Affinity for Linux

[Bog]

1 minute ago, Snapseed said:

As our friends in Italy say, "Eccellente e grazie" and it is very good to hear this. What we now have do is let all our Linux friends and contacts know that now would be a very good time to register with Wine HQ and do quite a bit of voting!

Yea we (well yall) should probably also go to the winehq forum and post about our existence.  I mean literally the only apps I miss since having switched to linux are illustrator and premiere.  (The only reason I need to run a virtualbox is for them.)  I'd post it myself except obviously I'm the cynical naysayer here lol.  If you guys do, don't "flood"! haha, trickle in a few at a time right.  gl. 

[blackbird9]

For me, I'd really like Publisher and Designer on Linux. I understand the plan to get Affinity in attention in WINE, so I've put my 3 votes to Photo.

Scribus is .. functional, but feels convoluted/clunky to achieve things. Inkscape is better. However, neither have an interface or performance feel that I admire. GIMP and Krita are pretty good, and I've used them some on Windows too, but I'd love the full Affinity suite on Linux. That's all I need and there'd be no going back - I'd be a full Linux designer. People like Logos By Nick have tempted me to try it early, and I did for a while.

I'm anxious to jump ship. I hate MacOS (used at work) and comfortable with Windows (work and gaming at home), but I feel the heavy-handedness of their developer companies increasingly restrictive, invasive and unwelcome. And I don't like Adobe's software or licencing model. I used Corel for years commercially, until migrating to Affinity a couple years back. Affinity is so less bloated, more responsive, and more intuitive interface. Plus tops to their licencing costs and permissions. I'd even buy Affinity again to have it native on Linux. I hope they reconsider the platform and support it soon, whether native or courtesy of WINE.

[wonderings]

On 2/27/2021 at 9:07 AM, Michael Tunnell said:

This a very flawed way of judging interest. The community is very large, I mean it dominates literally ever form of computing except for the desktop so it's pretty significant. The size of the community should never be judged by how many people post on a forum thread, or vote on the WINEhq website. For example, I have never bothered to vote on the WINEhq website for any of Serif products, yet I have commented many times on this forum thread. There is no way to actually gauge interest without Serif themselves asking the question.

I switched to Linux well over a decade ago as my only OS and this was before Affinity Photo existed so I only heard about it last year. This means there are a LOT of people who would be interested but just dont know of the software because why on Earth would they be looking for Windows alternatives to Photoshop?

If Serif truly wants to know how many people are interested and if it is worth doing they should just ask the question to the Linux community. I have a podcast with a decent sized audience so I could get the word out of them asking the question but I do need them to ask the question and provide a way for Linux users to answer it.

Serif could go one step farther with a Kickstarter to not only see people's interest but also to let people put money where their mouth is and buy pre-orders of the software. I would gladly do that for example.

Serif has the ability to easily find out if it is worth their time or not but likely they will just assume it isnt because research is rare these days.

I am not saying the community is judged by the size of a forum thread, just that it might be an indication when you can only get 70 posts in about 4 days. And those 70 posts each person can vote 3 times. I remember when Steve Jobs turned Apple around, the community was vibrant and passionate and something like this would have taken minutes to get 70 votes on something that is seemingly needed and demanded for Linux. I am assuming people just do not know about this option to vote on Wine and most people are content with how things they are working as is.

On 2/27/2021 at 9:42 AM, Michael Tunnell said:

This is not a practical thing to do. What incentive is there for a community campaign to support a proprietary piece of software that has no interest in supporting the platform? If Serif were to ask the question it means they have some level of interest to make it happen which in turn means people would be excited to participate. If Serif has no interest then where is the incentive for anyone? WINE would be doing work to make it function on the platform and the only outcome of that work is that Serif gets paid for people who use the software off of the work of WINE. Why would WINE be interested in that without Serif's involvement?

Why then are people still asking and looking for solutions when Serif said they would not be releasing a Linux version anytime soon? You have your answer and people still want to make it work. Good on them and I hope they can get something sorted for Wine that will be usable. I don't think it makes sense on Serifs end to drop a lot of time or resources into this but if people want to make it work I say best of luck! 

[Renzatic]

There are now enough votes to put Photo in the top 25!

Dunno if we'll beat Final Fantasy XI, but with a bit of effort, we could top Photoshop.

[j0e.org]

@everybody Please vote!

[Snapseed]

7 hours ago, j0e.org said:

@everybody Please vote!

Indeed, and as they saying goes, "Vote early and vote often" ===>  https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=39311

[Snapseed]

7 hours ago, Renzatic said:

There are now enough votes to put Photo in the top 25!

Dunno if we'll beat Final Fantasy XI, but with a bit of effort, we could top Photoshop.

@Renzatic, thank you for sharing that excellent news and we must also redouble our efforts to encourage our Linux friends and colleagues to vote too!

[Requester]

I am afraid that the survey system of WineHQ has not been properly understood by some.

For example, i told many people to register and give 3 votes, after 5 of them replied, that they had voted, there were only about 6 more votes.

You need to ensure, when voting, to enable all 3 checks before submitting.

[Snapseed]

On 3/2/2021 at 1:44 PM, Renzatic said:

There are now enough votes to put Photo in the top 25!

Dunno if we'll beat Final Fantasy XI, but with a bit of effort, we could top Photoshop.

I am now pleased to report that our combined efforts so far have put Affinity Photo at position 18 within the top 20 and that is good news.

We can still do more though. We can let our Linux friends and colleagues know by social media, messaging services and email that we would very much like them to help out by registering with Wine, going here https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=39311 and then voting for this app by ticking all three boxes then that would be a very great help.

 

[Snapseed]

On 3/5/2021 at 6:26 PM, Snapseed said:

I am now pleased to report that our combined efforts so far have put Affinity Photo at position 18 within the top 20 and that is good news.

We can still do more though. We can let our Linux friends and colleagues know by social media, messaging services and email that we would very much like them to help out by registering with Wine, going here https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=39311 and then voting for this app by ticking all three boxes then that would be a very great help.

 

It turns out that everyone has been really amazing and Affinity Photo is now at position 13 within the top 20 with 131 votes. By continuing to encourage our contacts to use their three votes for this app, I think we can realistically get Affinity Photo into the top ten.

Well done everyone!!

[Bog]

1 hour ago, Snapseed said:

It turns out that everyone has been really amazing and Affinity Photo is now at position 13 within the top 20 with 131 votes. By continuing to encourage our contacts to use their three votes for this app, I think we can realistically get Affinity Photo into the top ten.

Well done everyone!!

Woo!  We have to explain to people about clicking the three checkboxes when they vote, I don't think most people realize that...  

This is fun, I fell like we're pulling a short sell on wine like reddit did to the hedge funds with gamespot stock haha.  

[wonderings]

2 hours ago, Snapseed said:

It turns out that everyone has been really amazing and Affinity Photo is now at position 13 within the top 20 with 131 votes. By continuing to encourage our contacts to use their three votes for this app, I think we can realistically get Affinity Photo into the top ten.

Well done everyone!!

Where are all the people on this forum? 140 votes is only like 47 people. With the size of the Linux threads I assumed that this would have happened in a day. Guess they are probably not active in the community here.

[m.vlad]

1 hour ago, wonderings said:

Where are all the people on this forum? 140 votes is only like 47 people. With the size of the Linux threads I assumed that this would have happened in a day. Guess they are probably not active in the community here.

I was thinking of making a post today on a few subreddits.

[Snapseed]

52 minutes ago, m.vlad said:

I was thinking of making a post today on a few subreddits.

@m.vlad, that's an excellent idea and please feel free to proceed with it! ☺️

[Bog]

4 hours ago, m.vlad said:

I was thinking of making a post today on a few subreddits.

Cool be sure to point out that it's really to get other affinity products too because they're all just going to say "nah we've got gimp." So we need to explain that doing so would help support the base of the platform. 

Also obviously point out the three checkbox thing. gl

[Snapseed]

15 hours ago, Bog said:

Cool be sure to point out that it's really to get other affinity products too because they're all just going to say "nah we've got gimp." So we need to explain that doing so would help support the base of the platform. 

Also obviously point out the three checkbox thing. gl

^ Exactly this! All it would take is a couple more people, using all of their votes, and Affinity Photo would be at position 9 within the top 10.

[m.vlad]

Oh well, this went as well as I would've expected. 

[Snapseed]

5 minutes ago, m.vlad said:

Oh well, this went as well as I would've expected. 

@m.vlad, thank you very much for trying and some of those more thoughtful people who viewed those threads might in due course go on to vote in the end.

[My1]

I at the very least voted and commented on the reddit threads. I am not a fan of registering everywhere with my real name so I have not registered for wine, but I hope at least the reddit stuff helps.

[Redsandro]

11 minutes ago, m.vlad said:

Oh well, this went as well as I would've expected. 

Sometimes I don't understand why sincere attempts like this actually get downvoted. I understand that people who don't care don't upvote, but downvoting? That's actively thwarting something potentially good for Linux. Perhaps some of us can upvote this. I just upvoted. You can find the tread in r/linux when searching for the title ("Getting a good design app working on linux").

Remember, do not post a direct link to the thread. Reddit removes/shadowbans threads that get too many votes through a referral link.

[m.vlad]

2 minutes ago, Redsandro said:

Sometimes I don't understand why sincere attempts like this actually get downvoted. I understand that people who don't care don't upvote, but downvoting? That's actively thwarting something potentially good for Linux. Perhaps some of us can upvote this. I just upvoted. You can find the tread in r/linux when searching for the title ("Getting a good design app working on linux").

Remember, do not post a direct link to the thread. Reddit removes/shadowbans threads that get too many votes through a referral link.

I think it's just a general sentiment that linux has that FOSS apps help the ecosystem more than proprietary apps, as a user put it in one comment, and I get that, I just think that it's a waste of time to invest so much time and money into a FOSS alternative when even a proprietary app like affinity struggles to take away from Adobe's market.

[Snapseed]

15 minutes ago, m.vlad said:

I think it's just a general sentiment that linux has that FOSS apps help the ecosystem more than proprietary apps, as a user put it in one comment, and I get that, I just think that it's a waste of time to invest so much time and money into a FOSS alternative when even a proprietary app like affinity struggles to take away from Adobe's market.

I get the impression that a subsection of Linux users want software to be both open source and no cost so that they do not have to pay anything or donate anything. That is all very well but developers still have bills to pay and so I am fine with paying for software or with making donations to the developers concerned.

Another aspect of that skinflint mindset is that lack of money coming into an open source project means it can lag well behind its commercial equivalent so that when that happens, the commercial software is going to be significantly better than its open source equivalent, e.g. Affinity Photo vs. Gimp.

[Mark Ingram]

15 minutes ago, Snapseed said:

I get the impression that a subsection of Linux users want software to be both open source and no cost so that they do not have to pay anything or donate anything. That is all very well but developers still have bills to pay and so I am fine with paying for softwar

Exactly that. And that's exactly why apps and games aren't flocking to the Linux desktop. Because we just don't know if we will make any money at all from it. Let alone cover the initial costs of development.

People need to realise that yes, FOSS can be great, but often these projects need massive sponsorship to be successful. Relying on 1 or 2 developers using their spare time in the evenings to make a competing app isn't going to deliver the kind of quality that you would expect from a piece of proprietary software. And then you have to consider product support, documentation etc...

[m.vlad]

22 minutes ago, Mark Ingram said:

40 minutes ago, Snapseed said:

I get the impression that a subsection of Linux users want software to be both open source and no cost so that they do not have to pay anything or donate anything. That is all very well but developers still have bills to pay and so I am fine with paying for software or with making donations to the developers concerned.

Another aspect of that skinflint mindset is that lack of money coming into an open source project means it can lag well behind its commercial equivalent so that when that happens, the commercial software is going to be significant better than its open source equivalent, e.g. Affinity Photo vs. Gimp.

Exactly that. And that's exactly why apps and games aren't flocking to the Linux desktop. Because we just don't know if we will make any money at all from it. Let alone cover the initial costs of development.

I disagree, if anything what I got from that comment is that some people want to pay for things, as long as they're FOSS because when the company fails, at least people will be able to learn from the available code of the FOSS app, instead of starting from scratch. That doesn't mean that they represent the entire userbase. I think this is something that should be discussed with someone like Black Magic Design, who offers a paid studio version of DaVinci Resolve, and see what their numbers are in terms of people who pay for the studio version on linux, people who use the free version and how those numbers compare with the Windows numbers. They're probably in the best place in the market to give Serif advice on this, since video editing and graphic design are similar industries with a lot of crossover.

As far as gaming goes, it's an entirely different beast from a design app, there's way less stuff going on behind the scenes and to be fair, most game developers either use an in-house engine, which they spent years developing because it's such a huge beast to manage and they haven't planned for linux ahead of time, or they use one of the existing Unreal Engine & Unity engines and either don't know enough about the linux market or don't have the capacity to export to linux. Or I guess there could also be the case they just don't care about Linux, or are entirely reliant on steam's Proton development which makes most games playable on linux. Sadly, Affinity does not have that benefit, Proton doesn't work on Affinity and even this attempt to get Serif to work with CodeWeaver seems to be a "oh let them contact us first" as if it's CodeWeaver themselves who would benefit from this, not you who'd get access to an entirely new market at the price of... a few hours of e-mailing?

Also, Mark, for the same reasons you mentioned you could say "oh people use free browsers, play free games and use free apps like inkscape, figma, gimp, photoshop online and others on windows, we don't know if we will make any money at all from it." and yet you did. I hope you can see how this sort of statement can appear biased to someone like me when there are a multitude of other better reasons to make the jump.

[Redsandro]

40 minutes ago, Mark Ingram said:

 

59 minutes ago, Snapseed said:

I get the impression that a subsection of Linux users want software to be both open source and no cost so that they do not have to pay anything or donate anything.

Exactly that. And that's exactly why apps and games aren't flocking to the Linux desktop.

There is indeed a subsection of Linux users, just like there is a very big subsection of Windows users that use pirated software for the same reason. This thread is a testament to the Linux users that do want to pay, and even indicated wanting to pay double.

Linux users are willing to pay most compared to Mac and Windows users. Please focus on those users.