I’m keeping it broad by not specifying a distro. I’m just curious is this a real option for actual editing professionals? As far as I understand you can make it work by running under Wine, but I’m guessing this comes with significant drawbacks. I’m having trouble finding any information on both the current state of things with running Premiere under linux (most info seems to be from 2018 for some reason), and the extent of the drawbacks in a quantifiable way.
I’m generally a pretty happy Mac OS user, but I always want to keep options open. I haven’t really tried to use Linux on desktop since the late 00s.
The reason, you aren’t finding anything, is that nobody really attempts to install premiere or after effects anymore on Linux. The alternatives have cought up and they are available for Linux.
- DaVinci Resolve provides the complete package. Video editor and (node based) compositor in one. Even outside of the Linux world there is a lot of momentum behind this tool, as I probably don’t have to tell you. Keep in mind, that the free version on Linux has some limitations, that the free versions on the other OS’s don’t have (missing h264 support for example)
- Left angle Autograph (https://www.left-angle.com/#page=95) is a young product, having seen its first release earlier this year. It’s a direct competitor to After Effects. A timeline based VFX tool. Unfortunately fairly expensive as well.
Back to your question: making things work with wine has a significant drawback. Your system can break with every update. So you’re not making it work just once but over and over again.
Is there any good alternative to Photoshop on Linux? That’s about the only thing I miss after switching
There’s GIMP but it seems a little clunky sometimes, I’ve heard krita is good for artists but I tend to just use this kind of thing for editing images
GIMP is currently missing non-destructive editing (a rather core feature), but that’s something they’re aiming to fix in 3.2. I don’t know when that’ll be here, but that will be a good day for GIMP.
You might have better luck with Affinity Photo—it doesn’t really work well through Wine yet, but it’s getting there: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/182758-affinity-suite-v204-on-linux-wine/
I personally use Affinity Photo on macOS and I’m really happy with it. I like it more than Photoshop, actually. Fair warning that it will rasterize all your text layers in .PSD files, so you’d want to be using only .afphoto files, but it’s impressive how good the .PSD support is otherwise. So, give it a year or two, and Affinity Photo might be in good shape in Wine! I mean, I can hope.
It’s a browser app though
Extremely laggy as PWA in chromium, less laggy in chrome and has to be used in a normal browser window in firefox
Doesn’t work if I’m not connected to the internet and also ads taking up ~10-15% of the window
When it’s working in firefox it seems like a decent alternative and even supports opening psds which is incredibly useful but not sure I’d want to run it in a browser, if it was open source could shove it in an electron wrapper and be done with it but doesn’t seem to be, their public GitHub only has branding and information
Honestly, no there isn’t. Even if Gimp can apparently do a lot of what Photoshop can, you have to first learn, then jump through 20 unintuitive hoops to get to the same result thst Photoshop can do in 2 clicks. Nothing compares as far as I’m concerned.
Can it be done? Yes.
Can it be done in a reliable way that you can depend on to always just work when you need it? No.
If you are completely dependent on Adobe products for your livelihood, you should not plan to work exclusively on Linux.
Better off using native Linux applications. We have DaVinci Resolve, Lightworks, Blender, and Kdenlive. All are fantastic video editors that can give you very professional results.
Personally I use Kdenlive:
- Doesn’t require GPU
- Automatic subtitles
- Support for LUTs
- Nested timelines
- Proxy/Offline editing
- Warp stabilizer
- Free and Open Source
It’s probably the most feature complete FOSS editor.
The feature was part of the April release. That and Open AI Whisper support for subtitles.
If you’ve to work with other people and/or you really need the Adobe tools my best advice if to forget it. Emulation and stuff like Wine, Bottles, Crossover is all cool until you try to install MS Office and it doesn’t work properly or Photoshop doesn’t work because it fails to identify the screen size. You can’t simply run those programs for everyday usage under Linux with good results.
Forget wine. Virtual Machines or Remote Desktop work very well for generic Windows software. For graphics-heavy stuff, you need to learn whether this works for you.
