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Google Funds Work for Photoshop on Linux
S point 2 writes "Google has announced that they have hired Codeweavers, maker of the popular Wine software to make Photoshop run better on Linux. 'Photoshop is one of those applications that desktop Linux users are constantly clamoring for, and we're happy to say they work pretty well now...We look forward to further improvements in this area.' It is unknown whether or not the entire Creative Suite will be funded for support, but for the time being it seems Photoshop-on-Linux development is getting a new priority under Google."
Seems like a good reason to fund Gimp instead. Not that Wine is a project worth funding.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
For some professionals, there are tools that do not yet exist in gimp that they cannot be without (cmyk, layer grouping, adjustment layers, the list goes on).
However, gimp is good enough for many amateur and some professional uses.
While I like the gimp for what I do, my father who does photo retouching prefers photoshop.
If having photoshop work better(I believe it was bronze on winehq.com a little while back) helps make people make the move to linux, I'm all for it.
While we're at it... how about premiere too? Linux video editing doesn't even have a gimp equiv (kino doesn't give me enough control, cinelerra crashes, kdenlive has a few bugs and not enough effects yet...)
Finally, linux users can join in on the piracy of adobe products that the Mac and Windows people have been able to do. See, linux IS getting more like the other OS's every day! :^)
My life will be complete the day that WINE embraces, extends, and extinguishes the Windows API... ahhh, one can dream!
Perhaps linux will be stronger if it learns to acknowledge the existence proprietary software vs remaining a religious movement.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Perhaps you missed the point. It is to make proprietary software obsolete.
The GIMP might be very powerful and feature packed, but the learning curve to get into it is cliff shaped. That makes for a vey significant barrier for newbies.
Most people don't want to do hugely complex photoshopping, just remove red eye from phots and a few other simple effects.
I've tried to use GIMP a few times, without using the manuals, but after a few minutes of getting nowhere I've fired up a Windows box and used photoshop (also without a manual).
Perhaps this exercise will give the GIMP people a bit of motivation to make the software more newbie-friendly.
We're getting to the stage where Linux is almost simple to use. "It was hard to write, so it should be hard to use" no longer cuts it.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Adobe Photoshop is the standard for graphic designers for all intents and purposes. If they can get it to run on Linux then that's a solid reason for new users to consider using Linux. You can be as idealistic as you want about free software but until GIMP becomes as good as Photoshop then professionals won't use it. The only reason I still have Windows installed is because I have CS2 for some school-related projects.
Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.
We're the largest single contributor to Wine. We host the Wine web
site, employ the Wine maintainer, and do much of the 'heavy lifting'
required to keep Wine moving. Of course, many others contribute as well,
so we're certainly not the sole maker, but we very much play a vital
role in the making of Wine.
Allow me to introduce you to the Paragraph and the Full Stop.
That is all. Carry on.
As far as I know Codeweavers sell a version of Wine, so is this deal going to mean Photoshop will work better on Wine that I have installed for free, or the version that you sell.
I predict if they get Photoshop running properly on Linux, Linux users will abandon the OS in favor of something even more obscure and difficult to use. Then they'll tote that operating system as superior to Windows and piss about how nobody adopts it.
I have nothing compelling to say
With all the nonsense of Vista, a WINE porting strategy makes sense.
Think of it like this: Microsoft is trying to push a product (Vista) that its customers do not want. The *only* reason that any consumer would buy it is because they have virtually no choice because of Microsoft's monopoly.
Step in Google, fund WINE, work to create a Windows execution environment that supports many of those XP programs that will not work under Vista. Linux already supports many of the hardware devices that Vista does not. A working WINE may be able to eat away at Vista adoption.
What is needed is a smooth integration of Windows executables with Linux execution code. Conceptually, windows programs are nothing more than binaries that need their own environment, similar to the way one runs GNOME applications of KDE and vice versa, or better still Java programs. (Yes, I know that Java is a tokenized interpretive environment with a JIT, but this is a discussion not a compsci course.)
IMHO, the programs that should work out of the box on Linux with wine is quicken, quickbooks, peachtree, and photoshop. This would open up so many home and small business users who would love to use Linux but can't.
While I don't agree with the GP that the GIMP is a Photoshop replacement, I think you're being pretty harsh. It's a damn powerful piece of software, and the fact that it doesn't do _everything_ does NOT make it a toy.
As a huge Linux fan and user, I have to agree. The GIMP is just... it's a bad name.
I can tell someone I use Firefox, Ubuntu, OpenOffice, Pidgin -- that, not so bad. I can say I use Gnome or KDE (depends on my mood), or I can tell them I use Pan. But I cannot look at another human being and tell them to use "The GIMP."
Preamble: I'm a photographer needing to process tens of thousands of photos relatively swiftly. The functionality I need isn't all that advanced (curves, levels, an occasional straighten horizon (measure + arbitrary rotate), crop, unsharp mask, and sometimes an action to find edges, feather and apply unsharp mask on that), but being able to access and apply this functionality swiftly is an absolute must because of the volume of photos I deal with. Photoshop is optimized to perfection to allow a swift workflow, while the gimp seems optimized to perfection to hinder it. Focus is never where I need it, shortcuts to access tools don't work depending on which sub-window has focus, etc. So yes, I really need Photoshop.
I last tried Photoshop 7 under wine about a year ago. It was functional to an amazing degree (for someone who'd never seen or used wine before), but the rough edges were slightly too rough for me to be able to switch to Linux fulltime. I could trigger a dozen crashes in Photoshop at will just by resizing panels and doing other simple things like that, the program didn't feel native (alt-tabbing would keep the panels in the foreground, obscuring other programs), and focus sometimes strayed, amongst other lesser (but still annoyingly noticeable) issues.
I just tried the latest wine with these Google sponsored improvements, and wow. This is an amazing difference. Every single issue I saw a year ago is gone. Photoshop feels as responsive as it does under Windows (perhaps even more so), and I went through an hour long editing session without being slowed down or annoyed even once.
As far as I'm concerned, Linux is now ready to become my main OS.
Google: I don't like your lack of respect for my privacy, but for this work on Wine, I can say from the bottom of my heart: Thank you!
"Sooner or later he's going to realize he's just Bill's bitch on his own." Yep. Any decade now they'll wise up. It's just a matter of time.
Adobe Photoshop is the standard for graphic designers for all intents and purposes.
GIMP is good enough for the rest of us. I design a website, touch up some photos and GIMP i good enough for my needs. It's not like GIMP is an MS Paint competitor. For many purposes it's just as good as Photoshop. I don't think that many Linux users would buy or even pirate Photoshop even if it was native Linux. Most of us "regular" users just don't need it.
For me, even installing a program from CD seems like a hassle I'm not used to (except for base system). Add to that that I need wine. Keeping it up-to-date seems even worse. Do windows even have an update-manager for third party programs? Is that "emulated" in wine?
While I can understand some people absolutely need Photoshop I can't see it being a showstoper for most. I can also understand how GIMP gives a bad impression if you tried it on Windows, it absolutely needs virtual screens to be used. Windows traditionally uses MDI interfaces instead and some Unix programs just don't port that good to the platform.
Unfortunately, trying to coerce Photoshop into running well on LInux is not exactly the right path to go down. While it may be good for a few people who absolutely positively need to use Photoshop in short term, Linux needs more NATIVE software if it is to be stronger in the long run.
That said, I think it is important for Linux users to always try to look towards free software first. Even if that means being "religious" about it. I think this is more important, at least in principle, than having applicaitons like Photoshop. I think we'd see the spirit of LInux slowly leeched away by commercial interests if LInux users weren't passionate about Open Source Software. I'd like to see Linux stay "fun." Proprietary software is not fun, IME. It may get the job done, but it sucks to be dragged along by some corporate support line when things don't work the way they should.
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
It should. The religion behind OSS seeks to destroy their business model by making them obsolete.
Dispite the many claims, I really doubt that photoshop is seriously hindering Linux adoption. I mean, really, what percentage of users out there are photographic professionals?
Listening to the comments, one could get the impression that the number was close to 100%, as opposed to something around 0%.
So, I have a few comments. Firstly, I've introduced quite a number of people to the Gimp, for photo editing.
1- Noone complained about the name or even mentioned it.
2- They're not photographic prefessionals, and GIMP has frankly more than enough functionality for them.
3- They're staying all digital (ie photos stay on the computer), so they do not need CMYK seperation. Actually, the first bit isn't strictly true, but since they're not photographic professionals, they don't even know what CMYK seperation is. If they did, they don't have the calibrated monitors and printers required to make it really useful. Same goes for spot colours or whatever non RGB space you're talking about. See point 2.
4- Their cameras save pictures as 8 bit JPEGs, so the poor high bit depth support of GIMP doesn't matter. See point 2.
5- They're all people with too much time on their hands to bother pirating software. Or they need it at work for the odd basic task, where piracy is not an option.
6- None of them got free photoshop with a camera/scanner.
7- None of them had in fact ever uesd photoshop, so having a non-photoshop interface didn't matter. See point 2.
Finally, I fit happily in to the categories above. I've never used photoshop, GIMP does pretty much what I need in an easy, simple manner. I have never needed CMYK seperation. And FINALLY, I have a proper window manager which supports sloppy focus and focus-does-not-raise, and you know what? GIMP's interface actually works really, really, really well. Oh, and by the way, see point 2.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Off the top of my head, GIMP needs:
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The GIMP may be great, but that's not really the issue. Getting Wine, etc., to the point where the most important popular Windows apps run on Linux reduces the perceived transition costs (including retraining costs or lost productivity during the learning curve) and risks to companies and individuals that are already strongly attached to particular software to breaking free of the MS operating system stranglehold.
The people that I know that do 3D animation do it for Computational Fluid Dynamics. They use OpenGL. They use Unix (or Linux). Depends on what you are doing which platform is a toy...
Both of course!
All the work we did for Google was committed straight to the Wine repository. But that's just business as usual for us: we already submit 99% of the changes we make to Wine. The remaining 1% are those hacks that are rejected as too ugly by Alexandre (the Wine leader) but which we keep as a temporary fix / workaround.
See, the thing is that improving Wine is so central to our business that it's just part of our mission statement:
MissionTo transform Mac OS X and Linux into Windows®-compatible operating systems.
To help our customers leverage Windows technology on non-Windows operating systems.
To promote the growth of Free Software by supporting and extending the Wine Project.
You obviously don't know who I am if you think I'm not "in the know". *rolls eyes*
Linux is an operating system, whether you like it or not. There's a generally accepted set of core pieces that are shared by pretty much all the usable distros that most people think of as being "Linux". Nobody uses the term "Linux" to refer to the Linux kernel. They call that the Linux kernel. I have never in a single conversation with anyone heard someone use the term "Linux" to refer to the kernel without adding the word "kernel" after it.
From a purely pedantic technological perspective, you are correct. However, language is defined based on how it is used, not based on how an academic says it should be used. As such, Linux is generally used to refer to the Linux kernel plus collectively your choice of Linux distro. See there? I called it a Linux distro. If it were not an operating system, I couldn't call it a LInux distro. I'd have to call it an Open Source OS Distro Based on Linux, or at best, a Linux-based distro. For that matter, you used the term, too.
That said, my primary OS hasn't been Linux-based for a while now, and to be fair, even it has a handful of pieces that my purist approach says should probably be add-on pieces (though it does provide the option to not install them, IIRC). It does not, however, provide a paint program....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
There isn't "no one" to use Free, Libre and OSS. As long as the people who use it continue to be able to be part of it by having the same freedom on it as the original author, and make it grow, it will grow, that's the point !
;) people saying "merde! there is no game, it sux!" now use their proprietary game under wine, etc...
;)
People who a few years ago were "achh! there is no decent graphical interface, it's pointless!" are now drooling using compiz-fusion... people saying "crap! there is no multimedia! it will never work!" now use vlc, mplayer, amarok, songbird, etc... (and gnash soon
You can spend energy today telling everyone how it will fail, how it will never interest anyone, but someday it might be ready and comfortable enough for you.. and then you might realize the true value of Freedom. (hint: it has no price.