The “go to a website, download a binary, install it, and it runs” model has significant security issues.
The security issues are twofold. One is that you could easily be tricked into installing malware. Two is that you will never be able to keep up with security updates, leaving yourself vulnerable to being compromised by flaws in network applications.
Making that model of software distribution difficult is a feature, not a bug.
I fully understand that. And yet until you can convince Debian to include a copy of Adobe Photoshop in their repository you will cut off a significant amount of desktop users. How do you propose to solve that problem?
(Yes of course the solution is to fund Gimp until it’s better than Photoshop by so much that the industry switches. It was the solution 20 years ago too. Adobe has run away with this market. Photoshop is but one of many applications desktop users need.)
Most computer users do not use photoshop. For those that do, there are options. One is to use Krita. Another would be to use Wine to run the Windows version of Photoshop:
So I am friends with a bunch of photographers. Some are proponents of open source. Others don’t care. But universally they would rather have a thing that just works and feels right than mess with Wine. You can do almost anything. When your paycheck depends on your software working your patience is likely to be shorter.
I say this as a person who is a huge fan of Linux/Unix on the desktop. I wish I still was able to run it as my daily workhorse like I did for a decade and a half (and that was before the distros actually got good at this). You can make it work. But an average user isn’t interested because there are only downsides and little benefit.
It sounds like you're violently agreeing with the parent.
I worked for an open source company for over a decade. But, although things improved over time, within about a week of joining I went out and bought a MacBook to use (for the first time) because it was more politically acceptable than Windows but I didn't want to deal with either a locked-down corporate Linux distro or an unsupported free Linux.
My neighbor is a photographer. He uses photoshop on MacOS. It works for him. Until Adobe ports Photoshop to Linux, the “must have Photoshop with no issues whatsoever” demographic is better served by MacOS.
Yeah. I was hired to do a job and didn't want something that would really piss people off (Windows). But Macs were increasingly acceptable and that seemed a comfortable middle ground at the time. (And became increasingly so over time and I really grew to like a lot.)
> And yet until you can convince Debian to include a copy of Adobe Photoshop in their repository you will cut off a significant amount of desktop users.
Shouldn't you try to convice Adobe instead? AFAIK, they're already using their bespoke UI and if Sublime can do it, Adobe can sure deploy Photoshop on Linux even if they only want to bless Ubuntu.
The security issues are twofold. One is that you could easily be tricked into installing malware. Two is that you will never be able to keep up with security updates, leaving yourself vulnerable to being compromised by flaws in network applications.
Making that model of software distribution difficult is a feature, not a bug.