Beyond Adobe's pricey products: my graphic designer’s toolbox on Linux

I've spent years polishing my craft with Adobe’s heavyweight suite, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Premiere mainly, on macOS, treating each launch like a ritual. But the closed nature of macOS and Apple hardware eventually felt more like a cage than a canvas, so a few years back I made the jump to Fedora, Linux. The move forced me to say goodbye to Adobe, which stubbornly refuses to run on anything other than Windows or macOS, and start hunting for open‑source or cross‑platform replacements that could keep my workflow humming without breaking the bank.

For vector work, Inkscape has become my new trusty sidekick. It handles complex illustrations with aplomb, though it still lacks native CMYK support, a minor inconvenience when I need print‑ready files. In those cases, I either swing by an online converter or hand the job off to Scribus, which, despite its ~~nostalgic~~ outdated UI, does a solid job converting PDFs to a proper CMYK color profile. Scribus itself is a respectable InDesign alternative, but I rarely reach for it now that desktop publishing isn’t a daily chore. On the commercial front, I dabble with Affinity (previously Affinity Designer, Photo, Publisher). After Canva’s acquisition, the suite was turned into a free all-in-one creative product, yet it remains officially bound to macOS and Windows. Fortunately, a few manual steps let you run it on Linux, and Canva has also hinted at a native Linux version in the pipeline, good news for anyone who’s been petitioning for it.

Web design lives comfortably in the cloud. Figma is my primary tool, with Penpot as a handy open‑source backup; both offer (unofficial) desktop wrappers (Figma one; Penpot one) that feel just as snappy on Linux as they do on any other OS. When it comes to raster images, I’ve tried GIMP countless times, but its workflow never clicked for me. Instead, I turn to Photopea, a browser‑based editor that opens Photoshop PSD files without a hiccup, perfect for the occasional photo retouch that doesn’t merit a full‑blown desktop app. Video editing, once a Final Cut Pro affair on macOS, now lands in the capable hands of Kdenlive and DaVinci Resolve. Both deliver professional‑grade tools without demanding a subscription, and they run smoothly on my Linux workstation.

All told, my toolbox is a patchwork of community‑driven projects and savvy web services. And many other software exist, such as Krita for digital painting, Blender for 3D, Boxy SVG for quick SVG edits, and a handful of other utilities that pop up when a client throws a curveball. It’s a reminder that creativity doesn’t have to be shackled to pricey, platform‑locked software. With a bit of experimentation, Linux offers a surprisingly rich ecosystem for graphic and web designers alike.