Linux Software List

Thanks for the list, do you know which ones are free and which ones are not?

They're all paid and closed source. But they're industry standard software in the VFX realm. WIth the Substance software coming over for the push for game dev on Linux + VFX.

Also would plugins count as 'Software' for theses programs? IE like Pixar Renderman?

You can post them here, not all will go into the list but the thread is its own list anyway so your post is still a contribution. If they are Linux compatible that is the main thing.

There is already Maya listed btw

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I installed painter on Arch (manjaro) no problems. But for AMD users it doesn't yet work on the AMDGPU driver, I had to use catalyst.

Hm, good to know! Thank you.

Yeah, I saw Mudbox, Softimage and Motionbuilder are all different programs.

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Just realized, Evolution, despite its flaws, is still a useful productivity tool and alternative to Outlook and is missing here.

Added soundnode , SoundCloud app.

Looks cool, gonna check this one out

Not sure what category this would go under - productivity? I've started using KDE Connect recently and I'm pretty sure it's the best thing since sliced bread. It's basically an app that syncs with your phone, allowing you to share the clipboard, exchange files, share notifications, use your phone as a touchpad or keyboard, et cetera... it has a ton of features and it keeps getting more.

While it is a KDE app and it implements very well with KDE, they recently updated it so that it works as a cli so you can use it with GTK-based DE's too. It's a little buggy, but it still works great. It's not really something that Mac OSX or Windows has as far as I know, but it's a fantastic tool.

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No, it's not. Sometimes it's very hard finding specific things that aren't on top in google - especially when you're not sure yet what you're looking for.

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cool retro term. If you must stare at a screen full of text for hours you might as well have some options of the retro 1980's -1990's look just to irritate your boss.

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For those coming from the windows development world i recommend:

visual studio code: sudo pacman -S visual-studio-code (https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/visual-studio-code/) or yaourt it

this IDE allows you to program in most languages. as soon as you download you need to look at the extensions tab to look for the apporpate plugins for the language you would like to use, then create a file with .cpp/.html/.py, then CODE AWAY!

It's basically Atom in microsoft drag

its not an IDE. Its a text editor. But a nice one nonetheless.

For those of you considering switching to Linux but feel that you need to keep paying that hefty $50/month fee to Adobe to use their software that you have grown to love, then I think you should read this because we need to ween you off the teat of Adobe. Save that $50/month ($600/year) subscription you are paying for and put it to better use. Just like that fee you are paying Microsoft for the ability to type a paper.

The following are popular alternatives that are of really good quality and often "better". I will add feature lists at the bottom for some of the listed software.

These programs are also mostly if not all cross-platform (win/mac/Linux) so you should be able to get used to them on Windows first.

Adobe alternatives:

Adobe Premiere Pro: OpenShot and Lightworks
Adobe Illustrator CC: Inkscape, Bloom, and Vectr
Adobe Dreamweaver: Eclipse, Brackets and kodeWeave
Adobe Audition: Ardour, OcenAudio, Audacity
Adobe After Effects: Natron, Blackmagic Design Fusion, and Nuke
Adobe Animate CC: Synfig Studio and Tupi
Adobe Photoshop Elements: GIMP, Krita and Corel Aftershot Pro
Adobe Bridge: XnView MP, DigiKam, and Shotwell
Adobe Media Encoder: FFMPEG

Microsoft Office:
Microsoft Office Suite: LibreOffice, WPS Office, Calligra Suite, and Softmaker FreeOffice

Features list:

OpenShot

Support for many video, audio, and image formats (based on Small FFmpeg iconFFmpeg )
Gnome integration (drag and drop support)
Multiple tracks
Clip resizing, trimming, snapping, and cutting
Video transitions with real-time previews
Compositing, image overlays, watermarks
Title templates, title creation
Solid color clips (including alpha compositing)
Support for Rotoscoping / Image sequences
Drag and drop timeline
Frame stepping, key-mappings: J,K, and L keys
Video encoding (based on Small FFmpeg iconFFmpeg )

Lightworks

All major operating systems
Unmatched format support
Dedicated Web Export (MPEG4/H.264)
Optimised for speed
World class Trimming for fast precision editing
Multicam Editing
Powerful, realtime effects with inbuilt presets
Enhanced VFX with Boris FX
Text Effects with Boris Graffiti
Project Sharing for groups
Customisable interface
Hardware I/O Support
Unique Patented Console and Dedicated Keyboard

Inkscape

Object Creation
    Drawing: pencil tool (freehand drawing with simple paths), pen tool (creating Bézier curves and straight lines), calligraphy tool (freehand drawing using filled paths representing calligraphic strokes)
    Shape tools: rectangles (may have rounded corners), ellipses (includes circles, arcs, segments), stars/polygons (can be rounded and/or randomized), spirals
    Text tool (multi-line text, full on-canvas editing)
    Embedded bitmaps (with a command to create and embed bitmaps of selected objects)
    Clones ("live" linked copies of objects), including a tool to create patterns and arrangements of clones
Object Manipulation
    Transformations (moving, scaling, rotating, skewing), both interactively and by specifying exact numeric values
    Z-order operations (raising and lowering)
    Grouping objects ("select in group" without ungrouping, or "enter the group" making it a temporary layer)
    Layers (lock and/or hide individual layers, rearrange them, etc; layers can form a hierarchical tree)
    Alignment and distribution commands
Fill and Stroke
    Color selector (RGB, HSL, CMYK, color wheel, CMS)
    Color picker tool
    Copy/paste style
    A gradient editor capable of multi-stop gradients
    Pattern fills (bitmap/vectors)
    Dashed strokes, with many predefined dash patterns
    Path markers (ending, middle and/or beginning marks, e.g. arrowheads)
Operations on Paths
    Node editing: moving nodes and Bezier handles, node alignment and distribution, etc.
    Converting to path (for text objects or shapes), including converting stroke to path
    Boolean operations
    Path simplification, with variable threshold
    Path insetting and outsetting, including dynamic and linked offset objects
    Bitmap tracing (both color and monochrome paths)
Text Support
    Multi-line text
    Uses any installed outline fonts, including right-to-left scripts
    Kerning, letterspacing, linespacing adjustments
    Text on path (both text and path remain editable)
    Text in shape (fill shape following stroke)
Rendering
    Fully anti-aliased display
    Alpha transparency support for display and PNG export
    Complete "as you drag" rendering of objects during interactive transformations
File Formats
    Perfectly compliant SVG format file generation and editing
    Live watching and editing the document tree in the XML editor
    PNG, OpenDocument Drawing, DXF, sk1, PDF, EPS and PostScript export formats and more
    Command line options for export and conversions

Bloom

Completely Non-Destructive Editing Workflow
Vector Shapes & Editing
Raster Image Editing
Universal 16 bits Per Channel Support
Best-in-Class Adobe Photoshop™ PSD File Importer with Layers, Groups, Masks, and Layer Blending Styles
Group and Layer Blending Styles
Optimized for Large Files
Digital Drawing Tablet Support
Editable Liquify and Brush Strokes
Multitude of import and export formats, including all camera RAW files

Natron

realtime playback/RAM cache
multi-threaded rendering
2d tracking
rotoscoping
grading
animation via f-curves
3rd party OpenFX plugin support
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Don't forget we had Davinci Resolve first :P

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This is excellent work, keep it up!

Also wine 2.0 is supposed to be better than ever.

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Maybe it would be interesting to group these by workflow and underlying framework.

Like a protog will use either rapid photo downloader with darktable and gimp, or digikam and gimp or krita for instance. There is also a very big UI difference between all of these softwares.

They all have some things in common though: they offer a lot more functionality and speed than Adobe products, and they are not so unsafe and unreliable.

People looking for a 1:1 alternative, aka a "port", will always want to stay with what they are using though, it is always necessary to adapt and learn new things and adapt the workflow when switching to open source, but this needs to be done only once, because:
- with an adapted workflow, users can be far more productive and efficient with open source programs, because these are made specifically for and by the users, they are not made by a corporation who tells users what they can and can't use and how they should and shouldn't use it;
- commercial closed source applications force users down a (paid) upgrade path, and change the UI and workflow without asking the users from version to version, and users have to adapt or perish. This is never the case in open source, there is no discontinuity in workflow, so you only have to make the investment in adapting the workflow once, and then never again.
- This is also the reason why nobody should use closed source applications in Linux as a fixed part of their workflow, it's better to support open source applications, the more users, the more feedback they get, and the better they get in terms of workflow and features. So programs like Lightworks, although great because Hollywood and all, should maybe be relegated to their specific use case scenario, whereas most people could probably work just fine with Blender and KDEnlive for video editing purposes.

Another example of the quick transition to open source in the creative sector is plugins: A couple of years ago, I bought quite a few licenses for plugins from Waves, iZotope, IK, etc, for well over 10k. These things take a while to pay themselves back, because the added value is minimal in a pro environment with a lot of decent outboard gear, they are more like consumer things that have gone the "pro route" because too expensive than the other way around. So these things do not pay themselves back in 5 years, they need more than that. As with many commercial software products, they are a complete rip off and just plain stupid, but what do you do, clients use them because they're stupid (basically newbies use them because they can't get or don't know how to get the good outboard gear that does everything better). Thing is though, when I bought them, I was using Cubase and it was before the 64-bit mess, so they were 32-bit plugins. Then Cubase decided to go 64-bit but it was a complete mess, and Ardour wasn't good enough yet to use in production at that time. So the hunt for 32-bit bridging began, and it was a nightmare. Third parties would sell bridging applications, Steinberg would keep fucking up and breaking stuff... and in the end, people who didn't just dump the whole thing when Ardour became good enough and moved the whole thing to Linux, including all of the plugins that just work in Linux with any VST host, had to pretty much buy all of those plugins again in 64-bit versions. The problem with that was that by that time, many people had lost interest in them, and sales didn't do so well, people would just rather pirate them or would switch DAW or whatever, which lead to the income of the commercial production software industry to go down spectacularly. The very big Steinberg (this was like the Microsoft of the multimedia production world) almost went belly up because of this, and Yamaha had to buy them out. The industry learned that closed source is not an option. In top range pro products, linux quickly became the new standard because it was a main concern of high budget clients that long term support could be guarateed, and since half of any product these days is software, a switch to open source was the only available option. Since a few years, we've seen the industry also switch to linux for more consumer orientated products, the likes of the Kempers, Torpedos, etc... but recently a remarkable newcomer is the new AKAI MPC range, of which prototypes were leaked a couple of years ago running Windows, but now the products have finally come out, they're not running Windows at all, they're running linux. The AKAI MPC is a 100% consumer targeted device, it's like the Nintendo of the home music production world, it's the default production machine for aspiring dance and hiphop artists, entirely in the hipster market, so those are the guys who buy iPhones because iPhone right... so AKAI probably delayed the product release by over a year and invested millions extra, just to throw the already developed Windows based product in the dumpster and remake it entirely based on linux... guess AKAI has also learned. So it's just a matter of time before everybody will HAVE to be on open source software in the creative industry. The creative industry is slow to evolve, but once it gets rolling, it's like a tsunami, it happens fast and on a massive scale. That's why everyone should really switch to open source in the creative industry, because it's happening really fast and you don't want to get caught by surprise.

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