Help support. Please make Affinity possible on Linux!
Why not just use and support fully open source alternatives like Krita, Inkscape, Kdenlive, etc instead of giving money to Adobe?
This isn’t Adobe.
And as much as I want to like Krita, GIMP and such, their workflows just can’t compare with proprietary software in many cases. Also, especially for photo editing, their feature sets can’t compare with Adobe’s or Affinity’s either.
I use Krita, GIMP and Affinity Photo pretty regularly, and while there have been great improvements to the open source alternatives recently, I just get stuff done with Affinity, while still having to constantly search the web for things Krita and GIMP hide somewhere deep within their menus.
All open source image editors I’ve used are in dire need of a complete UX rework (like Blender and Musescore successfully did) before being more than niche alternatives to proprietary software.
So, as of yet, I can definitely understand the wish for a feature-rich and easily usable image editing suite on Linux.
Blender did an amazing job with their overhaul. I really don’t know why anyone would use anything else for 3d modeling. I’m hoping they pump up their CAD features, but I understand if they don’t.
What’s crazy is that while I used to know countless Maya / 3DSMax people, everyone seems to have switched to Blender. It’s crazy how fast the industry switched to Blender after that UI revamp.
The UI was pretty bad before, it took forever to get people to understand what was going on. Now it’s just a few tips and tricks and people are off and running. They did a great job.
Idk, you lost me when you said Krita’s UI is too challenging… wtf
And that arrogant “I understand it, why don’t you?!”-attitude is exactly what’s so often the main issue in the design process of open source software.
I’d recommend watching this recent talk by Tantacrul, the design lead for MuseScore and Audacity. In it, he shows some videos of first-time user tests he conducted for Inkscape recently. It’s really fascinating to see, how users fail to do what they want because of confusing UX choices. And often it isn’t even that hard to fix. But open source image editors are just full of these little annoyances by now, which really smell like the result of inadequate user testing. And no professional would prefer to work all day with software full of little annoyances when there are alternatives.
I mean, just try adding text in Krita, for example. There’s a giant pop-up where you have to format your text without actually seeing it on your image. That’s just klunky and far more time consuming than a WYSIWYG approach would be.
Just want to chime in that a Krita developer has been working on a complete text tool overhaul from the ground up for the past 5 years or so, and it is just about ready to be pushed into the beta versions, so that pain point should be resolved soon, thankfully.
Yeah, why help build the next “Adobe”? Use and donate to FOSS.
Yeah man. I don’t get it these days. Back when all we had was GIMP, I fully understood it. But switching to Krita has been pretty easy. The Photoshop binds are still a bit off, but nothing that you can’t go in and fix up the rest of the way
I use Inkscape and Affinity designer interchangeably. Designer is a bit more powerful and for some reason inkscape has issues sometimes but its more straightforward in ways that designer is not.
By the time they get feature parity I’ll be dead. Affinity is just plain better right now, and it’s not Adobe.
I’d rather support FOSS software
Are you doing profesionnal art/design work for a living ?
This is a Linux community not a professional art/design community.
FYI, Affinity was bought by Canva,
this is probably an advertising.Affinity will probably enshitify in the next release. Hopefully not, but who knows.I expect an affinity subscription plan.
Yep, and then everyone will go start looking for another option again. I hope they don’t, but those CEOs got get their more millions paychecks so they can stand up straight at the country club, somehow.
When the acquisition happened they made a pledge to keep affinity as a separate product and to have perpetual licenses.
Technically they can always introduced a subscription in addition to perpetual licenses but the implication is that they wouldn’t do that.
For what it’s worth, they understand their user base and were vocal about their plans. Maybe they’ll disappoint, but they haven’t really given reason to doubt so far.
i did not know that…
No problem. they are great currently.
That is a waste of time. I emailed the company a few months ago and they replied that they won’t port to Linux. Not that they don’t have plans to currently do it, but that they won’t. Clear as day.
Indeed, I don’t get the post. Does OP genuinely think they could influence Affinity to support linux? Via freaking change.org?? Really, why is the post so well-received by community? Got so many questions.
Yea yea. I’d love it, but it would still be a proprietary product you’d be tied into as a customer. I’d rather support Graphite when I can https://graphite.rs/ as well as Krita and Inkscape.
I don’t mind paying for good software on Linux. I don’t understand this idea that everything Linux should be free.
I don’t mind paying for software either. I own Affinity & Zbrush licenses. However I run the risk that in the future, these products may be sold to the highest bidder and development stalls (as it happened a couple years ago in the case of Zbrush) or interoperability suffers. When this happens, not only is your database of scenes and files obsolete, you also have to go through the process of learning a different program, and DCCs are… huge. Whole factories. It’s very hard to reinvest the time necessary to learn them inside out and be proficient again. It is also impossible to contribute to a non-open codebase. Proprietary programs are ticking bombs.
That’s not what people demand, it’s a side effect of users demanding software be open source and developers saying that’s not economically viable.
honestly inkscape is great :D I switched from illustrator after my adobe creative cloud subscription expired, and it’s been an easy transition!
Agreed it’s very capable today
Oh wow, hadn’t heard of graphite/graphene yet, and it looks so interesting! I rarely explicitly thank a comment that gave me a lot personally, but this time I think I have to. The graphene framework and the concept of artwork as compiled programs is pretty intriguing read! Thanks a bunch!
Nice. Hopefully that matures a bit more but yes the technologies are exciting
is there anything more useless than signing online petitions?
If you wan’t to use FOSS I get it, I want to. But when it comes to professionnal workflow you sometimes have to put your ego on the side. When I tried to ditch the Adobe Suite, the Free(dom) alternatives didn’t worked for me or the proprietary alternatives were simply better.
Inkscape is great but Affinity Designer is superior in many regards and even it is inferior to Adobe Illustrator. GIMP and Krita are awesome tools, honestly GIMP3 makes me want to play more with it and Krita is an awesome digital painting software, one of the best out there. But for photo editing Affinity Photo is still better for my workflow even if I still prefer to use Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom.
The new redesign of Scribus in unstable is exciting but I don’t see myself using it for professionnal work. Affinity Publisher is just better and yes again Adobe InDesign is still superior.
I’ve almost fully ditched Adobe (with the exception of Photoshop), I often try Free and Open Source alternatives and while some are good enough none can compare to Adobe who is leading the industry by the way, that’s the sad truth as of today.
Here is a list of alternative to Adobe I’ve made : https://alternativeto.net/lists/25812/softwares-for-content-creators-that-don-t-want-to-supports-adobe-monopole-/
Edit : grammar and typos
If you wan’t to use FOSS I get it, I want to. But when it comes to professionnal workflow you sometimes have to put your ego on the side. When I tried to ditch the Adobe Suite, the Free(dom) alternatives didn’t worked for me or the proprietary alternatives were simply better.
Then, I would argue, the alternative isn’t to sign petitions to make the corporate guys make their proprietary stuff available on FOSS operating systems. The alternative is to contribute to the FOSS alternatives in order to make them as good as the proprietary.
I’m not saying that you in particular haven’t contributed (either financially or developmentally). I don’t know you, so this isn’t particularly directed at you.
But in general, the “FOSS isn’t as good as proprietary stuff” crowd has overwhelmingly never actually tried to fund or contribute to the development of the software itself and their complaints amount to “Why isn’t my free thing as good as the thing they make me pay for?”
In which case the answer is “of course it isn’t…you’re telling me the software developed on the evenings and weekends by enthusiasts doing it in the spare time for NO money isn’t as polished as a fully funded business software!? NO WAY!!! I’M SHOOKETH!!!”
The alternative to the (perceived) quality disparity between FOSS and Proprietary isn’t to go begging at the Corporations doorstep; it’s to make the FOSS alternatives good enough to take the throne of “industry standard” away from the corporations.
It’s not impossible…hell, Blender is the poster child for pretty much doing exactly that. It’s not the “industry standard”, but it’s accepted in the industry in ways that GIMP and Inkscape still aren’t. And the reason is because it’s good enough to be there.
I agree with you, but there’s two sides of the coin.
I would rather pay for a finished product that is good. Sure I can download Linux for free, but I’d rather pay for it. I’d rather support teams that are putting out a product to ensure it is the best it can be and be continually maintained.
FOSS doesn’t have to be free. Nor should it be.
However when projects get organized like that they become organizations. Organizations become businesses. And that’s fine. Let’s support them so they can eat and feed their kids.
So it begs the question, if I feel that way about them is it fine to support non open source orgs and software? Of course it is.
So it basically comes down to the complaining that the software is not good enough.
Of course “good enough” isn’t binary, so if its on the threshold of usability I use it and if its severely lacking then I don’t. No big deal.
If its free, then there is no reason to complain regardless. If you’re paying for it, I think your opinion has a bit more weight. Of course there’s still a scale. If it’s so far removed from usability then I just don’t buy it. Windows is a good example of that. But if its close, voicing your opinion that you want certain features is more than fine. It doesn’t remove your support. Wanting Affinity on Linux is a fine desire. If they haven’t said they aren’t going to then asking isn’t a complaint. It’s a want.
I use Affinity because its the best solution I can find. I would love to have it on Linux. Maybe one day it will happen, but I’m not holding my breath. Supporting Affinity in hopes that they make it better for me (for my preferred platform) is OK, because I’m finding a way to use the product that suits me today. If that way becomes too much hassle tomorrow, I’ll move on. But if they make it easy for me to stay with them then I won’t. But either way, supporting Gimp won’t make it Affinity. It’ll just make Gimp a better Gimp.
I guess it boils down to, do you support something that isn’t what you want in hopes it becomes what you want it to be or do you support something that is exactly what you want, hoping it will go to where you want it?
Sorry I rambled on there (I’m tired). I do agree with you but there’s a counter point I also agree with. I don’t think they are exclusive.
I agree with you. My dream is that every public school should use and contribute to FOSS and FOSH, but I’m an utopiste. Honestly I wish Serif would at least free some of its codebase but that’s very unlikely. I would like to have these proprietary software as I still rely on them for my workflow on a GNU/Linux machine rather than macOS and that sounds more reasonnable for a private company building private code and selling licences. Today it’s some of the few software that I can’t run on GNU/Linux to ditch a proprietary OS for work.
I have finally ditched Windows years ago after living my whole childhood in that proprietary crappy spyware environment and did tried many FOSS tools for professionnal work and I do use some (PenPot, blender, OBS, Thunderbird, VSCodium (and Zed a bit), LibreOffice, Nextcloud, UltimakerCura and Signal to name a few).
Unfortunately I still do rely on proprietary software (and these rely on proprietary OS) and yeah there is a reason for that : I need to get the work done. They have the money proprietary licence advantage over FOSS tools of course but hey a small part of the money I make thanks to these proprietary tools are sent to foss projects I want to support. It’s not as big as I wish and I don’t have enough time nor skills to contribute as much as I want to the Free World in general but I do my part and it has grown over the years.
I would prefer relying on proprietary solution on a free OS than relying on proprietary software that rely on proprietary OS. That’s why I signed this (probably useless) petition.
I agree with you.
For my personal stuff, I am on Linux 100%.
I tried for a long time to put privacy first and Linux first everywhere. At some point, I realized that I am making my work so much more difficult using all these work arounds.
I am still waiting on a few things to come to Linux, once they do, I can try again. But I will keep using what works best for my work as earning a living needs to come first.
The closest Free(dom) alternative that I really see to make a change is PenPot but their Adobe counterpart (Xd) is discontinued. Still a great FOSS tool that I love to use despite some performance issue on big projects.
This is such a looooong shot, a more realistic plan would be to play the Powerball to win and use your winnings to fund open source programs into matching feature set.
Which is also wildly unlikely, but just a little more likely to happen.
I mean… you know they sold out to Aussie-Adobe like 4 years ago right?
They are currently strip-mining the code so they can learn how to write an application that isn’t an instagram filter tacked onto MS paint… I just made that last part up, hopefully they do something good… but I assume they acquired Serif for the sake of IP protection and not because they were hoping to develop it further. I haven’t seen anything innovative happen for the last few years at least.
At best they will repurpose certain features to add them to some “pro” (but still web-based) version of Canva at $50/mo. There’s no way in hell we’ll get Linux apps for Affinity. I really wish we would because they are literally the only reason I still have a Windows VM.
As long as you’re doing it in a VM might as well try the MacOS version. IIRC the OS screen scaling and apples requirements that everything have vector or MIB mapped icons makes for a much nicer experience.
I don’t know if it works on a VM… just fondly remember using the apps on my MacBook 😅
Never thought of that, I may give it a shot!
nope did not know rthat… welp there goes that ;)
This ain’t it, Chief.
It’s owned by Canva, so I’d be willing to bet their next release will we some kind of web version - in that case there would be no need to port it.
And it’ll be subscription based.
We have Affinity at home:
Affinity at home > Gimp
GIMP with the PhotoGIMP overhaul and Resynthasizer plugin (content aware fill) is pretty darn solid. Not perfect, but a massive upgrade from stock gimp.
Gave it a shot so many times just couldn’t get onboard with it…Even with the lastest release. The icons alone annoy me…
I’ve just tired installing the trial of Affinity on Linux by using a script for Lutris, and I’ve failed.
The day when Serif releases an Affinity suite for Linux I’m going to buy it asap.
In the meantime, I’ll stick to Gimp and Inkscape…
I’m a professional graphic designer and I will never EVER support any initiative trying to get privative support into Linux and this kind of shitty mindset from colleagues actually irks me. I will support any initiative trying to improve what we already have. You don’t even need to be a developer nor donate money to help - bug reports and translations are also a thing. That’s how we got to get high quality software like Krita, Inkscape or Blender.
Can I ask your perspective on the comments here saying that Krita and Inkscape just aren’t comparable to their commercial alternatives?
The reason is… I’m not a professional graphic designer, I have a small consultancy with several staff and work with documents and spreadsheets all day.
Occasionally I encounter similar threads discussing the difference between LibreOffice and Microsoft Office, and the comments are all the same. So many people saying LibreOffice just “isn’t there yet”, or that it might be ok for casual use but not for power users.
But as someone who uses LibreOffice extensively with a broad feature set I’ve just never encountered something we couldn’t do. Sure we might work around some rough edges occasionally, but the feature set is clearly comparable.
My strongly held suspicion is that it’s a form of the dunning-kruger effect. People have a lot of experience using software-A so much so that they tend to overlook just how much skill and knowledge they have accumulated with that specific software. Then when they try software-B they misconstrue their lack of knowledge with that specific software as complexity.
My strongly held suspicion is that it’s a form of the dunning-kruger effect. People have a lot of experience using software-A so much so that they tend to overlook just how much skill and knowledge they have accumulated with that specific software. Then when they try software-B they misconstrue their lack of knowledge with that specific software as complexity.
You just answered yourself. They’re just tools.
I’ve written a few articles in LibreOffice and the things I need to be able to do just can’t be done in order to follow the structure of the zine I was writing for. It’s a hobby zine and the work is free by everyone so they just reformatted it for me; but it still inconveniences others when things aren’t within a certain expected standard. I do blame microsoft for it though; all office apps uses the same standard except microsoft, unfortunately all the users uses microsoft office…
and no, krita, inkscape, gimp, etc. can’t replace Affinity. Affinity itself could barely replace Adobe in their first place. but it still has, for many. so it’s not a learning issue. Affinity is more intuitive than Adobe, so in this case Adobe is just outdated.
but as for the open source, the issue is more than just a lack of features. The UI is at least 15 years out of date.
Professionally the software just isn’t there; and it’s a real shame too, because I feel very uncomfortable using ANY microsoft products (on principle). But as far as Photoshop goes, there is photopea which is a great free browser based clone. Sadly there is no illustrator or indesign browser based clones that can match the quality of photopea, and the only desktop apps up for the job of matching Adobe is currently the Affinity Suite.
It sounds like you’re talking the ability of ms office products to open documents authored by libreoffice.
Also what a lot of people don’t see ist, that as a company if you are looking for employees, there are a lot of potential workers with adobe experience, much less with affinity (although growing). Not sure how kany you find with professional FOSS tool experience.
So you do have major onboarding costs for each new employee who has to relearn their workflows
Can I ask your perspective on the comments here saying that Krita and Inkscape just aren’t comparable to their commercial alternatives?
I am a professional and have been doing this since… Well, I started with Mac OS 7, let’s put it that way. Krita and Inkscape are like using craft scissors to cut sheetmetal. They’re simply the wrong tool for the job. They are maybe 10% comparable to Adobe apps. Affinity apps are probably 60% or 70% comparable. Anybody who says Inkscape is a replacement for Illustrator simply does not use it in any serious professional capacity. It doesn’t even have any means of adding paragraph spacing!
Have you tried collaborating to the project in some way or other? I think we in this capitalist world are frequently used of being given a solution, usually paid, sometimes for free (at least apparently). IMHO the change of paradigm has to do with first aligning with the ethics we wish for our world and humanity (I doubt anybody besides Adobe shareholders could cherish the idea of a world that using its products contributes to), and then putting all of our will and efforts in supporting the initiatives that make sense to our deep inner wishes for this world. How much are we willing to open ourselves to something like a different workflow if it makes sense with our ethics? The thing is that the paradigm perpetuates itself by us having being familiarized with it since we were kids. (Think Windows or Adobe in schools or Universities, although you could certainly bring this example to other spheres of human endeavours). Kids won’t break it… We need adults that, although have been indoctrinated with the old ways, have enough will power to open these new doors and create new realities for the children of the future.
I would if I knew anything about programming or UI design, but unfortunately I don’t.
Yeah, I used to think the same… I dont know much programming (at least not enough to collaborate), but I usually help translating, documenting or answering some forums… Maybe it’s not much but it helps a littlw
I fully support this comment. Have been a Graphic Designer since Quark Express truly was the better option to Indesign.
I have no way to evaluate whether these claims are true. Pretty much verbatim what people say about libreoffice.
Again, you’re operating off your own limited experience. Ask someone who does Excel programming (yes it’s a thing) if LibreOffice compares. It does not.
Guy, everyone operates off their own limited experience.
LibreOffice has user defined functions that work just fine. You’re just illustrating my point really.
Anybody who says Inkscape is a replacement for Illustrator simply does not use it in any serious professional capacity. It doesn’t even have any means of adding paragraph spacing!
That’s sort of where I see the issue as well. What proprietary software does is takes the features of a bunch of different pieces of kit and puts them together into one package.
There isn’t one particular thing that Propietary software does the FOSS software can’t. The problem is that you need multiple different software solutions to do it.
So while Illustrator offers Paragraph Spacing (for example) Inkscape doesn’t, you get that in Scribus. But Scribus lacks the more advanced pathing vector tools, which Inkscape offers. Meanwhile neither of them have strong photo editing abilities, which GIMP brings to the table, but GIMP can’t really do painting well, which KRITA brings to the table…and so on and so on.
Every open source alternative does something as good as their proprietary alternaties. But not everything. You have to use a combination in order to match the capability of one adobe product, and that’s just not feasible in a professional environment.
Even that isn’t really true. GIMP for example is nowhere near feature parity with Photoshop, not even close. it only just got non-desctructive editing a few months ago, something that Photoshop has had for at least 20 years if not more! The disparity gets much, much worse when you look at filters or tools like content-aware fill.
GIMP for example is nowhere near feature parity with Photoshop
Yeah. That’s exactly my point…maybe I wasn’t clear.
The problem is that no one specific FOSS tool has feature parity. To get the same abilities as Photoshop, you have to use a workflow that is a combination of GIMP, Inkscape, Krita and Scribus instead of having it in the one package, which is why Adobe is the industry standard.
No, what I’m saying is that PS has features that simply do not exist in any of the current FOSS apps. How do you replicate smart objects or content-aware fill? How about sky replacement or the camera RAW filter?
Honestly, affinity is just a company. They will make a Linux version if it makes business sense for them and it won’t. Adobe is far ahead in almost every way. Their software is competing in the market of amateurs. And for an amateur, it should make more sense to pick up Gimp, inkspace. Affinity publisher is ok, but pros will have adobe and for anything less inkspace or figma free tier is good enough. Affinity has no market.
