Affinity for Linux

[Renzatic]

1 minute ago, LondonSquirrel said:

A distinction which negates your statement.

It's a thin straw to grasp upon. 

[Vex]

2 minutes ago, D’T4ils said:

And it would also be really nice if we could avoid posting comments that have no direct connection with the topic at hand. I'd rather stay subscribed to this thread because I'm really interested on a positive outcome regarding Affinity for Linux.

Me too. But when someone decides to make a legitimate discussion about them and their personal opinions, I play by their rules until they get the message.

[Snapseed]

2 minutes ago, D’T4ils said:

And it would also be really nice if we could avoid posting comments that have no direct connection with the topic at hand. I'd rather stay subscribed to this thread because I'm really interested on a positive outcome regarding Affinity for Linux.

I fully agree with you and one option would, for example, be to report the vexatious poster and ask that the off topic  argument posts are removed. Who's going to do that - you or me?

[Renzatic]

2 minutes ago, ClairelyClaire said:

i still say "wonton" instead of "wanton" 🤣

I eat wontons wantonly.

 

1 minute ago, LondonSquirrel said:

A rather large hair which negates what somebody else stated.

What you're arguing is somewhat like arguing some program or another wasn't actually on Windows first, because it came out on NT originally, and NT wasn't really Windows until later.

Like ClairelyClair said above, it's a distinction without much of a difference.

[D’T4ils]

1 minute ago, ClairelyClaire said:

Me too. But when someone decides to make a legitimate discussion about them and their personal opinions, I play by their rules until they get the message.

Wow! Really? So you'd rather turn this whole thing into a personal battle instead of simply ignoring the person who is desperately looking for nothing but attention. Very constructive on your part too. Hooray for the community spirit!

[D’T4ils]

2 minutes ago, Snapseed said:

I fully agree with you and one option would, for example, be to report the vexatious poster and ask that the off topic  argument posts are removed. Who's going to do that - you or me?

Did that already before your comment 😜

[Renzatic]

Just now, D’T4ils said:

Wow! Really? So you'd rather turn this whole thing into a personal battle instead of simply ignoring the person who is desperately looking for nothing but attention. Very constructive on your part too. Hooray for the community spirit!

You're right. This conservation isn't really doing anyone any good.

But it's been a fun way to spend a boring Sunday morning.

[Vex]

6 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

On the contrary, I was correct and the other person was wrong. They were grasping straws, not me. I have been entirely correct in my posts.

You were patently wrong about Nvidia not caring about Linux. Provably, 100% wrong.

Ergo, you have not been "entirely correct."

[D’T4ils]

10 minutes ago, Renzatic said:

You're right. This conservation isn't really doing anyone any good.

But it's been a fun way to spend a boring Sunday morning.

For sure it might be fun for some people, but how about the rest? How about finding 83 new notifications on your email about a thread you're really interested about to later find out that it was nothing but a children's quarrel?

[Vex]

3 minutes ago, D’T4ils said:

Wow! Really? So you'd rather turn this whole thing into a personal battle instead of simply ignoring the person who is desperately looking for nothing but attention. Very constructive on your part too. Hooray for the community spirit!

No, it's more that I am well versed in going up against arrogant, self-involved people who are pathologically compelled to make everything about them. I care a lot about Affinity on Linux, which is why I joined this thread. I also care a lot about individuals not filibustering everyone else and preventing real discussion from happening.

The most ironic thing about this whole tangent is that Linux users have been falsely smeared as arrogant, acting as though the universe revolves around them, etc. It's quite obvious that Linux users aren't the ones with a personality problem here.

[Snapseed]

1 minute ago, D’T4ils said:

For sure it might be fun for some people, but how about the rest? How about finding 83 new notifications on your email about a thread you're really interested about to later find out that it's was nothing but children's quarrel?

^ I fully 100% agree with you about this  - thank you!

[Renzatic]

1 minute ago, D’T4ils said:

For sure it might be fun for some people, but how about the rest? How about finding 83 new notifications on your email about a thread you're really interested about to later find out that it's was nothing but children's quarrel?

Yeah, that probably would be something of a buzzkill, expecting some new breakthrough on the Affinity on Linux front, and getting...well, this.

[D’T4ils]

3 minutes ago, ClairelyClaire said:

No, it's more that I am well versed in going up against arrogant, self-involved people who are pathologically compelled to make everything about them. I care a lot about Affinity on Linux, which is why I joined this thread. I also care a lot about individuals not filibustering everyone else and preventing real discussion from happening.

The most ironic thing about this whole tangent is that Linux users have been falsely smeared as arrogant, acting as though the universe revolves around them, etc. It's quite obvious that Linux users aren't the ones with a personality problem here.

Go do justice in your own personal space. You say you care about the topic and the discussion at hand, your actions say otherwise.

[Renzatic]

The one biggest takeaway I have from this conversation is wondering what happened to make the mods here put a daily limit on likes.

...whatever it was, it must've been horrible.

[Vex]

3 minutes ago, D’T4ils said:

For sure it might be fun for some people, but how about the rest? How about finding 83 new notifications on your email about a thread you're really interested about to later find out that it's was nothing but children's quarrel?

I know how it made me feel - it was inordinately frustrating to see that one person who has literally nothing useful to contribute to the discussion had blown up this thread (again) to center the discussion on them and their (badly misinformed and based on obsolete assumptions) opinion of Linux and Linux users.

So the options at my disposal were:

1. Ignore everything, unsubscribe, and check back months later
2. Attempt to discuss the subject around our friend
3. Call out the offending individual directly for their inconsiderate behavior

I'm naturally inclined toward #3. So here we are.

[Vex]

7 minutes ago, D’T4ils said:

Go do justice in your own personal space. You say you care about the topic and the discussion at hand, your actions say otherwise.

I do indeed, and I've brought up a few potential avenues for pursuing Linux support with complete honesty and sincerity.

I take umbrage with anyone who responds to a real discussion by flooding the conversation space with their unsolicited opinions, which have treaded into ad hominem attacks against us as people who use (or want to use) Linux.

[D’T4ils]

6 minutes ago, ClairelyClaire said:

I know how it made me feel - it was inordinately frustrating to see that one person who has literally nothing useful to contribute to the discussion had blown up this thread (again) to center the discussion on them and their (badly misinformed and based on obsolete assumptions) opinion of Linux and Linux users.

So the options at my disposal were:

1. Ignore everything, unsubscribe, and check back months later
2. Attempt to discuss the subject around our friend
3. Call out the offending individual directly for their inconsiderate behavior

I'm naturally inclined toward #3. So here we are.

Trying to justify your actions isn't really helping you either. Just like you, I also guide my actions by doing what I feel is right, that's the reason why I've also reported you. Since trying to talk some sense into you didn't work and only triggered a cascade of excuses, I chose to go that route.

I'm done here. Have a good day!

[m.vlad]

2 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

Please try to stay on topic. Affinity stated: I won't rule out making a Linux version of Affinity, but I need someone to show me a combination of distro, desktop topology and deployment (paid) platform where we would recoup our development costs. If someone can show me that, I'll be willing to talk some more about it all..

So, they want a combination of:

• distro
• desktop topology
• paid platform support
• all of which must recoup their development costs

If you can't show that, you only have yourselves to blame.

You could put it up on Steam, that would solve the paid platform problem, offer analytics support and work on most platforms due to steam handling libraries itself.

...also "we"? What would you be recouping as a user?

[Renzatic]

9 minutes ago, m.vlad said:

You could put it up on Steam, that would solve the paid platform problem, offer analytics support and work on most platforms due to steam handling libraries itself.

Serif already sells the Windows versions of their apps off their own storefront, which I imagine provides them all the analytics they need. Providing a Linux version alongside it probably wouldn't be that difficult. Though Steam is a good 2nd option, since it's unofficially the official proprietary app storefront for all Linux distros.

As for libraries and whatnot, targeting a single distro, like either Red Hat, or Ubuntu, as a support foundation, then releasing either a flatpak or .appimage with all the libraries included would be the path of least resistance. That's pretty much what everyone else does these days.

[m.vlad]

Just now, Renzatic said:

Serif already sells the Windows versions of their apps off their own storefront, which I imagine provides them all the analytics they need. Providing a Linux version alongside it probably wouldn't be that difficult. Though Steam is a good 2nd option, since it's unofficially the official proprietary app storefront for all Linux distros.

As for libraries and whatnot, targeting a single distro, like either Red Hat, or Ubuntu, as a support foundation, then releasing either a flatpak or .appimage with all the libraries included would be the path of least resistance. That's pretty much what everyone else does these days.

It's a shame we can't just pin things in this thread in a way, because that's what's been said for pages now, yet people still ask for solutions and options and release channels.

 

I mentioned Steam because it's a pre-existing solution that's already embedded into the linux scene.

[Renzatic]

7 minutes ago, m.vlad said:

It's a shame we can't just pin things in this thread in a way, because that's what's been said for pages now, yet people still ask for solutions and options and release channels.

Yup. I'm pretty sure I've stated the above at least 3 times in this thread alone. It's bound to happen in these long running topics.

7 minutes ago, m.vlad said:

I mentioned Steam because it's a pre-existing solution that's already embedded into the linux scene.

Honestly, Linux or not, I'm surprised Serif hasn't done so already. Just about everyone else provides their software through Steam, and there's a fair number of people who prefer to use it exclusively over any other app store.

...though it is very, very crowded these days.

[Vex]

44 minutes ago, m.vlad said:

I mentioned Steam because it's a pre-existing solution that's already embedded into the linux scene.

Steam is a particularly interesting option, IMO. Valve is very clearly committed to supporting Linux, and has put tremendous effort into parity between Linux and Mac/PC. While Valve has historically been focused on video games, this is no longer the case. This is evident by Valve's own actions, as they have promoted Steam as a full-featured app store alternative to the big guys across all desktop platforms.

This thread started in 2014, and a lot has happened since 2014, particularly in terms of Valve's contributions to Linux and WINE (their own flavor of WINE is called Proton). I just don't know enough about the technological blockers to WINE compatibility to have any realistic grasp of what might be required for compatibility. As I mentioned in one of my first contributions to this thread, my husband put in some actual effort, after finding an old bog post somewhere written by someone who got some old version of one of Affinity's products running (sort of) in Linux. We determined that there's an Affinity-specific library which is barfing when launched under WINE or Proton. There's not much we can do beyond that, unless Affinity's apps are written in unobfuscated .NET, which is something I haven't yet investigated (and highly doubt is the case here).

All this being said, it seems to me that the biggest blocker to actual feasibility here has nothing do with whether or not Linux is super cool, but more to do with the fact that hiring software engineers to port your software to Linux is no small chore, and as a smaller software publisher (than, say, Adobe or Valve or Microsoft), they don't have limitless engineering resources to throw at something.

So here's a radical idea, taking all this into consideration...

What if Affinity chose to crowdsource this effort? Not to publicly release their source code, but to essentially put out an APB for Linux software engineers in the wild to volunteer to contribute, provided they can prove they're qualified to do so. This is the kind of thing an NDA applies to very well. This proposal is, I think, functionally equivalent to the "hackathons" big companies (like Microsoft and Google) hold annually, where employees can focus their efforts on pet projects that might have nothing to do with their job description or their career focus.

Like I said - it's a radical idea, but...that doesn't make it a bad idea.

P.S. I'm proposing this with the idea that there is a nonzero quantity of Affinity users who happen to also be software engineers, either professionally, or for funsies. With a motivated enough group of people, you can accomplish a lot without having to spend a dime.

[My1]

1 hour ago, LondonSquirrel said:

Ask that incorrect posts are removed too. Any posts claiming that Linux invented or brought anything to the desktop environment, for example.

maybe linux didnt "invent" virtual desktops, clipboard tracking and several other things but among the big 3 (Windows Mac and Linux) linux was sure the one that has had it the longest, and likely improved upon it enough that it was brought to Windows and mac. like sure xerox atari and whatever may have been earlier but none of them are really around nowadays.

[Vex]

3 minutes ago, My1 said:

maybe linux didnt "invent" virtual desktops, clipboard tracking and several other things but among the big 3 (Windows Mac and Linux) linux was sure the one that has had it the longest, and likely improved upon it enough that it was brought to Windows and mac. like sure xerox atari and whatever may have been earlier but none of them are really around nowadays.

How something went mainstream matters a lot more than nitpicking over which guy technically thought of it first.

[My1]

5 minutes ago, ClairelyClaire said:

How something went mainstream matters a lot more than nitpicking over which guy technically thought of it first.

exactly that's what I am trying to say.