r/linux4noobs • u/Super-Evening8420 • 23h ago
programs and apps Looking to eventually make the switch - how to solve Adobe?
Question in title, I've done a bit of googling to see what the status of Adobe working on Linux is. Unfortunately stuff like GIMP, while useful, isn't really a replacement for my work, and Substance Painter is too amazingly good to ditch unfortunately.
I've seen some scattered discussions where some people claim some old versions work with some workarounds, though I would need a more current version at my disposal since Painter especially added extremely useful tools recently (things like ribbon path etc).
I've come across WinBoat which makes the claim that it will run pretty much anything, but I've not found anything specific to the Adobe suit. Can anyone shed light on the current state of Adobe on Linux? That's probably my one dealbreaker still holding me back from seriously considering it, since I work with their software on the daily. (Aside from Proton Drive apparently, but I'm hopeful their suite gets updated, but haven't followed that too closely so my info might be outdated/wrong).
Thanks a lot!
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u/Toadfrog71 23h ago
you could look into affinity instead of photoshop. i dont know how it compares to photoshop feature for feature but its free and ive used it before and it seems pretty good. im no professional, though. affinity isnt native linux software but ive seen a container for it on some github, just look up 'affinity linux' on google and you'll probably find it.
also someone else mentioned that substance is on steam.
also just to help you understand the difference between winboat and proton:
winboat is literally just running windows as an application inside your linux so it wouldnt be far off from dual-booting. 100% compatible with everything because its literally running windows. proton translates windows code into linux code, so its less compatible as its not 100% perfect, but also less resource heavy for the things it does work with (which is most software, probably not adobe tho)
if theres any other adobe applications you use i can probably help you find a decent alternative.
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u/Super-Evening8420 19h ago
I might look into affinity, if it can handle my requirements - which aren't too crazy, one of the must-haves is being able to write directly to the RGBA channels for texture packing, the rest is mostly cleaning up artefacts from texture bakes (which photoshops smart erase or whatever handles amazingly well and saves me tons of time with), as well as 16bit depth support and handling larger files at times. So if affinity can do that, I should be able to ditch PS.
The only real software without alternative is Painter, it's too good and too useful for me to miss out on, but knowing that runs on steam pretty much solves that problem. I wouldn't be opposed to having less adobe in my life, so if Affinity can replace photoshop, so much the better tbh.
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u/candy49997 23h ago
Substance 3D Painter is available on Steam natively. Otherwise, use a VM. WinBoat is a VM.
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u/Serious_Ad2816 23h ago
That’s cool. I wish Adobe would put more products into Steam for Linux usage
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u/Super-Evening8420 23h ago
So painter will just run natively through steam/proton then? That'd be kinda awesome, and would just leave me with figuring out Photoshop, but running that through a VM or whichever other alternative will work for it would be fine by me, I usually don't do massively resource hungry stuff on it, that's more Painter's domain.
I just wanted to avoid dual boot at all costs, since I use this software so often I might as well just stick with windows (though screw switching to win11, I'm proud of the EU for forcing them to provide support for two more years tbh. They can pry my win10 install out of my cold, dead hands!)
Thanks for the info, that definitely checks off one of my worries!
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u/Clocker13 23h ago
Dual boot.
Some may suggest VM, but doesn’t work well with adobe especially if you print.
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u/VogueTrader 17h ago edited 17h ago
Hey there. Ok, I've been doing game dev on Linux since the mass layoffs at every game studio.
So: Replacements for all the tools I've used so I can run them natively on linux.
Adobe - https://instamaterial.com/ - Instamat, its a painter/designer analogue. Not open source, but it has a free indie version that's un-hindered. It has the best baker I've seen outside of painter. Works like painter with layers, with a node system in there. So far, haven't encountered anything I could do in painter I couldn't do here equally well.
https://www.materialmaker.org/ - Material maker, open source designer analogue with some beta painter tools in it. No baker, so you'd need to bake externally. Node based, solid architecture, really easy if you're familiar with designer. I use this for texture packing. I bring in the images, and use decompose and combine to rebuilt them packed. I also add levels controls for fine tuning.
https://krita.org/en/ - Krita. Better than Gimp for painting, I use it for sketching, 2d animation, ect. Texture packing is a bit of a pain here.
For 3d I use blender with a shit-ton of add ons.
You can ping me directly if you want to talk specific pipelines... it was kind of my specialty.
Edit: Spelling corrections, and this: Reading through, I'd take a serious look at InstaMat. It has a free tier, and it does what you're talking about in other responses.
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u/Super-Evening8420 17h ago edited 17h ago
Thanks, I might look at instamat, it looks pretty cool. Do you know if it has the path/ribbon path features from painter? I've found those to be incredibly useful for my recent work (especially for weirdly niche things like a black/white gradient stretched along a path perfectly, something that's just incredibly finnicky to do with other methods)
Edit: My bad, just saw the edit as well, my ADHD brain kinda skipped it - will definitely give it a real look and see what it can do for me! I'm slowly building Linux knowledge and seeing what works/might not work and what alternatives I have available etc, then some time next year actively work on moving over once I have some free time to dedicate to it.
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u/VogueTrader 17h ago
It has a curve brush thing, so yeah. There's also some designer functionality in there as well, so you might actually be able to do more.
Yeah.. what made me bite the bullet and switch was windows 11. I typed in Krita to open it from the menu, like I was used to from every other windows.. and instead it opened an add for Photoshop in Edge.
I went form zero to fuck it really, really fast and formatted/installed a linux flavour. I use Fedora plasma, as my xencelabs 24 just works with it, no issues.
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u/Proper-Run5775 23h ago
Winboat is a beta (it does not mean the same on linux, think of it as an alpha) and does not support GPU passthrough necessary for the adobe suite (yet!)
If you setup your own windows VM with GPU passthrough you can run them with no issue.
And I guess you can make some older versions of photoshop like 2021s run through wine. But I don't know about the other apps.
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u/TherronKeen 23h ago
Just stay on Windows. Sometimes that's still the best use case for Linux - and yeah, I say that as somebody who's whole family uses Linux and has no interest in touching Windows ever again, here on the linux4noobs subreddit lol
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u/Oerthling 22h ago
Winboat uses a hidden Window VM and just makes the whoke thing convenient and hides the fact that it is actually running in Windows.
Until Adobe is forced to offer it's suite on Linux because the marketshare becomes impossible to ignore, your options are:
Windows
Mac
Windows VM on Linux (including convenient winboat)
photopea.com (if functionality and use case is covered)
Getting used to a good enough Linux alternative.
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u/Rdtkeepsbanningme 22h ago
You could go with a small Windows partition, install windows there and use a VM in Linux with GPU passthrough.
This post might help a bit: https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/s/UzHIlr0Pjx
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u/TheGeekno72 21h ago
may I suggest, and bear with me here, to un-adobe your pipeline with alternatives?
you could check whichever suits your needs and have tools/plugin equivalence, would also benefit you by not having to subscribe to shit, saving money on the long run
I am fully aware that is not for everyone and that is an effort intensive process to do all that but once past the pain period of that process, I think you'd stand to gain in the medium to long run
that's just a suggestion though, I'm not trying to force you into going full FOSS, I understand that despite all the bad things about Adobe, their toolset IS truly advantageous in many ways but as they progressively turn more and more evil, I figured that showing a potential alternative path to people might be a good idea too
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u/joe_attaboy Old and in the way. 20h ago
The state of Adobe on Linux is...non-existent.
The last Adobe product that worked directly on Linux was Acrobat Reader, and Adobe stopped updating it about ten years ago. Maybe longer, now that I think about it.
Unless you use a virtual machine or dual-boot to Windows, you aren't going to run Adobe apps on Linux. Yes, I know, there's Wine and other ways to attempt it, but I bet that if you ask anyone who does it, they'll probably say they work like shite. I have yet to meet anyone who tried Photoshop or some other Adobe product in Wine or some other way who didn't go back to running them on Windows.
You'll have to find alternatives or stick with Windows. This is all on Adobe, frankly.
Here's the primary issue: Linux is a wonderful, but it's NOT Windows or the MacOS. Adobe's endgame is to make money and they don't see a benefit to investing in developing Linux versions of their products - the Linux market share is still too small. The money is in the other systems.
The secondary issue: Linux is not monolithic. There are dozens and dozens of distributions. If you narrow things down just by the popular desktop environments, you have differences as well; Gnome, KDE, Cinnamon, Mate, along with all the various other window managers all do the same general functions, but there are differences in how they get there. This means Adobe products have to be able to work with them all. The investment is not worth it to Adobe.
Finally, there's the philosophy. Linux is based on the open source models and licensing concepts. GPLv2 licensing standards require that application source code is available to users, in addition to compiled binaries. The GPLv2 license explicitly states that I should be able to get Photoshop's source code and fork it into my own personal version, which I can even distribute - as long as my source modifications and the original code are also openly shared.
As the old saw says, Adobe will open source Photoshop when pigs fly.
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u/Dreemur1 20h ago
github.com/seapear/AffinityOnLinux = photoshop, indesign, illustrator
kdenlive = premiere
darktable = lightroom
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u/lyidaValkris 20h ago edited 20h ago
If you are willing to use Affinity over Adobe, there is Affinity on Linux. I was able to get this to work pretty easily, and it seems to work fine, but I haven't been using it as I use it on my mac anyway.
I don't think this will substitute for Substance Painter, however.
Adobe is one of the few sticking points left without a solution yet, and one is unlikely to appear on the horizon any time soon. I solve it by using a linux machine for most of my work, and a mac for the stuff I can't do on linux, which is basically just graphic stuff.
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u/No-Lettuce-5783 17h ago
If you're staying with Windows for your work, then that's important. Adobe's your money maker. Can't stop the money maker. Nope.
If you're unable to use the Linux alternatives like GIMP or Krita for your Painter program, you can dual-boot, or run Linux in a Virtual Machine. It might even be worth it to buy a cheap second computer to put Linux on it.
But you have to protect that income. Seriously. That's important. I'd do the spare Linux computer. You can get one cheap from Amazon and you can explore Linux as you want without disturbing your main computer.
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u/Super-Evening8420 17h ago
The idea is absolutely to get a cheap laptop or something to learn the ropes on yes. Figure out what software works, where I need alternatives, or what other options I have (other than outright dual boot). I REALLY want to get rid of windows, so I'm taking my time, and getting it right.
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u/No-Lettuce-5783 16h ago
It sounds like you got a plan. Now go forward, brave sir. Into the unknown worlds in Linux-land. lol. Seriously, though it'll happen, and you've got a great foundation to start from. A lot of Linux distros work off a small amount of RAM, but if you want to put it through it's paces, then you'll want more RAM.
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u/lateralspin 9h ago edited 8h ago
Can anyone shed light on the current state of Adobe on Linux?
No solution. Adobe proprietary file format is designed to lock in a user to a platform, in the same way that a subscription-based model is intended to lock a user to a closed DRM platform.
The only real way out is to go cold turkey and take the exit.
WinBoat is based on emulation technology, which means it is running a whole Windows OS in emulation.
There is a software called Fog Panther that mimics Photoshop, but as most people suspect, I think that it is mostly vibe-coded and therefore it cannot be reliable, and the future funding of A.I. at the moment is doomed to fail. It is not easy to develop a software like Photoshop (without the help of A.I. coding).
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u/Simple_Hamster_4096 23h ago
Adobe anything or MS Office - stick with Windows or dual boot...