porting software

[rdsii64]

is it possible to take a program such as photo shop and port it to run on linux. as you can tell I am a linux newbe.
thanx
Ron

[voidmain]

Sure, if you have the source code, which only Adobe does. Adobe for a period did have their apps ported to Linux.  They stopped though for lack of sales apparently. The best you could hope for now is to run them under Wine. Don't know if Adobe products run well under Wine or not as I use alternative native Linux apps.

[Calum]

well if they did once, then won't those versions still be floating around somewhere? even if adobe themselves have stopped distributing them?

i reckon that enough water under the bridge will turn adobe and macromedia around. You can get adobe acrobat reader for linux (though why you would need it is beyond me) so it's a start.
i signed a petition the other day somebody was running to get macromedia to port their macromedia office stuff to linux, i reckon it'll be a while, but the only reason they don't do it already is because they think nobody'll buy the stuff, after they put all the effort into porting it.
Stand up and be counted and it's only a matter of time.
(can't remember the URL for that petition, but it's easily found using Google)

[gnomez]

Why doesn't Adobe get some volunteer Linux enthusiasts to port all their apps to Linux?  It would cost Adobe nothing, unless they want to be exclusive with only one UNIX variant, Mac OS X.

Imagine what a great stable platform Linux would make for those types of programs.. A little more work on the GUI and who the hell would need an intel port of Mac OS anyway?

[ April 04, 2002: Message edited by: Garden GNOME ]

[Calum]

so who ported photoshop to OSX anyway?
adobe i presume? it didn't take them long to move from MacOS to OSX did it? wouldn't it be easy to port to linux since it's now running on a unix thing anyway?
maybe there's some MacOS specific stuff they can't be bothered to sort out for linux, you know how MacOS programs still run in OSX, that sort of thing,
Or maybe they're frightened of open source. Maybe they believe M$' bullshit about open source being constrictive, and maybe they think all the free software people are all warez fanatics, and won't pay for the stuff.
Maybe people won't pay for photoshop when the gimp is free, but i reckon enough people prefer photoshop to the gimp to make it worth adobe's while.

[gnomez]

Besides you can run GIMP on both Windows and Mac OS X, so that reason doesn't hold any water.  It is true that MS likes to spread huge lies to make people think that if they write any software for Linux they have to hand over the code to the GPL hordes or something.. geeze.

[psyjax]

As far as I know PS was allways built with Mac hardware in mind. Their software is optimized for MacOS and meny of their technologys (PDF, true type, etc.) are incorporated in the Mac much better than any other computer. Apple and Adobe have allways had a sort of symbiotic relationship making the two almost sinonymous.

The porting of PS and their other software to the PC was surely just to tap in to the cash that market offerd. If you ever use PS on the PC then try it's mac counterpart you will see what I mean, don't trust numbers or any other hype, running it on a Mac especially PS7 on OS X, is quite impressive.

But as far as linux, I think it's just the market. It's hard for a comercial computer company to see a nich market full of rebel computer nerds and want to develop for it. I'm not saying this is good, infact I think it sux, because attracting big companys is what Linux is going to have to do in order to grow.

Maybe pettitioning Adobe would convince them to release a port.