Not enough support from Adobe?

[semperfried76]

I am a subscriber to Adobe's cloud services, as it gives me access to their entire Creative Suite, an invaluable set of tools. I am also a recent Ubuntu convert, after having dabble with it for a little over a decade, and using it for several years as my server OS of choice. My question is this- Mac OSX is built on BSD, a stone's throw away from Linux, so close in architecture that they share a great deal of the same tools: Why do they shun the Linux community? I really hate having to run CS6 on a virtual machine suffering the glitches inherent with virtual graphics drivers, but at the same time, I despise the thought of having to go back to Windows, and losing things like apt-get, multiple desktops, bash, the wealth of easily set-up programming tools that I can use to compile just about any language, the LAMP stack, rvm, etc... I cannot afford to drop twice as much as I would on a PC on a Mac, so that's out of the question too. I've heard for years that GIMP and Inkscape are viable alternatives to Photoshop and Illustrator, but as a longtime user of all of them, I have to say I don't share that opinion (cue OSS-fanatic forum hate in 3...2...1...), GIMP is great at some things that Photoshop doesn't do, but sucks at everything it can do, by comparison, anyways, and I don't see how anyone in their right mind can tell me that Inkscape is a better vector graphics editor than Illustrator, especially when Illustrator can be so neatly tied into my workflow with InDesign and Acrobat.

So, why no love, Adobe?

I love you.

I pay for your product.

Please make a Linux port of CS6 (or if that's not possible, CS7).

[kio_http]

For similar reasons, Richard Stallman has for steam on linux, I don't think its a good idea to make Gnu/Linux and distros like Ubuntu full of non free software. I'm not extremist like Stallman though, I don't mind Microsoft making non free software as long as they don't obstruct the progress of free software. I also prefer having a non free driver on Linux as opposed to none at all.

[vexorian]

OS/X uses the BSD kernel. But GUI toolkits are a whole different issue. So porting a complex GUI app like photoshop from OS/X to GTK or QT is not a trivial task. They don't hate us, they are just lazy as hell. If desktop Linux had enough of a user share of graphic designers, then it would motivate adobe to port to Linux, but until then, they have no reason to do it.

GIMP is free as opposed to paid photoshop. It runs in Linux and is used by plenty of professionals. It is not a "replacement" but it is very decent at what it does. Of course, if you really, really prefer photoshop and can't get it to run in WINE, then you would need to use another OS.

[snowpine]

Not to defend Adobe, but 5 minutes of research and you would have known Adobe does not support Linux before you made the switch from Windows.

In your case, Adobe would not make a penny from a Linux port, since you are already a subscriber, correct? Therefore there is no financial incentive for them to do so, and since they are a for-profit company... you see my point.

[lukeiamyourfather]

Money talks. If you want Adobe to port their products to Linux call them and cancel your subscription and let them know you're canceling because they don't support Linux.

[neu5eeCh]

It's not that they hate Linux, it's that they love positive ROI's (Hi, KiwiNZ ;)). Until any given desktop Linux distro is confirmably more than (probably) 10% of the market, few if any of the more mainstream commercial software companies are likely to invest in it -- least of all Adobe. Marketshare is key. On the other hand, if some multi-millionaire or billionaire (like, oh, I don't know who) were to pay Adobe to port their software to a linux distribution (like, oh, I don't know -- maybe Ubuntu?) instead of paying Russians for jaunts into outer space (just as a completely arbitrary example) Ubuntu would have Photoshop. Just sayin'.

[lykwydchykyn]

I don't think Adobe is on this forum. Maybe you should send them an email if you want this question actually answered, instead of being used as a springboard for an Adobe flamefest.

[semperfried76]

Snowpine: Duh.
I've been using Linux since before it was easy to get network support on a consumer grade machine, back in the winmodem days. I'm not saying this like it's a new thing, like "OMG IT"S SUCH A SHOCK I CAN"T RUN PHOTOSHOP!". It just seems like that because I am new to actually posting in the forums. It also seems to me that Adobe could make quite a bit of money supporting linux, as I've seen literally thousands of requests for this very thing.

[semperfried76]

I don't think Adobe is on this forum. Maybe you should send them an email if you want this question actually answered, instead of being used as a springboard for an Adobe flamefest.

Question was less for Adobe and more for the community, I've already posted to Adobe forums, and they seem disinterested, to say the least- they are pointing those who ask for a Linux port to a third-party forum, because Linux users asking for a CS port were clogging up their own forums- said third-party forum has the support of over 10k readers, but still Adobe claims that the market share of Adobe users on Linux is minimal. Duh- it's minimal because we can't get their product to run on our OS, not because we'd rather use Windows or Linux. Adobe claims to love all platforms, let them prove it.

[neu5eeCh]

It also seems to me that Adobe could make quite a bit of money supporting linux, as I've seen literally thousands of requests for this very thing.

It may "seem" that way, but I'm sure the bean counters at Adobe have done the math. I personally doubt that you've "literally" seen thousands of requests and I seriously doubt that those "thousands" of requests would translate into sales. The following is from the Adobe website:


Again, we've done the research. The profits aren't there -- very few Linux users are willing to pay for commercial software.
And the cost of entry is still high because of the fragmented Linux landscape.

The Linux world has to change before commercial software will have reason to invest in Linux ports.
And we haven't seen much real change in the Linux market in several years.

There is a big difference between calls for something, and a market willing to pay for that thing.
Think about how many people want an Italian sports car, versus how many are willing to actually pay for them.

Sadly, people willing to pay a few dollars for small games does not translate into professionals willing to pay hundreds of dollars for desktop software.

Yes, Adobe would have a lot to lose: everything it spent on making the port, advertising money spent, etc. And it is not a stalemate -- the ball is in the Linux court. Linux developers and users can pick the ball up and join the game, or keep playing solo.

The cost doesn't appear to be "prohibitively high" for people using Photoshop professionally. And Photoshop is a professional product, not a consumer product.

The fact that Linux users are not will to pay for software is quite valid, and backed up by a lot of market research. A few anecdotes don't change that fact.

Again, the Linux developers and users need to step up to make Linux a viable platform for commercial software. It has to make some business sense before a business will invest anything in the effort.


Yes, we've asked about users willing to switch.
Really, there aren't that many.

But we'll keep asking, and hoping that the Linux community develops.


I'm a Senior Engineer on the Photoshop team.
Photoshop's codebase is 20 years old, but constantly cleaned and refactored. Our codebase is C++, and pretty portable. That has nothing to do with not porting to Linux.

I doubt that the research is well published, since marketing research is usually perfomed by well paid research companies (and they want to keep getting paid). I see the research done every year or two, and the results barely change with respect to Linux users.


Linux still lacks standards for color management or fonts, and just barely has standards for printing. Things like tablet support are more than a little hacked, and drivers are still a nightmare. And that's just the problems I can see from occasional use, I'm sure there are more. And where is the standard UI toolkit (currently you can pick from 6 or more bad choices based on the mistakes of X Windows)?

Stabilizing the OS and adopting standards would make Linux more attractive to ports (and to write anything more complicated than command line apps). It would also be far more attractive when code can run on more than one distribution of the OS without major effort.

Yes, Linux devs without experience on other platforms might find the facts hard to swallow. But Linux is not a single OS, but a kernel used in many fragmented OSes with few standards.


And, AGAIN, the primary reason for no Photoshop on Linux: there is no market. Linux users are still not willing to pay for commercial software. You have to solve that problem before you'll get serious commerical applications.
Solving the standards problems would make Linux more attractive to developers, and then you might get more users. Right now, the sets of Linux users and developers are overlapping a little too much (when app tutorials start with "download these 8 packages and build them", you've got a problem).
And there you have it (http://forums.adobe.com/thread/487814), agree or not, straight from the horse's mouth.

[KiwiNZ]

The don't hate us, they like to and are required to make a profit on products.

[1clue]

It may "seem" that way, but I'm sure the bean counters at Adobe have done the math. I personally doubt that you've "literally" seen thousands of requests and I seriously doubt that those "thousands" of requests would translate into sales. The following is from the Adobe website:

And there you have it (http://forums.adobe.com/thread/487814), agree or not, straight from the horse's mouth.


+1.

<rant>

Free software, in reference to Open Source, means "free to use and modify" not "no monetary charge." FOSS was initially for programmers who intended to contribute code back, not just people who have an aversion for spending money for something. The premise that in order to install Linux you need some old box that isn't useful with Windows on it anymore is still way too commonly held.

Frankly in my experience, Linux costs more in the long run than Windows or Mac. Take whatever your hourly earnings are at work, and multiply that by however many hours you spend "configuring" your Linux box when it would have just worked on some commercial operating system. If you come up with fewer dollars than the price of a brand new Mac, then you haven't been using Linux very long, or you're unemployed.

I have bought commercial software on Linux, and commercial Windows-based software when my sole intent was to run it through Crossover Office, and will do so again if I have need. I choose Linux because it is a better fit for what I do and the way I do it. I buy hardware brand new, piecemeal, and assemble it, and put Linux on it. I can't remember the last time I installed Linux over the top of an existing commercial OS, it has been more than 10 years.

I would rather use an Open Source alternative if a suitable one exists, but the idea that I might do without an application altogether when the only available alternatives are commercial quality, commercially licensed products is insane.

The idea though that some company like Adobe would develop professional software for a platform where nobody wants to pay for anything at all is laughable. The only way that would happen is if:

The movers and shakers in the Linux community stop encouraging developers to build Open Source versions of apps that look and act just like the commercial product they are intended to compete with. Instead, develop new tools which solve the same problems in a new way, and make the commercial alternatives react to FOSS for a change.
The Linux community would suddenly be seen as full of professionals who have exacting standards and a desire to get the job done properly and legally even if the license is not free.
A large number of regular consumers started using it.
The people who want free (dollars free, not OSF free) software whether it's copyrighted or not would go somewhere else, or at least be seen as a small minority.


In my very strong opinion, Open Source should work hand in hand with commercial software without flaw or bias. People who insist on Open Source can and should be able to choose only Open Source and build their entire system from it, but they should not try to force all open source distributions to limit access to commercial software. There are plenty of distros out there that try to limit access to commercial software. This is not one of them. If you don't like that then go find another distro.

</rant>

[oldsoundguy]

IF and when The Cloud reaches it's projected goal, there will BE NO difference to the cloud user what OPERATING SYSTEM is on their computer, as almost everything will be done in the cloud via the browser.

Adobe, at present, really does not care about less than 2% of the desktop computer users. Putting money into porting for Linux when they are going to go the way of the browser/cloud computing makes no financial sense at all.

And I see references to GIMP again. Gimp is fine if you already KNOW what you are doing .. there is a lot of on line help available, but a lot of that help assumes you already know a lot about the program .. which MOST do NOT. And there are few classes offered by educational institutions in using GIMP .. whereas there ARE classes for Photo Shop and other Adobe programs (granted, expensive in most cases, but classes none the less.) Unless you are a Senior Citizen and your local Senior Center offer low priced or free classes. The center in my town DOES offer classes .. from baby steps to journeymen level .. expert level is you are on your own.

[1clue]

Yeah, Gimp vs Photoshop.

They're both the same to me because I'm equally incompetent with both of them.

My sister is a professional photographer. She took the Photoshop course, or maybe several for all I know. She had it on her Windows laptop and then after awhile upgraded to one of the huge iMacs. She didn't have the spare money at the time to buy Photoshop all over again, so I installed Gimp for her for the month or so she needed to wait.

She gave it a good try, and made do for that month. Then when she got Photoshop, she showed me the difference by using both tools on the same photo to do things that needed to be done for her customers.

Gimp is NOT equal to Photoshop. Even I as a rank amateur can see that after having a professional show me.

The tools/controls you would use together on Photoshop are all easily reachable from the same place. Not so on Gimp.
The controls on Photoshop have a reasonable real-world minimum and maximum, and the entire travel of a slider is useful. The same slider on Gimp goes from zero to 100%, even if the useful range is 70-80%, and so you have an extremely good chance of doing more harm than good to your image, or you will spend a lot more time trying to fiddle with it.


Gimp is an example of a tool written by a bunch of programmers who don't really understand the problem to be solved. Contrast that with Apache Web Server, where the free software is simply the best at what it does, bar none. The programmers knew exactly what they wanted and worked their rears off to get it, and did the job better than anyone else in the world.

Gimp is fine for me, because I am not a professional photographer and I don't ever intend to be one. I don't know what most of those controls are even for, let alone how to use them. For others in my skill range, Gimp is fine, and I would never spend the cash for a professionally oriented tool when I have no more than a passing interest in using it. I snap pictures with my phone and let the world see how bad a photographer I am.

On the other hand, anything relating to my job is a totally different story. You gotta spend it to make it. That goes for time and money.

[semperfried76]

Linux still lacks standards for color management or fonts, and just barely has standards for printing. Things like tablet support are more than a little hacked, and drivers are still a nightmare. And that's just the problems I can see from occasional use, I'm sure there are more. And where is the standard UI toolkit (currently you can pick from 6 or more bad choices based on the mistakes of X Windows)?.

I think this is probably the best answer I've heard yet. Really, If we can't get a CS6 port, this would probably be the best reason. Thanks for posting.

[semperfried76]

Yeah, Gimp vs Photoshop.

They're both the same to me because I'm equally incompetent with both of them.

My sister is a professional photographer. She took the Photoshop course, or maybe several for all I know. She had it on her Windows laptop and then after awhile upgraded to one of the huge iMacs. She didn't have the spare money at the time to buy Photoshop all over again, so I installed Gimp for her for the month or so she needed to wait.

She gave it a good try, and made do for that month. Then when she got Photoshop, she showed me the difference by using both tools on the same photo to do things that needed to be done for her customers.

Gimp is NOT equal to Photoshop. Even I as a rank amateur can see that after having a professional show me.

The tools/controls you would use together on Photoshop are all easily reachable from the same place. Not so on Gimp.
The controls on Photoshop have a reasonable real-world minimum and maximum, and the entire travel of a slider is useful. The same slider on Gimp goes from zero to 100%, even if the useful range is 70-80%, and so you have an extremely good chance of doing more harm than good to your image, or you will spend a lot more time trying to fiddle with it.


Gimp is an example of a tool written by a bunch of programmers who don't really understand the problem to be solved. Contrast that with Apache Web Server, where the free software is simply the best at what it does, bar none. The programmers knew exactly what they wanted and worked their rears off to get it, and did the job better than anyone else in the world.

Gimp is fine for me, because I am not a professional photographer and I don't ever intend to be one. I don't know what most of those controls are even for, let alone how to use them. For others in my skill range, Gimp is fine, and I would never spend the cash for a professionally oriented tool when I have no more than a passing interest in using it. I snap pictures with my phone and let the world see how bad a photographer I am.

On the other hand, anything relating to my job is a totally different story. You gotta spend it to make it. That goes for time and money.

Too right. Don't get me wrong, for what it is, GIMP is an excellent tool, but it really can't compare with Photoshop. The GIMP devs should not feel bad though, even Corel's tools really can't compare to Adobe's, in my opinion. I've used all of them, at one time or another, and I keep going back to Adobe- it's just too good to quit using it, and as a professional designer, I'd be foolish to do so. When I don't need to worry about heavy editing, (for instance, if I just need to crop or resize an image) GIMP is fine, and can even be quicker than using photoshop even on a native platform, but for anything else, there's no substitute for the real thing.

[Primefalcon]

Adobe doesn't make anything I am really all that interesting I am afraid......... now Valve is a different a matter!

And dn't knock Gimp is really is a powerful tool... great with my wacom tablet too!

[1clue]

You might find this interesting, although the support database isn't too promising:

http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/search/?name=photoshop&search=app

The interesting part is that if you REALLY want the app to work, you can commission them to make it work. I don't know how much that costs, it could be exorbitant or it could be reasonable for all I know. Click on the "porting" tab on top.

The app in question is Crossover Office. It's the commercial version of Wine. It's basically Wine with Windows libraries needed to run the software you want. It's legal, the fee you pay pays for the licensing of the DLLs.

I've used this before, had a business requirement to run a Microsoft product in the Office suite.


On a lark, I just tried the wine database, and that seems to be more promising than the Crossover site:

http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=17

They show a "silver" rating for version 6, and I also punched "photoshop" into their site search and noticed that there seems to be a photoshop group there. You probably want to look at that.

[rg4w]

Free software, in reference to Open Source, means "free to use and modify" not "no monetary charge." FOSS was initially for programmers who intended to contribute code back, not just people who have an aversion for spending money for something.
For better or worse, "free as in freedom" winds up being "free as in beer" whenever getting a copy of the object code is just a make file away.

While it's true that the Linux crowd has a historically earned a reputation for not wanting to pay for software, as it grows to reflect a broader demographic we're seeing a shift with such attitudes. Not everyone is religious about The Four Freedoms, and it seems at least some Linux fans are very willing to pay to support good software:

Linux Users Pay More for Humble Bundles than Mac/Windows Ones
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Linux-Users-Pay-More-for-Humble-Bundles-than-Mac-Windows-294778.shtml

[TenPlus1]

Am using latest Google Chrome on linux and it has Pepper Flash 11.4 working fine for me...

[handy]

As has been previously stated, it is only about profit.

This is an excellent read which broad brushes the Apple/Adobe history, both companies which are primarily interested in profit (like 99% of all companies anyway!):

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2010/04/14/chronicles-of-conflict-the-history-of-adobe-vs-apple/

[alphacrucis2]

Gimp currently has a lot of cool stuff coming down the pipeline that can now occur due to the migration to GEGL. Especially support for high colour depth which allows lots of image processing without losing colour accuracy. Several photographers have said this is a must have feature that stops them from seriously using GIMP. While GIMP may always be behind photoshop I see it is rapidly going to acquire the features that photographers really need.

[szymon_g]

as it gives me access to their entire Creative Suite, an invaluable set of tools.

... an yet you have moved to linux?



Mac OSX is built on BSD, a stone's throw away from Linux, so close in architecture that they share a great deal of the same tools:

who told you that?


apt-get,

highly overrated


multiple desktops,
you can have them on windows


bash,
see above



the wealth of easily set-up programming tools that I can use to compile just about any language,

code written in how many languages do you manage?


the LAMP stack,

xampp


Photoshop doesn't do, but sucks at everything it can do, by comparison, anyways, and I don't see how anyone in their right mind can tell me that Inkscape is a better vector graphics editor than Illustrator

I cannot understand why someone in their right mind can change operating system and than be surprised that programs written for one system don't work on another... especially when that person is familiar with term "operating system"


I love you.

if you feel anything to your tools, you should seek medical advice...

[Uncle Spellbinder]

And, AGAIN, the primary reason for no Photoshop on Linux: there is no market. Linux users are still not willing to pay for commercial software. You have to solve that problem before you'll get serious commerical applications.

While drivers, printing and a general set of standards is a big issue for companies like Adobe, MONEY is the main issue here.

I've run across many Linux users who strictly adhere to no proprietary apps/drivers/fonts, etc on their Linux OS. "If it isn't 100% FOSS, it isn't true GNU/Linux." I've seen variations of that phrase on many a forum. Until that attitude changes (and I doubt it ever will), companies like Adobe, Apple (iTunes), Sony (AcidPRO) will steer clear of Linux distributions.

[1clue]

While drivers, printing and a general set of standards is a big issue for companies like Adobe, MONEY is the main issue here.

I've run across many Linux users who strictly adhere to no proprietary apps/drivers/fonts, etc on their Linux OS. "If it isn't 100% FOSS, it isn't true GNU/Linux." I've seen variations of that phrase on many a forum. Until that attitude changes (and I doubt it ever will), companies like Adobe, Apple (iTunes), Sony (AcidPRO) will steer clear of Linux distributions.

I'm not entirely sure that's fair. I've seen several people who run Windows with a complete Microsoft Office suite, AutoCad and anything else you want, and they paid not one cent for it. How do I know? They told me. Same thing goes for music and movies downloaded of the net.

I think this attitude is a form of rage against the machine, people who see capitalism as an evil when all it is is formalized bartering.

You're right in the sense that Linux attracts that sort of person simply by saying everything is "free" and that's all they need to hear, whether their interpretation of it is correct or not.

Speaking as a programmer, the lack of general standards in the area you intend to interface with an OS is a big deal. I'm not a UNIX programmer so I didn't really know all that. Yes, money is a big motivator -- even for companies and individuals who write open source. But it's not the only thing.

[KiwiNZ]

Why did I go from the Military to Government IT, to Private Enterprise IT ? money I could earn considerably more in IT and in particular Private Enterprise so like Corporations I did it for profit.

I left IT however and entered Urban Rescue then Volunteer Urban Rescue as I have retired form full time work.

I now do contract Restructuring and Change Management Consultancy again for profit. So like Adobe, Apple, MSFT, Canonical etc etc etc being it for profit is a good thing and an advantage to all who use IT.

So Adobe does not hate us, they just have no way to make a profit from us currently.

[SeanIM]

You beat me to it.

Anyways, imho you can live without Adobe for most things.

The only thing I kind of like is Lightroom but honestly I can do most of what I need in other programs that don't require love from Adobe on my ubuntu machine.


Not to defend Adobe, but 5 minutes of research and you would have known Adobe does not support Linux before you made the switch from Windows.

In your case, Adobe would not make a penny from a Linux port, since you are already a subscriber, correct? Therefore there is no financial incentive for them to do so, and since they are a for-profit company... you see my point.

[SeanIM]

I have to agree on this as well. I love the latest update from GIMP, but with wine installed I also use an old copy of Paint Shop Pro 7.x and all of the filter/photo enhancements I need are taken care of.

I really need to play with GIMP and Inkscape more, but for now I can do everything I need without Adobe gear.


Gimp currently has a lot of cool stuff coming down the pipeline that can now occur due to the migration to GEGL. Especially support for high colour depth which allows lots of image processing without losing colour accuracy. Several photographers have said this is a must have feature that stops them from seriously using GIMP. While GIMP may always be behind photoshop I see it is rapidly going to acquire the features that photographers really need.

[litiform]

I've never liked Adobe. It didn't surprise me at all when they fail to support Linux.

I can't wait till we no longer have to use Flash for internet. I just can't wait.

[linuxpcplus]

No matter how you look at it, it all boils down to rigid corporate bs. Adobe, Microsoft, & others are losing out on a vast & rapidly growing share of the market by refusing to support Linux. Take a look at Steam if you want proof. In the month or so it's official Linux release, the Steam Linux client has been downloaded tens of thousands of times. Just think it if adobe made creative cloud Linux compatible. Take $30/month subscription & mulitply it by 10,000. Not a small chunk of change & I have no doubt they would see 10 times that many downloads/subscriptions by linux users in the first 2-3 months!
Butr companies like Adobe & Microsoft are to damn chicken to take the leap. They gives these b.s. lines that there is not enough market share, but a post on their own community forums shows more than 25,000 votes for this in the last 6 months alone!
Maybe someday these corporate retards will remember that excluding large market segments screws them out of millions of dollars of potential revenue! But for now, we Linux users are screwed & are restricted to running either vm's for this product, dual booting winblows, or finding and using the closest alternatives we can find.
Adobe Creative Cloud is an aswesome set of software, but only if you want to suffer with the shoddy but expensive OS we knows as Winblows!

[mips]

“The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.”― Carl Sagan (http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/10538.Carl_Sagan)

[mips]

No matter how you look at it, it all boils down to rigid corporate bs.

No sensible business man will ever shun a market that generates them money, it would be extremely stupid of them. Emotion does not come into play here.

[aspergerian]

semperfried76,

Try digiKam (http://www.digikam.org/). Install the latest version 3.1.0 (?). I have CS5 on two w7 computers, occasionally use gimp for simple manipulations, and found the 3.0 digiKam to be closer to CS5 (this, for the short time I allowed my Acer 1410 to run Unity (fell back to Xubuntu, which I like and use).

[Dry Lips]

I wish Gimp, Inkscape, Scribus was more like a software suite. Right now they are (largely) working independently of each other. If they joined forces I believe they could be a serious contender to Adobe.

Also, there are a few technical limitations to the aforementioned programs that needs to be solved before they can become a 100% viable alternative to Adobe for professionals. Scribus is perhaps the most mature of these programs.

[coldraven]

And, AGAIN, the primary reason for no Photoshop on Linux: there is no market. Linux users are still not willing to pay for commercial software.

So Lightworks must be crazy.
One poster said something like "For the same cost of an average Mac he could buy a high powered PC and no licensing problems"
If you are going to be creative, especially with video, raw horsepower is what you want and not something that is just shiny.
Dream on Adobe!

[evilsoup]

So Lightworks must be crazy.


The name of the company is Editshare, and them being crazy is entirely possible.

[cariboo]

semperfried76,

Try digiKam (http://www.digikam.org/). Install the latest version 3.1.0 (?). I have CS5 on two w7 computers, occasionally use gimp for simple manipulations, and found the 3.0 digiKam to be closer to CS5 (this, for the short time I allowed my Acer 1410 to run Unity (fell back to Xubuntu, which I like and use).

Why can't you run digikam on Xubuntu?

[mamamia88]

Adobe doesn't hate us they just did the math and came to the conclusion that the development cost would be greater than the potential gains.

[Hugh Mulqueen]

I don't think they hate us; I think they just don't enjoy our perticular cup of tea. Adobe does support open-standards but their track record with flash is questionable at best.
Pepper is good but where is the porting to other browsers like Firefox, Konceqerer Icescape and miro or something.. (I can't think of the rest).
I do realise that most of those browsers I just metioned run with Webkit but flash is a different matter.

All of the points the Senior Photoshop Engineer is making in that fourm post are either fixed (Ubuntu Software Centre, Steam4Linux) or in the process of being fixed (Wayland, Linux Standard Base, Open Desktop standardisation). Maybe he just doesn't seem to understand or appreatiate the underying principles with FOSS or the open-source way.

The only reason I use GNU/Linux is because the fuctionally its better than the alternitives in my opinion. He apitamises the perseption that the FOSS/Open-source world has. That all we want is free $oftware... That is compleate and utter rubbish. I will only pay for quality software thats at a good price, That isn't bugy to the point of being destuctive of your data, and being relitivly good or exciting. be it open source or propitetary.

So I don't think the question is Why does Adobe hate us? I think it should be: Why don't Adobe love us?

P.S. Sorry for the spelling no spell-check in new fourms!!!

[lykwydchykyn]

I wish Gimp, Inkscape, Scribus was more like a software suite. Right now they are (largely) working independently of each other. If they joined forces I believe they could be a serious contender to Adobe.

Also, there are a few technical limitations to the aforementioned programs that needs to be solved before they can become a 100% viable alternative to Adobe for professionals. Scribus is perhaps the most mature of these programs.

Have you seen calligra suite? It's got a raster editor, vector editor, and the word processor is much more DTP-oriented than most others. It's probably not feature-complete enough yet to rival some of these other programs, but it's probably more likely that it will get features than that three independent foss projects will join into a single project.

BTW, I think this thread really needs a few more people telling the OP that Adobe's behavior is driven by business decisions rather than emotion. I don't think the first four pages of this thread drove that point home quite enough.

[smellyman]

Why do people love Adobe?



yuck...


I see too many home users waste money on MS Office and Adobe suites, thinking they need it. 99% of them do not. Makes me cry a bit inside.

[VeeDubb]

Why do people love Adobe?



yuck...


I see too many home users waste money on MS Office and Adobe suites, thinking they need it. 99% of them do not. Makes me cry a bit inside.

We might debate whether or not your 99% is anywhere near reality, but the simple truth is that some of us to need one or the other. The company where I work my day job runs MS Office. If I take work home, work on it in Libre Office, and then take it back to work, I have to spend almost as much time fixing things that got messed in the transition as I do actually working. Yes, that's gotten better over the last few years, but interoperability is critical, and Libre Office still just doesn't cut it for complex documents.

Likewise, my home business is in wedding photography. I've gotten to a place where I'm able to do everything I need using a combination of FOSS, and commercial software that is either native linux, or platform independent. However, there are companies that I would LOVE to be able to do business with, but simply can't because I can't run photoshop. For instance, vision artbooks. Last time I looked, their service required that photobooks be uploaded as fully layered PSD files, which despite some limited improvement in recent GIMP releases, just can't be done consistently with the level of quality and precision that you need when trying to sell someone a $600 wedding album.


All that being said, it still comes down to what many people have said already. The reason there's no photoshop on linux is simple.

X=The potential revenue from porting photoshop to linux.

Y=The total cost of development, marketing and support, which currently includes a nightmare of different toolkits, inconsistent color management (which is critical for real graphics work), and different support tools in different distributions.

When X>Y, we'll have native versions of Adobe CS, MS Office, Top Tier gaming, and just about any other commercial software you can think of. The linux community is growing, and all of the things that increase the costs are slowly coming down, and if Mir (or wayland) is designed with color management in mind from the ground up, we may see some real interest from Adobe, but until then, we're out of luck.

[Ian Clark]

Adobe©®™ hates us the same way all bureaucrats hate us. all they want is to breathe our oxygen for another day, and take no pride in their work. good workers want to finish the job and move on to more important things, but adobe wants to keep the gravy train running forever until they or their grandsons' grandsons die.

i'm on this thread because running xubuntu 12.04, got another sudden flash update and had to restart my computer in the middle of doing a lot of web design work. i'm searching around for when we can possibly use html 5 and seriously delete this syphilytic orgre called Adobe Crash©®™ from our hard drives.

[coldraven]

>>P.S. Sorry for the spelling no spell-check in new fourms!!!

In Firefox just right click in any text input box that has more than two lines then select "Languages".

[aspergerian]

Why can't you run digikam on Xubuntu?

After retreating to Xubuntu, I tried digiKam in Ubuntu Software Center. Wasn't the latest version of digiKam, didn't seem as slick as most recent version, so I chose not to install recent version given that full-fledged image processing on a netbook with 11.6" screen is more than my eyes need deal with.

[LillyDragon]

This thread is definitely an interesting read; it was nice hearing an actual Adobe engineer's perspective, as well as from the Linux community on the profitability of ports of Adobe brand products. The aforementioned developer makes very solid points, but hopefully some of those will change as the Linux culture and tech evolves.

As for the usability of GIMP, the latest version (2.8.4) brings a lot of things to the table, and considering I use it primarily to draw cartoon art, and some animations, it's perfect for an intermediate hobbyist like me. The interface is heavily customizable and I've changed my setup to make it more comfortable for my preference. (Like trimming tools from the toolbox that I don't use/need. Ticked single window mode, selection editor tab, path tool dialog, etc.) The Linux version of 2.8 also runs a little smoother than on Windows, so I'm always happy to run GIMP from the Linux side of things.

However, I've learned more than half of its tools functions in just a year's time of heavy usage, and starting to want more; the boundaries of mystery with the program are closing in. I'm also not sure if its stabilizers will be enough when I get a tablet, and I've heard GIMP is not the best for painting either. (Although it's fully possible and I have seen it done, but Krita's brush engines look far more advanced and organic.) I've been studying tutorials on Krita for painting, and may continue serious vectoring with Inkscape's numerous advanced path tools; it's also tempting to purchase a license for PaintTool SAI.

But I digress. Point is, I feel that GIMP is a great starting point for digital artists, and even has some tools that aren't included with Photoshop Elements, for instance. The interface is simple, easy to customize, and the wealth of tools is overwhelming; the limitations aren't immediately obvious and your imagination won't go to waste. Essentially, it's like "the jack of all trades" with its art tools, as one of my friends put it, giving you all the various basics you need for editing. Besides that, it's free, as in freedom, so discovering if you want to pursue art more seriously isn't an expensive venture. You don't need Photoshop just to start out, that's kinda overkill.

However, like the program's namesake likely implies, GIMP may constantly be playing catch up with other art software; there is simply no obvious replacement for Photoshop if you absolutely need its advanced tool set, hence the strong desire for a native port that I've read about in this topic. It would be nice, but for the moment, that can only be dreamed of, so doing what you can with WINE is the best we have right now, and it's far better than nothing. (Older versions of Photoshop do run well under WINE, at least; CS2 is perfect with zero workarounds for me.)

[VeeDubb]

I think you hit a lot of good points there. I also hope some of the pitfalls of porting to linux will improve, and I think that both Wayland and Mir have the potential to help, although the multiple toolkits will continue to be an issue until they are somehow unified.

As for the usability of Gimp, I think you hit the nail right on the head. It probably is a valid replacement for Photoshop Elements, and as a few people have pointed out, there are a lot of people running CS that really don't need to be. However, gimp just isn't ready to be considered a replacement for serious commercial graphic design.

[Hugh Mulqueen]

This thread is definitely an interesting read; it was nice hearing an actual Adobe engineer's perspective, as well as from the Linux community on the profitability of ports of Adobe brand products. The aforementioned developer makes very solid points, but hopefully some of those will change as the Linux culture and tech evolves.

As for the usability of GIMP, the latest version (2.8.4) brings a lot of things to the table, and considering I use it primarily to draw cartoon art, and some animations, it's perfect for an intermediate hobbyist like me. The interface is heavily customizable and I've changed my setup to make it more comfortable for my preference. (Like trimming tools from the toolbox that I don't use/need. Ticked single window mode, selection editor tab, path tool dialog, etc.) The Linux version of 2.8 also runs a little smoother than on Windows, so I'm always happy to run GIMP from the Linux side of things.

However, I've learned more than half of its tools functions in just a year's time of heavy usage, and starting to want more; the boundaries of mystery with the program are closing in. I'm also not sure if its stabilizers will be enough when I get a tablet, and I've heard GIMP is not the best for painting either. (Although it's fully possible and I have seen it done, but Krita's brush engines look far more advanced and organic.) I've been studying tutorials on Krita for painting, and may continue serious vectoring with Inkscape's numerous advanced path tools; it's also tempting to purchase a license for PaintTool SAI.

But I digress. Point is, I feel that GIMP is a great starting point for digital artists, and even has some tools that aren't included with Photoshop Elements, for instance. The interface is simple, easy to customize, and the wealth of tools is overwhelming; the limitations aren't immediately obvious and your imagination won't go to waste. Essentially, it's like "the jack of all trades" with its art tools, as one of my friends put it, giving you all the various basics you need for editing. Besides that, it's free, as in freedom, so discovering if you want to pursue art more seriously isn't an expensive venture. You don't need Photoshop just to start out, that's kinda overkill.

However, like the program's namesake likely implies, GIMP may constantly be playing catch up with other art software; there is simply no obvious replacement for Photoshop if you absolutely need its advanced tool set, hence the strong desire for a native port that I've read about in this topic. It would be nice, but for the moment, that can only be dreamed of, so doing what you can with WINE is the best we have right now, and it's far better than nothing. (Older versions of Photoshop do run well under WINE, at least; CS2 is perfect with zero workarounds for me.)

I was hoping there would be some logical points being made on this, you hit the nail on the head. No need for me to elaborate anything else. On your point about touch devices. Touch is still sort-of in beta for most companies. Some use capacitor screens or resister screens. So I recommend you go for Wacom touch tablets for the moment unless theres a new cheap touch screen thats doing the business at the moment! I did my stuff on the Wacom for a while (Till I sat on it! and broke the thing). Thats the way it goes for some more than others...

It works okay with GIMP and as you say its "a jack of all trades".

PS thanks for the tip the spell check is working now...

[LillyDragon]

I think you hit a lot of good points there. I also hope some of the pitfalls of porting to linux will improve, and I think that both Wayland and Mir have the potential to help, although the multiple toolkits will continue to be an issue until they are somehow unified.

As for the usability of Gimp, I think you hit the nail right on the head. It probably is a valid replacement for Photoshop Elements, and as a few people have pointed out, there are a lot of people running CS that really don't need to be. However, gimp just isn't ready to be considered a replacement for serious commercial graphic design.

True, the multitude of libraries and toolkits offers Linux users a lot of choice, but it's all hardly unified yet, so I'm hoping for the same in the future. And yeah, GIMP's not yet ready for commercial quality graphic design, but I think it does wonders for the hobby sector as it is now.


I was hoping there would be some logical points being made on this, you hit the nail on the head. No need for me to elaborate anything else. On your point about touch devices. Touch is still sort-of in beta for most companies. Some use capacitor screens or resister screens. So I recommend you go for Wacom touch tablets for the moment unless theres a new cheap touch screen thats doing the business at the moment! I did my stuff on the Wacom for a while (Till I sat on it! and broke the thing). Thats the way it goes for some more than others...

It works okay with GIMP and as you say its "a jack of all trades".

Sorry to hear about your tablet, ouch. ;__; Yeah, Wacom's pretty much the household name in tablets, and I'm considering a Bamboo Splash pretty soon, since it's the best compromise between value and functionality I can find in the Wacom lineup. As for touch screens, Wacom's Cintiq models are pretty amazing, but I believe those are more expensive than some Macintosh systems! I wouldn't be able to justify purchasing one until I really needed it.

And GIMP works okay with Wacom tablets? Last I remember, 2.8 broke compatibility with a lot of tablet models, and one of my friends did not feel the program was responsive enough with the quicker strikes of the pen. Have some of those issues been resolved in recent updates to GIMP?

[iamkuriouspurpleoranj]

Linux doesn't have to 100% replicate Windows' functionality to be adequate, viable and attractive. I am thinking of a friend who is a successful salesman. He has plenty of money and uses a computer at home. However, he has no need of MS Office, Adobe suite etc. and does not need to take his work home with him. He should be on Linux for his home computing. I will try and "sell" the idea to him.

As for Adobe, the reality is that Adobe wants a stable unified market that spends money. This could in time exist with Ubuntu/Mint, which in developer terms is a single OS. However, there is no magic world where Adobe starts developing for all kinds of Linux e.g. Gentoo or even Debian, with a Linux community that remains free of the culture that exists on proprietary systems. We have a choice: Do we want to be a market or a community? Adobe will develop for a market, once this becomes sizeable enough for it be worth the extra development investment. However, as we have seen, developing for a community is not an attractive investment opportunity for them.

[1clue]

There's no reason to unify toolkits. I think to try to do that is a big mistake. The advantage of multiple toolkits is that developers can choose the one/ones they want to support, and use those. The very nature of this process means that as some toolkits get better, people will gravitate to those and abandon others. At some point, the least used ones will fall entirely out of favor and nobody will care.

If you "unify" them then that implies that the crappiness of each one gets implemented into the "unified" one so that all the software that was written for the crappy toolkit can use the new one too.

IMO the best way to "unify" toolkits is to make one that kicks ass over all the rest. The Adobe developer had great points I thought, and one of the biggest he made was that the graphics toolkits sucked. Provide one or two really good ones and that might convince a few specialty developers like Adobe to give it a try. It would also be a boon to every software developer writing for Linux.

I'm all for the idea of multiple implementations and approaches for this sort of thing, I just don't think they should be combined.

<rant>
I'm not sure why, but for some reason people who insist that Linux users use Linux because they're cheap really offends me. The last few Linux boxes I built cost thousands of dollars each, and there were no laptops involved. One thing that seriously disappoints me about Linux is that high end hardware is not very well supported, especially if it's a niche market. I'd love to know that I could get a thousands-by-thousands touch screen that worked flawlessly on Linux. It might take me awhile to afford it, but I would definitely want one, and probably buy it.

I know a lot of people, especially from foreign countries, use Linux because they just can't afford an operating system. I use it because it's the best thing for me, and I like it. I would like to think that MOST people who run it felt the same way, although I guess if the software has no monetary cost for use you'll always get the bottom feeders.
</rant>

[lykwydchykyn]

Every desktop platform has multiple toolkits. It's insane to say we should only have one.

What we don't have is an "official" toolkit, because in free software there is no "official" anything. If a distro wanted to claim some toolkit as "official", then that's one thing; but there is no organizational structure around what we commonly call "linux" (not meaning the kernel specifically) to make anything official.

I'd be interested in knowing how QT is deficient compared to whatever Adobe is using on Windows. 'Cause in my experience it's pretty awesome.

[divergex]

As a former user of Adobe products, I am not so sure that I want to see their software on Linux. Adobe products need to be activated, and the activation can be revoked if they believe you are abusing the license. I have seen this happen to a client when a computer hard drive crashed, and now it is happening to me. In my case, I upgrade or build a new machine often, and each time I have deactivated my copy of Dreamweaver CS4 as directed by Adobe. Just the other day, a message popped up when I launched it telling me that my license is no longer valid because I have activated it on too many computers. I always made sure to deactivate the software to avoid just such a situation. Well it turns out that according to Adobe, you can only deactivate software 20 times. Apparently I have hit that limit, and I'm stuck. I don't even know if I want to try to work with customer service. I feel like I should not be in this position in the first place.

I understand Adobe wanting to fight piracy. Photoshop and their other products are bootlegged more than anything but Microsoft Office, but I paid full retail for the software. I have activated it and deactivated it as needed so that I could continue to use it. Now I'm being told that I can't use it anymore? This is a perfect example of how copy protection/DRM/activation hurts innocent, law-abiding people. Do we want this kind of thing on Linux? I know I don't.

Needless to say, I have decided to no longer give Adobe my money. Instead, I will donate to the open source software projects that I use as replacements.

Adobe makes great tools, but after this experience I won't recommend their products to anyone.

[LillyDragon]

I don't build or buy computers very frequently, so I wouldn't be affected by that limitation, but by principle that is biting the hand that feeds you; i.e, working against the paying customer. That greatly discourages me from considering a Photoshop license in the future, if I have to keep track of how many times I've deactivated a product. I moved away from Windows as a primary operating system to get away from such pointless micromanagement, (Defragging, spyware scans, registry cleaning, etc.) so that sounds greatly irritating.


There's no reason to unify toolkits. I think to try to do that is a big mistake. The advantage of multiple toolkits is that developers can choose the one/ones they want to support, and use those. The very nature of this process means that as some toolkits get better, people will gravitate to those and abandon others. At some point, the least used ones will fall entirely out of favor and nobody will care.

If you "unify" them then that implies that the crappiness of each one gets implemented into the "unified" one so that all the software that was written for the crappy toolkit can use the new one too.

IMO the best way to "unify" toolkits is to make one that kicks ass over all the rest. The Adobe developer had great points I thought, and one of the biggest he made was that the graphics toolkits sucked. Provide one or two really good ones and that might convince a few specialty developers like Adobe to give it a try. It would also be a boon to every software developer writing for Linux.

I'm all for the idea of multiple implementations and approaches for this sort of thing, I just don't think they should be combined.

<rant>
I'm not sure why, but for some reason people who insist that Linux users use Linux because they're cheap really offends me. The last few Linux boxes I built cost thousands of dollars each, and there were no laptops involved. One thing that seriously disappoints me about Linux is that high end hardware is not very well supported, especially if it's a niche market. I'd love to know that I could get a thousands-by-thousands touch screen that worked flawlessly on Linux. It might take me awhile to afford it, but I would definitely want one, and probably buy it.

I know a lot of people, especially from foreign countries, use Linux because they just can't afford an operating system. I use it because it's the best thing for me, and I like it. I would like to think that MOST people who run it felt the same way, although I guess if the software has no monetary cost for use you'll always get the bottom feeders.
</rant>

You make a great point. The nature of open source software allows the better technologies to evolve quickly, while the rest is left behind to their bugs and limitations. Nice rant as well; not everyone is using Linux because it's the cheapest thing to do. A lot of us do choose an alternative operating system for countless reasons.


Every desktop platform has multiple toolkits. It's insane to say we should only have one.

What we don't have is an "official" toolkit, because in free software there is no "official" anything. If a distro wanted to claim some toolkit as "official", then that's one thing; but there is no organizational structure around what we commonly call "linux" (not meaning the kernel specifically) to make anything official.

That's true. I guess that's why Valve is only supporting Ubuntu, since that's the closest to an official standard you can get by supporting one distro and it's default dependencies/libraries/tech exclusively. If Adobe were to support Linux, they might have to do something similar.

Besides that, if there were an "official" standard released for Linux, it's not like the other distros would have to follow or comply; they still have the choice of doing their own thing. So I think setting a standard that others would follow might be virtually impossible either way.