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How to use Photoshop in a VM on Ubuntu
- kaolinite 14y agoIs Photoshop really 100% stable on Windows or OS X? Still, very nice guide.
- dmix 14y agoI haven't had stability issues with Photoshop on OSX in the last 3 years.
- zheng 14y agoI don't use it a ton, but it has literally never crashed in ~2 years of use on Win7x64
- hnriot 14y agoOn the Mac you can run it constantly and it won't ever crash. It's one of the most amazingly reliable pieces of software out there.
- davidcollantes 14y agoSee: http://log.maniacalrage.net/tagged/cscr http://log.maniacalrage.net/tagged/cscr It is not "one of the most amazingly reliable pieces of software out there" by any stretch of the imagination.
- kwanbis 14y agoI thought he was going to tell how to use WINE or something to do it. Installing VirtualBox+Windows is very obvious.
- davidcollantes 14y agoIt is mainly "How to use VirtualBox on Ubuntu to run Windows, then install Photoshop and use it." I mean, come on!
- pdubs 14y agoIt does provide detailed steps for a solution to a problem. I'm sure many people will appreciate that.
- solox3 14y agoMany people... on Hacker News or eHow?
- phaus 14y agoI've met more than a couple of programmers who are otherwise so computer illiterate that you pretty much have to walk them over and sit them down in front of a text editor. Most people around here seem to have somewhat decent system-admin skills, but there's also lots of students and even professionals who just haven't messed around with virtualization very much. I'm pretty good at using VMWare to set up Linux systems in Windows, but I haven't tried the opposite yet. Sure, I could probably figure it out, but it's nice to have this guide to fall back on if something goes wrong.
- ekianjo 14y ago> I've met more than a couple of programmers who are otherwise so computer illiterate I have not witnessed this myself but I have heard countless stories from friends/colleagues in the same vein - there seems to be indeed a big gap between one's coding abilities and the overall computing knowledge.
- mikegioia 14y agoI've been doing it this way for over a year and it's been nearly perfect. It looks and feels like a native app like he says in the article. However, I've noticed issues with USB peripherals / Virtualbox that make Photoshop nearly impossible to use with a tablet for me.
- carpo 14y agoI think turning off mouse integration in virtualbox helps with the tablet issues. I use virtual box for Photoshop and light wave 3d, and the mouse integration feature always upset how the program read the cursors coordinates. You just have to remember to use the keyboard shortcut to turn it on again before trying to move your mouse back to a host program.
- mikegirouard 14y agoThis is a great guide. I've invested heavily in MacOS, so I'll probably need to figure out an alternate approach. One thing struck me as odd: Why make a `photoshop` alias if you're going to have the shell script in `$HOME/bin`?
- ykl 14y agoWell, on OSX, there's a much easier approach: just.... run the native version of Photoshop.
- mikegirouard 14y agoRight... The same could be said for this article too, but you missed the point. I'd like to run Photoshop on my linux workstation but I don't have Windows.
- halvsjur 14y agoBecause $HOME/bin is in the path? I always put stuff in $HOME/bin, $HOME/opt, $HOME/etc, etc. if its something that would work equally well mounted somewhere else. In this case it would just require a Linux with VirtualBox installed.
- xtreme 14y agoThis should rather be titled "How to make an application running in a vm look native on Ubuntu". The "seamless mode" was meant for just that.
- QuantumGuy 14y agoCare to do one for Arch Linux? I am currently learning Arch so I can make the switch and would really love it if you did an article on the subject. Thank you for your work by the way.
- Cieplak 14y agosudo pacman -S virtualbox See https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/VirtualBox https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/VirtualBox
- muellerwolfram 14y agothe steps for arch would be almost identical. the desktop entry specification is a standard that is used by arch as well: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Desktop_Entries https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Desktop_Entries how much it integrates depends on what desktop environment you are using. gnome and kde are using the same desktop files as far as I know. So it should work. Haven't tested it though. You could also use unity with arch: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Unity https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Unity
- gmq 14y agoThe main problem with using a VM is that you won't be able to open PSD files directly from your file browser. Having to switch to Photoshop and browse for the file would end up being a huge time sink in the long term.
- acqq 14y agoDid you actually read the article? It seems he solved that too.
- gmq 14y agoI'm talking about a native 'Click to open' function. The article only mentions sharing a folder to make it visible from the VM.
- acqq 14y agoHe implemented click to open too. He states that goal at the begining: "should be searchable and launchable from Ubuntu dash." If you read the rest you'll discover how he implemented that.
- muellerwolfram 14y agogmq is probably talking about opening psd files in your Ubuntu file browser by right clicking them and selecting "open with Photoshop". That's not possible with the method i'm describing in the article. But it's something that's bugging me too and I'm working on a solution. I haven't quite figured it out yet though.
- jpswade 14y agoMight as well just VirtualBox step and just install Windows instead of Ubuntu...
- Raydric 14y agoI was doing something similar but end it up ditching the whole thing since I'm running CS6 on Wine without any problems (except a buggy lasso tool): https://gist.github.com/4610671 https://gist.github.com/4610671 It checks for the VM state and waits the system to be ready, so you can turn off the vm if you want. Feel free to adapt to your needs.
- StavrosK 14y agoI would be more interested in learning how you used CS6 on Wine!
- Raydric 14y agoWindows XP, atmlib, comctl32, gdiplus (native), ie6, msls31, msxml3 (native), msxml6, pngfilt, vcrun2005, vcrun2008, vcrun2010, inseng (native) When you're installing it will say it's not working...but check the HDD light because it's actually installing files so when it stops blinking your installation is ready.
- StavrosK 14y agoOh wow, that's a lot of dependencies. I'll give it a shot, thanks!
- doublerebel 14y agoDo you have tablet pressure in CS6? Photoshop has run under Wine for years, although tablet pressure hasn't worked since CS2 AFAIK.
- Raydric 14y agoI don't own a drawing tablet, sorry. And yeah I know: http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=17 http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application...
- tambourine_man 14y agoWhat about graphic card support? Photoshop uses it extensively and VirtualBox support was really poor last timeI checked.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- tsahyt 14y agoThe requirement of 100% stable is somewhat irritating. As far as I know Photoshop isn't even 100% stable under Windows.
- contingencies 14y agoOn the 100% meme, VirtualBox is apparently regarded as 'tainted crap' by kernel developers, re: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OTk5Mw http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OTk5M...
- tsahyt 14y agoPersonally I'm a big fan of KVM. However it has flaws too, unfortunately.
- jiggy2011 14y agoPhotoshop in a VM? is that not a horribly laggy experience? I have a Core2 Quad Q6600 based computer and when I have run Windows inside a VM it is too laggy to use as a serious desktop beyond using a few basic apps. Doing 1080p video is choppy too. Is there something about newer CPUs such as i7 that makes virtualisation hugely faster and more responsive?
- bstar77 14y agoI don't think Photoshop would be too laggy with modern hardware. I have some lag issues playing modern 3d games, but they seem to be related to game events that access the hard drive. I'm guessing this is because accessing compressed drives have some overhead. With that said, I'd think the startup time would be horrendous unless he's just suspending the vm. The side effect of that is lots more HD storage requirements. So to make this as lag-free as possible, you would need to turn off hd compression, use suspend to avoid the windows bootup time and defrag like you would normally do in windows. To answer your question, I believe modern Intel processors have virtualization optimizations built in.
- martinced 14y ago"Is there something about newer CPUs such as i7 that makes virtualisation hugely faster and more responsive?" Well you probably could set the CPU affinity of every single application that is not the VM to one core and set the CPU affinity of the VM to the three other cores. A tiny script doing that should be fairly easy. Maybe someone who knows VM better than me could tell if it would work or not? Now my experience with VMs do not match yours: I've been running Windows just fine inside VM providing it has enough RAM (but RAM is basically given these days) and provided the special drivers were installed to make the UI fast. Also, I've read professional photographer use Octocore Macs with 20 GB of RAM and create gigantic ramdisk for Photoshop and saying that it is incredibly much faster than letting the OS be "smart" about what/when to page to disk.
- hcal 14y agoI'd check your RAM settings first. A faster processor helps, but to virtualize an OS properly you need a good chunk of RAM to make both Host and Guest feel snappy. Four gigs works well for me without a VM running, but is a little laggy once a virtual OS is spun up. With my typical work load and 8 gigs of memory properly allocated between the host and guest OSes I rarely notice the VM running in the background.
- fox91 14y agoIt's not "How to use Photoshop in Ubuntu", it's "How to use Photoshop in a VM"
- CKKim 14y agoThanks, muellerwolfram. This guide is excellent and dear to me as someone once stuck in the exact same position described in the opening paragraph. Indeed, flitting between operating systems was so natural that even now I instinctively want to take issue with your "dual boot sucks" but if I could use one OS for everything (and I do mean "everything", other OS emulation included) then I would, so quite simply: you are right. For what it's worth, I chose a different route in solving my Photoshop dependence: I forced myself to learn alternatives. But I don't mean just that I learned GIMP (which I recommend, though completely sympathise with the "Regarding GIMP" section); I mean that I made it my goal to be someone who can take new software and ascertain how to do with it what I already know how to do in my "native" habitat, even if the method is convoluted or requires learning a new paradigm. This goes back to days of using elementary school computers with nothing more than MSPaint and enjoying that hit of satisfaction from performing a manual "crop": make a selection, copy it, minimise the canvas to a handful of pixels, ctrl+V, MSPaint automatically resizes the canvas to the pasted selection, BLAM it's a crop! (We've all been young, when figuring these things out for oneself is the next best thing to being a Jedi - and that said, if anyone has their own method for cropping in 2000-era MSPaint I'd love to hear it). Likewise in the "new paradigms" category, learning about Turing machines and formal data structures changed everything for me as a BASIC-minded programmer. Since adopting this generalised view I have found it's helpful as a core principle: I can't always count on the environments I know, so learning to adapt is crucial. This applies to programming, competitions, and even romantic partners. In the infinite indulgence of our field to give everything a "cool" name, I refer to this as the "Peter Petrelli" skill. Quite apart from arguing against using Photoshop in Ubuntu, it returns to your piece. Sometimes short of coding something up from scratch there really is only one program that does what we require to solve a specific problem, and sometimes the operating system is fixed. Knowing how to solve the equation for these variables is part of being an adaptable and valuable agent. Great article.
- timdorr 14y agoIs anyone running the opposite setup? That is, Windows as the primary OS and Linux in a VM. I'm looking to upgrade my laptop soon and don't want to pay Apple's high prices, so I'm looking at 1080p Windows laptops. I'm considering Windows as the base OS and a Linux VM for development stuff. I do web development, including design work, so I would need the ability to run Photoshop and other tools. But for running my ruby stuff (Rails, Spork, etc), I think a Linux VM would be ideal. Summed up: How do others live in the Rails dev world when not using Mac OS?
- sethhochberg 14y agoI did exactly this for many months, but then realized that I was spending 90% of my time in the VM and it just made more sense to run the linux install native. My laptop is my development machine, so I usually have my desktop (Windows, since it doubles as a gaming rig) in reach if I need Windows for Photoshop or Visual Studio or something else briefly and don't feel like firing up a VM.
- RegEx 14y agoI don't see any advantage to running the install native. I've actually had more issues in native installs than through VMs. As a side note, if anyone is interested in running an Ubuntu desktop VM, I highly recommend Lubuntu. It's extremely lightweight and fast, it's perfect for VMs.
- phaus 14y agoHow do you configure your VM once you install it? I seem to have a lot of performance issues unless I get a pre-configured VMWare image. The only image I've ever gotten to run as fast as a native install is the Official Backtrack VMware .iso. I've installed several distributions, including Lubuntu, along with the VMware tools, but I always get really poor performance when I try to set up my own VMs.
- RegEx 14y ago2 processor cores and 2G of memory is all mine needs to perform well. Perhaps my level of "fast enough" is much slower than yours, but my VM doesn't feel any slower than the host.
- boonaru 14y agoIf you don't mind using Photoshop CS2, you can get it from here for free. http://www.techspot.com/downloads/3689-adobe-photoshop-cs2.html http://www.techspot.com/downloads/3689-adobe-photoshop-cs2.h... CS2 runs perfectly with Wine (as far as I've seen).