P: Provide support for Linux

The whole point of my posting further down is that there are two sources of additional revenue from making a Linux version of any product. Firstly, people such as myself who aren't prepared to buy the product and run it in a VM - the same goes for PSE, by the way, and there may be people who would buy CS5 ...

Secondly, there are people, such as myself, who are prepared to pay for an expensive version of a software license so as to ensure ongoing compatibility of the purchased product with whatever computing platform (physical machine, as well as OS: you get to run bibble5 on all your machines, as long as you only use one of them at once). I bought the pro license for VueScan for the same reason.

But in the end, Adobe has a duty to its stockholders to maximise its profits by investing in versions and products that will likely be profitable. All we can do in this forum is to provide some evidence that there would be a real income stream.

A poor business model? With such arguments everybody should develop exclusively for Windows then! Let's forget about Mac and Linux, Windows is more than 90% of the market. Great argument!

And BTW, why do we have cars in Red, Green, Blue, Marron or whatever, let's have only Black cars. That's costing a lot to have multiple line of color.

And why...

No seriously! Some people not using Lightroom today will probably be tempted to buy it if they are using GNU/Linux daily.

Of course you're right, the bottom line is "will a Linux version bring us additional money?" and almost equally of course the answer is no. Lots of photographers are already using Window and Mac, Linux users are still the minority. And furthermore, *if* a linux version became available, I think that most people, myself included, would not buy two licences but rather replace their windows version with a Linux version. Thus it would not bring any extra income to Adobe. It would simple by a poor business model.

Nevertheless, still I can't stop dreaming about a Linux version 🙂

I own a license for Bibble5, not because I especially liked it but because it runs native on Linux. And it is the more expensive Pro license because it will also run on OS/X if I win the lottery and decide to buy an Apple laptop. And because it supports colour management. Which is emerging - at least in Gnome.

As things stand today, I would buy an LR license for Linux.

Ah, I see the point. And I do agree that it's quite the chicken and egg problem. I feel like this is where the open source model has a particular edge (not that I'm suggesting Lr be made an OSS project): if someone wants to see something happen, they have the ability to make it happen themselves and others can join in as they see fit. Nevertheless, hopefully this thread (and additional supportive posts to it!) will help convince the business-minded at Adobe...

I for one would also like to see this. A lot of people are moving from Microsoft OS products simply because they are fed up with all of the bloat. Transitioning to Ubuntu for example has been a very positive experience. In the mean time Ubuntu can do everything I need an OS to do EXCEPT for handle my RAW library. Please add support for linux. (at least debian based systems)

I think what Lee Jay is referring to is that there's no additional money changing hands if people are already buying the Windows version and that dampens the business case for a port.

It's been a really frustrating thing for Linux Desktop adoption. If you don't buy the software you're not a customer and it's hard to convince the vendor to act on your wishes. If you do buy it for the alternate platform, they already have your money. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. :o(

Now, I subscribe to the philosophy that customer goodwill is a tremendously valuable thing even if it doesn't show up on the balance sheet, but purely business minded folks tend not to see it that way.

Sure, many of us already have a Lightroom for Windows or Mac because that's our only option at this point. As you can see from the above comments, there are a fair number of us who would be very excited to see the remaining barrier preventing us from getting rid of Windows removed.

Paying for a Linux version of Lr rather than a license for Windows just so I can run Lr (i.e. two licenses) makes a whole lot of sense. I think for those of us who keep Windows around just for Lr would gladly switch to paying for just one product.

Minimally, it is supportive of the tack I suggested above: the first phase would probably be to get Lightroom to behave decently in Wine.

Something interesting to note in this thread. More than half of those that want a Linux version already own a Windows version. With Linux adoption at something on the order of 1%, and so many Linux users buying a Windows version anyway, I think what Dan said above might well be true. Namely, "The testing and development cost of a full port would be high enough that it'd be hard to make a business case for it." If that is indeed the case, that's why there isn't a Linux version already - Adobe is a business.