linux has made its mark in mobile phones. otherwise, it has gone nowhere in desktop os'es in the past 30 years. give it another few decades and it might near 10% of market share, but probably not.
I absolutely agree, it's not a matter of what the general public uses, it's a matter of what this particular niche market would use. I haven't looked into it myself, but I believe OSX numbers are going down, especially in a down economy. But that's not important. The real metric is how many Adobe customers are on OSX vs Windows. Adobe CC is very much a niche application.
I would say we do not know what the Linux numbers are because Adobe CC is not available on Linux, making the numbers theoretical.
But the long term existence of this thread and the number of contributors seems to indicate that it would be SOMETHING.
I started out on a Mac, but grew tired of Apple's draconic control of the hardware and switched to a platform over which I had more control. For instance, memory that isn't #%)(%*7 soldered to the motherboard.
But currently, the only OS Adobe supports on non-Mac hardware is Windows. I hate Windows. Everything I do is in a browser, EXCEPT Adobe CC. This product is the only reason I still have Windows on my desk.
If Adobe ported Lightroom Classic and Photoshop (the real Photoshop, not the toy that runs on Android) to ANY version of Linux, say any of the user friendly versions -- Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, or if you wanted to go industrial with support, Red Hat, I'd drop Windows and never look back. I do not need this operating system on my desk for anything OTHER than Adobe. It's infuriating.
Every once in a while I look at Darktable, and currently the only thing holding me back from doing the migration is figuring out how to migrate a library of 300,000 photos and retain changes. If the Darktable developers ever provide a migration tool that can handle that, Adobe can kiss my behind goodbye. No because I want to leave Adobe, but because I want to leave WINDOWS.
Before it comes up, fragmentation in the Linux community is not an issue. Pick a popular version, say, Ubuntu, and stick with it. The Adobe community who wants off Windows and OSX will migrate to it. To be clear, it's not important what we in the Linux community are CURRENTLY running. I happen to have machines running Mint because I like the interface. But if Adobe CC was supported on Debian or Fedora, I'd switch without a second thought. Moreover, in the Linux community, the names may be different, but there's more commonality between Linux flavors than there is between Windows and OSX. I strongly suspect Adobe would find that a native port to Debian would also work on forks of Debian.
Were I starting today, I'd be using PhotoGIMP and Darktable. Not because I think they're superior, but because they run on Linux.
The thing is, im the person who only uses Windows because of Adobe and nothing more. Why Adobe cant do a research to target these people? "Whould you use Linux if there was Adobe softwares support?" This would open a new perspective above this market shares.
I look at it from a business/ROI standpoint. Adobe unfortunately isn't a charity - they have to answer to shareholders.
The cost of developing and supporting an OS with a maximum adoption of less than 2% (and that would be if everyone on Linux bought Creative Cloud) is a non-starter.
There isn't enough customer base to even start the discussion, even with passionate users like yourselves. The reality speaks for itself. If Linux suddenly had greater than (guessing) 5-7% of market share, then perhaps Adobe and other companies would take notice for developing an untapped income stream.
adobe's a for-profit corporation. if you have a proposal that shows their cost of porting to linux would be offset by the many linux users known to purchase software, make your pitch to adobe.
Going by numbers alone, Creative Cloud is a niche in the computing world, and Photoshop is a smaller niche within that.
The total number of people on the Internet is said to be somewhere around 5 and half billion users. Yes, that includes desktop and mobile since a large percentage of those are smartphones only, but it’s valid because Adobe sells subscriptions worldwide across desktop and mobile.
30 million Creative Cloud users across a total addressible market of 5.5 billion users is 0.5%, half a percent. That’s definitely a niche number, with Photoshop an even smaller fraction of that.
Within the creative community, yes, the 30 million Creative Cloud and Photoshop subscribers are dominant and not a niche.
Before it comes up, fragmentation in the Linux community is not an issue. Pick a popular version, say, Ubuntu, and stick with it. The Adobe community who wants off Windows and OSX will migrate to it. By @roc97007
It’s hard to really know for sure, but it is interesting to see that Linus Torvalds himself claims that fragmentation is an issue:
For Photoshop specifically, though, you may be right…if Photoshop was released on only one Linux distribution, it does seem likely that a lot of people would just use that one.
Not going to get into semantics @Conrad_C - my point was not comparing CC/Photoshop vs every person on the planet. Adobe is the largest software developer in terms of adoption and usage for design/photography/video editing. Show me another Imaging/Video/Content creation software with a higher user base and I'll concede. Whats niche is the industry itself but that is also the customer base for the company.
Back to the original discussion - if someone can prove to Adobe that there is a market with profits to be had/ROI on developing for Linux you'd think they would have done more in 13 years since this thread started.
According to what Chris Cox (former Photoshop engineer) once said, Linux has no proper color management support. That may have changed for all I know - but if that's still the case, the whole thing is a non-starter anyway. Photoshop's whole architecture revolves around functional color management.
There is also the issue of architectural support. Intel? Qualcomm ARM? Apple? What about video cards? Just nVidia?
Finally, you have the zealots who would scream endlessly about Photoshop and all of its associated add-ons being closed-source and demanding absolute control over what runs and how.
I love Linux, but it's just a non-starter, as has been pointed out many, many times. It makes no business sense to invest all the money, time, and effort to support such a tiny, yet disparate community. I hate MicroSoft and Apple. I've used both Macs (at work) and PCs (home and work) running Adobe programs since 1997. I've been building computers since 1994, and running Linux since 1998.
My coworker's 2017 27" iMac crashes several times a day and hasn't been able to be updated successfully since 2019. (I'm fairly sure this could be fixed by contacting Apple, but I guess we don't want to pay to do it...) The 2020 iMac never has problems, and the four Windows work systems I've built spanning 2013 to 2019 and the two home ones I currently have have never, ever crashed, so OS stability comparisons are moot. (Windows 10 still sucks. 11 sucks harder.)
Anyway, if someone can create an emulator for Linux that will support Photoshop, not the other way around, they'll just get sued into oblivion, so there is ultimately no real chance of ever - EVER - getting Linux support.
I look forward to checking in on this thread in another decade...
I switched to linux full time long ago, when photoshop CS6 was new. When I went to linux, I put windows in a virtual machine (then windows 7) and moved my photoshop license to there. Now I run photoshop cs6 anytime while also running linux. Photoshop and windows sees all my linux drives, so all my photos reside in the linux file systems. I only run a couple of windows programs in the virtual machine and do not access the internet with windows.
I would gladly pay for and install photoshop CC if there was a linux version. Yes, I could do this with windows in a virtual machine, but I will never run windows 11, so going forward, it will need to be native linux or I will not use photoshop CC.. But until a linux version happens, I'll also continue to use rawtherapee and gimp unless I need something photoshop specific.
Despite Adobe, linux share is increasing. If Adobe included linux, that market share would likely jump considerably.
To be honest, if You go ahead with new terms and conditions, then forget it. I won't share my personal work with You and PAY YOU subscription on top of it.
You're right - nowadays there are already awesome apps for Linux, such as DaVinci Resolve, Reaper, AfterShot and Blender, and some of them are proprietary like Adobe suite would be.
Thanks to Vulkan, Steam and Proton, lots of graphical intensive games are running on Linux too, so performance is not an issue.
Hardware manufacturers such as HP, Wacom and Xencelabs already provide linux drivers for their printers and pen tablets.
Flatpak today allow easy packaging regardless of the distro, and devs can even spin their own flatpak repository if they want full control on software distribution.
Now that proper colour management is coming to Wayland too, and Nvidia is open sourcing its drivers (AMD and Intel drivers are already open) there's really no technical reasons any more not to port Adobe creative suite to Linux.
Most of these improvements (flatpak, Vulkan, Nvidia, ...) happened in the last few years - these make obsolete any decision taken more than 4 or even 3 years ago, since the Linux landscape changed a lot, and for the better.
Adobe has supported macOS since it had a small market share, and now Linux is reaching similar levels, representing millions of users. With part of the "unknown" segment including Linux, its share could be nearing 10%.
Notably, more professionals are adopting Linux. Some companies and graphic designers are switching from Adobe to DaVinci Resolve, reflecting a growing trend. Tools like Krita with AI plugins and alternatives like Photopea are starting to challenge Adobe's dominance. While Adobe's macOS support is important, the shift toward Linux is gaining traction as alternatives improve.
Linux has Vulkan, a robust API, making it easier for developers to create software for the platform. As demand for Linux grows, Adobe risks losing users on Windows and macOS if they don't adapt.
Dissatisfaction with Adobe's support is driving people to alternatives. If Adobe doesn't respond, they'll lose more users to Linux, and other tools will thrive. I've seen colleagues switch to Linux with no plans to return. If Adobe doesn't adapt, they risk being left behind.
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