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Affinity for Linux


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9 minutes ago, Michael Tunnell said:

It never surprises me when people haven't heard this term, it's usually because they don't have a direct connection with someone who has received the insult. I didn't know it was bad until I started hanging out with someone who was on the receiving end of it and he told me about it. Then I realized it was very widespread after researching it. I mean rarely would I ever use urban dictionary as a source but oddly, this time it is relevant. GIMP as a project has known about this issue for decades and the reason it was originally chosen was also incredibly stupid. The team at the time thought it would be funny to name it after the Pulp Fiction version which sealed the fate of the project because no educational institution or corporation will even consider to use such an app due to association with those things.

anyway, you may have not heard of the insult version or even the pulp fiction version but you probably have heard the term "gimp leg" as in referring to an injured leg. That is just a very tame version of the usage.

It very well could be only used around people who might be the ones to receive the insult. I have a cousin, missing both arms, one below the elbow and one right at the elbow, also missing 1 leg at the knee. Never heard the term around her though I would be curious if that is something she has heard as I am not with her 24/7. 

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3 minutes ago, Michael Tunnell said:

I don't recommend AppImages because they have no security mechanism and most don't even have a mechanism for updates. I'd rather use Flatpak or Snaps and then maybe an AppImage if there necessary but AppImages have a lot of issues unfortunately.

I use appimages for some applications.  I install an appimage on a network share and create a symlink that is used to launch it.  Everyone in the studio has access to it.  Then when I want to upgrade, I simply download the latest appimage, relink to the new version and boom... everybody in the studio now has instant access to the latest version of the software.  Takes 2 minutes.  Flatpak is ok, but  requires more management.

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15 minutes ago, justajeffy said:

I'm not a huge snap fan either, but I understand that snapd runs applications in a sandbox to prevent access to outside resources.  This is by design for security reasons, and it is somewhat configurable.  It should be super-simple to bind mount any path into your home in order to make it accessible to the application.  Looks like they also provide binary releases in the form of flatpak or appimage.  Perhaps the appimage would be more your style.

Yea I learned that in my discussion on the ubuntuforums (shh don't tell anyone I'm the same guy there as here lol)  

https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2453111&goto=newpost

 

12 minutes ago, Michael Tunnell said:

I don't recommend AppImages because they have no security mechanism and most don't even have a mechanism for updates. I'd rather use Flatpak or Snaps and then maybe an AppImage if there necessary but AppImages have a lot of issues unfortunately.

Why not just a regular apt-get package?  (or yum). Think .deb files seem reliable and easy to install...

 

 

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10 minutes ago, wonderings said:

It very well could be only used around people who might be the ones to receive the insult. I have a cousin, missing both arms, one below the elbow and one right at the elbow, also missing 1 leg at the knee. Never heard the term around her though I would be curious if that is something she has heard as I am not with her 24/7. 

well I should probably clarify that it isnt something that is likely to come up, the only reason I had the conversation with the friend of mine is that I was talking to them about the GIMP app itself and he said he hated the name of it and then I asked why. So it's not something I bet any of them want to talk about but since it was directly in his face due to the application discussion he couldn't help it. That experience might have been rare in itself for me to have heard about it too. I am curious what she says if you ask her but I also totally understand not wanting to ask her about it.

8 minutes ago, justajeffy said:

I use appimages for some applications.  I install an appimage on a network share and create a symlink that is used to launch it.  Everyone in the studio has access to it.  Then when I want to upgrade, I simply download the latest appimage, relink to the new version and boom... everybody in the studio now has instant access to the latest version of the software.

this is cool in a company setting when you can manage one thing for everyone, that is a very cool value. I also have something like this setup for some tools because I can just keep them on a separate drive and that is nice. However, the average user wont have someone like us managing their updates and that is what makes it a terrible structure to not have a built-in update system . . . even if it is just notifications and a link to get the latest download. I do use AppImages for some things but I think they are inferior to both Flatpaks and Snaps due to this lack of updates and lack of a security mechanism.

4 minutes ago, Bog said:

Why not just a regular apt-get package?  (or yum). Think .deb files seem reliable and easy to install...

DEB & RPM files are fine for the most part but they have a MASSIVE flaw and that is version locking. I explain the issue with DEBs in this post on AskUbuntu.com however I didnt mention that DEB files have zero security mechanism just like AppImages although in a way they are worse than AppImages because they run as Root while AppImages only run in the user level. So DEB files, and partly RPM as well though RPM is better, are not ideal because of arbitrary version locking.

Side note 1: apt-get is legacy, all a user needs these days is apt: here's a video and an article I made on the subject.
Side note 2: yum is replaced with dnf these days except for in stuff like RHEL.

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The more I use Krita, the more I realize it's a better analog to Photo than I initially thought. It's geared more heavily towards digital painting than raw photo manipulation, but it can still do the latter fairly well. At the very least, it has some decent content aware/inpainting brush style tools, and honest to god non-destructive adjustment layers, both of which GIMP lacks.

I'd still rather have Photo and Designer in Linux, but I'm finding I can use Krita without feeling like I'm sacrificing all that much.

edit: You can even make it look pretty snazzy.

Screenshot_from_2021-02-05_13-36-42.png

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  • 2 weeks later...
1 hour ago, MeatRadiator said:

Guys are they still not going to port the software?

 

2 minutes ago, Michael Tunnell said:

I dont think they've even read anything in this thread for years.

Exactly; they're myopic, completely ignoring all of us in spite of the fact that it's a whopping 35 pages and we're making legitimate well-articulated arguments about how profitable it would be for them given that it's 2021 and Adobe still doesn't support it and probably never will.  They're in such a good market position.  I'm not buying any serif products and I'm telling windows or mac users to avoid them because they're not being intelligent. 

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5 minutes ago, Michael Tunnell said:

I dont think they've even read anything in this thread for years.

not sure why they would read the thread. They know that people want a Linux version and it is not in their plans to release a Linux version. Even if they were going to release a Linux version don't see any reason why they would need to put time into reading and following any Linux thread.

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1 minute ago, Bog said:

 

Exactly; they're myopic, completely ignoring all of us in spite of the fact that it's a whopping 35 pages and we're making legitimate well-articulated arguments about how profitable it would be for them given that it's 2021 and Adobe still doesn't support it and probably never will.  They're in such a good market position.  I'm not buying any serif products and I'm telling windows or mac users to avoid them because they're not being intelligent. 

Or they disagree, I know that is hard to believe. Not sure why you are getting so emotional and telling people to not buy a product because they are not doing what you want them to do. Seems like a childish attitude. Adobe not developing for Linux is probably a good indicator of the need and potential profit in Linux. They have the money and the resources and as they are in it to make money and if they could make money in Linux I am sure they would. 

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2 minutes ago, wonderings said:

Adobe not developing for Linux is probably a good indicator of the need and potential profit in Linux. They have the money and the resources and as they are in it to make money and if they could make money in Linux I am sure they would. 

I think that's a pretty good summary unfortunately. I say unfortunately, because I'm a big Linux fan, and as I work here, I just can't imagine how we could justify the (initial and ongoing) development costs. 

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10 minutes ago, Bog said:

Exactly; they're myopic, completely ignoring all of us in spite of the fact that it's a whopping 35 pages and we're making legitimate well-articulated arguments

I'm not sure that all of the arguments in this thread are quite so legitimate or well-articulated.  It's a pretty mixed bag.  😀

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Just now, wonderings said:

Or they disagree, I know that is hard to believe. Not sure why you are getting so emotional and telling people to not buy a product because they are not doing what you want them to do. Seems like a childish attitude. Adobe not developing for Linux is probably a good indicator of the need and potential profit in Linux. They have the money and the resources and as they are in it to make money and if they could make money in Linux I am sure they would.

Adobe does however also have a much larger portfolio of apps and if they port one they would probably need to port their entire portfolios to make it more enticing. Considering adobe is already the market standard it's easy for me to see how they've grown content with their position and don't do anything too crazy except add features here and there that are up to date with the newest tech. Also the fact that adobe apps kind of work on linux means that, unless there's a real competitor on linux, adobe most likely feels like they win linux by default by having the apps kind of work on linux and there not being any strong competitor on there.

 

5 minutes ago, wonderings said:

not sure why they would read the thread. They know that people want a Linux version and it is not in their plans to release a Linux version. Even if they were going to release a Linux version don't see any reason why they would need to put time into reading and following any Linux thread.

If I was at serif I wouldn't totally ignore this potential future avenue now, because it'll create a lot of animosity later. And who knows, maybe they'll work on a port soon, maybe they won't, but completely ignoring an avenue like this when you need every user you can get would put them in a bad standing, PR speaking.

 

6 minutes ago, Bog said:

Exactly; they're myopic, completely ignoring all of us in spite of the fact that it's a whopping 35 pages and we're making legitimate well-articulated arguments about how profitable it would be for them given that it's 2021 and Adobe still doesn't support it and probably never will. They're in such a good market position. I'm not buying any serif products and I'm telling windows or mac users to avoid them because they're not being intelligent.

As they've said before, this is not a democracy, serif is a company and they have to make decisions that make sense for them. For you and me it might make sense, like duh, its an empty market with a growing userbase due to the increase in mindfulness over privacy and data usage of Windows and the closed ecosystem of apple devices. Also making a linux compatible base would be better now than later, when they have a larger portfolio, but we don't know their financial standing, their developers' workloads, etc. There is a lot of stuff that goes behind the scenes at a company that can affect decisions like porting to a different platform, and Serif has shown that they're not ones to take risks. Unfortunately, I think when linux is big enough for them to consider it worth it adobe will throw a huge wad of cash at their developers and release a port of their suite before adobe, and then affinity will still be the alternative, instead of *the* primary choice for a lot of users, requiring them to convince adobe users to switch on the linux side as well, when they could release something now and have people think the opposite: "Do I want to try out adobe now when this is working perfectly for me and it's blazing fast?".

Mădălin Vlad
Graphic Designer
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15 minutes ago, wonderings said:

Or they disagree, I know that is hard to believe. Not sure why you are getting so emotional and telling people to not buy a product because they are not doing what you want them to do. Seems like a childish attitude. Adobe not developing for Linux is probably a good indicator of the need and potential profit in Linux. They have the money and the resources and as they are in it to make money and if they could make money in Linux I am sure they would. 

There no emotion or childishness there. It's a calculated decision. If they're not logical enough to see the potential then there're not good at this whole software business thing; hence I wouldn't recommend the software of a company isn't good at it. ( I have no idea how you got "emotion" out of that. )

As for them reading the comments- like I said, we're continuing to make valid arguments as to whit it's profitable that are worth reading. 

 

 

 

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8 minutes ago, Mark Ingram said:

I think that's a pretty good summary unfortunately. I say unfortunately, because I'm a big Linux fan, and as I work here, I just can't imagine how we could justify the (initial and ongoing) development costs. 

Right but what you're not getting is that the lack of adobe support causes a market gap that you can take advantage of. Business 101. 

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You can use a bit of maths to work out potential income from getting the apps on Linux.

35 pages of 20 posts.

Assume zero duplicate users (we know that's not true, I've posted several times, other users have posted several times too), that's 700 posts. Assume every individual purchases two Affinity apps. That's $70,000. And I'm being generous with the figures there.

Unfortunately, $70,000 really wouldn't justify the development of 3 apps on a new OS.

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24 minutes ago, m.vlad said:

As they've said before, this is not a democracy, serif is a company and they have to make decisions that make sense for them. For you and me it might make sense, like duh, its an empty market with a growing userbase due to the increase in mindfulness over privacy and data usage of Windows and the closed ecosystem of apple devices. Also making a linux compatible base would be better now than later, when they have a larger portfolio, but we don't know their financial standing, their developers' workloads, etc. There is a lot of stuff that goes behind the scenes at a company that can affect decisions like porting to a different platform, and Serif has shown that they're not ones to take risks. Unfortunately, I think when linux is big enough for them to consider it worth it adobe will throw a huge wad of cash at their developers and release a port of their suite before adobe, and then affinity will still be the alternative, instead of *the* primary choice for a lot of users, requiring them to convince adobe users to switch on the linux side as well, when they could release something now and have people think the opposite: "Do I want to try out adobe now when this is working perfectly for me and it's blazing fast?".
 

I don't see anyone claiming that they don't have the right to make their own decisions.  Is anyone claiming that? Obviously yes, and as long as they have contact information we have "the right" to disagree with them.  I mean that's an empty statement.

I agree with your great comments- the term you articulated in the last few sentences is, (as I'm sure you know), "first mover advantage".  I don't understand why they don't get that. If adobe isn't going to support linux and serif does, then they've claimed a stake in a new market (commercially) as you said. 

(And as always, I'm not even talking about photoshop but the whole serif suite one at a time, (mainly I want something to compete with Illustrator). )

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2 minutes ago, wonderings said:

Adobe not developing for Linux is probably a good indicator of the need and potential profit in Linux. They have the money and the resources and as they are in it to make money and if they could make money in Linux I am sure they would. 

It most certainly is not a good indicator at all, not even slightly or at least it shouldnt be. Adobe has industry dominance they have zero incentive to devote time to a port when they already have the dominant product. Bigger companies do not innovate in regards to trying new platforms. Also if Affinity is waiting for Adobe to do it before they do then they will always live in Adobe's shadow. If Affinity brings their software to Linux after Photoshop did, then why would I care about using Affinity? If I'm able to to go back to using Photoshop, why would I bother with Affinity?

Affinity taking marketshare from Adobe on Windows and Mac is always going to be an uphill battle. Affinity on Linux would be competing with no big players and thus the market is ripe for an option and hungry for the option. The Linux market will start promoting Affinity as a reason to use Linux to people so they'd get promoted not just for being a good product but also being a product that supports Linux.

right now Affinity is a small fish in a big pond and it relies on the "willing to pay but not willing to pay for Photoshop" market vs becoming a big fish in a small pond that has vast potential to grow into the biggest pond. It just needs companies willing to jump in early to make it happen.

Linux really only suffers these days from the lack of applications and the app developers always say "we will when there are users", well this is a catch 22. . . something has to come first otherwise it is just a endless cycle of waiting. Why is it that people think Linux is not worth it? Linux dominates literally every form of computing except for the desktop. Why is that? Well I think it is because the large companies realized the value and embraced the platform for their needs like servers and whatnot to the point that they took the risk and it paid off. I mean, 65% of Microsoft's own Azure platform is powered by Linux. Even Microsoft has given up the fight against Linux there.

15 minutes ago, Mark Ingram said:

I think that's a pretty good summary unfortunately. I say unfortunately, because I'm a big Linux fan, and as I work here, I just can't imagine how we could justify the (initial and ongoing) development costs. 

I am curious what the technical holdouts are because I believe they are all gone now.

With Snaps & Flatpaks the development nightmare of multiple distros and version locking is completely gone as well so there is more and more reasons to make a Linux port.

In regards to the initial cost, I'd like for y'all to do a crowdfunding campaign to really test the interest in having Affinity on Linux. You set a campaign on whichever platform you want, calculate how much you think you need for support and let's see if the platform will help make it happen. I think it absolutely would be on board for it and until someone tries its all just speculation.

Let's say you setup an IndieGoGo campaign, or whatever, and set it for $500,000 to bring it to Linux and in this case, backers would be just pre-orders. If it makes it to the number then you port it obviously and if not you don't. You create multiple tiers for the campaign so that people like myself can purchase multiple copies or put in more just in general. For example, $50 for Affinity on Windows is a good price but if it will help bring the software to Linux I am willing to pay $250 to get it. There are also many others in my position where the base price is great but also willing to pay more for the chance of it being on my platform.

It would need 10,000 at $50 and 2,500 at $250 . . . are those numbers reasonable? I'd say absolutely and not only reasonable that would be very easy to get. I'd probably be able to put a massive dent in that just with my podcast/youtube audience.

If the crowdfunding campaign doesn't make then Affinity is basically out nothing and at a minimum can prove they were willing to try to those who ask in the future. I'd call that a win / win.

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9 minutes ago, Mark Ingram said:

You can use a bit of maths to work out potential income from getting the apps on Linux.

35 pages of 20 posts.

Assume zero duplicate users (we know that's not true, I've posted several times, other users have posted several times too), that's 700 posts. Assume every individual purchases two Affinity apps. That's $70,000. And I'm being generous with the figures there.

Unfortunately, $70,000 really wouldn't justify the development of 3 apps on a new OS.

Ok.  So, how many unique users posting in this thread would it take to justify development of just one of the apps on a new OS?

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19 minutes ago, Bog said:

There no emotion or childishness there. It's a calculated decision. If they're not logical enough to see the potential then there're not good at this whole software business thing; hence I wouldn't recommend the software of a company isn't good at it. ( I have no idea how you got "emotion" out of that. )

As for them reading the comments- like I said, we're continuing to make valid arguments as to whit it's profitable that are worth reading. 

 

 

 

Seems very emotional as you are upset that they are not doing what you think is right. They have their business plan and direction and doing it. It may one day involve Linux, it may not. You are not owed a Linux version of Affinity and if you are going to dissuade people from using good software for a great price simply because you are not happy with them not developing for Linux I would say that is very childish. If the software is good then recommend it. Obviously you could not recommend it for a Linux user but why you would go ahead and dissuade people from using on Mac and Windows is beyond me. 

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1 minute ago, wonderings said:

Seems very emotional as you are upset that they are not doing what you think is right. They have their business plan and direction and doing it. It may one day involve Linux, it may not. You are not owed a Linux version of Affinity and if you are going to dissuade people from using good software for a great price simply because you are not happy with them not developing for Linux I would say that is very childish. If the software is good then recommend it. Obviously you could not recommend it for a Linux user but why you would go ahead and dissuade people from using on Mac and Windows is beyond me. 

All I gotta say is look at my response above, it covers what you're repeating. I explained the logic that if they make bad decisions they're not good at this so shouldn't be recommended, and explained the lack of emotion. I don't know how else to help you here.

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