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Yes. (at the moment) the mainstream world is mostly Windows....
And this situation will keep being like this as long as software vendors that hold industry standards (Adobe in our case) fear to expand to new technologies for the sake of the shareholder's statistics.
Adobe supporting Linux (or rather I should say "going inter-operable") is without doubt a good step, but only on the long-term... and long-term has never looked nice for the share holders which do not understand the nature of computing as IT people do.
That is one of the down-side characteristics that we find in big companies (like Adobe in our case).
Fear of progressive decision making.
And Linux has proven that it is actually the most unlimited, promising, progressive OS out there, and that is due to it's open source nature.
This "fear of progress" characteristic is one of the major factors that keeps a company in an "idle", sustainable position in its market area... Until a newcomer arrives to stir the waters... and when that happens it would be too late, let's say, to "save the ship".
There are many software developers out there that can produce code that can equal the features of Adobe's software.
Creative Suite can stop being the Holy Grail from one day to another if a bunch of software developers decide to push out a product that actually follows the open-source OS "progress", minimizes the user's expenses and counters Adobe's product capabilities.
We've seen many examples of the "newcomer's arrival" (as I mention above) mostly in the enterprise IT areas (it-infrastructure, VOIP, server side applications hosting and development, databases ........) where open-source systems took over the "throne" from well established closed source systems that failed to realize that Unix based OS's (mostly Linux and BSD) where the "progressive choice".
On the normal consumer side of things, a very good example is Google's Android. Android has become the new "Hype" of mobile OS's in less than a year and there's no doubt that it will dominate the market in the very near future. Why?... It uses a Linux Kernel. It's based on open-source standards. It does not depend on other companies such as Apple or MS to survive. It's is inter-operable.
Now (the almost dominant on the server-side) Linux OS is making first steps towards mainstream professional workstation computing, Offering limitless possibilities for anyone that is willing to use it and at almost no cost. For any product that is not supporting Linux, the open source community, or Linux supporting "new comer" vendors can, (and will...) push out alternatives. If this happens then it would be too late to "save the ship" for companies that where paying attention only to their short-term objectives.
If you (by reading this post) think that I'm amplifying the "Linux support hype", I'm NOT. I've put my hands at almost all OS architectures out there and I'm a great supporter of all platforms (aside MacOSX that is.. 
). So, before jumping to any counter posts, just take a minute and think...
Linux, in 18 years from it's first release has actually dominated more areas of the IT industry than any other technology (both closed and open source) could ever had. Now Linux is (in almost all cases) the major OS player for networking, mobile and stable telephony, embeded systems, data warehousing, education, science, medicine, robotics, computer operated automations, the Internet, business server side applications (CRMs, ERPs, Financial Systems....) and many other areas.
Don't be fooled into thinking that the professional's desktop computer is a tough nut to crack. I think that is rather the opposite. Mainstream computer professionals are always after the most customizable, stable, affordable and most supported (within Internet forums and blogs) solution.
Mainstream computer professionals will make the switch to that kind of solution from one day to another (...simply because there is no issue in the migration of resources for an individual user. Migration of resources is an obstacle only for companies when switching from one technology o another).
It happened before and it will naturally happen again.
Supporting platforms beyond Windows and OSX would be a very difficult step to make, but the possibilities that would be opened for Adobe after this step is made will be equal to the possibilities that Linux offers to it's users. And that would be limitless.
Somehow, I do not recall many NLE programs coming out of Cuba, Communist China, or the old USSR, but maybe I missed something. 
Hunt
the_wine_snob wrote:
Somehow, I do not recall many NLE programs coming out of Cuba, Communist China, or the old USSR, but maybe I missed something.
Hunt
My friend.
What you've posted is not funny.
For obvious reasons... these people leave in povetry. I don't think their main objective is to produce NLEs.
...and yes. you have missed something...
jeremy d. wrote:
So that sounds like the innovators' failure.
Perhaps, but still... Everybody knows Photoshop! Some people know about GIMP, but its use is generally discouraged in the industry. There are no equivalents to Adobe Flash and Adobe After Effects on Linux, and there's certainly not the mindshare! There's no question that Linux isn't capable of the type of work that the Creative Suite allows you to do, it is just that the offerings do not exist for Linux for the prosumer.
Adobe is the king of the desktop publishing industry, they make it or break it. If even just Photoshop was ported, it would prove the viability of the platform for creative types. The chicken-and-egg problem would be solved, pretty much! And just by only officially supporting one or two distros (Ubuntu LTS and RHEL), you'd pretty much hit nearly everybody.
And Ubuntu is getting prettier! 
So, the "Mac is the only aesthetically pleasing OS" argument is disappearing! Adobe has the funds, the manpower, and the expertise to do this, and do this well!
Ugh, aesthetically pleasing. Fisher-Price Easy Bake iOven.
There's no question that Linux isn't capable of the type of work that the Creative Suite allows you to do
Please clarify that for me -- I'm assuming you mean that Linux is capable
Oops, yeah, I meant is capable.
I'm sorry, but I must be missing something here. That sounds like corporate-driven innovation to me.
I was making a point against waiting for small startups to prove viability for creative types.
And Ubuntu is getting prettier!
I installed Ubuntu via the Oracle VM VirtualBox just to take it for a test drive. And you're right - it is getting prettier. Much prettier.
But it still falls far short of OSX's or even Windows' "ease of use". Don't get me wrong - it's getting much better in that department, too. But for creative types who want to produce, even Ubuntu is far too "techie" for most of them. Ask someone who's never used Linux before to install a new program, then sit back and watch. Even for packages included in the Ubuntu distro, it will be a frustrating experience for anyone who's not very computer savvy. Ask them to install a package that's *not* included in the distro, and you'll be able to go get a couple of beers, and maybe a whole six-pack, before they've sussed it.
Linux has improved its look, feel and operation by leaps and bounds in the last few years, but it's not yet a viable "artist's" OS.
I've got a feeling that Canonical has something up their sleeves for improving Ubuntu's ease of use. My experience with converting my friends to use Linux instead of shelling out for Macs was generally favorable, but I do see your point. The Software Center does make it easy to get lots of different software packages, but it isn't quite there yet. And there are other instances of user-friendliness not quite there yet. But, it is getting there!
I am not sure what "industry" you are speaking of here. I've been in the advertising print industry for about 35 years now. From the earliest releases of Gimp, I have seen it actually encouraged in that industry. I tried it way back, but had PhotoStyler and Photoshop, and liked either better.
Even today, there are probably a dozen recommendations for Gimp on the Adobe PS board, and they are common, especially when one complains about the cost of Photoshop.
Now, there are probably factions in the advertising production industry, where it is discouraged, for for a decade, so was the use of a PC. I had many Mac-only clients, who firmly believed that if an image ever saw a PC, it was ruined forever. They were adamant about only having a Mac work on any image. I could handle and output to all the popular Mac-formats on Mac disks (Syquest whatever in those days), and I just kept my mouth shut. For those, who knew I had used a PC, I got congratulations for having "seen the light," and going over to a Mac. None knew and lauded the beautiful images, that could ONLY have come from a Mac. Some factions just foam at the mouth, and one needs to work around them.
At the university I go to, we are required to have Adobe Creative Suite for our art classwork, no subtitutes. Their logic was the reason I gave you, so... meh. Worse yet, we had to have a Mac, even though the school workplace machines were all PCs running Windows....
That Adobe has not become convinced of the marketability and ROI on porting to Linux is just an indication of their decisions, but I would assume that they have looked into doing so, only to find that the ROI is not there - yet. It might happen, or it might not.
Heck, for all I know, they may internally already have most of the infrastructure in place to make a port to Linux and release it! I don't know, but the only thing I can really do is keep asking about it, until it arrives.
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