Linux

Are there no good alternatives to Photoshop?

If you want “Photoshop but not named Photoshop”, then no. If you want something that actually fits the definition of “alternative to”, then yes: Gimp.

It looks like you already find what they alternatives are, but as you noticed they're not Photoshop. They work differently so you'll need to develop a different set of skills to used them.

If what you want is to use Photoshop, the best is to install Photoshop itself with Wine.

Maybe try photopea?

It mostly depends on what features of Photoshop you use. If you use most of them, there's no real alternative imo. If you only use a subset of its features, then GIMP, Krita, Photopea or Pinta may become viable alternatives for your use case.

If you like an online one , you can use photopea.

Maybe Darktable is an option for you.

https://www.darktable.org/

I hear you. I hate Photoshop, glory to Photoshop and all that. You can download a Windows 10 iso for free. Fire it up in Boxes or whatever VM software you have and enjoy unadulterated Photoshop. Sure, you're running a whole bloated OS and emulating hardware for just one app, but disk space is cheap, and you can disconnect the virtual nic if you don't want it online.

IDK if you can convince it to run on Linux, but I've been pretty happy with paint.net lately

It's basically a newer project like gimp. It's got the core abilities and appearance of Photoshop. Feature wise, it's less than gimp or Photoshop, but what it has works decently well

Most importantly for me, the UX is much better than gimp... Not as good as Photoshop, but I find stuff is usually where I'd expect it to be

Obviously it's built on .net, so theoretically it could run native on Linux... Not sure if anyone has done the work to make that actually happen

Bruhh GIMP is so hard to use but it's doing basic stuff I needed like typing text.

If I needed Photoshop or something else I would use GNOME Boxes.

I vaguely remember there are some UI overhauls for GIMP to make it look more like photoshop. Can't remember what they are called though.

Once I saw a video review of various Photoshop alternatives. All the guy did was just draw a face and knocked a point every time something was different then photoshop. Now changing alt+t to alt+y or what ever does take time to relearn. Which yeah it is true for him that all these programs will be slower the photoshop. But photoshop would be slower for someone that spent years learning kirta and then moved over to photoshop.

Why are the shorcuts not a simple 1 to with photoshop? Maybe language barrier, maybe just random choice from developers, maybe there is some trade or patent that photoshop has. I don't really know.

Given enough time and practice you will relearn on the short cuts, and best way to get things done with gimp and krita.

There is a Photoshop CC installer for Linux hosted on Github. I've tried it - it works. It's just not a great experience. Saving files is a pain, because the export option does not exist. You need to use Save As, and that only works with a hacky workaround.

The UI doesn't update until you do something that forces it to re-draw (like zooming or panning), which is a real pain when transforming or moving layers - for example. Plus, the UI doesn't scale. You need to use Photoshop in complete fullscreen otherwise parts of the UI will be missing.

AI filters do not exist, for obvious reasons. However, most other filters work fine.

And most obviously, performance has an extreme degradation. It's really slow.

But yeah, would probably get a "Bronze" rating on WineHQ, which is better than not working at all - I suppose. It's progress?

It depends on what you are doing, but there are lots of viable free alternatives. In addition to GIMP you mentioned, take a look at Darktable if you do photo editing. Any piece of complex software takes time to learn.