Questions about KDE in the creative industry

[Benson Muite]

Hi,

On Sun, Aug 17, 2025, at 4:44 PM, aronkvh wrote:
> Hi,
>
> The design/"creative" industry is an area where Linux/KDE has pretty low 
> adoption, with the exception of large vfx studios, many of whom have 
> been running on Linux for 20+ years.
>
> I have some vague understanding of the reasons for this:
> Big studios use Linux because:
>
>   * their internal tools and pipelines were often already Unix-based
>   * they have custom tools to manage workstations
>   * A stable enterprise platform, RHEL 7 ran KDE 4
>
> These advantages don't scale down to studios in other industries or 
> small teams:
>
>   * they don't benefit much from developing custom management tools,
>     since they have a small number of PCs
>   * commercial design software doesn't support Linux (Creative Cloud,
>     Affinity, Cavalry, Cinema4D, etc. and even open-source ones like TiXL)
>
> My questions:
>
>   * What did I miss or didn't get right? What else made multiple VFX
>     studios choose KDE back in the day?

Small teams can benefit, though they typically need support if someone
on the team does not have an interest in programming.  Custom workflows
can help make them much more efficient.  There are many desktops, so KDE
is one choice among others today.  Tools such as Krita, Gimp, Blender, Inkscape
are helpful.  There are many other niche workflows, and many tools - but most
creatives will want a nice scripting language (Lua, Python, Scheme, Ruby etc),
very few will want or need to get into C++ or GPU programming.


>   * I haven't seen a new company move to KDE anymore for a long time.
>     Did something else other than RHEL dropping Plasma happen?
>   * What do you think the image of KDE or Linux plays in this? I'm
>     thinking about agencies using Macs because that's the "right way".
>     What can we say to be seen as more as an alternative dreading Adobe?

Information on Macs and Adobe is easier to find. Job advertisements requiring
knowledge of a specific package are also quite common - recruiters/management
may have a difficult time evaluating whether a FOSS tool can be used instead and
even if so, transitioning a whole team to another tool is quite a time investment.
Proprietary file formats also make transitioning between different tools challenging.
If the end customer cares not only about the final product, but also having the design
files, then FOSS tools are much more appealing.

>   * What can KDE do to scale down the advantages from big enterprises to
>     smaller fleets?

Probably a question of focus. KDE has many apps. Ubuntu has design studio:
https://ubuntustudio.org
Fedora has a design suite:
https://fedoraproject.org/labs/design-suite

Most creatives however will focus on a small set of applications which they will
need to work reliably.  The needs will vary, someone doing 3D rendering may
need a high end GPU, digital still art maybe better on a 2 in 1 or need a
drawing tablet, music production requires low latency hardware, others maybe
fine on a 10 year old desktop provided it can still connect to a high quality printer.

>   * Did apps like Houdini or Nuke work already on Linux, or did studios
>     moving to RHEL require their developers to make them cross-platform?
>
> I'd really appreciate ideas or experiences from all the people who are 
> more knowledgeable than me and have experience with 
> studios/pipelines/making design software.
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Áron