
How to use Photoshop in a VM on Ubuntu - muellerwolfram
http://www.prtfl.io/muellerwolfram/blog/2013/1/23/how-to-use-photoshop-in-ubuntu
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davidcollantes
It is mainly "How to use VirtualBox on Ubuntu to run Windows, then install
Photoshop and use it."

I mean, come on!

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pdubs
It does provide detailed steps for a solution to a problem. I'm sure many
people will appreciate that.

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solox3
Many people... on Hacker News or eHow?

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phaus
I've met more than a couple of programmers who are otherwise so computer
illiterate that you pretty much have to walk them over and sit them down in
front of a text editor.

Most people around here seem to have somewhat decent system-admin skills, but
there's also lots of students and even professionals who just haven't messed
around with virtualization very much.

I'm pretty good at using VMWare to set up Linux systems in Windows, but I
haven't tried the opposite yet. Sure, I could probably figure it out, but it's
nice to have this guide to fall back on if something goes wrong.

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ekianjo
> I've met more than a couple of programmers who are otherwise so computer
> illiterate

I have not witnessed this myself but I have heard countless stories from
friends/colleagues in the same vein - there seems to be indeed a big gap
between one's coding abilities and the overall computing knowledge.

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Raydric
I was doing something similar but end it up ditching the whole thing since I'm
running CS6 on Wine without any problems (except a buggy lasso tool):
<https://gist.github.com/4610671>

It checks for the VM state and waits the system to be ready, so you can turn
off the vm if you want. Feel free to adapt to your needs.

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doublerebel
Do you have tablet pressure in CS6? Photoshop has run under Wine for years,
although tablet pressure hasn't worked since CS2 AFAIK.

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Raydric
I don't own a drawing tablet, sorry. And yeah I know:
[http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application...](http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=17)

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CKKim
Thanks, muellerwolfram. This guide is excellent and dear to me as someone once
stuck in the exact same position described in the opening paragraph. Indeed,
flitting between operating systems was so natural that even now I
instinctively want to take issue with your "dual boot sucks" but if I could
use one OS for everything (and I do mean "everything", other OS emulation
included) then I would, so quite simply: _you are right_.

For what it's worth, I chose a different route in solving my Photoshop
dependence: I forced myself to learn alternatives. But I don't mean just that
I learned GIMP (which I recommend, though completely sympathise with the
"Regarding GIMP" section); I mean that I made it my goal to be someone who can
take new software and ascertain how to do with it what I already know how to
do in my "native" habitat, even if the method is convoluted or requires
learning a new paradigm. This goes back to days of using elementary school
computers with nothing more than MSPaint and enjoying that hit of satisfaction
from performing a manual "crop": make a selection, copy it, minimise the
canvas to a handful of pixels, ctrl+V, MSPaint automatically resizes the
canvas to the pasted selection, BLAM it's a crop! (We've all been young, when
figuring these things out for oneself is the next best thing to being a Jedi -
and that said, if anyone has their own method for cropping in 2000-era MSPaint
I'd love to hear it). Likewise in the "new paradigms" category, learning about
Turing machines and formal data structures changed _everything_ for me as a
BASIC-minded programmer.

Since adopting this generalised view I have found it's helpful as a core
principle: I can't always count on the environments I know, so learning to
adapt is crucial. This applies to programming, competitions, and even romantic
partners. In the infinite indulgence of our field to give everything a "cool"
name, I refer to this as the "Peter Petrelli" skill.

Quite apart from arguing against using Photoshop in Ubuntu, it returns to your
piece. Sometimes short of coding something up from scratch there really _is_
only one program that does what we require to solve a specific problem, and
sometimes the operating system _is_ fixed. Knowing how to solve the equation
for these variables is part of being an adaptable and valuable agent. Great
article.

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timdorr
Is anyone running the opposite setup? That is, Windows as the primary OS and
Linux in a VM. I'm looking to upgrade my laptop soon and don't want to pay
Apple's high prices, so I'm looking at 1080p Windows laptops.

I'm considering Windows as the base OS and a Linux VM for development stuff. I
do web development, including design work, so I would need the ability to run
Photoshop and other tools. But for running my ruby stuff (Rails, Spork, etc),
I think a Linux VM would be ideal.

Summed up: How do others live in the Rails dev world when not using Mac OS?

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sethhochberg
I did exactly this for many months, but then realized that I was spending 90%
of my time in the VM and it just made more sense to run the linux install
native.

My laptop is my development machine, so I usually have my desktop (Windows,
since it doubles as a gaming rig) in reach if I need Windows for Photoshop or
Visual Studio or something else briefly and don't feel like firing up a VM.

~~~
RegEx
I don't see any advantage to running the install native. I've actually had
more issues in native installs than through VMs.

As a side note, if anyone is interested in running an Ubuntu desktop VM, I
highly recommend Lubuntu. It's extremely lightweight and fast, it's perfect
for VMs.

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phaus
How do you configure your VM once you install it? I seem to have a lot of
performance issues unless I get a pre-configured VMWare image. The only image
I've ever gotten to run as fast as a native install is the Official Backtrack
VMware .iso.

I've installed several distributions, including Lubuntu, along with the VMware
tools, but I always get really poor performance when I try to set up my own
VMs.

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RegEx
2 processor cores and 2G of memory is all mine needs to perform well. Perhaps
my level of "fast enough" is much slower than yours, but my VM doesn't feel
any slower than the host.

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phaus
I have a 2nd gen i7 and 16gb on the host. I think I tried everything up to 8
cores and 4 gb, but it still seems like everything is slow.

So you don't do anything special to optimize it?

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RegEx
No, nothing at all. I have an ivy bridge i5, 8GB 1600, and two old nvidia
geforce 8600 under sli. Perhaps the people at /r/techsupport could help. Full
screen in my VM feels just like booting into Ubuntu - no lag at all.

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tsahyt
The requirement of 100% stable is somewhat irritating. As far as I know
Photoshop isn't even 100% stable under Windows.

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contingencies
On the 100% meme, VirtualBox is apparently regarded as 'tainted crap' by
kernel developers, re:
[http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OTk5M...](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OTk5Mw)

~~~
tsahyt
Personally I'm a big fan of KVM. However it has flaws too, unfortunately.

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kaolinite
Is Photoshop really 100% stable on Windows or OS X? Still, very nice guide.

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hnriot
On the Mac you can run it constantly and it won't ever crash. It's one of the
most amazingly reliable pieces of software out there.

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davidcollantes
See: <http://log.maniacalrage.net/tagged/cscr>

It is not "one of the most amazingly reliable pieces of software out there" by
any stretch of the imagination.

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xtreme
This should rather be titled "How to make an application running in a vm look
native on Ubuntu". The "seamless mode" was meant for just that.

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tambourine_man
What about graphic card support? Photoshop uses it extensively and VirtualBox
support was really poor last timeI checked.

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gmq
The main problem with using a VM is that you won't be able to open PSD files
directly from your file browser. Having to switch to Photoshop and browse for
the file would end up being a huge time sink in the long term.

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acqq
Did you actually read the article? It seems he solved that too.

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gmq
I'm talking about a native 'Click to open' function. The article only mentions
sharing a folder to make it visible from the VM.

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acqq
He implemented click to open too. He states that goal at the begining: "should
be searchable and launchable from Ubuntu dash." If you read the rest you'll
discover how he implemented that.

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muellerwolfram
gmq is probably talking about opening psd files in your Ubuntu file browser by
right clicking them and selecting "open with Photoshop". That's not possible
with the method i'm describing in the article. But it's something that's
bugging me too and I'm working on a solution. I haven't quite figured it out
yet though.

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mikegirouard
This is a great guide. I've invested heavily in MacOS, so I'll probably need
to figure out an alternate approach.

One thing struck me as odd: Why make a `photoshop` alias if you're going to
have the shell script in `$HOME/bin`?

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ykl
Well, on OSX, there's a much easier approach: just.... run the native version
of Photoshop.

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mikegirouard
Right... The same could be said for this article too, but you missed the
point.

I'd like to run Photoshop on my linux workstation but I don't have Windows.

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jiggy2011
Photoshop in a VM?

is that not a horribly laggy experience?

I have a Core2 Quad Q6600 based computer and when I have run Windows inside a
VM it is too laggy to use as a serious desktop beyond using a few basic apps.
Doing 1080p video is choppy too.

Is there something about newer CPUs such as i7 that makes virtualisation
hugely faster and more responsive?

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shocks
>> Is there something about newer CPUs such as i7 that makes virtualisation
hugely faster and more responsive?

Yes.

<http://ark.intel.com/Products/VirtualizationTechnology>

Running the Android Emulator on my i7-3770k is smooth as silk with Intel
Virtualization turned on. Without IV it's like rubbing my face on sandpaper.

~~~
pavanky
Sorry for hijacking the topic but I need to ask something.

I recently purchased a 3770k and all other parts arrived today. The
documentation[1] says 3700k supports Vt-x but not Vt-d. Does that affect
anything at all ?

1\. <http://ark.intel.com/products/65523>

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shocks
VT-x is for hardware virtualisation. VT-d is allows direct pass through of
device (PCI, etc).

VT-x is essential, VT-d is 'nice' because it lets you hook PCI devices
directly into the VM (good for some servers) but in general you don't need it.

3770k is a very nice chip! I love mine. Easy to overclock too.

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boonaru
If you don't mind using Photoshop CS2, you can get it from here for free.

[http://www.techspot.com/downloads/3689-adobe-photoshop-
cs2.h...](http://www.techspot.com/downloads/3689-adobe-photoshop-cs2.html)

CS2 runs perfectly with Wine (as far as I've seen).

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fox91
It's not "How to use Photoshop in Ubuntu", it's "How to use Photoshop in a VM"

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QuantumGuy
Care to do one for Arch Linux? I am currently learning Arch so I can make the
switch and would really love it if you did an article on the subject. Thank
you for your work by the way.

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muellerwolfram
the steps for arch would be almost identical. the desktop entry specification
is a standard that is used by arch as well:

<https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Desktop_Entries>

how much it integrates depends on what desktop environment you are using.
gnome and kde are using the same desktop files as far as I know. So it should
work. Haven't tested it though.

You could also use unity with arch:
<https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Unity>

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jpswade
Might as well just VirtualBox step and just install Windows instead of
Ubuntu...

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martinced
But what if for all the other applications, for example out of security and
performance concerns and by desire of not having to reboot every patch-
tuesday, he prefers to not run Windows?

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jpswade
Both of these things were addressed in Windows 8.

