Please support this! As graphic designers we should be able to use a open source OS.
Sign the Petition
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?
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
if youre fine with relying on proprietary software you might as well just run it in a windows 11 ltsc iot enterprise vm
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.
@nyankas @HiddenLayer555 Unfortunately I have to agree, I find Photoshop hands down much easier and more intuitive to use than Gimp even though I've been using Gimp ever since Adobe went to a subscription only model because I absolutely refuse the Klaus Schwab notion of you will own nothing and be happy, bullshit. I was more than willing to pay for Adobe software when I could buy it but fuck if I will rent it.
Idk, you lost me when you said Krita's UI is too challenging... wtf
The Affinity suite is not an Adobe product.
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.
Actually, I never witnessed change-org ever changed something.
Well it makes people feel like they've done something.
Exactly. If the effort is low the result likely will be as well.
Which is worse than useless since it renovated the impetus to do anything else.
It's like when you tell everyone your new years resolution and they all go "wow you're really courageous, well done on turning the new leaf". Your brain goes "ok, got my recompense for that, no need to put more effort in there" and bye bye resolution.
Let’s change that. Please sing this change-org petition. /s
True!
I'd rather support FOSS software
Yes, but if I wait for Gimp & Co. to become an alternative, I will be long retired or - most likely - dead.
So having Affinity on Linux would be fantastic for gfx professionals.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Complaining about online petitions.
Got 'em#
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.
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.
Agreed. At the cost of Adobe software, it is amazing that we cannot get a Kickstarter to fund software that closes the gap.
$250 one time from 4000 people would be a million dollars. Isn’t it $300 a year for Photoshop?
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.
Just if the projects had a 10th of the funding of Adobe
Yes that would be awesome, probably 1% would still be big.
I have been donating to FOSS project that I rely on (or sometimes project I find important) using free and open source payment method like Bitcoin (even sometime using the Lightning Network) or Monero for two years now. I wish more people that could afford it would do the same. Obviously I don't donate as much as if I was paying for the full Adobe Creative Suite (which was included in my scholar fees) but I donated a few hundreds USD in total to various projects since 2023 and I won't stop until I am cut from my income.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
nope did not know rthat.. welp there goes that ;)
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...
This ain't it, Chief.
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 would, but I can't get through their captcha (even w/ adblockers, tracking, etc all disabled)
I mean, signing a change.org petition has resulted in absolutely nothing, ever, so it's not like your vote is exactly vital here
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.
The problem is that if widespread desktop Linux adoption is the goal, then the tools for amateurs aren’t going to cut it. Not even close. Tools that professionals use need to be available and they need to work like they do on macOS and Windows, it’s pretty much that simple. I think Darktable is fine for me tinkering around with my amateur photos. If I were a professional using it daily I’d probably hate it.
As much as we wish it wasn’t true, most people don’t really give a shit about their OS. It’s the logo that appears when they boot up their computers to work. What they do care about is having their tools available to them, if they can’t use the Adobe Suite, Pro Tools etc (and no, WINE is not a practical solution for most of these people) then Linux of any flavour is functionally useless to them. It’s for this reason that smug people saying “just switch to linux lol” as if it’s an actual solution whenever a Windows user complains about some rabidly anti-consumer bullshit that Microsoft is forcing onto them annoys the hell out of me.
It’s changing somewhat now, but it’s why you’ll find that a lot of people in the creative industries traditionally stick with macOS, because for a long time the options for those professionals were just better on that platform and people tend to stick with what they know.
On the other side of that coin, you have software vendors looking at the single-digit market share that Linux on the desktop “enjoys” and coming to the fairly reasonable conclusion that building packages, fixing bugs and providing support for myriad different distros just isn’t worth the headaches it will inevitably cause for them.
Classic chicken and egg problem.
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.
i dont think gimp is useable. gimme ANYTHING but gimp. photopea,krita, whatever...but to hell with gimp.
Why? Krita exists and it's FOSS. I would sooner throw them a donation than pay a subscription or fee for something else.
Affinity is a one-time fee at around 80€ for a Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator clone that sprang unto existence literally to combat Adobe subscriptions. Except since using Affinity exclusively for a year now, it feels better than Adobe ever did. Much more modern. Only missing a rare few of features that have work-arounds.
But, as OP says. Linux support is sorely missed. Because it's much smaller than adobe there is a lack of community effort to get it to run on linux and if you manage to make it run, it craps out on you.
Since I work professionally with digital art and print, Krita, GIMP, etc. are sadly nowhere closer viable options (I have tried). Unfortunately I had to give up and install Windows last week solely to run Affinity properly, all other software that I use for work runs smoothly in linux, and like 95% of my preferred games (I too refuse to pay a subscription on principle).
Krita is not the same software than these... You don't use Krita to design a book, you don't use Krita to manipulate RAW pictures...
Having Krita as basic image editing is doable. However, if you actually use them professionally, you'll realize that Krita is definitely not alternative to those.
Krita is a first-class painting software, and even its current development is more closer to be Clip Studio Paint alternative, like having comic layer, webtoon layout, etc. The dev regularly observate Clip Studio Paint development.
Affinity Photo is actually easier to use than any alternative, including Photoshop and even GIMP. Its base system also much more faster than Photoshop, GIMP, and even Krita.
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.
Yeah it took me like a year to finally start editing photos on my Linux machine. I was so used to lightroom that I kept bouncing between digikam, darktable, and rawtherapee. I wanted something that just did everything that lightroom did in a way that made senses to what I had learned until I finally just sat through a few youtube videos and decided to use digikam for managing my library and darktable for all my editing. Then seeing posts here on lemmy on people's workshops helped me a lot
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.
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!
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.
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.
Oh I would love this. I’m a Mac and Linux user and use this on Mac already. Not having to switch computers would be nice. But in general I wish more companies support Linux.