Google funds Photoshop-on-Linux work

Ahh.. now is this a native port or more work with Wine? Big difference and given past efforts more likely the latter.

If you'll ask me, Google isn't funding something that is impossible to achieve.
It will work for sure via Crossover.

Offcourse there are also other options like;

Pixel Image Editor
http://www.kanzelsberger.com/pixel/?page_id=5

or

Lightzone (raw editor)
http://www.lightcrafts.com/products/index.html

You missed my point. What people really want is a NATIVE port of Photoshop. As good as the alternatives may be people want Photoshop period. Google Earth was a prime example where development of the Linux version had more to do with extending Wine than actually porting any code.

Nono, I did get your point. It will offcourse not be a Native port orelse Adobe should give their sourcecode away and that would be very unlikely to happen. Orelse it would take ages before photoshop is being port Natively.
Instead it will be a Crossover project running transparently so it will look like a Native port. Nothing wrong with a transpartent port if it runs just fine. It does not have to render any frames like in 3D Studio Max or Maya or whatever.
If you dissagree with that I would like to hear about it.  

I agree, people will be wanting Photoshop for Art stuff and Pixel Image Editor can't even get close to the quality Photoshop is aiming at. Still it's a nice program to work with when there is no Photoshop within reach.
On the other hand Lightzone is a different story. I photograph a lot and afterwards I'll edit my photo's in Lightzone. Read some reviews about it and see how masterfull this non destructive (pixels) method with superb quality really is.
Some say it's even better than Lightroom (Rawshooter technoligy included) which is Adobe's pearl for photographers and since I know Lightroom, it's a close competition for sure.

Adobe don't have to give their source away at all. They just don't license it under GPL and sell it like the rest of their products. Adobe Photoshop LX Edition  

Actually there was some talk of Adobe actually doing some porting for themselves. Whilst I appreciate this is not Maya you would be surprised how much CPU time some users have with Photoshop when they run batch filters etc on large collections of images. At the end of the day any performance hit is a disadvantage to the marketability of a given OS as the platform of choice.

As for Adobe going GPL - Why not? other companies have used the model and still made money.

True, hope this is recent talk cause half a year ago they didn't want to spend time on porting it themselves.
Never studied batch filters yet. They are not ment for photo's right cause every light/temp/saturation situation is different. If they are for photo's than what do they do that makes the process THAT cpu hungry. Hope my Q6600 can take it.  

I do wonder myself at times, but I do remember reading an article by a guy who generates ~10Gb of new photo stock most days. Images were processed on a fix re-size, adding of watermark, drop in resolution and generation of images at different grades. I'd accept that this is a little more applied than many PS users would get to. In a commercial world time is money as they say... Also some of us are still running good old single core!  

The other issue as I see it is another possible vector for virus / malware. By running Wine or other Windows compatability layers you do open up the possibility, all be it one where it is less likely to cause damage than on a windows box.

I wonder if the wine developers are more concerned with getting programs to run properly or if they are focused on security as well? Do you think that in order to get windows programs running properly that they'd have to even replicate the bugs/bad behavior of windows as well?

Before I didn't really care whether a program was native or not so long as it just runs (and runs well), but now I see that in the long run, ports using WINE actually hurt Linux. I think the WINE people are doing a great job enabling people to run windows programs that neither support nor plan to support linux, but I cringe when i see groups like Google do what they did with picasa (where it was just a port through WINE). Hopefully people will eventually make more native ports of programs for linux.

-Zorak

I prefer native ports myself, except for one program I run, I actually the windows version, as the GUI is much nicer and actually works... This program is Eagle PCB.

Zorak,

Believe me that time will come if Microsoft keeps on doing what they are doing. More and more people are into Linux these days and even certain firms like Asus (eee pc) start to deliver their products with Linux instead of Windows.
The only problem atm is that Microsoft made a deal with Suse and they are now abusing this deal.
Suse thought that Microsoft would finally give in to open source but that's far from happening.
Suse thought that Microsoft would not be able to sue big Suse clients when it comes to Patent rights.
Instead Microsoft tries to win Suse for themselves by keeping them as friends.
A great example is Silverlight, Microsoft promised a great partership with Linux but instead they've released Moonlight.
Moonlight should be the new replacement for Silverlight but it will be maintained by Microsoft. This way Microsoft can keep the source code for themselves and turn the open source into closed source so Linux people can't recompile it anymore.
How nasty can we get?