It's an industry/education barrier more than anything else. Photoshop has been the standard for years because it generally works quite well and is supported on the two major desktop operating systems.

> assume Photoshop will never happen on Linux

Probably not, no money in it for Adobe. I've always said I'd happily pay for a commercial Linux OS developed by Adobe that ran Creative Suite.

> it may even already exist

It doesn't.

> the developers behind OS alternatives will never know what functionality you require if all the details you give are "Photoshop"

No offence but you're kind of talking about Photoshop like it's MS Paint. It's a ubiquitous, massively bloated, complicated piece of software (10 million LOC, roughly the same as the Linux kernel?) that can take years to master.

Even if there was a collection of Linux-compatible software that was just as effective as PS and LR, professionals don't necessarily have the time available to learn those tools.

As an engineer part of your skill is trying to translate what people are saying into something meaningful

Windows 10 with forced updates is too big if a reliability risk, especially when we're under deadline. Even if we could accept the spyware.

MBP could work, but it's very expensive, and the 16GB limit would be painful.

Mac Pro is expensive and somewhat outdated, and also is not portable.

Windows as a guest on Linux may work for us, but I'm still unclear on how that will impact color calibration / transforms.

I wish Adobe would just offer CS for Linux. Even at twice the price it would be our best option.

A workflow of, for example, Rawtherapee + GIMP would be more than enough for basic to upper intermediate tasks to replace Lightroom with. ( No, I'm not talking bs, my wife is actually using this for work; just like Mixxx is usable for professional DJing. ) There is also digiKam, which is rather impressive; it is lacking a few features, yet, but not as many as you'd think.

PS & Lightroom is everywhere, that is what's tought in schools; it's the MS Office of photo & design, and it shouldn't be.

There are, of course, situations, when the all-in-one PS is needed, but it's really, really rare.

Give digiKam and GIMP a go, but give them weeks, not minutes. Most of those who run away are only literally trying them for hours at max while these are utterly different tools.

Adobe won't make a Photoshop port, unless it is 100% obvious to them, that they are leaving more money on the table by not porting it than is the cost of porting and support.

Which may suck for you, if your business or job requires Photoshop right now. You aren't going to switch to Linux then, because you will get Photoshop and whatever OS it requires in the state it is today - which decreases the motivation for Adobe from previous paragraph.

And certainly no option for a business, but rarely for your average Joe, either. It is often hit and miss.

Like I have said countless times, a lot of users are bound to using either Windows or Mac because of a few applications. There is Microsoft Office (cloud versions are not good enough). Visual Studio. Adobe products. Avid. Ableton. Apple’s own software (Logic, Final Cut).

Where there even is alternatives, they are just not good enough.

Where Linux has gotten some support, is from the VFX industry, especially from Autodesk. You can use Maya and Nuke and Linux. Actually, almost all VFX companies use Linux in their shop.

Despite saying this, this is a fairly good option and I applaud Wine for its existence and the monumental undertaking they undertook (poor grammar, sorry).