Why Adobe is not interested in Ubuntu/Linux?

I  am old enough to have demonstrated in the early '90s, versions of Illustrator on NexT, Silicon Graphics, and Sun Solaris. All of them have been discontinued, they just did not sell enough to justify the effort of developing, support and marketing.

I am sure that, if Adobe sees a market for a Linux version, they will develop one.

According to web traffic Linux users is way under 5% of total.

It could grow if Adobe, and others migrate apps to Linux, maybe. But I think that most Linux users are far from design oriented, more likely are and will be programmers, web or network users...

The majority of users that load Illustrator from a Windows or OSX machine do not know or give a damn (myself included) about how the operating system performs or changes over time. They use tools Photoshop or Illustrator for their work or joy.

I do not negate that would be interesting to see, those communities include many active users that may push hard for software improvements. Illustrator as such is already a mature (old?) software, the task of porting it would be complex and very expensive. a New application like those being develop by Adobe for iPad, could be better candidates and get a big development on computrs with a CPU and RAM more powerful of what we have on those portable devices..

Hi

As a former employee, I can vouch for all of my colleagues past and present insomuch as they don't make "shady" comments.

It's great that you love Illustrator and also that you're keen on Ubuntu—completely understand why, too. The most likely reason for there being no Ubuntu offering or support is that the numbers probably don't make it worthwhile. There simply aren't enough people wanting to use the platform to make it commercially viable—you'd need more engineers, more quality assurance, more support, etc. and all of that costs money—a lot of money.

Please pardon me for this, but people often forget that Adobe is a business, and they are duty-bound to make sensible business decisions with the revenue the company generates and the investnents made in it. That is also part of the problem with getting a response from active staff beyond something like "that is not our focus at the current time" which I'm hazarding a guess at meets your definition of "shady". 

You'd probably find enthusiastic Ubuntu users in the Adobe workforce (using it for other tasks or personal projects) who would love to see Illustrator on the platform but also know that at the moment it's not likely to happen—at least until they are joined by tens of thousands of other users demanding the same thing.

Hope that helps you to understand, and who knows, one day that could happen—but it's in the Ubuntu community that you need to be recruiting support, maybe.

🙂

p.s.

You could always try asking the team directly by creating a request on uservoice: https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-feature-requests

In my opinion the only insightful input that can be given in this matter is by Adobe employees, as they are ultimately the ones who are the decision makers and implementation agents for this case. Now since you seem to be untrustfull of their comments i am not very hopeful that this thread will lead to anything more than just guesswork.

-Manan

"(Don't want any shady comment from Adobe employee)"

Who do you want comment from? What would a 'shady' comment be?