Linux and Digital Art - Annoying

SteelyDan14

Formerly Known as GeekBone
Modder
Donor
Jan 13, 2018
1,418
6,137
I prefer Linux. Nothing wrong with Windows as I have used it most of my life, but I prefer Linux. Having said that, I am a graphic designer so Linux is really not an option for me so I have to do the annoying dual boot or have a machine just dedicated to graphics work. Why? Because Adobe products do not work on Linux.

Do they have alternatives to Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator? Yes... but they freaking suck. GIMP is the photoshop "equivalent" but do you know how hard it is just to draw a rectangle? Then try to manipulate it. FFS what a pain in the ass. The selection tools are garbage, there are STILL no adjustment layers and they only recently added CMYK support. GIMP is clearly 10 or so years behind Photoshop. GIMP is solid enough for basic editing and the casual user but that's about it.

Of course, the bigger problem for this forum is DAZ3D does not work on Linux either. Blender does, but not DAZ.

Are there any devs/modders besides me who use Linux? If so, what tools do you use?
 

Arkanae

Newbie
May 29, 2018
71
105
I have tried. Like you, I have to admit failure. The Linux "equivalents" to the Adobe and Autodesk (I also do CAD) tools are vastly inferior.

Double boot is too much of an annoyance (I don't want to deal with the Windows desktop, especially not while doing dev), so having an actual Windows install isn't an option.

So far, I have been able to run some of these using a Windows VM. There is a performance impact for renders, but it's not huge enough to deter me. The main issue I still have, however, is peripherals. Tablets work... OK for the basic features, but aren't properly recognized.
 

MissFortune

I Was Once, Possibly, Maybe, Perhaps… A Harem King
Respected User
Game Developer
Aug 17, 2019
5,432
8,711
Thread was necro'd, but I'll toss a couple pennies in since it's here.

You're experiencing the reason why you'll find basically no active artists on Linux. It's just not artist friendly. Some of that can be blamed on hardware manufacturers (Nvidia, looking at you.), but I don't think we'll ever see Linux get mainstream enough to see companies start building their software with Linux in mind.

So, there's either VMs or dual booting (as I'm sure you're aware.). Both are kind of a hassle, especially for Daz as you'll be seeing a bit of a performance hit if you use a VM. Dual booting is the most realistic choice here, but as mentioned, it can get pretty tedious.

As for Adobe alternatives, there are some good ones. It's browser-based and missing some of the more popular features (e.g. Camera Raw, Content Aware Fill, AI stuff, etc.), but PhotoPea could be worth a look. DaVinci is also very real competition for PP/AE, and I'd probably be using it if I felt like learning an entirely new software. But if you absolutely need Adobe? Yeah, you're kinda SoL. Though, you might be able to get ?
 

DSSAlex

Member
Aug 19, 2017
169
161
It's not terribly hard to get Daz installed but it can be a son of a bitch to get it to recognize video card drivers through a compatibility layer. I still mostly use a windows rendering rig, but I have run some tests where I got Daz up and running on my linux rig and piped it through the Iray server, which natively runs on Linux. There is also a thread about this here too

https://f95zone.to/threads/how-to-install-daz3d-on-linux-updated-with-new-method.101227/