Proprietary Software on Linux

2018 has been a crazy year for Linux. Thanks to the huge efforts of Valve and the open-source community, Linux has been getting a lot of attention lately. Windows gamers who were once scared of giving away their favorite AAA game titles can now enjoy gaming on Linux without resorting to dual-booting or PCI-passthrough; and Linux users who were already enjoying Feral's excellent ports and numerous Indie games, can now enjoy the rest of the Steam library using DXVK.

On the other hand, artists still complain about Linux's lack of creative software. For most people, moving to Linux means saying goodbye to the Adobe products, professional compositing and audio software, plugins, VSTs, etc… And while there are some remarkable open-source and multi-platform programs out there (Blender for example is slowly becoming the next industry standard), professionals and companies still need "commercial-quality" products and solutions that can satisfy all their needs.

But what people in general don't seem to realize is that Linux is actually getting to the same level of support as Windows, or at least to the same level of compatibility. Native Linux versions of award-winning professional products do exist, and the deeper you dig into the internet, the more commercial software you can find for this open platform. What's more surprising is that sometimes you'll even find software released for both Windows and Linux, and not for MacOS! (like in the case of Motionbuilder or Softimage).

As a 3D animator/designer student who wants to work on the cinema industry, I can't tell you how satisfying my experience with Linux was. For a couple of years now I've been able to study and work on my personal laptop using industry-standard proprietary software on my Linux system, next to some other Windows students, and without any issues whatsoever. In fact some of my teachers grabbed my laptop to teach me some tricks about 3D rendering, and because I had the KDE taskbar hidden, they didn't even notice that the software was running on a different operative system. In conclusion, the whole work experience was pretty much identical to Windows.

I want to raise awareness of this fact, because for a lot of artists, Windows and MacOS are the only serious platforms to work with. They see Linux as a hobby project, and funnily enough, big studios like Pixar, Dreamworks, Naughty Dog and even the producers that work with James Cameron have been using Linux software and servers for decades to create and render their big budget projects (in fact, it is thanks to these guys that nowadays we're able to buy high class software like Maya or Mudbox for Linux, and with full official support from the developers).

That's why I'd like to share a list of proprietary software that I was able to test and use for my school assignments; and before you ask… yes, everything does run and feel smoother in Linux using native software, sometimes even using Wine. Programs start and load libraries twice as fast, windows and menus feel more responsive and performance seems to be better overall, specially on lower-end PCs. Furthermore, thanks to the numerous improvements done in Wine Staging and the GPGPU computing libraries, advanced software like Adobe Premiere is now able to use the GPU to render high definition video in real-time with near native performance (if you have the right hardware). Other software like Mocha Pro runs on Wine just as fast as the native Linux version, even OpenCL turned on, which is almost unbelievable.

3D Animation/Design/Sculpting/Texturing

• Autodesk Maya 2018 [with full OpenCL support] (Arnold Renderer, FumeFX, Iray, OctaneRender, Substance plugin, Vray… they all have their respective linux versions)
• Autodesk Motionbuilder 2018 (can't export mov preview videos with the h264 codec)
• Autodesk Mudbox 2018 (needs a complete DE like KDE or Gnome, otherwise it crashes before launch)
• Substance Designer 2018 [with full CUDA support]
• Substance Painter 2018 [with full CUDA support]
• ZBrush 2018 (Wine) –> winetricks -q corefonts mfc42 vcrun6 vcrun2008 vcrun2010 vcrun2013 comctl3 (needs to be run inside a virtual desktop, otherwise it takes twice as long to start)

Audio Editing/Workstation

• REAPER 5 * FL Studio 20 (Wine) [compatible with the native ASIO audio driver]
• Sony Soundforge 12 (Wine)

Digital Compositing

• Adobe After Effects CC 2014 (Wine) [with full CUDA support] –> winetricks -q vcrun2012 quicktime72; needs Adobe Application Manager to work
• Blackmagic Fusion [with full OpenCL support]
• Foundry Nuke 11 [with full OpenCL/CUDA support]
• Mocha Pro 2019 [with full OpenCL support]

Drawing & Photo/Vector Processing, Editing

• Adobe Illustrator CC 2018 (Wine) [with full GPGPU support]
• Adobe Photoshop CC 2018 (Wine) [with full GPGPU support]
• Autodesk Sketchbook Pro 8 (Wine)
• TVPaint Animation 11 Pro

Video Editors

• Adobe Premiere CC 2014 (Wine) [with full CUDA support] –> winetricks -q vcrun2012 quicktime72; needs to install Adobe Application Manager separately (I also tested CC 2019 but it crashes right after it detects the GPU)
• DaVinci Resolve 15 (with full OpenCL/CUDA support and useful plugins like ReelSmart Motion Blur)
• Lightworks 14

All of these programs except for Adobe's, FL Studio, Sketchbook Pro and Soundforge run natively on Linux without any special tweaks required. I've been using Maya, Premiere and TVPaint at the same time for my 3D animations, and if I'm honest, after a few days of work I almost forgot Premiere was running under a compatibility layer.

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