There don’t seem to be any Photoshop specific topics that aren’t over a year old. So I’ll ask for some newbie advice on best VM solution for stable use of Photoshop (in particular I need the video editing tools and power)
-What’s the consensus on PlayOnLinux? In general, are most VM’s pretty good, or are there any that work especially well with OpenSuse? GUI windows preferred over command line (as I’m a newb and won’t have any use for VM other than Photoshop)…
-I bought an install disk for Win 10, but my impression is I won’t have a use for it.
-I’m also paying Adobe $10/m for Photoshop (without currently using it). Will I have a use for this subscription?
i’m not that familiar with PlayonLinux, but skimming a few titles in the Documentation suggests that it’s a WINE implementation with the twist of deploying on virtual drives instead of the bare file system. If this is the case, then PlayonLinux is not virtualization. You shouldn’t experience a hardware penalty, but know that a WINE implementation doesn’t isolate your Windows from your Linux so if something goes wrong, it might affect more than just your Windows part.
I don’t know much about PlayonLinux, but if you’re insterested in installing WINE, it looks like the SDB for Wine was updated recently to include the repository for installing on 42.2
WINE is not virtualization, but if you decide to use any (eg Virtualbox, VMware, KVM, Xen, etc)
When you use any virtualization technology that uses hardware CPU extensions, there is approx. a 2.5% performance penalty.
What that generally means is that if your machine is extremely powerful, you’ll probably not notice the difference, but if your machine is lacking to begin with, then as your application pushes past your hardware limitations, you’ll see latencies and possible freezing sooner and more seriously.
So,
You should consider what kind of Photoshop projects you’ll be working on… If they’re 3D live motion, then that’ll put a heavy load on your system, but if you’re creating still images then you’ll have less of an issue.
If you can install a second GPU in your system, you might also consider GPU pass-through although that’s on on the bleeding edge of virtualization technology and is constantly evolving (although is far more viable today than a year ago).
As for licensing, ordinarily companies require and apply licensing in virtual machines the same as if installed on bare metal, but if you have any doubts you should contact the application vendor.
I think tsu2 has given you already a lot of information.
I was only wondering about your observation of not finding something about Photoshop that isn’t over a year old. Did you find older ones? As far as I can remember I have never seen one.
Linux users tend to use GIMP. The consequence of this being that not many people here have much Photoshop experience. I can of course understand that GIMP does not fulfill your requirements, but I would then either run it on a Windows in a VM, or maybe even direct on Windows on bare metal (using the Windows system for nothing else of course).
On Thu, 18 May 2017 01:26:01 +0000, dcnblues wrote:
> -What’s the consensus on PlayOnLinux? In general, are most VM’s pretty
> good, or are there any that work especially well with OpenSuse? GUI
> windows preferred over command line (as I’m a newb and won’t have any
> use for VM other than Photoshop)…
PlayOnLinux is a WINE frontend, which isn’t a VM solution - it’s an API
emulation solution.
If you want a full Windows environment in a VM, your easiest VM solution
is probably VirtualBox. You’ll need a Windows license in order to run it
there.
> -I bought an install disk for Win 10, but my impression is I won’t have
> a use for it.
Well, if you’re running a VM, you will need a Windows license.
> -I’m also paying Adobe $10/m for Photoshop (without currently using it).
> Will I have a use for this subscription?
Again, I know little about this. If I need photoshop video, will that require a full windows environment? As I said, I have the licensed install disk, and am paying subscription, but would like the setup that will do the job with the least use of system resources. So I guess now I need more info on whether I need VM or API. Thank you for the response…
On Thu, 25 May 2017 04:56:02 +0000, dcnblues wrote:
> hendersj;2823382 Wrote:
>> On Thu, 18 May 2017 01:26:01 +0000, wrote:
>>
>> PlayOnLinux is a WINE frontend, which isn’t a VM solution - it’s an API
>> emulation solution.
>>
>> If you want a full Windows environment in a VM, your easiest VM
>> solution is probably VirtualBox. You’ll need a Windows license in
>> order to run it there.
>>
>> Jim –
>> Jim Henderson openSUSE Forums Administrator Forum Use Terms &
>> Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C
>
> Again, I know little about this. If I need photoshop video, will that
> require a full windows environment? As I said, I have the licensed
> install disk, and am paying subscription, but would like the setup that
> will do the job with the least use of system resources. So I guess now I
> need more info on whether I need VM or API. Thank you for the
> response…
You can check winehq.com to see what the compatibility is for the version
you’re running. If the compatibility is good, then you can use WINE. If
it isn’t, a full Windows VM probably will make more sense.
If PlayonLinux supports your version of Photoshop, then a generic Wine install will work, too.
People will decide on either based on their own personal requirements.
As I described in my prior post, from a performance perspective, there is a very slight difference. Will it make a difference? Maybe, maybe not. It all depends on exactly what you will be doing. I’ve personally only used Photoshop on static graphics, no video. I’ve compiled plenty of video in virtual machines using other software, but they’ve generally been camera type video, not animation which would be a far heavier load. Generally speaking, if what you want to do requires DirectX, then you will want to use WINE 2.0(apparently this is a <very> new feature since approx Dec 2016 so YMMV) or virtualization will require a GPU passthrough.
One of the reasons why I generally prefer <not> to use WINE is that installing and running things in WINE involves significant modifications to the Linux system, changes I don’t know should something go wrong might be recoverable. This was possibly more of a problem long ago compared to today.
When you use virtualization instead, there are some generic modifications made to your Linux system to support virtualization, but the Windows OS and the application running on Windows is “genuine” and isolated. That means
If something goes wrong, it’s completely self-contained in the virtual machine which can be discarded without affecting your base Linux
You can make multiple copies or versions of your virtual machine
Windows is exactly as MS wrote the code. There is no reverse engineering, there are no compatibility issues. If something will run on Windows somewhere, then it will run in the virtual machine running Windows.
So, if performance is not an issue, then I’ll always opt for Windows in a virtual machine instead of running WINE. But, as I mentioned if you require DirectX support then that may be a big reason to try WINE instead.
But, that’s just me.