this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2025
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Fuck AI
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I'm one of them, and currently looking into Linux, if I can migrate my Photoshop tools/brushes/gradients/etc successfully over to another program that is compatible.
My only hang up after that is gaming, and I feel that can be resolved with dual boot to win10.
Gaming on Linux either works on Linux or the game requires a rootkit malware to run.
I refuse to call it "kernel-level anti-cheat." That's like calling a sucking chest wound "alternative breathing"
Eh could do with a Linux version of MO2 or Vortex. Manual modding is tedious and plenty of mods use the mod managers for settings.
It exists and is called Limo.
https://flathub.org/en/apps/io.github.limo_app.limo
It's basically linux native MO2.
I've been using it for New Vegas, and Cyberpunk 77, for almost two years now.
Works pretty good!
Don't have to do some kind of wacky wine/proton set up for each instance of MO2.
EDIT:
If you prefer non flatpak, though the flatpak is the officially supported version, you can do a other kinds of installs:
https://github.com/limo-app/limo
It's also on Arch via the AUR, source is on github, has build instructions, they seem to be oriented around Debian based OS's, but you could probably/maybe figure it out for other OS's as well?
When I first swapped the linux I was able to get MO2 working with Wine. Had a Wabbajack mod list running. It was a bit of a pain, though.
Why not just play games on linux?
It works so well nowadays
Does it now? I have an Arc B580 and Linux drivers are lackluster at best.
Pretty sure everyone warned that Intel drivers would be iffy regardless of OS and to only buy if you're okay being a beta tester for Intel.
The linux AMD GPU driver is superior to their windows driver
Intel arc has good hardware codecs tho
my god linux and intel graphics drivers were so easy for me to setup. Even got HDR running first attempt which is apparently hard. No idea why, may have just been the distro made it easy.
I figure that at least a few games I like to play are not compatible with Linux. I haven't yet gotten the full list of games that won't run on it but I'd hedge a bet that there's more than one. One of them which I play a lot, Warframe, is apparently a bit buggy on it. I'm a sucker for multiplayer games and if there is kernel level anti cheat on them it might cause things to break.
Check them here: https://www.protondb.com/
Proton has a constantly updating list of games and how well they work on Linux and the Steam Deck
Man, none of the games I am trying to get running are on there. Bummer.
Gaming on Linux works now. I play every game I care for.
Gaming on Linux is superior, on a lot of games! I dual booted and ran benchmarks on Windows 11 and Fedora, same hardware. Ran nothing but the OS and Steam in the background, (gaming mode on and off), oddly found better performance with gaming mode off, then tried the same thing with Fedora. 5-10% higher framerates in Fedora running Proton.
Tried the same thing with synched Firefox tabs, half a dozen open tabs, telegram and discord running. Fedora sometimes hit 15% higher framerates.
Are you on an AMD card?
I have a Ryzen CPU with onboard graphics and then an Nvidia 3060ti mobile. Rpmfusion drivers in Linux and Nvidia experience in Windows.
I have a 3080ti and it runs better on popos/cachyos vs windows 10. Never tried windows 11 on it though.
Yeah I've been playing Elden Ring with no crashes since switching to Mint.
The only problem is some anticheats and older games. Whenever the boys and I wanna play Battlefield I gotta switch to Windows, but besides that it's basically fine.
A lot of older games run better on Linux. Lots of older games that don't even work on Windows anymore
Huh. I would have thought that older games would run better than newer ones.
Nah, I've been trying to get the Sims 2 ultimate collection to run on mint for a while now, to no avail. I know it's possible, but all the necessary links etc. have died, and the internet archive hasn't been helpful yet. Once the people making running older games possible stop doing it, it just... becomes impossible, unless you can make those things yourself.
To an extent, yes. The oldest Windows game that I'd still probably want to play legitimately is probably Thief: The Dark Project, from 1998. It was made for DirectX version 6. Naturally, it will just not run on modern systems, Windows or Linux.
There are patches that bring it to DX9. It has an internal frame rate limiter to something weird, 90 fps or something. The weakest machine I have available can push that about at 4K while apparently still in full energy saving mode.
Proton's DX9 emulation is apparently a bit rough, but most of the DX9 games you'd want to emulate are just fine with 'brute force'. There's a couple of problematic games - CS:GO, for instance - where the efficiency matters.
While going for another program, ideally non proprietary, with a native Linux version would be ideal, I would not be surprised if running Photoshop on Linux with wine was a viable option these days. Or will be in a not-too-distant future.
As for games, what the others have said. Unless you're into a specific multiplier game with a kernel level "anticheat", then it should be fine.
In fact, I suspect Photoshop, rather than gaming, is much more likely to be the reason you'd have to dual boot.
In my understanding, still no, especially not the more advanced filters stuff. PS6 (or whatever the last one you could actually buy was) on the other hand is 95+% functional if you can go back. Not an expert, GIMP is fine for my needs, there's even a spin with PS-like menu layout if that's your jam, but happy to be told I'm wrong about new PS.
Adobe shit and AutoCAD stuff are the the last major sticking points these days, Office is in the cloud now. Shame these last two won't let their cash cows be rented in the cloud (instead of subscribed, you know, a long term rental agreement using your own computer) to my knowledge. There's always VMs.
Ah, that's good to know. I wonder why that is. I don't use these programs beyond the odd very simple image manipulation that could be done just as easily in paint, so I have no idea what people want from Photoshop alternative. However, I seem to keep hearing no single open source program does everything from people who are PS power users.
Don't get me started on AutoCAD, and just CAD tools in general... Being more involved on that side, from a dev rather than user perspective, I can't say I think very highly of Autodesk, or the idea of having all these geometry kernels be proprietary, and Autodesk acquiring as many of them as it can. Maths is public, maths research belongs to the public, you can fuck off with gating it.
As for VMs, we are talking about apps that need a relatively good GPU and therefore one would need to do some GPU pass through on their VM to use it properly I believe. Assuming I'm right, that may be more trouble than it's worth compared to a dual boot (also assuming this hasn't gotten much simpler than my somewhat distant memory now)
Modern versions of Photoshop are deeply integrated with another software called Adobe Cloud. As in, you can't even install Photoshop by itself, it needs to be installed and managed via Adobe cloud, which has to constantly be running in the background for Photoshop to work (and it wouldn't surprise me if it's some kernel level BS, knowing Adobe). They are also reliant on other Adobe online services for some tools and services, and not just the generative AI ones.
That's usually what causes a lot of hangups I believe. For example, if you need to connect your Photoshop to your client's Adobe cloud or share files through it, or maybe connect Photoshop to other Adobe products like Indesign or After Effects, that may not work properly. This even applies to pirated versions of Photoshops on windows, where a lot of the patching comes from blocking Adobe's constant interference with the program as it's running, but as a result several tools may end up not working.
As for stuff people want from Photoshop, this is anecdotal from me but I primary use Photoshop to letter things and literally no other program that runs on Linux even comes close to the simplicity and versatility Photoshop gives me for lettering with its type tool. It is just so simple to configure text the way I want to and there are so many ways to modify it. Clip Studio Paint is the second best contender (makes sense since it used to be primarily a comic creation software) but, shocker, it doesn't run on Linux either.
Every open source tool I tried, Gimp and Krita included, is so many miles behind in this department that I thought I had returned to the stone age when I tried using them for this purpose earlier this year. Krita didn't even have a live preview of the text I was writing. It was completely unusable for my more advanced needs.
This is why I just tell people who use Photoshop and Adobe that want to switch to Linux to just accept dual booting. It's realistically the only thing that won't constantly lead to headaches with the software.
I have to use illustrator for work sometimes. I used to dual boot, now I use winboat. It's a bit of a pain to set up initially but it works well once you've done that
I'm still using Windows 11 just from inertia, but I've been putting my kids on Linux Mint and Bazzite depending.
I don't think I can get away from Windows, as a professional .NET developer, but I won't likely have more than the one Windows laptop at this point. My entire home lab and home infra is Linux of one variety or another. If we count VMs, then I overwhelmingly using Debian.
Because you have to use VS Code instead of VS? You can always deploy to a Windows VM if you need to be sure IIS works. Though everything will just run on dotnet and nginx through a reverse proxy if you want to stay within Linux.
For most cases you can use Rider, which has a native Linux version. It doesn't do database projects so if you use MSSQL without an ~~OEM~~ ORM you're gonna want at least VS Code, but other than that it works fine.
Of course if you're a .NET developer in a corporate environment you probably don't have a choice as you're already using a Windows VM through Azure Virtual Desktop just so that your company can chain itself harder to daddy Microsoft.
honestly, if there would be a 100% office compatibility, photoshop on linux, and proper anticheat support, we would have 40% linux usage
I know it isn't an exact solution, but people have created a Photoshop-like UI layout and keybindings for Gimp. That could help, should you choose to go with Gimp as the image editor.
I’m going to drop this here. Both Affinity 2 if you bought it or the Free Affinity 3 works well on Linux.
https://github.com/seapear/AffinityOnLinux
Nice! Do you know if the Mac License works with the Affinity 2 Windows version as well?
Games work better on Linux than you might expect. Check out protondb for specific titles you're thinking of. Most things I've just hit "play" on steam or heroic and they work n
Thanks for the suggestion! I'll definitely check it out.
You might be surprised by how capable linux gaming has gotten. The only thing really missing is AAA FPS type games. That doesn't matter at all to me, but its something to consider. Just about everything else plays right out of the box.
While I don't generally recommend it, NVDIA has streaming options for games on Windows. You can even run this from a browser if you wanted, all within Linux. I would be surprised if you couldn't use this for Photoshop or an alternative existed.
It's just important to keep in mind this isn't your computer, its a subscription to someone else's computer. I just thought I'd mention this because it's not commonly suggested and it's nice to know avaliable options.
You can also just get a separate computer with MacOS for Photoshop and ditch the kernal games or maybe play them on Mac if they're low end, and use Linux for everything else.
Maybe rootkits will be gone soon. 2026 is the year of the Linux desktop.