Many Linux users have experience with Wine, the application compatibility layer which allows some Windows programs to run on UNIX-like machines. During Ubuntu's Open Week event, Mark Shuttleworth was asked about Wine, and how important he believes it is for the success of Ubuntu.
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Member since:2006-06-01
I can agree with you. I think those apps have to be developed a bit more to also be noteworthy for professionals. I don't think it will take a very long time to reach that point, given the speed of development at this moment.
Piracy is big here in the Netherlands too I am afraid.
In the past also did download a few programs from a "hrm" not-official source...
Using Linux however changed this mind-setting. You can use boatloads of software, but you do not have to be very wealthy to get all this beautiful stuff. You now can invest in better hardware, because the software costs are extremely low. And wat's more - if you get used to be completely legal even the tiniest "not-too-legal" thing feels "uneasy". As a result that "not-official" software is not longer downloaded here.
Anyway - as I said - GIMP, Krita, Inkscape etc. are still being improved, so I think at the end we will see better and better graphical applications. Not sure about Xara LX tough..
For photography there is also LightZone for Linux. Maybe worth to give it a look...
Member since:2007-09-23
Yeah! I am totally with you on this one. Piracy feel very strange now after I moved to Linux full time. Downloading Photoshop just doesn't feel right. Weird but that's just how I feel.
And as you said, I too have complete faith in that all the open source application will get "there" soon. They are being developed very fast and they are all moving in the right direction. That, is the power of FOSS.
Member since:
2007-09-23
Most people I know don't buy them. They get them from TPB. But then I live in Sweden where piracy is really big. I don't know if this is true for other countries but the only people I know that pay for Photoshop are schools.
I do know a lot of people that would probably be able to use Krita or GIMP for what they do with Photoshop, that's true. Although I doubt it is 99,9% but it's the majority.
Still, I would love to see Linux become king on multimedia. Either by Adobe going multiplatform or some Linux application that do a better job than Adobe.
Other than games what most people that I talk to miss on Linux are the products from Adobe. And the features they use that GIMP or Krita doesn't have (correct me here) are stuff like those really easy tools for emboss, shadow, etc (don't know what it's called but last time I used it you accessed it by right-clicking on the layers). Another great feature is the ability to merge a number of photos into one and Photoshop will distort and change the photos so that they match each other. All done by magic. Very popular for photographers I know.