Photshop for Linux? It is time...

Question

Hi
I really hope this is not a stupid question, but are there any future plans to release a version of Photoshop for Linux?
Why I ask is that the only reason a lot of us keep Windows is to run Photoshop.
Running it inside Linux Wine is very unstable and the fonts are almost unreadable.

Answer 1

I understand the time you wasted to write this post, you are correct with all the different libraries that would needed to be created with working with different distros however you do not understand that a company would be working direct with the community of the distros to diffuse this problem. No biggy! You say 98% pirated, Wake up to reality man it's 2011, man back long time ago when they brought out the megaphone, Vinyl's oh the Vinyl's recorder, Tapes, oh the tape recorder, stupid companies all had your theory omg everything will be pirated, all sales will drop. you waste your breathe complaining how much effort it would require to make the port but it's not hard, Like any software it can be ported just like any other software can. Adobe is being purchased anyway so your complaining has gone down the drain Just my 2 cents.
YOU do not understand.  Work with the "community of distros to diffuse this problem?"   OK.  First thing, the distros ARE the problem.  The fact that there are 8 zillion distros each shipping different flavours of linux is the whole fragmentation issue in the first place.   The mere fact that you don't understand that is another problem.  Linux users don't realize that they've been shooting themselves in the foot for 16 years, instead they blame the boogeyman Microsoft.  Would you want to go into a business with a bunch of cognitively dissonant idealists?  Would you bet your company's slim profit margin on them?  A bunch of people in that other thread don't even understand the difference between revenues and profits.   Revenue is completely irrelevant, profit is what matters.  This is econ 101 stuff.  Did you note how Chris said "I don't see that there is even an understanding of the problems here".  He means you.  The fact that you think having 800 distros is a good thing.  They all come with the same software but are different in all the ways that matter to software developers.  Things are made much much more difficult than they need to be, for no real advantages at all.
Second thing, working with the community never produces anything positive.  You clearly have a very different view of the linux software development community, than the reality of the situtation.   There is a ton of infighting and people with huge egos.  Everyone thinks they know the right way to do things, and generally when there's a disagreement the standard response is "well screw you!  I'll just fork you or go start my own project!"  This furthers the fragmentation issue, and makes companies loathe to get into Linux development.    Look at Miguel de Icaza, that guy founded GNOME (one of the biggest free software projects), he has given more to the community than probably anyone else on earth, and he can't go 2 days without someone picking a fight with him.  He is constantly at odds with Richard Stallman and others.  This is just one example, the KDE and Gnome guys don't get along.  Nobody agrees on what sound or graphics stacks to use.  X11 has been rotting for 25 years with minimal development.  The Linux Standards Base has been around for 10 years and done exactly zero.  You say this is okay because it gives users more choice, but these are stupid choices that nobody wants to make (choose your sound stack? sounds like fun), especially not developers.  Adobe can make a choice too, they can choose it's not worth it getting into bed with Linux.
What problems has the community solved thus far?  Linux can't even ship a standardized desktop stack, there are bugs that have been around forever, there are core subsystems that have been neglected for years.  Stuff that Adobe NEEDS to ship PS for linux, like fonts and colours.   You think Adobe wants to start submitting patches to the kernel and glibc and KDE and stuff?  They want to deal with a bunch of touchy developers who have a proven track record of failure and willful ignorance, a history of opposition to commercial software, who can't get along with each other, and have no monetary incentive to listen to Adobe (nor any incentive to include their fixes)?      The open source and Linux community has very very few successes, even stuff like openoffice and firefox were originally commercial software (staroffice and netscape, respectively) that was given to the community by generous companies.
Furthermore, distros have a history of BREAKING other peoples' software.  Look at flash.  Adobe gives flash to the linux community (when they have no financial incentive to do so, very altruistic), distros break it with patches and library/API mismatches, everyone starts saying blah adobe sucks they hate linux, etc etc.   Look at the debian SSL debacle.   A maintainer with no software developer expertise effectively crippled SSH security for everyone who uses Debian, because his debugger was giving him warnings and he commented out code until it went away.  Yeah, I totally want to give these people more software.
Look at ATI.  The 'community' begs them for years to release an open source driver so they can hack on it.  What happens?  ATI releases their driver sources, "The community" produces a lousy driver, ATI gets a bad rep for not working nice with linux and everyone says go use NVIDIA cards and their stable (closed source) drivers.  Getting into Linux is lose/lose.
People in that other thread say they are willing to do anything to get photoshop on Linux.  This is a boldfaced lie.  What if I said the only way to get PS on Linux is to eliminate all distros and build a standardized Linux from a set of core libraries that are guaranteed to retain certain APIs.   The Linux community would whine and complain that they need 'choice' and 'competition'.   Like I said, you can have your choice but you will not have Photoshop, other commercial software, or marketshare worth talking about.   Clearly you will not do whatever it takes.  This is REALITY, not magical free software land where the rules of capitalism do not apply.   You cannot selectively ignore evidence that you disagree with and expect people to take you seriously.
It's willful ignorance to pretend that Linux PS would not be extensively pirated.  Chris mentionned he speaks regularly to other companies that produce linux software, and he said that they confirm Adobe's marketing studies.   I would bet dollars to donuts the guys who write linux software witness overwhelming piracy rates.   Piracy is a big big problem in general, and the fact that you scoff it off speaks to your ignorance of market realities.  If people are stealing your software it cuts into your bottom line and causes legitimate users to have to pay more to cover the costs of development.  It's called the free rider problem.   Software development already has razor thin margins as it is.  Why do you think there are so many more console games than PC games these days, and PC is almost an afterthought as a port?  The money is in console development, and one of the biggest reasons is piracy.  If you ask anyone from industry they will agree.  If you ask anyone from the linux community they will pull backwards arguments out of their butts.  Who do I trust here?   And do I want to sell products to people who think that piracy is OK and no big deal?
You say it's 2011, but you are stuck in 1997, when Linux was last relevant.   You and most other Linux users live in a different reality than the rest of us.  You probably don't even have a good reason for using linux anyway but you use it because either: a) you want to be special and unique based on what software you use or b) you hate microsoft for vague reasons.   Wake up, and get over it.  Windows is actually a really really good OS.   If you're not using MS because of the price, you think Adobe should sell their 1000$ software suite to people too stingy to drop 150$ for windows?  Yeah.  Good luck with that.
If you think Android will save Linux, dream on.  Google takes what they want from Linux and ignores the rest.  Like the ENTIRE DESKTOP STACK.  Smart move, because the entire desktop userland for linux is in a terrible state.  Android apps will not run on linux, and won't ever.  Most people who use android don't care about Linux, if they've even heard of it at all.  In fact google submitted their changes for android back to the kernel community (as they are obligated to under the GPL) and nobody did anything with it.  It didn't get integrated into the kernel, the patches just rotted until they fell out of the kernel source tree.  Oh yeah, and the main dev for GlibC started whining about google not helping the community enough.  They followed the GPL, what more do you want?  More more more more more!
I have no idea if Adobe is being bought out and I guarantee you Chris can't comment on it (company policy), but a bit of googling shows that the most recent activity for such things is a potential buyout from Microsoft.   So MS is going to port PS to Linux once they buy Adobe?   Even if it's another company, do you think the first thing they will do is embark on an unprofitable venture?   OK, then whoever buys Adobe will go the way of Sun Microsystems.
On top of all this, Adobe is not the most important software to improve Linux adoption.  If you guys really want more people to Linux (which, be honest, is your ultimate motivation here), you should go bother Apple to port iTunes.  I don't care for that software personally, but it is by far the biggest obstacle to Linux adoption.  Get iTunes ported and you might have some crack at becoming a real player in the OS world.