“[Google] has sponsored developers from Codeweavers to make Photoshop CS and CS2 work better under Wine,” according to a computerworld article. This could mean more users switching from Windows to Linux.

Google software engineer Dan Kegel posted a message to the Wine mailing list last week describing some of the improvements to Wine that Google has sponsored in the past year. These improvements, says Kegel, have substantially improved the Linux compatibility of several popular commercial software applications, including Adobe Photoshop and Dragon Naturally Speaking.

CodeWeavers make a customized, commercial version of Wine called CrossOverLinux and have been major contributors to Wine. (Wine allows Linux users to run Windows applications.) This post from the CodeWeavers blog details how the company has succesfully ported versions of Chromium--the open source core of Google's Chrome browser--for Mac and Linux.

It looks as if Wine might be supporting Adobe's Flash CS3 as well as Photoshop CS3 on Linux in the near future. With the recent help from Google to get Photoshop CS and CS2 working properly in Wine a huge chunk of the underlying architecture work was put in place for CS3 application support. There are still a number of bugs that need to be triangled and fixed before CS3 is properly supported but this is great news none the less.

Starting from last night, Photoshop CS2 can now be installed easily by using Wine... on any Linux distribution! "Photoshop CS/CS2 should
now work, please help us testing it" - said the wonderful people behind the Wine project.

CodeWeavers has released the latest version of its CrossOver software for Mac and Linux users. If you want to try working without Windows but can't live without a must-have Windows app, CrossOver just might be the answer.

I admit that many folks out there really prefer Photoshop over every other graphics app. Eve though the Gimp is as featured packed and as easy to use, folks just prefer Photoshop. I understand. But the challenge was always that Photoshop was not being written for Linux. The folks at Adobe made Photoshop for Windows and Mac, but not Linux. Enter Disney.

I'm sure some of you would love to install and use Photoshop on your Linux box. So while I prefer using GIMP, I will still show you how to install Adobe Photoshop inside Linux with the help of Wine (not the alcoholic drink). On this tutorial, I'm using Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" and Photoshop CS4.N ow let's get started and install Adobe Photoshop on Ubuntu Linux...

I know this promotes the use of proprietary software but it does break down one more barrier to GNU/Linux adoption and that can only be a good thing while the GIMP isn't "good enough" for those picky Photoshop-loving graphic designers. Now even they can make the switch.