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Photoshop? The application most people want, at this date, to be ported to Linux from Windows is Photoshop? Color me surprised!
When Novell started its survey of which applications people wanted ported to Linux, both Novell CoolSolutions site editor Scott Morris and I were surprised to find Adobe Photoshop anywhere near the top of the list in early results.
Quicken, my own favorite, QuickBooks, Dreamweaver—sure. But Photoshop—when we already have GIMP?
GIMP, in case you dont know, has long been considered one of the Linux desktops success stories. For example, its been described as offering “a level of functionality comparable to Photoshop for free” in LinuxPlanet—back in the year 2000.
Now, what I know about photo editing programs could be placed on a small, say, 360KB, 5.25-inch floppy disk. If you cant do it with Googles Picasa on Windows, F-Spot on Linux/GNOME, or iPhoto on Mac OS X, its beyond me.
So I pestered some of my friends in the graphics business to see why Linux users would prefer Photoshop over GIMP.
First of all, Photoshop—on either Mac OS X or Windows—is the default photographic and prepress program for serious graphics firms.
Just as Quarks QuarkXPress was for the longest time the best layout program in serious publishing work, Photoshop is simply “the” application that professionals use.
Its also not really thought of as a “Windows” application in many shops. For many graphic pros, its a Mac OS program.
So this appears to be a case where its not really so much that people want a Windows application ported to Linux, as that they want what they see as the best-of-breed application, regardless of operating system, to run on Linux.