615
Please support this! As graphic designers we should be able to use a open source OS.
(www.change.org)
I'm almost sure it works with wine
this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2025
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It requires a custom version of wine
Why?
Because for it to run it needs a patched version of wine with dxcore support(or smth like this)
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.
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.
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.
It's not that paying for things is bad. The problem is that good software is vital to digital artists' income, and both purchasing and learning that software is a substantial investment. When a company sells or otherwise enshittifies their software, the artist is then put in a very hard place. Open-source software is the only way to combat that unfortunately likely scenario. By all means, please pay for that software if you can afford to. Doing so subsidizes usage for less fortunate people who may be able to better their situation as a direct result of your generosity.
I have paid (by donating to them) for many of the open source software I use, so I don't think that everything should be free (as beer) but should be free (as freedom) and therefore open source.
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
I work in CGI and I use Photoshop for about 4 hours a day preparing images for clients, of whom use Photoshop and affinity (cheaper and one off payment). in the office, we are at our whits end with windows bugs and its just general annoyances.
we use Linux for rendering, so we've seen the light. but we are forced into using windows for the creative suites. I would love it if affinity were to offer native Linux support, the entire office would love the switch. however I'm very doubtful it will happen.
If you don't start using and contributing to free tooling now, they'll never get better and they'll never be "professional" (whatever that actually means).
You can continue to lock yourself into proprietary tooling, but that result will always be the same: a decent product gets bought, made subscription, get worse in quality while bleeding the customer out via subscription. You are already there will Adobe, and its started for Affinity.
So, the longer you hold out on FOSS tooling, the worse and slower things will be.
Look at how excellent FOSS tools are when they get attention and investment: blender and krita.
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.
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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...
Why not just use and support fully open source alternatives like Krita, Inkscape, Kdenlive, etc instead of giving money to Adobe?
By the time they get feature parity I'll be dead. Affinity is just plain better right now, and it's not Adobe.
Affinity is not affiliated with Adobe. And presumably because Affinity is higher quality than it's open source alternatives.
It's not just about quality, there's a lot missing or honestly plain worse in gimp for example, compared to affinity photo. I'm as big a proponent of OSS as any, it's just that software isn't there yet.
What's more, the target audience for that product are usually people who've had their chance encounter with programming and have decided against doing it. My anecdotal experience obviously. Edit: I mean it's unlikely they will contribute to features
it's just that software isn't there yet.
I put about 2000 hours of work into $open_source_project. After a huge release 10xing the quality, we had about 1000x as many users.
The existing user base was ecstatic- for many of them, it was all they ever wanted and more. But we had 1000x new people saying "it just isn't there yet"
Yes, because everyone has different needs. Even blender, which has gone far and beyond most graphical software, would be a no-go for someone because of one or two specifics.
Again, I firmly believe in OSS, but I don't see how porting more professional software hurts the community or freedom effort, when our biggest hurdle is adoption. Missing things people need is a barriers of entry. Missing things a workplace needs is an automatic loss.
That happens to the commercial folks too. It is just the nature of the adoption curve.
It is the same with price. A few will say that your product is already worth 10x the price. Most will say it’s too expensive. If you drop the price, a few more will see the value. Lots won’t.
More users is more users though. It is not something to get discouraged about. The advantage with Open Source is that, as long as it is useful to some, we have almost an infinite amount of time to expand it to new audiences. Baby steps pay off for Open Source.
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You can already use gimp and inkscape.
Also darktable, rawtherapee, DigiKam and Krita. Not sure if those are suited to professional work, but for amateurs they are more than enough.
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i dont think gimp is useable. gimme ANYTHING but gimp. photopea,krita, whatever...but to hell with gimp.
Inkscape sure, but gimp is no comparison for photo. Also Publisher is really good
GIMP is honestly fantastic. My workflow goes draw in GIMP, import to Inkscape to convert pieces to vector, then bring them into Godot where shaders get applied. I would rather draw in GIMP than any other program. I find drawing in Inkscape super awkward in comparison. GIMP is pretty no-frills, but it does the job. I prefer it over Photoshop. With Darktsble I've found it useful for importing high res raw images for textures too.
I don't know why people hate on it so much. It's all about using the tools you're comfortable with.
FYI, Affinity was bought by Canva, ~~this is probably an advertising.~~ Affinity will probably enshitify in the next release. Hopefully not, but who knows.
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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.
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