Adobe, Linux Support, and the Linux Foundation.

[gai.ra.III]

While generally I've only lurked the Adobe forums I've finally worked up guts to post this. I also know that about every 1-2 months this question is asked but I think it deserves a another go around.

My premises is this:

Adobe joined the Linux Foundation in 2008 for a focus on Linux for Web 2.0  Applications like Adobe® Flash® Player and Adobe AIR™. Currently Adobe holds a silver membership status with the Linux Foundation. So why in the world do they not have any Creative Cloud Programs available in Linux without the need for WINE and other such workarounds. I think it's a sucky move to support the Linux Foundation and use Linux in the back-end while not doing anything to support actual Linux users who have for at least a decade requested Adobe desktop products on Linux. Sure it's going to take a lot of manpower, financial resources, etc. But to truly support Linux and the Linux Foundation I think it's necessary that y'all do make things like Photoshop and Lightroom available for the Linux desktop. In any regards the wider Linux community would most likely help with testing and debugging programs. We're used to it.

[LarrySmith1000]

Why not? So many Adobe users must use Windows soly for Adobe.  Google is 100% Ubuntu users.  They seem pretty on top of things.  Why not follow?

Market share not making it worth it to you Adobe?  Not many people travel by train before rails are laid.  Do it adobe.  Prove yourself hip to the scene.

[David__B]

Check out this thread

https://getsatisfaction.com/adobe/topics/produce_creative_suite_for_linux

[eddieprislac]

Just posted this in Ubuntu's forums today (solidarity!)

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=12262138#post12262138

[eddieprislac]

David__B

Referring people asking for Linux support to a 3rd-party forum isn't going to make us go away. I pay for your product, and there are many other Linux users out there who do the same, or would, if they had native support. Having to run a VM  (and consequently, pay for a windows license we will never use for anything else) because we can't even get your product running in Wine (the windows emulation layer for Linux) is just ridiculous.

[Ken G. Rice]

@sf76 - David was not trying to brush you off. Adobe is aware that there are many customers and potential new customers who would like to see our products run on Linux. There are many Adobe employees who would love to see this. Currently this is not a reality but do continue to make your voice heard. The Get Satisfaction page David pointed you to is one place to make your voice heard.

[eddieprislac]

No rudeness intended, Ken, it's just frustrating to have to pull up a

virtual machine every time I want to do any sort of graphics work. My job

is half split between coding (which I find loads easier on linux, as I can

have all my native apache/php/mysql/ruby/java/tomcat stuff sitting right

where I can get at it, virtual directories where I can actually access and

edit documents, virtual desktops, etc...) and graphics. Currently, besides

Visual Studio, which I am using solely for TFS as even MS Office and .net

MVC4 run on Linux now, Adobe CS6 is the only reason I keep Windows around.

[Phopojijo]

Also, Adobe is trying to promote Creative Cloud.

Painless portability between platforms with access to the most current versions available would be a very compelling reason to upgrade an old standalone license and switch to a subscription plan.

[shouldntneedthis]

Theres something else here. There have been a few posted promises for linux support "soon" which have gon unfulfilled. There is a very large demographic you have chosen not to sell to. Worst of all, while the old versions worked with wine, CC will not until you support it. So, your not just fingers-in-ears ignoring a quickly growing demographic, your actually losing previous cusotomers. Personally lack of Adobe support for linux is the ONLY thing that has kept my desktop windows, while I have two laptops and 16 servers all running Ubuntu. It's absurd, and to be honest I am now looking for alternatives to your programs (after over 15 years of loyalty) because Im just tired of it.

[torianoburney]

Hopefully my comment throws some weight. I agree with the chap's thread to revolutionize the availability of Adobe's brand. I personally predict that Unbutu will become the number one boutique platform for developers and designers alike.

I say do it and I am well over 6 figures deep in this conversation !

Unbutu fan

Toriano

[rsoucy]

14,000 people voting for linux support on the getsatisfaction site

x $50 / month for Creative Cloud

= $700,000 / monthly revenue

It's certainly true that not everyone who voted for it will pay for CC, but think of the thousands of linux users who haven't voted on that page who will.

If I could have the Adobe apps I need for work on linux, I could finally stop using windows.

[lhodaniel]

BTW, before I am banned, I have purchased every upgrade to PS since 4.0 and every version of LR since 1.0. Take that to the cloud.

[LarrySmith10000]

Hey David,

I'm back nearly a year later.  Any progress on this?

Can you offer another, more robust, venue to make our message more powerful?  It seems we broke the website you referred to within 1 month of your comment.  It received too many comments (well over 10,000) to continue servicing the thread.

Why don't you encourage the discussion here on your servers?

I must ask.  Is Adobe concerned about making money?  Perhaps these linux users should find a way to get our message directly to shareholders.

This has been a high demand issue for over 3 years, and still no word of any plan to meet that demand.

Ryan

[shouldntneedthis]

Im getting a pretty clear picture here. Customer response has been overwhelming on this issue, in fact Id guess you guys havent ever had a single issue garner more support than linux versions, and yet, after years of overloading the feedback paths you provide, there's not a single response either confirming or denying your intent to persue it. You have even stated that your OWN PEOPLE want to see it happen, and yet you cannot simply say 'yes, were working on it', or at the very least have the courtesy to say 'no, we dont care if you want it, we wont make it.'

Well, I have put off the shift of both my personal workstations, as well as my design team's, to an ubuntu platform (which every other computer in the company runs) for this, and ONLY this reason. No more. It has cost us considerable time and money, as well as added frustration to have split platforms and cater to M$'s exentricities JUST so that they can continue to run your software. At the end of the quarter we have decided to switch platforms on the remaining computers. If Adobe doesn't release a linux version by then we will be going with a patchwork suite or replacements (ie gimp, inkscape, synfig, nvu, etc). I would absolutely stipulate that they are inerior products, but THEY RUN ON LINUX. We would have no problem paying the same ammount, even slightly more, for a linux creative cloud, but we have waited far too long for any definative response on the matter.

Not threatened by losing 22 counts? That's fine, its not intended as a threat, just feedback on a reality that many of your customers have encountered. What you SHOULD consider, though, is that if your hearing this from me here, how many other customers DONT know about this thread, or wont bother taking the time to post feedback to you? Ive been a loyal customer since 1998, and TBH I love your programs, I have worked with and know a few of your employees personally (who, as you said, are frustrated about this as well), and even considered working for Adobe in the past, but I just cannot justify forcing an M$ platform for small portions of my company while we wait on this any longer. Its actually worth the learning curve for our designers, and possibly losing a couple, thats how serious this is.

[LarrySmith10000]

SEND YOUR MESSAGE TO SHARE HOLDERS BLOGS, NOT TECH BLOGS!!!

If you want to get Adobe's attention, don't contact the insiders, contact the share holders.

To do that, take your comments to Wall Street news stories comments about Adobe Business.  If everyone that finds this thread searches Google for a current news story about ADBE, like "ADBE market news", and posts a comment on the news story about Adobe ignoring a large potential source of revenue, you can indirectly get the attention of Adobe through the shareholders.

If it is greed that drives them, threaten their cookie jar.

I posted my first here:

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/cloud-transition-is-better-for-customers-adobe-ceo-PpJH8yztTLWdnUWobP...

[rcwendorf]

I'm a little curious myself to see if y'all have made any headway on this.  Thanks Adobe!   I love CS6 and would love to see it play nice with my favorite Linux Operating System.

[shouldntneedthis]

no, unfortunately as far as I can tell they not only have not given an definative reply, they stopped acknowledging the requests all together about 6 months ago. As you can see at the top they asked people to go to basically a petition type site, which was then flooded by "signatures". I think they assumed that would soak up the feedback like a sponge and they wouldnt have to deal with it. For the life of me I have no idea why a company would ignore such an overwhealming outcry from its customers. It honestly feels like the folks with any contact to the community dont have any pull in the matter, and they people who do are just completely disinterested. Happens often, so the powerless folks speaking to the community just insert fingers to ears so they (understandably) dont really have anything they can say constructive. At least, thats what it feels like from my POV

[shouldntneedthis]

If your curious HOW out of touch they are, heres a few things a quick google drags up:

1. in 2010 computerworld reported that canonical (Ubuntu) processesed surveys of their users and found Adobe software (PS in particular) as the SECOND most desired software for linux users! What's first? Skype, and it has since produced a linux version, leaving Adobe at the top, fingers deep in those ears.

2. in 2010 OMGubuntu had a 'lets get adobe on ubuntu' camplaign https://getsatisfaction.com/adobe/topics/produce_creative_suite_for_linux

3. In 2011 the campaign got a response from Adobe employee Carey Burgess, which amounted to a shuffle-step 'we heard you, please stop sending feedback' and that it is "definately on the radar" (one would THINK that was an affermative, one should think again)

4. According to getSatisfaction employees, the site was setup to oroginally handle issues with 100 or less followers, so the petition was closed.

5. Aug 2012 David___B from Adobe directed people in this thread to instead 'be heard' at the closed-for-over-a-year getSatisfaction.com site for this issue.

6. When they recieved massive complaints that the issue stopped tracking after 100 followers, they opened up the limits. Theres a nice post from one of their employees explaining that when they opened it up they immediately had over 10k followers, and OVER A MILLION EMAILS IN SUPPORT OF IT IN ONE DAY!!!. So they again closed the issue (Im guessing someone over there had to change their shorts).This was 7 months ago,

7. GetSatisfaction started a new thread on the same topic. Its slower growing as it is semi hidden and all links go to the locked thread, but you should consider posting there as well. Why would they do this? presumably because the first post acts as a sort of filter ("THIS THREAD IS CLOSED" (then in tiny text in a reply) click here for the other thread). Sounds sneaky, but it works. Heres the updated link:

https://getsatisfaction.com/adobe/topics/creative_suite_for_linux_thread_2

no response I can find from Adobe on the matter since.

[LarrySmith10000]

Apparently David was trying to brush us off, because it didn't seem to matter how many people responed to getsatisfaction.  We broke the site with the number of responses, and still nothing from Adobe.

AGAIN, EVERYBODY

SEND YOUR MESSAGE TO SHARE HOLDERS BLOGS, NOT TECH BLOGS!!!

Businesses could careless about what users want, unless it affects the interests of the share holders.  If you want Creative Cloud on Linux, tell the shareholders to pull the plug.

[escaped.light]

Adobe on Linux would not only be smart business wise, but it would be smart tech wise as well.

As any linux user knows very well, Linux's strongest aspect is it's extremely low resource use, which in terms of working with high resolution graphics and video, means more of my valuable processor and ram to dedicate to my work. With the way Microsoft is continuing on their dictatorial tirade of hardware dominance with each new release of Windows, by the time we get to Windows 10 they will have found a host of new services and background processes to use up the last of our available resources... just to run the bloody operating system. That's all well and great if fancy animated toolbars, alpha blending, shadowing and "candy" are what you are looking for when browsing files on a cluttered desktop, but I don't need or want it. I bought my hardware to do real work with.

It should also be said that I, or we (Adobe fans), have always viewed Adobe as being the pinacle of PC software and as being "ahead of the curve" so to speak, so it should be taken as very serious news around the Adobe water cooler and the board room that near the end of last year, game makers Valve breached the linux barrier with gaming and that soon after, Blizzard and THQ confirmed they are on their way to linux compatibility. These are the de facto leaders in the gaming industry who represent the pinacle of gaming software. We watch them to see ahead of the curve, and ahead of the curve is linux.

Some of you may look at the number of Linux users and think you're going to be dealing with a small minority, and while that may hold true today, but it's not because the OS is bad, it's because software giants like Adobe and our favorite game developers are helping to hold up the monopoly of Windows, which is a bad OS for any serious professional. The crazy thing is, Adobe holds the key to changing the entire face of computing, because a fully compatible Creative Suite on Linux would cause a massive and unmistakable exodus of users away from Windows. I'd even be willing to take a high stakes bet on that.

So, c'mon Adobe, stay ahead of the curve. Let us combine the power of your software with the full power of our hardware under an OS that makes that dream a reality.

Please!

[clintbohaty]

I just wanted to add myself to the growing list of Adobe subscribers who would prefer to use Linux OS!

[ralphroberts]

yes Linux is the future!

[mytaxsite]

It is oxymoron to ask for CC for Linux because by definition, and by concept, most things are free in Linux and Adobe is not in that sort of business.

It is non-starter here.

[Phopojijo]

They're not asking for "no-cost Creative Cloud on Linux". They (and I) want to pay the same subscription rates as everyone else, just use it on a free (as in both beer and, the progressively more important, speech) operating system.

Claiming that Linux users do not want to pay for Adobe software requires some pretty big horse-blinders, because you're in the middle of a discussion full of people who want to pay for Adobe software on Linux.

It really makes as much sense as saying, "there will never be open-source software on Windows because by definition, and by concept, it is proprietary". It really does not make any sense and yet so many people honestly, genuinely, think that. It really does boggle me.

[mytaxsite]

Phopojijo wrote:

They're not asking for "no-cost Creative Cloud on Linux". They (and I) want to pay the same subscription rates as everyone else, just use it on a free (as in both beer and, the progressively more important, speech) operating system.

There is no justification to create a department to develop Linux Applications because Nix boxes are mostly used by hobbyists and academics.  Adobe is making products for businesses.  Mind should boggle if Adobe, Microsoft and Apple starts developing products for Linux boxes because that is the first step for harakiri for senior executives.

[Phopojijo]

mytaxsite.co.uk wrote:

Phopojijo wrote:

They're not asking for "no-cost Creative Cloud on Linux". They (and I) want to pay the same subscription rates as everyone else, just use it on a free (as in both beer and, the progressively more important, speech) operating system.

There is no justification to create a department to develop Linux Applications because Nix boxes are mostly used by hobbyists and academics.  Adobe is making products for businesses.  Mind should boggle if Adobe, Microsoft and Apple starts developing products for Linux boxes because that is the first step for harakiri for senior executives.

1. Adobe makes software for hobbyists and academics, as well as businesses.
2. Microsoft and Apple are, both, very different companies relative to Adobe.
3. Businesses could want to move to Linux if they are upset with Apple (Final Cut/Mac Pro debacle) and Microsoft (Windows 8), provided that their workflow does not need to change too much... especially if they have more confidence that Linux will not pull a sharp-turn that Microsoft and Apple are capable of and have recently demonstrated they, both, may do at any point.

Horse blinders.