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Photoshop in Linux Thanks to Disney
miladus writes "eWeek
reports that Walt Disney's feature animation unit (along with 2 other
unnamed studios) are using Adobe's Photoshop in Linux. They use the Wine emulator
to run the software and the 3 studios 'not known as team players, all
three agreed that a project that would benefit the entire open-source
community while delivering a technology they needed--was worth their cooperation'."
Running Photoshop on VMWare has even less to do with running Photoshop in Linux that running Photoshop running on Wine.
It's still a Windows application running on an implementation of the Win32 API. Which means it's not a Linux application, it's a Windows application that runs in an emulator. So what?
My journal has hot
Photoshop is probably one of the things that kept Apple going in the dark times. With Photoshop working on Linux there is little reason for a lot of people to stay with windows. This won't make anyone suddenly aware of Linux, but that's because most graphic designers are smart enough to be able to weigh their options. This is why Apple has such a large market share in the design world compared to the consumer world. This probably won't be the killer app for Linux, but it's a VERY big step in the right direction.
Help I'm a rock.
No. Disney non-supporting Open Source,
as it has always been.
Now, instead of using, and helping
improving The GIMP, "linux people"
will just run their pirated Photoshops
and be happy, as oftenly such users
do not know the difference between free
and proprietary software.
-><- no
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
I'm sorry, but Linux needs photoshop. That is one of those programs that some people actually earn their living using. The GIMP is nothing compared to photoshop. It may work for amateurs, but even people who use it as a major hobby could not get the same results with GIMP.
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
Why does it takes an EVIL company to do the right thing????
Ahh, but you're missing the point entirely. This is one of the major strengths of open-source from a corporate perspective. If there is something in an open-source package that does almost what you need, you pay a development team to add the feature in, then you "contribute" your changes back to the open source project, and they maintain it, at no cost to you. Developing software is relatively cheap when compared to maintaining it over a long period of time. So Disney was smart, and they got a feature they needed for relatively little money, and will continue to get it, and updates to it, for free.
Evil or not, they're not stupid, and it perfectly illustrates why open-source is a good investment for companies.
--That's the point of being root, you can do anything you want, even if it's stupid.
Disney is just doing what it has always tried to do: Increase shareholder value. If they had decided that it was more cost effective to run all of their workflow on windows they would have done it. Linux is the best of the money according to them so they use it.
Getting popular applications like this running on Linux is the single most important thing to get Linux on the desktop.
Note that Adobe could probably release a native version of Photoshop to run on Linux fairly easily. They had a Unix version, and also of course it will run on OSX, so going native to Linux can't be that big an issue.
Everyone who wants to see Linux on the desktop should be pestering the companies of the software they use to release a Linux version. For me, the important one is Macromedia Flash, so I've been emailing Macromedia asking when they are going to port it. If you want to see Linux on the desktop, start pestering!
I've been using Photoshop since the 2.5 days (pre layers -- when real men [and women] used alpha channels) on Macs. I then switched over to using pshop on the PC because, well, I couldn't afford a mac!
But then, something strange happened. I had been using Linux (Redhat) as my OS-of-choice at home and would switch to my laptop (running 2k) to do Photoshop work. Out of the desire to use my mouse, I went and sunk a few bucks and bought the crossover application (commercial version of wine) and whalla! Photoshop 6 runs on my linux box, and faster!
So, now I can use Photoshop with my mouse (instead of that annoying touch-pad). The only thing that is a little annoying is that the focus of the tool bar and the other pallets take away from the canvas, so if you click on the marquee tool, you have to "double click" on the canvas to get the focus where you need it. Not a big deal, just a "thing."
sad robot making broken music
Speed is not an issue with my setup at all. I have installed Photoshop 7.0 with no windows dlls at all in wine's fake_windows setup. The install ran perfectly for me. Pop in the cd, mount it, and run "wine setup.exe"
:-)...
The actual execution of Photoshop has been perfect so far. I have used various builtin filters (but not all) with no problems. Saving files is quicker on Linux than it is on Windows, but then again, I have my drive hdparm'd to the max
Oh, btw, I'm running this on a PIII 500mhz w/ 128 meg of ram... not really a high end machine. Again, I have had no real performance issues with running Photoshop under Wine.
BTW, I am using wine-20030618
In general WINE is no slower than native Win32, and in many cases is actually faster! Remember WINE is Not an emulator, it is a reimplementation of the Win32 API native to Linux. The Linux guys often do a better job on the reimplementation then the origional coders =) Not sure where the slowness is for mirc, but I know that the mirc code uses almost none of the standard API calls so it's possibly something that is broken in WINE. Btw why run mirc under WINE when there are so many native IRC apps?
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Give him a fresh juicy apple, and he complains that you should have instead figured out how to make the worm in the last apple tastier.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Also remember that disney is editing 35MM film, 24 frames per second, at ungodly resolution. They probably have this stuff running on a 4 way or 8 way workstations. Multi-head licenses for windows are STEEP. Microsoft also takes you out the ass for large-scale file storage. The cost per workstation probably includes the cost of the server divided over the number of users.
With Linux you are paying for the hardware and the photoshop license.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Just this:- I think this should be credible enough for Adobe to look at a Linux version of Photoshop. After all, two of its large corporate customers, DreamWorks and Disney, are already using it.
More than mere navel gazing.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Wine IS a Win32 subsystem emulator. It is not a x86 emulator that you must purchase Windows to run on top of it.
Want to see every step I took to start my company? http://www.rowdylabs.com/blogs/pitchtothegods
An application doesn't bestow one with talent no matter how well it's written.
But it can be a tool that makes a talented person's life a hell of a lot easier.
A talented carpernter may be able to build a house with a Bowie knife and 20 acres of forest, but its not exactly the quickest and easiest way of doing it, especially if there are commercial demands and deadlines to meet. Sure, you're pure "artist" could render Finding Nemo with a #2 pencil, but how long would it take him.
Personally, for the amount of PSing I do (bad Fark contests) the gimp and PS (or PS Elements) is a wash (mainly because I suck eggs). BUT... from the folks who do some sort of graphic design for a living almost all of them swear by PS, and quite a few of them have dicked around with the GIMP as well. To a (wo)man they all say it just isn't as good of a tool to get the type of work done in a timely manner.
Does Gimp support CMYK, like Photoshop? Do you know it is REALLY important if you are doing graphics for a living?
Adobe != Microsoft.
Getting more apps to run on Linux (even if through Wine) gives a path to follow to wean a company away from Windows slowly instead of the daunting all-at-once switch that they aren't willing to go for. It's much like the inverse of installing Unix Services for Windows. The purpose of that isn't to help unix - it's give companies using unix a path to leave it slowly.
If Windows as a platform is no longer needed because it's apps can run elsewhere, then companies can start using linux for everything, and THEN native ports become economically feasable after the install base is there.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.