
Ask HN: Why Doesn't Adobe Release CS for Linux? - ethanpil
For myself and I would surmise, many others, the remaining killer app with no FOSS equivalent is the Adobe Creative Suite. I know there are very good FOSS equivalents for almost every app Adobe makes, but for most professionals, Adobe CS is the industry standard toolset and cannot be substituted. Additionally, CS doesn&#x27;t operate reliably under Wine, and is too resource intensive for a virtual machine, in my experience.<p>I have come to believe that Creative Suite is the one of the last strings keeping many people away from Linux. Am I correct?<p>Did MS or Apple pay Adobe something to keep them from releasing for Linux?<p>Wouldn&#x27;t they be wise to lock up every platform with their apps?<p>All they are doing is allowing the FOSS clones to get better and better, clone them more closely, and lock in their 100% market share on the #1 growth OS. What am I missing?
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detaro
You said it: it is the thing people keep a Windows around for. So they are
already buying licenses, so why would Adobe spend money on a Linux port, on
extra support, ...?

I honestly doubt that the number of Linux users that would buy an Adobe Suite
for Linux, but aren't buying it for another OS now is very large, or even
close to be enough to justify the expense. Commercial desktop software on
Linux doesn't have that many success stories, and right now there isn't much
in the way of commercial competition that might capture that market.

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neeksHN
I wouldn't be suprised if sometime in the past Apple and Adobe didn't collude
to ensure Apple was the only Unix platform that could be considered a
creative-workstation. Adobe and Apple have a long partnered history - don't
let the Flash fiasco divert you from their storied history. Purely speculative
tinfoil theory though.

However, I wouldn't be suprised if some Adobe dev's had internal Linux ports
that they don't share with the public. With the majority of the core app being
written in C/C++ and them porting some UI elements to HTML, I can't imagine
that much of a barrier to offer a Linux equivalent.

The "market share" argument shouldn't be an accepted reason for them to ignore
the platform - although I could see how a tunnel-visioned management team
could use it in their narrative. I know too many devs who would gladly ditch
their MBP, or instead install a Linux distro on it, if Adobe's product line
was available for Linux.

Luckily, there's tools for devs today if you just need to inspect/export
design like [http://avocode.com](http://avocode.com).

~~~
ethanpil
I agree, I'd bet they have an internal Linux build for a few years now...

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jmnicolas
Linux represents less than 5% of the desktops and most of its users are not
know to pay for software (a bit like Android).

It makes no financial sense, considering you have a zillion distributions to
support.

No need of a MS and Apple conspiracy.

~~~
ethanpil
This has been my line of thought, and makes the most sense, but still feels
frustrating.

At this point, I feel like the best way to go about this is some sort of
Kickstarter or bounty for the Wine project to provide incentive to get these
apps working, for those of us that want it and are willing to pay.

~~~
neeksHN
The file dialogs and random bugs really deter the experience on WINE. I'd say
the best way to go is to get Windows Enterprise/Server edition installed in a
qemu virtio box, set up Remote Apps and use rdp. The server you can run
headless I believe, the Enterprise will still being running a gui instance
though.

[http://www.abstractstudio.co/](http://www.abstractstudio.co/) looked real
promising but the project died and they never shared source (atleast the last
I checked)

