I gave Asahi Fedora a shot and liked it a lot, but I can’t get Photoshop, Roblox, or a Windows VM with semi-decent graphpics support to run. I went back to macOS but I’m thinking of building a desktop PC and running Windows and RDP on that, then switch back to Asahi.
GIMP is a pretty good replacement for Photoshop. V3 just came out which is awesome.
Roblox is, well, subject to some criticism, but that of course is up to you. You could probably run it via Wine.
Windows VM you might have to configure properly, so deal with that in a thread of its own when you come to it.
Overall, Linux is so superior is so many ways that Windoze just disappears into the background once you learn to use and acclimatise to Linux. On the rare occasion something win is needed, there is Wine, which works 90% of the time.
Gimp doesn’t come close to Photoshop’s feature set still (and might never unfortunately?).
Roblox is, well, subject to some criticism, but that of course is up to you. You could probably run it via Wine.
For Roblox there’s Sober but that doesn’t work on ARM (though perhaps someone could make it run with that FEX emulation), and Roblox via Wine doesn’t work even on x64.
Most Photoshop users only need a small fraction of Photoshop’s feature set. There is a large community developing Gimp extensions. Linux also has command-line image manipulation tools that can replace lengthy mouse-clicking Photoshop sessions.
I have often encountered problems with artifacts created by a Windows user and found I couldn’t get the user to take my report seriously until I demonstrated it on Windows, so some linux users do need a Windows installation, but I’m also seeing a move by creators to macOS.
App support on Linux has been the barrier to wider adoption for a while now. The best work on OS UIs has been in the Linux space for a while now, I would argue. gNome 48 is looking really nice.
Switching from long-used macOS/Windows apps requires a period to retrain muscle memory, to forget existing keyboard shortcuts, learn new ones etc. I’ve always found Gimp too unintuitive and I always give up using it.
I’ve also never managed to get Wine to work properly, at all. And if you do get it working up to a point, it’s not supported by the app developers, so if you run into issues, you’re on your own.
So, in my case, when Asahi Linux achieves support for built-in microphone and touchID, that might seem the time to try again to make Asahi Linux my daily driver. It’ll still mean maintaining licences for all those macOS apps and occasionally booting into it for things when I need. So, not complete independence from macOS.
Another day…another “Gimp is a Photoshop alternative” comment. Sighs. Gimp will work for most people, but it’s not even remotely close to Photoshop. But to answer your question, sometimes alternatives do work. Other times, you just have to resort to Wine or keep Windows on a dual-boot when there really is no alternative that works for you.
My photo editing needs are such that I do everything in gThumb. I haven’t found an app that works better on Linux or Windows.
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