Adobe Customer Care: There Hasn't Been Enough Demand For Linux

[jpg44]

What Adobe should do here is port over to a platform independent open source development environment that can work on both Linux and Windows: Emscripten and Webassembly, which C++ code can be compiled to and increasingly many other languages such as Python can be compiled to, with rendering via WebGL, the code base then can be used on both a desktop installed application and also for SAAS, on the desktop you can either use a locally installed web server and point the web browser at that or load the webassembly code into the browser using some other means using the browser engine as a library or whatever in a wrapper that loads the code locally into a web browser engine.

For anyone developing application software, I recommend this approach, this way you can target all plaforms without needing any porting. Write once, run anywhere.

Another possibility is to use Qt, Qt can also run in web browsers with Emscripten.

[TemplarGR]

Save $$$ on antipiracy measures, make more $$$ because you hook up the consumer base to your product so that when they are in a position where they have to pay they will buy your product.

That's win-win.

Exactly. It is the same thing Microsoft has been doing for decades. They essentially "allow" piracy, by not trying too hard against it, because in the end, as long as 99% of the world is using Windows, 99% of the world is going to keep using Windows....

It is hillarious when you think that at least 80% of the females on Facebook post photoshoped pictures, and i find it hard to believe that all those people paid 300 euros for a licence... All those people could have used GIMP as well, but since both are free, why bother with GIMP?

The only TRUE reason there is DRM on those products is to justify the cost for the *SUCKERS*... Said suckers wouldn't pay if they knew that Microsoft does not care about the freeloaders...

[kpedersen]

What Adobe should do here is port over to a platform independent open source development environment

They inadvertently have already done that with Wine. It just so happens that Windows is able to run Wine apps natively

[kpedersen]

Any Adobe employee please don't listen to him. Unless the source leaked has a FOSS license (so Adobe can't sue to hell anyone trying to distribute a program made with it) you are only endangering yourself for little benefit.

No, please Adobe employee, you must listen to me. I will make it worth your while. I will even give you cookies!

I don't even care about the license. I care about lifespan of the software, I don't particularly care about the freedom of software for others in this instance. I just wan't to make my personal port of Acrobat 9. Screw everyone else

[MilesBHuff]

It'll probably never happen (plus there are Libre programs that are just as good), but here are the links to the various petitions, anyway:

• https://adobe-video.uservoice.com/fo...-linux-support

• https://adobexd.uservoice.com/forums...on-of-adobe-xd

• https://adobe-video.uservoice.com/fo...untu-gnu-linux (Duplicate)

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I'm willing to bet that their reasoning is only part of the real reason.

The thing they don't say (and i'm only guessing here) is that their source is probably heavily reliant on specific windows and mac functions to function. It does function quite wonderfully on those platforms so whatever they are doing, they are doing a good job at it.

But yeah, making that cross platform so that it runs on Linux is probably not some minor code update but more or less a whole rewrite.

And to play advocate of the devil.
Linux has a horribly history (and future...) when it comes to GUI toolkits. KDE and Gnome (as still being the biggest two) have their own unique styles with still only limited cooperation to make a Qt app look native in GTK and vice versa. So which one should Adobe follow there? Or go with their own style (like they do on windows and mac).

If that isn't enough, you still have the driver state, the package managers, the wildly different distributions...

Yeah, i think i can understand why Adobe would be hesitant to support linux.

What are you talking about? Adobe apps on Windows quite often have entirely their own unique look and feel and it does not bother anything, and most Windows applications do their own look and feel as well, and its not a problem on Windows, so nothing different there than on Linux. A button is a button and being styled a little different between apps does not matter to most users. So the situation with GUI toolkits has absolutely nothing to do with Adobe's decisions. Qt and Gtk are perfectly fine GUI toolkits. There is also OpenGL and Vulkan for rendering. Linux's graphics stack is perfectly fine and no different than Windows really.

Nearly every Windows program I have used has a completely different GUI style. Uniform GUI styles went out the window, pun intended, a long, long time ago, if there ever was any, and there never was in the Windows world. There is no uniform GUI style on Windows at all. Every program does what it darn well pleases. And thats fine with me, because really, this whole thing with uniform GUI style is trite nonsense anyway that has little to do with a programs capabilities. Microsoft has a huge number of different GUI libraries and toolkits it has accumulated over the years so there is no uniformity there either. Add to that many people use web browser based applications which are completely independent of any of the OSs elements, the Java programs, there is no unified GUI on Windows period. And, it just doesnt matter to much average people, a Button is a button, even if it is styled differently. So Linux and Windows are really no different in terms of the diversity of GUI styles.

Also, Gtk and Qt programs run quite happily alongside each other on the desktop. I prefer Qt myself simply because I like the API. Qt also seems to have more of a focus on cross platform and has APIs for other things such as audio and video rather than just 2D elements making it a more comprehensive cross platform solutions.

[edwaleni]

Back in another galaxy far, far away....

Corel Draw ran on Corel Linux (which became Xandros) under WINE.

Corel did do the work to get it to work under WINE. People kept asking for it,(Linux support) so Corel supplied.

If people remember, Microsoft then threatened to revoke their Premier Developer Status. They were using MSFT tools to improve their products to run better on non-Windows platforms.

Then they (Corel) dumped Linux.

Adobe needs a serious competitor to run on Linux, natively or non-natively. That is what holds them back.

Adobe only responds to market pressures and shareholders, not technology demands.

The only Adobe products I can run under Linux/WINE is Photoshop Elements. I have tried various old versions of Premiere and Premiere Elements, but it needs controls not found in WINE.

.

[miabrahams]

Someone; anyone--

Please give a rational, solid reason as to how a piece of software one must rent--by the month, or year--is a good deal for the user.
When you arrive at the only possible conclusion, send that to Adobe.

Because users get continual updates to the software, ongoing customer support, access to other subscription benefits such as assets and tutorials, and web services for storage and synchronization across devices. Maybe those aren't features that matter to you, but different users will always disagree on what they value. Personally, my subscription from CC2016->CC2019 has offered massive improvements in Photoshop and I would be kicking myself right now to have paid e.g. $600 for a "permanent license" back then and be stuck on a version missing important features like 3d panorama editing.

Maybe a subscription isn't the best deal for all consumers, but overall it's what their users are demanding. More features, more bug fixes, or even big changes like porting to Linux. Adobe isn't selling sofas where they ship the product from the warehouse it's not their problem anymore. They have to constantly track moving target of increasingly advanced demands, new niches and use cases.

Don't forget that a huge portion of Adobe's revenue is from corporate clients. These customers will be paying for enterprise support on will demand a subscription model no matter what else is offered. Their needs change too frequently to be able to deal with permanent licenses. Studio contracts may last for a few months to a year - who knows how many guys will need Adobe for the next project?

[angrypie]

I read that as "no big names asked for it, so it won't happen lol. Did you really, really think you, a no-name end-user, had a voice?"

Because users get continual updates to the software, ongoing customer support, access to other subscription benefits such as assets and tutorials, and web services for storage and synchronization across devices. Maybe those aren't features that matter to you, but different users will always disagree on what they value. Personally, my subscription from CC2016->CC2019 has offered massive improvements in Photoshop and I would be kicking myself right now to have paid e.g. $600 for a "permanent license" back then and be stuck on a version missing important features like 3d panorama editing.

Maybe a subscription isn't the best deal for all consumers, but overall it's what their users are demanding. More features, more bug fixes, or even big changes like porting to Linux. Adobe isn't selling sofas where they ship the product from the warehouse it's not their problem anymore. They have to constantly track moving target of increasingly advanced demands, new niches and use cases.

Don't forget that a huge portion of Adobe's revenue is from corporate clients. These customers will be paying for enterprise support on will demand a subscription model no matter what else is offered. Their needs change too frequently to be able to deal with permanent licenses. Studio contracts may last for a few months to a year - who knows how many guys will need Adobe for the next project?

Are you Adobe PR? "Big changes like porting to Linux" is likely the worst case to make for a company that has not given a hint of giving a fuck about anything outside the Windoze-Mac world. I can be charitable and assume their codebase is so un-portable that it's seriously not worth it without rewriting big portions of it, which costs money which they don't believe they'll recoup because, deep down, they believe Linux users are freeloaders.

[calc]

If Photoshop was ported to Linux it would have much the same issue as GIMP, a lack of available plugins. One of the big reasons everyone uses Photoshop is how many useful plugins there are, and they are OS and arch dependendent. So a user would need both Photoshop and the plugins they use to be ported to Linux before they could switch to using Photoshop on Linux. This was also an issue when Photoshop first went 64bit, they had to install both 32bit and 64bit versions so you could run whichever you needed for the particular plugin you wanted to use.

The alternative works very well, run Photoshop on Windows in a VM with all your plugins.