes decisions for directions, right?

Why here goes all with market share, Linux devices and so on, it will not change the goal of getting affinitys to Linux if suddenly one person is in right. Money has a much stronger word.

We have now 2022, I found a post from 2014, something must be done or it will never happen

[Anon172]

I tried with the newest Wine tkg version (Wine-Tkg-Fsync 7.3) and I can install now Affinity Designer. I can also start it, but it infinitely loads. Something is with the graphics or window (manager)

[Pufty]

On 3/7/2022 at 6:19 PM, Anon172 said:

I tried with the newest Wine tkg version (Wine-Tkg-Fsync 7.3) and I can install now Affinity Designer. I can also start it, but it infinitely loads. Something is with the graphics or window (manager)

I had this a while before actually when I tried getting it to work with wine. It looked extremely hopeful when everything from the installer to the download folder and shortcut worked correctly, but launching it never worked. You would see the splash screen and nothing else.

So in other news I'm seeing that Adobe products are getting easier to get working on Linux now?

[PaoloT]

On 3/7/2022 at 6:41 AM, gukosowa said:

Only money makes decisions for directions, right?

Unfortunately, yes. Those greedy developers pretend to be paid.

Paolo